March 21, 2016 • 36 mins
The Women Airforce Service Pilots of WWII was formed to see if women could fly military aircraft, and potentially free up male noncombat pilots to serve in the U.S. armed forces. Our expert guest reveals that there's so much more to the story, though.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I am Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frying. Today we have a real treat.
Earlier this year, I met Dr Katherine Sharp Landic. She's
(00:21):
an Associate professor of history and director of the Pioneers
Oral History Project at Texas Women's University, and she is
also a private pilot. Kate has spent about twenty years
studying and writing about the Women Air Force Service Pilots
or WASP of World War Two, and she serves as
vice president of the Wing Tip to Wingtip Association, which
is the WASP legacy organization. The Women Air Force Service
(00:45):
Pilots were essentially an experiment that set out to determine
whether women could fly on military aircraft, while also assigning domestic,
non combat flying duties to women to free up desperately
needed male pilots in the United States Armed forces. The
WASP actually started out as two different groups that were
formed in nineteen two. One was the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying
(01:08):
Squadrons or WAFTS, which was led by Nancy Harkness Love
and made up of women who were already highly experienced
as pilots. The other was the Women's Flying Training Detachment,
led by Jacqueline Cochrane, which was set up to train
women to pilot military aircraft. The two were merged to
form the Women Air Force Service Pilots on August five
(01:28):
of nineteen forty three. During their service, these women flew
seventy seven different types of aircraft more than sixty million miles,
all within the continental United States. We've gotten a few
requests to talk about the Loft and Hate really graciously
agreed to be on the show to talk about them.
During our conversation, she had so many wonderful stories and
(01:48):
insights to share that we're going to divide the interview
into two parts. Today, we are going to be talking
about how the WASP were formed, how they were trained,
and what life was like for women who, even though
they were civilians, were really doing military work during wartime.
Then in the next episode, we will talk about their
service during the war, and then what happened after the
waste program was disbanded. So we're going to start Tracy's
(02:11):
interview with some questions on how women were becoming experienced
pilots in the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties. So today
I'm talking to Katherine sharp Landeck, who has spent a
lot of her career working with and studying the women
Air Force Service pilots, and so she seemed like a
(02:32):
perfect person to help us, uh learn about these people
who some folks have asked us to talk about on
the show. Uh. So you've already heard from Holly and
me kind of the basics. So what The first thing
that I wanted to ask you was the first women
who flew for the Women's Auxiliary Flying Squadron were already
experienced pilots, but there weren't really women flying for commercial
(02:55):
airlines at this point. Where were the women who started
out already experien rience to fly airplanes? Where were they
getting that experience? Right? I think this is a great
question because you're quite right there the airlines were not
hiring women. They there weren't that many airline jobs, and
um one woman had been hired, Helen Ritchie in the
nineteen thirties, and it was more for publicity than anything else.
(03:19):
So these women didn't learn to fly the airlines or
get any experience, and they had a ton of flight
time they averaged over hours. The first thirteen women, so
that's a lot of flight time. Many of these women
had money because flying was expensive at the time, so
they were able to just buy flying time. But a
(03:39):
lot of them were able to work as flight instructors,
which was a really common job for women. It was
not a threatening job because women flight instructors were essentially teachers,
just teaching flying, so it was a little different, you know,
very similar and comfortable for people. Several of the women
did air shows and air races, uh so they were
(04:00):
getting their flying experience that way. Nancy Loves who ended
up leading the West those early women pilots, she actually
worked for an airplane manufacturer and demonstrated the plane. That
was one job the woman could do is work in
the in the sales side of the airplanes, because then
they could demonstrate the plane, you know, go out and
(04:21):
show shows potential buyers how to fly it. And the
thought was that they will look, our plane is so
easy to fly, even a woman can fly it. Uh
So they were yeah so. Uh so Nancy was able
to get a lot of flight time that way. So
it really depended on the woman. They all just got
it as they could get it. For these early women well,
(04:43):
and there were also women who paid for their own
training so that they could join the service. Right. Yeah, so, um,
that's that's a real distinction between these earliest women and
then the women who went through the training program. But
because those early women had so much flight time, but
all the women that joined the WASP had to have
(05:05):
at least thirty five hours. It started out with two hours,
um and and then got shifted to thirty five hours.
But they all had to have some flying time. So
there were two ways that that they did this. Uh.
Some of the women just went out and paid for
their flying They got jobs at the airports and traded
their secretarial labor for flying time or for different things
(05:29):
like that. Um. Some of them pay cash or their
parents helped pay cash. But almost half of the women
who went into the training actually learned. There was a
program in the late thirties, UH called the Civilian Pilot
Training Program, and this was a government program set up
(05:49):
in part as as a New Deal type program to
support the aviation industry, but in reality it was growing
the number of pilots we had in the country because
by the late thirties, everybody could see something was coming
without a war and we just didn't have enough pilots.
So the government started this civilian pilot training program to
(06:11):
train men to fly. It was it was free flight
training basically. Uh. And the way that parts of Congress
who were trying to say, oh, this is a you know,
a depression program. We're trying to uplift the economy of
the aviation industry. It's not a war readiness program, because
there are a lot who of people who wanted us
(06:31):
to stay neutral. Um was, they let women in. So
out of a class of ten of these civilian pilot
training program classes, you could have one woman and and
over of the war earned their flying that way. So
they didn't have to have money. They just had to
be really smart and worked really hard. And so that's
(06:54):
the way that you get more women who are trained
to fly. When it came to actually joining the WASP,
what kind of physical requirements and standards did the women
have to meet? And were these different from, uh, from
the standards that men had to meet to join the military, right,
that's a that's a great question. So the standards for
(07:15):
the women changed over time, as it did for the
men um the you know, they were patterned after the
aviation cadets and and this is a big experiment to
see what women could do. The requirements for those first
women that came through those lasts, uh, they had to
be high school graduate. They had to be between twenty
(07:36):
one and thirty five years old. They had to hold
a commercial pilot's license, which is a level above that
private license. They had to have five hundred flight hours,
which is a lot of flight time. And they had
to have a two horsepower rating which meant they could
fly airplanes was two hundred horse power engines, which was
(07:57):
a big, big heavy airplanes for the time. Uh. They
had to have two letters of recommendation. All of these
things were men who were hired by the Faring Division
at the time as civilian pilots had to be between
nineteen and had to have only three years of flight
school and only two hundred flight hours. So there was
(08:17):
a real distinction between those first women and the men
who were being brought in for the same jobs. And
part of this was on purpose to um make sure
that the very most qualified women were getting in, because
you know, you have to have the best to prove
that yes, women really can't do this. Uh. So that
(08:37):
was uh, that was on purpose. So the women who
were brought into training, and there were a lot of
women who wanted to do this. There were twenty five
thousand women who applied to join the LOST to join
that training program. Only eighteen hundred and thirty were selected
because most of them didn't meet the requirements. But they
(08:58):
had to be between twenty one and thirty five, have
the high school education, they had to only be six
stance is tall, and have two hours of flight training um.
And then they had to pass a medical exam by
an Army flight surgeon. So we have all these stories
of women going to these military bases and these army
medical doctors not knowing what to do because here comes
(09:21):
this this you know, twenty year old, twenty one year
old woman asking for a flight physical and and uh
it's almans some of the male doctors. UM. And then
these women had to be approved by a personal interview
with either Jacqueline Cochrane or a member for staff UM.
So so, and these requirements are going to change over time.
(09:44):
They figure out that younger women, just as they do
the men, are maybe better at you know, being shaped
as a military pilot. So the ages dropped to eighteen
and a half UM and then that flight time has
dropped to only thirty five hours instead of two hundred,
and the biggest reason for that is there's just one
(10:05):
enough women out there who had two hundred hours. There
weren't enough people up there who had two d flight hours,
so they dropped it to thirty five. Now, male aviation
cadets who were brought in UM didn't have to have
any flight time, but the women had to have at
least thirty five hours to prove that they could could
handle it. Basically, so the requirements were different for the
(10:26):
women UM. But but they really tried to parallel the
men in some ways. They just they could be more
picky with the women because they had so many who
wanted to join where then then they desperately needed mat
UH and so they they their standards were a little
bit different. You mentioned that they needed to be at
(10:48):
least six tall. I was reading. I read a lot
of women's remembrances of having been in the LOSP and
and watched some UH interview footage with people, and several
of the women in described themselves as being really petite.
There was one who talked about she was actually half
an inch too short and she just sort of stood
on her honor tippy toes while she was being measured. Um,
(11:10):
in the hope of getting in. And like five ft
two is not very tall, and it's still more than
four inches shorter than the average male height at this point.
Did they have to do anything to modify the cockpits
or the controls considering that those would have been built
with a male pilot in mind. Right, Yeah, a lot
of these was for sure. The you know, the average
(11:31):
was almost five five especially since in the later classes
they raised the limit and the average men at the
time was five nins, which is pretty small too if
you think about it by today's standards. Um, but they
didn't do any modifications. These women were not going to
be coddled too in any way. Right, they were an experiment.
(11:53):
If they couldn't do the job, they were not they
were sent home. So one of the things that the
women did was they would carry extra parachutes with themselves
and they put them behind themselves and underneath themselves so
that they could lean be further up, uh and and
reach the petals and things like that. So they didn't
modify the cockpits. It's important to to remember that these
(12:16):
planes are small, you know, even today, you know, the
bombers and cargo planes and things like that are are bigger,
and so pilots can be bigger, you know, taller and
just larger. But those fighter planes today, and the pursuit
planes and and the lighter aircraft of of the warriors,
they're they're best suited for small people. So a lot
(12:39):
of the men pilots who were the pursuit pilots, they
were short as well, because it just it was such
a compact space to get everything in that needed to
happen still make the plane light enough to be fast
and maneuverable. So you know, you see a lot of
pilots in the world, and many of them are short.
(12:59):
I love the idea that they were basically using parachutes
as a booster seat. That that's awesome. Yeah, it was that.
Lots of pictures of them carrying carrying extra parachutes across
you know, across the ramp, and uh, you know, some
of them talked about some of the men, if they
wanted to date us, they would carry our parachutes for us,
and and things like that. But but but yeah, they
(13:21):
were problem solvers. It is still incredible to me. How
many women went out and got their own flight training
so that they could join the WASP. And this number
is going to come up again. There were a lot
of women who were interested in joining, about thousand applied.
(13:44):
I think those numbers will probably surprise a lot of listeners.
I know they did me. Before we move on to
the next part, do you want to pause for a
word from one of our sponsors. Let's do that all right.
Now that we've talked about what the vironments were for
women to join the WASP, we're going to talk about
what that training process was actually like once they were accepted.
(14:06):
Most of it took place at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas,
which is home to a WASP museum today. So let's
get back to the interview. Once women were accepted into
the training program? What was that training program like? Great?
(14:27):
But the training was um extensive and it changed over
time and again it really paralleled the training that the
male cadets were going through, the aviation cadets were going through. Uh,
this program from the beginning was set up as an experiment,
let's see what women can do it whether we can
count on women as military pilots. Because when it all started,
(14:50):
we just didn't know what was going to happen. We
didn't know who was going to win the war in
nineteen nineteen forty three. Uh, it wasn't looking good. So
we really we might need women in all of these roles. UM,
and they wanted to release men pilots. So they did
what they knew. You know, the Army Air Forces did
what they knew, and they paralleled the women's flight training
(15:11):
with the men and I got longer over the course
of the war. Uh. They they had all sorts of
different training. In the beginning, UM, it was twenty three
weeks from the beginning of the program to graduation UH,
and then included something like a hundred and fifteen hours
of flying and a hundred and eighty hours of ground school.
(15:34):
By the end it was thirty weeks, so it got
extended quite a bits of flight training three three hours
of ground school. So you know, we have these visions
of them flying all the time, and really what they
would do is they'd split their day and half where
they'd fly half of the day going through uh uh
(15:55):
different different levels of it. Uh and then they would
go to ground school for half the day, so half
of their time was spent in a classroom learning all
sorts of different things. Uh. They learned military things because
they were expected to be military. They were technically civilians,
but they were trained with the expectation that they would
(16:15):
be military. So they learned military courtesy and customs. They
learned drills and ceremonies, army organization, different things like that
that would make them a good member of the Army
Air Forces. Um. They marched everywhere they went. Who got
a lot of really fun songs from them, uh singing
while they marched. They did daily calisthenics to keep themselves
(16:38):
in shape. Uh. But then they had more traditional courses.
They had mathematics, they had physics, uh, maps and charts
and uh navigation basic principles of flight. They had engines,
they had propellers, weather, you know, physical and first day training.
And then the one piece that they all hated the
(16:59):
most and still grown about when you mentioned, was Morse code.
They all had to learn Morse code, and they all
did did dead dead, and they hated it. But but
it was the navigational tool of the day. Uh. So
they had to spend hours studying Morse code uh in
a hot classroom in Texas. But but so it's really
(17:21):
um this next day for them, And and they could
be eliminated for failure in any of those things, whether
they failed the training of of the classroom or if
they failed the flight, you know, if they were insufficient flying.
So they were they were always on edge, uh and
(17:43):
and desperately afraid of being washed out. Is it true
that the first class was only assigned married instructors who
would sort of know how to handle women. Yeah, so
this was this was new right, using women uh to
fly these airplanes. And and there was a lot of debate.
(18:04):
This decision to make bring women in as pilots had
been debated for several years. Both Nancy Love and Jack
the Cochrane had come up with these ideas and and
presented them, and the Army Air Forces was like, no,
we're not going to do that. We don't need them yet.
And one of their biggest reasons not to was just logistics.
You know, how do we how's the women? Where do
(18:26):
we put the women with? You know, who instructs the women?
And and our women even capable of doing this job.
So when they started the training, it's like, okay, let's
let's bring in married men as their flight instructors because
they will know how to handle the women. Um and
which isn't always accurate. Uh and uh and and let's
(18:52):
let's figure this out. Another big part of why they
wanted married men or limited where on the field men
could go, especially when they got to Sweetwater, Uh, was
they wanted to protect the women's reputation because there was
a big controversy about women in the military and whether
(19:13):
they were um, you know, were they just chasing after
the you know, the status of Mrs Right and getting
married themselves, whether they were really prostitutes rights, whether they
were all lesbians, whether they were all you know, who
are these women who want to join the military? Um.
(19:34):
The reality is they were patriotic women. But uh, the
this was a big part Jack le Cochon, especially who
ran the training side. Um, she really wanted to protect
the reputation of the women and to have nothing questionable
about who these women were and what they were doing.
And so she made a lot of rules and a
(19:55):
lot of the decisions based around that premise of protecting
the reputation of the women and her own reputation as
the leader of the women. Uh. You know. One of
those things they did in Sweetwater, which is where most
of the women trained was. There was another airfield nearby,
big airfield was nearby, and when the men figured out
(20:17):
that there were a bunch of women pilots on the field, uh,
they fly over and then it was declared, well, you
can't land on a vendor field um without an emergency.
And surprisingly enough, over a hundreds and thirty men had
emergencies and had to have emergency landings unless air field.
(20:38):
Of all these women pilots in the first two weeks,
how I thought that, you know, all these pilots, um,
So they had to shut that down uh, and and
wouldn't let them land there at all. Uh. And they
wouldn't lead men anywhere near the housing portions of the field.
They called the Cochrane's convents because they just weren't going
(20:59):
to have any any trouble with men the women. When
they did the training at Sweetwater, it got very big.
So they couldn't have all married instructors, but they had. Uh.
It was strongly uh forbidden to date uh flight instructors.
(21:19):
Of course, amazingly, some of the flight instructors of the
loss got married. So I'm not sure how that happens
since they weren't allowed to date. But but you know
it was it was a real effort to to protect
the women and a real um. But the Army Air
Forces just weren't sure what to do with all these
women pilots because they were it was just so different.
(21:40):
They had nurses, and they had different groups of women
in the military, of course, but but that was they
could figure out what to do with them. But these
women pilots, maybe it was such a masculine thing that
that they just they just weren't sure had to handle it.
I love the fact that the emergency landings spike. I
(22:01):
had not heard that at like hundred over a hundred
over like a hundred thirty five or something. Good. Oh no,
it's a story that um that one man you know,
this is this is as the X was coming down
forbidding it that he actually flew over a hundred miles
was with his engine missing, right, he knew it was missing,
(22:22):
and he he made it miss and he took off
that way and flew past other airfields with the engine missing,
so he could land with a legitimate emergency. So these
young men were very inventive. So while I was preparing
for our interview, I read really wonderful book called for
(22:45):
God Country and the Thrill of It, which is mostly
photographs of of the WASP and their training and all.
It's wonderful. One of the things that was in this
book was a photograph of a class of graduates along
with Jacqueline Cochrane, and they're throwing coins into a wishing
well and that that was a tradition that was part
of their graduation ceremonies after training. Is there a story
(23:07):
to how that tradition developed and what it symbolized? Great? Well,
I think the um the story that I know, uh,
is that that starting with the second class, you know,
the WASP, that started their training in Houston, and Houston
was not very conducive to flight training. It was it
(23:29):
was crowded, there was no good housing, UM, and the
weather just if you've ever been to Houston, the weather
is not good for flight training. And you know, the
fog comes in, the fog goes out. It just it
just wasn't wasn't a good place. So they moved out
to Sweetwater, Texas, to Avenger Field, which you know is
in western Texas and wide open spaces and and just
(23:51):
just better. UM and the base had been used for
mail pilots, for British mail pilots. Uh. And so I
believe the wishing well was from those men. But the
tradition for the WASP started. Um. The second class graduated,
uh and uh General Barton Out who had helped begin
(24:12):
the program, was their graduation and through a silver dollar
in the wishing well as congratulations and good luck uh
for the women. Uh for that first class and graduates
and all who came after them. So he you know,
they put a plaque there at everything and uh. Um
they still have the plaque actually at Texas Woman's University
(24:35):
of the you know him wishing them well and giving
them this this point. So that became, you know the
tradition of tossing a coin in the wishing well for
good luck before Czech ride and h after you soloed,
you also got thrown in the wishing well. And it
was just a way. Um. There was so much tension.
(24:59):
The women had a great time, but there was real
tension that was always being afraid of of washing out,
of not making it through the program. So those those
little celebrations become very important. Uh. And and so to
have to have the coin tossed from someone like Jack
the Cochrane or from each other. Um, it was a
(25:20):
big part of that that's fun tradition, that's that they had.
I was so glad to hear from Kate about this
particular point. I watched a lot of interview footage and
read written interviews with women who had served with the WASP,
and most of them were done as part of WASP
(25:41):
reunions or when museums were open, and uh in one
case a parade float that was built for the Rose
Parade that we're going to talk about later. And so
most of the time when people when these when we're
being interviewed, they were talking about um, their patriotism and
their passion for flying, and this huge sense of camaraderie
that they had with the other women just because of
(26:02):
the context where they were being asked the questions. And
so it wasn't until this part of the interview with
Kate that it really sunk in what an enormously stressful,
high pressure situation this was, in addition to just the
fact that it was happening during wartime. So before we
get to this last chunk of today's part of the interview, Tracy,
do you want to pause again and have a little
(26:22):
sponsor break. Let's do that, alrighty. Not all of the
women who started the WASP training program made it all
the way through to earn their wings. And as we
close out today's installment, Kate and Tracy are going to
talk about why that was the case when we haven't
(26:49):
really talked about this, but a lot of women didn't
make it all the way through the program because it
was really hard, like eighteen eighteen hundred and thirty works did,
but only a little over actually graduated. Great. Well, um,
that's right. So thousand apply eight thirty year accepted to
(27:12):
training and then a thousand and seventy four graduate because
the total number of the WASP is eleven hundred and two,
but that includes those wafts, those first who were really
highly qualified and didn't go through the training. But yeah,
only a thousand and seventy four graduate um from the
training program. And it's it's interesting and a lot of
(27:33):
people don't realize this that, um, you know, the women
get washed out for a number of different reasons. Uh,
insufficient flying is is the biggest problem. H And that's
that's standard. Uh. Some of the wast to talk about
this and say, look, there were girls who were and
they say girls so um that that we're good pilots,
(27:54):
but just it all moved so fast that they just
couldn't keep up. Or you know, if you get sick
and you missed your flight training, you could wash back
to another class, but you know, then you're behind. So
there were there were all these different issues. Uh. The
interesting thing about this washout rate, right, this non graduation rate,
(28:15):
is that it parallels the men's washout rates. And so
what the army our forces would do is they they
based the number of graduates that they would have out
of a particular class. Right, there were eighteen classes of WASP.
They were designated by the year they were they were
going to graduate, right, so forty three um, and the
(28:38):
women had a w for for women, and then you know,
forty three three is the third class to graduate, in
ninette seven is going to be the seventh class to graduate,
and it's and it goes on out and they're eighteen classes.
And the men were designated the same way, you know,
forty three one three to forty three three whatever. And
(29:00):
if you parallel the men's classes to the women's classes,
the percentage of the washout rate is the same. Or
or very close. It's because the Army Air Forces were
looking at the losses in Europe and in the Pacific
of pilots and guessing how many new pilots they were
(29:21):
going to need. And so some classes have a much
lower washout rate than others because the Army Air Forces thought,
we're going to need more pilots, we need to graduate
more pilots. Okay, let them get away with that or
that um and and some classes they have a fifty
washout rate because they're like, oh my gosh, we just
we don't need as many pilots. Let's, you know, find
(29:43):
something else for them to do. Well. The men, when
they washed out, they would be moved over into you
know and be a navigator or be a bombardier or
have different positions. Where the women, if they washed out,
their bed was rolled up and they were sent home.
Uh So it was a different experience for these washouts.
(30:03):
But you know, some legitimately were washed out. You know,
most were legitimately washed out because of different different clauses.
But that percentage um was was really based on what
was going on in the war and expectations like that.
That's both fascinating and heartbreaking. The idea that that we're
(30:25):
basically replacing people. I think that's an important point. That
we were replacing people, right, I mean, that's that's what
was going on in the war, is you were you
were expanding the number of pilots we had right uh,
in combat, but especially in before that. The P fifty
(30:45):
one saved lives, right that aircraft because it can take
the bombers all the way into Germany, you know, and
protect them. But before the P fifty one was ready
to go with those long range tanks, um, we we
had a lot of pilots who are being lost and
we had to replace them. And the main purpose of
(31:06):
the loss was to release men from domestic flying so
they could go and fly in combat. It was it
was a war. It was for the war, you know.
It wasn't it wasn't just an experiment to see what
women could do. There's an experiment to see what women
could do so men could go and fight. Uh. And
(31:28):
And that I think is an important thing. You know,
these women are very fun and very cool, and and
it has been a joy to study them for the
last twenty years. But but they have to be put
into perspective of what their purpose was um and that's
to replace men, uh and to release men who could
go and fight and that. Okay, I know this is
(31:55):
a very downer place to end an episode. It's such
an important note though. The WASP were really really incredible.
They were hugely dedicated, they worked incredibly hard. They broke
a lot of new ground for women in both aviation
and in the American Armed Forces. But really all of
this came about because the men who had been doing
those jobs were first needed elsewhere, and a lot of
(32:18):
times it was because the people who had been doing
those jobs elsewhere had been killed in the line of duty.
So I know it's a sad place to pause for
the day, but we're gonna have lots more to talk
about in our next episode on Wednesday. So from here,
Tracy's fabulous interview gets into what sort of work the
WASP actually did once their training was over, and so
(32:38):
that's gonna be for next time. Uh, and we will
pick up with the work that they did ferrying planes
and people as well as towing targets for practice with
live ammunition. But for right now, Tracy, do you have
some listener mail for us? They do? I have listener
mail from Amy and she writes to us, actually about
two episodes, one that you researched and one that I researched,
(32:58):
So I'm gonna read the whole thing. And uh Amy says, Hello,
Holly and Tracy. I've been listening to the podcast for
about a year and love what you do. Thank you
for your time and effort in researching these interesting topics.
I'm writing about two different podcasts. First on Sir Isaac Newton.
When I was studying physics, my professor told the class
a story about his early years. A point tidbit that
(33:20):
stood out to me was the oddness of his childhood home.
Specifically the matriarch of the family. I think it was
his grandmother, but it may have been his mother boarded
up the windows in the house to avoid paying additional taxes,
which were at the time based on the number of
windows a home displayed, So not only was he isolated,
but his home was always dark. My professor indicated that
(33:41):
this may have contributed to his eccentric behavior later in life.
Second on Katherine Dexter McCormick. She is one of my
heroes and I was thrilled to see your podcast about her.
I attended m I T and lived in McCormick Hall
in two thousand four, during the anniversary of Catherine's graduation
from m I T. It is a gorgeously decorated and
(34:02):
outfitted home on the shores of the Charles River. The
design of the dorm was extremely deliberate based on Catherine's wishes.
There are several large living rooms on the main floor
of the Green Room and the Brown Room, which contained
pianos and beautiful antique furniture. Many of these pieces of
furniture belonged to Catherine, and we're used to smuggle contraception
into the country. There was also a dining hall in
(34:23):
the building, which Katherine insisted upon so that the women
living in the dorm did not have to cook their
own meals each night before classes in the morning. McCormick
Hall is the only single sex dorm left on campus.
As a memorial to Catherine and her efforts for women's
suffrage and women's health, and to m I t s
dedication to advancing women in science and engineering. And then
(34:43):
she goes on to thank us and to suggest some
more episode topics. Thank you so much, Amy, that's such
a good, a great note. His We've had a few
folks right in who either went to m I T
or are from their surrounding area and rode in with
personal details about about mccormacall, but this is my favorite one.
(35:03):
If you would like to write to us about this
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(35:25):
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(35:46):
Force Service pilots. So you can learn all that and
a whole lot more at how stuff Works dot com
or miss and History dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is It, How stuff to
boot Bolling
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I am Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frying. Today we have a real treat.
Earlier this year, I met Dr Katherine Sharp Landic. She's
(00:21):
an Associate professor of history and director of the Pioneers
Oral History Project at Texas Women's University, and she is
also a private pilot. Kate has spent about twenty years
studying and writing about the Women Air Force Service Pilots
or WASP of World War Two, and she serves as
vice president of the Wing Tip to Wingtip Association, which
is the WASP legacy organization. The Women Air Force Service
(00:45):
Pilots were essentially an experiment that set out to determine
whether women could fly on military aircraft, while also assigning domestic,
non combat flying duties to women to free up desperately
needed male pilots in the United States Armed forces. The
WASP actually started out as two different groups that were
formed in nineteen two. One was the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying
(01:08):
Squadrons or WAFTS, which was led by Nancy Harkness Love
and made up of women who were already highly experienced
as pilots. The other was the Women's Flying Training Detachment,
led by Jacqueline Cochrane, which was set up to train
women to pilot military aircraft. The two were merged to
form the Women Air Force Service Pilots on August five
(01:28):
of nineteen forty three. During their service, these women flew
seventy seven different types of aircraft more than sixty million miles,
all within the continental United States. We've gotten a few
requests to talk about the Loft and Hate really graciously
agreed to be on the show to talk about them.
During our conversation, she had so many wonderful stories and
(01:48):
insights to share that we're going to divide the interview
into two parts. Today, we are going to be talking
about how the WASP were formed, how they were trained,
and what life was like for women who, even though
they were civilians, were really doing military work during wartime.
Then in the next episode, we will talk about their
service during the war, and then what happened after the
waste program was disbanded. So we're going to start Tracy's
(02:11):
interview with some questions on how women were becoming experienced
pilots in the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties. So today
I'm talking to Katherine sharp Landeck, who has spent a
lot of her career working with and studying the women
Air Force Service pilots, and so she seemed like a
(02:32):
perfect person to help us, uh learn about these people
who some folks have asked us to talk about on
the show. Uh. So you've already heard from Holly and
me kind of the basics. So what The first thing
that I wanted to ask you was the first women
who flew for the Women's Auxiliary Flying Squadron were already
experienced pilots, but there weren't really women flying for commercial
(02:55):
airlines at this point. Where were the women who started
out already experien rience to fly airplanes? Where were they
getting that experience? Right? I think this is a great
question because you're quite right there the airlines were not
hiring women. They there weren't that many airline jobs, and
um one woman had been hired, Helen Ritchie in the
nineteen thirties, and it was more for publicity than anything else.
(03:19):
So these women didn't learn to fly the airlines or
get any experience, and they had a ton of flight
time they averaged over hours. The first thirteen women, so
that's a lot of flight time. Many of these women
had money because flying was expensive at the time, so
they were able to just buy flying time. But a
(03:39):
lot of them were able to work as flight instructors,
which was a really common job for women. It was
not a threatening job because women flight instructors were essentially teachers,
just teaching flying, so it was a little different, you know,
very similar and comfortable for people. Several of the women
did air shows and air races, uh so they were
(04:00):
getting their flying experience that way. Nancy Loves who ended
up leading the West those early women pilots, she actually
worked for an airplane manufacturer and demonstrated the plane. That
was one job the woman could do is work in
the in the sales side of the airplanes, because then
they could demonstrate the plane, you know, go out and
(04:21):
show shows potential buyers how to fly it. And the
thought was that they will look, our plane is so
easy to fly, even a woman can fly it. Uh
So they were yeah so. Uh so Nancy was able
to get a lot of flight time that way. So
it really depended on the woman. They all just got
it as they could get it. For these early women well,
(04:43):
and there were also women who paid for their own
training so that they could join the service. Right. Yeah, so, um,
that's that's a real distinction between these earliest women and
then the women who went through the training program. But
because those early women had so much flight time, but
all the women that joined the WASP had to have
(05:05):
at least thirty five hours. It started out with two hours,
um and and then got shifted to thirty five hours.
But they all had to have some flying time. So
there were two ways that that they did this. Uh.
Some of the women just went out and paid for
their flying They got jobs at the airports and traded
their secretarial labor for flying time or for different things
(05:29):
like that. Um. Some of them pay cash or their
parents helped pay cash. But almost half of the women
who went into the training actually learned. There was a
program in the late thirties, UH called the Civilian Pilot
Training Program, and this was a government program set up
(05:49):
in part as as a New Deal type program to
support the aviation industry, but in reality it was growing
the number of pilots we had in the country because
by the late thirties, everybody could see something was coming
without a war and we just didn't have enough pilots.
So the government started this civilian pilot training program to
(06:11):
train men to fly. It was it was free flight
training basically. Uh. And the way that parts of Congress
who were trying to say, oh, this is a you know,
a depression program. We're trying to uplift the economy of
the aviation industry. It's not a war readiness program, because
there are a lot who of people who wanted us
(06:31):
to stay neutral. Um was, they let women in. So
out of a class of ten of these civilian pilot
training program classes, you could have one woman and and
over of the war earned their flying that way. So
they didn't have to have money. They just had to
be really smart and worked really hard. And so that's
(06:54):
the way that you get more women who are trained
to fly. When it came to actually joining the WASP,
what kind of physical requirements and standards did the women
have to meet? And were these different from, uh, from
the standards that men had to meet to join the military, right,
that's a that's a great question. So the standards for
(07:15):
the women changed over time, as it did for the
men um the you know, they were patterned after the
aviation cadets and and this is a big experiment to
see what women could do. The requirements for those first
women that came through those lasts, uh, they had to
be high school graduate. They had to be between twenty
(07:36):
one and thirty five years old. They had to hold
a commercial pilot's license, which is a level above that
private license. They had to have five hundred flight hours,
which is a lot of flight time. And they had
to have a two horsepower rating which meant they could
fly airplanes was two hundred horse power engines, which was
(07:57):
a big, big heavy airplanes for the time. Uh. They
had to have two letters of recommendation. All of these
things were men who were hired by the Faring Division
at the time as civilian pilots had to be between
nineteen and had to have only three years of flight
school and only two hundred flight hours. So there was
(08:17):
a real distinction between those first women and the men
who were being brought in for the same jobs. And
part of this was on purpose to um make sure
that the very most qualified women were getting in, because
you know, you have to have the best to prove
that yes, women really can't do this. Uh. So that
(08:37):
was uh, that was on purpose. So the women who
were brought into training, and there were a lot of
women who wanted to do this. There were twenty five
thousand women who applied to join the LOST to join
that training program. Only eighteen hundred and thirty were selected
because most of them didn't meet the requirements. But they
(08:58):
had to be between twenty one and thirty five, have
the high school education, they had to only be six
stance is tall, and have two hours of flight training um.
And then they had to pass a medical exam by
an Army flight surgeon. So we have all these stories
of women going to these military bases and these army
medical doctors not knowing what to do because here comes
(09:21):
this this you know, twenty year old, twenty one year
old woman asking for a flight physical and and uh
it's almans some of the male doctors. UM. And then
these women had to be approved by a personal interview
with either Jacqueline Cochrane or a member for staff UM.
So so, and these requirements are going to change over time.
(09:44):
They figure out that younger women, just as they do
the men, are maybe better at you know, being shaped
as a military pilot. So the ages dropped to eighteen
and a half UM and then that flight time has
dropped to only thirty five hours instead of two hundred,
and the biggest reason for that is there's just one
(10:05):
enough women out there who had two hundred hours. There
weren't enough people up there who had two d flight hours,
so they dropped it to thirty five. Now, male aviation
cadets who were brought in UM didn't have to have
any flight time, but the women had to have at
least thirty five hours to prove that they could could
handle it. Basically, so the requirements were different for the
(10:26):
women UM. But but they really tried to parallel the
men in some ways. They just they could be more
picky with the women because they had so many who
wanted to join where then then they desperately needed mat
UH and so they they their standards were a little
bit different. You mentioned that they needed to be at
(10:48):
least six tall. I was reading. I read a lot
of women's remembrances of having been in the LOSP and
and watched some UH interview footage with people, and several
of the women in described themselves as being really petite.
There was one who talked about she was actually half
an inch too short and she just sort of stood
on her honor tippy toes while she was being measured. Um,
(11:10):
in the hope of getting in. And like five ft
two is not very tall, and it's still more than
four inches shorter than the average male height at this point.
Did they have to do anything to modify the cockpits
or the controls considering that those would have been built
with a male pilot in mind. Right, Yeah, a lot
of these was for sure. The you know, the average
(11:31):
was almost five five especially since in the later classes
they raised the limit and the average men at the
time was five nins, which is pretty small too if
you think about it by today's standards. Um, but they
didn't do any modifications. These women were not going to
be coddled too in any way. Right, they were an experiment.
(11:53):
If they couldn't do the job, they were not they
were sent home. So one of the things that the
women did was they would carry extra parachutes with themselves
and they put them behind themselves and underneath themselves so
that they could lean be further up, uh and and
reach the petals and things like that. So they didn't
modify the cockpits. It's important to to remember that these
(12:16):
planes are small, you know, even today, you know, the
bombers and cargo planes and things like that are are bigger,
and so pilots can be bigger, you know, taller and
just larger. But those fighter planes today, and the pursuit
planes and and the lighter aircraft of of the warriors,
they're they're best suited for small people. So a lot
(12:39):
of the men pilots who were the pursuit pilots, they
were short as well, because it just it was such
a compact space to get everything in that needed to
happen still make the plane light enough to be fast
and maneuverable. So you know, you see a lot of
pilots in the world, and many of them are short.
(12:59):
I love the idea that they were basically using parachutes
as a booster seat. That that's awesome. Yeah, it was that.
Lots of pictures of them carrying carrying extra parachutes across
you know, across the ramp, and uh, you know, some
of them talked about some of the men, if they
wanted to date us, they would carry our parachutes for us,
and and things like that. But but but yeah, they
(13:21):
were problem solvers. It is still incredible to me. How
many women went out and got their own flight training
so that they could join the WASP. And this number
is going to come up again. There were a lot
of women who were interested in joining, about thousand applied.
(13:44):
I think those numbers will probably surprise a lot of listeners.
I know they did me. Before we move on to
the next part, do you want to pause for a
word from one of our sponsors. Let's do that all right.
Now that we've talked about what the vironments were for
women to join the WASP, we're going to talk about
what that training process was actually like once they were accepted.
(14:06):
Most of it took place at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas,
which is home to a WASP museum today. So let's
get back to the interview. Once women were accepted into
the training program? What was that training program like? Great?
(14:27):
But the training was um extensive and it changed over
time and again it really paralleled the training that the
male cadets were going through, the aviation cadets were going through. Uh,
this program from the beginning was set up as an experiment,
let's see what women can do it whether we can
count on women as military pilots. Because when it all started,
(14:50):
we just didn't know what was going to happen. We
didn't know who was going to win the war in
nineteen nineteen forty three. Uh, it wasn't looking good. So
we really we might need women in all of these roles. UM,
and they wanted to release men pilots. So they did
what they knew. You know, the Army Air Forces did
what they knew, and they paralleled the women's flight training
(15:11):
with the men and I got longer over the course
of the war. Uh. They they had all sorts of
different training. In the beginning, UM, it was twenty three
weeks from the beginning of the program to graduation UH,
and then included something like a hundred and fifteen hours
of flying and a hundred and eighty hours of ground school.
(15:34):
By the end it was thirty weeks, so it got
extended quite a bits of flight training three three hours
of ground school. So you know, we have these visions
of them flying all the time, and really what they
would do is they'd split their day and half where
they'd fly half of the day going through uh uh
(15:55):
different different levels of it. Uh and then they would
go to ground school for half the day, so half
of their time was spent in a classroom learning all
sorts of different things. Uh. They learned military things because
they were expected to be military. They were technically civilians,
but they were trained with the expectation that they would
(16:15):
be military. So they learned military courtesy and customs. They
learned drills and ceremonies, army organization, different things like that
that would make them a good member of the Army
Air Forces. Um. They marched everywhere they went. Who got
a lot of really fun songs from them, uh singing
while they marched. They did daily calisthenics to keep themselves
(16:38):
in shape. Uh. But then they had more traditional courses.
They had mathematics, they had physics, uh, maps and charts
and uh navigation basic principles of flight. They had engines,
they had propellers, weather, you know, physical and first day training.
And then the one piece that they all hated the
(16:59):
most and still grown about when you mentioned, was Morse code.
They all had to learn Morse code, and they all
did did dead dead, and they hated it. But but
it was the navigational tool of the day. Uh. So
they had to spend hours studying Morse code uh in
a hot classroom in Texas. But but so it's really
(17:21):
um this next day for them, And and they could
be eliminated for failure in any of those things, whether
they failed the training of of the classroom or if
they failed the flight, you know, if they were insufficient flying.
So they were they were always on edge, uh and
(17:43):
and desperately afraid of being washed out. Is it true
that the first class was only assigned married instructors who
would sort of know how to handle women. Yeah, so
this was this was new right, using women uh to
fly these airplanes. And and there was a lot of debate.
(18:04):
This decision to make bring women in as pilots had
been debated for several years. Both Nancy Love and Jack
the Cochrane had come up with these ideas and and
presented them, and the Army Air Forces was like, no,
we're not going to do that. We don't need them yet.
And one of their biggest reasons not to was just logistics.
You know, how do we how's the women? Where do
(18:26):
we put the women with? You know, who instructs the women?
And and our women even capable of doing this job.
So when they started the training, it's like, okay, let's
let's bring in married men as their flight instructors because
they will know how to handle the women. Um and
which isn't always accurate. Uh and uh and and let's
(18:52):
let's figure this out. Another big part of why they
wanted married men or limited where on the field men
could go, especially when they got to Sweetwater, Uh, was
they wanted to protect the women's reputation because there was
a big controversy about women in the military and whether
(19:13):
they were um, you know, were they just chasing after
the you know, the status of Mrs Right and getting
married themselves, whether they were really prostitutes rights, whether they
were all lesbians, whether they were all you know, who
are these women who want to join the military? Um.
(19:34):
The reality is they were patriotic women. But uh, the
this was a big part Jack le Cochon, especially who
ran the training side. Um, she really wanted to protect
the reputation of the women and to have nothing questionable
about who these women were and what they were doing.
And so she made a lot of rules and a
(19:55):
lot of the decisions based around that premise of protecting
the reputation of the women and her own reputation as
the leader of the women. Uh. You know. One of
those things they did in Sweetwater, which is where most
of the women trained was. There was another airfield nearby,
big airfield was nearby, and when the men figured out
(20:17):
that there were a bunch of women pilots on the field, uh,
they fly over and then it was declared, well, you
can't land on a vendor field um without an emergency.
And surprisingly enough, over a hundreds and thirty men had
emergencies and had to have emergency landings unless air field.
(20:38):
Of all these women pilots in the first two weeks,
how I thought that, you know, all these pilots, um,
So they had to shut that down uh, and and
wouldn't let them land there at all. Uh. And they
wouldn't lead men anywhere near the housing portions of the field.
They called the Cochrane's convents because they just weren't going
(20:59):
to have any any trouble with men the women. When
they did the training at Sweetwater, it got very big.
So they couldn't have all married instructors, but they had. Uh.
It was strongly uh forbidden to date uh flight instructors.
(21:19):
Of course, amazingly, some of the flight instructors of the
loss got married. So I'm not sure how that happens
since they weren't allowed to date. But but you know
it was it was a real effort to to protect
the women and a real um. But the Army Air
Forces just weren't sure what to do with all these
women pilots because they were it was just so different.
(21:40):
They had nurses, and they had different groups of women
in the military, of course, but but that was they
could figure out what to do with them. But these
women pilots, maybe it was such a masculine thing that
that they just they just weren't sure had to handle it.
I love the fact that the emergency landings spike. I
(22:01):
had not heard that at like hundred over a hundred
over like a hundred thirty five or something. Good. Oh no,
it's a story that um that one man you know,
this is this is as the X was coming down
forbidding it that he actually flew over a hundred miles
was with his engine missing, right, he knew it was missing,
(22:22):
and he he made it miss and he took off
that way and flew past other airfields with the engine missing,
so he could land with a legitimate emergency. So these
young men were very inventive. So while I was preparing
for our interview, I read really wonderful book called for
(22:45):
God Country and the Thrill of It, which is mostly
photographs of of the WASP and their training and all.
It's wonderful. One of the things that was in this
book was a photograph of a class of graduates along
with Jacqueline Cochrane, and they're throwing coins into a wishing
well and that that was a tradition that was part
of their graduation ceremonies after training. Is there a story
(23:07):
to how that tradition developed and what it symbolized? Great? Well,
I think the um the story that I know, uh,
is that that starting with the second class, you know,
the WASP, that started their training in Houston, and Houston
was not very conducive to flight training. It was it
(23:29):
was crowded, there was no good housing, UM, and the
weather just if you've ever been to Houston, the weather
is not good for flight training. And you know, the
fog comes in, the fog goes out. It just it
just wasn't wasn't a good place. So they moved out
to Sweetwater, Texas, to Avenger Field, which you know is
in western Texas and wide open spaces and and just
(23:51):
just better. UM and the base had been used for
mail pilots, for British mail pilots. Uh. And so I
believe the wishing well was from those men. But the
tradition for the WASP started. Um. The second class graduated,
uh and uh General Barton Out who had helped begin
(24:12):
the program, was their graduation and through a silver dollar
in the wishing well as congratulations and good luck uh
for the women. Uh for that first class and graduates
and all who came after them. So he you know,
they put a plaque there at everything and uh. Um
they still have the plaque actually at Texas Woman's University
(24:35):
of the you know him wishing them well and giving
them this this point. So that became, you know the
tradition of tossing a coin in the wishing well for
good luck before Czech ride and h after you soloed,
you also got thrown in the wishing well. And it
was just a way. Um. There was so much tension.
(24:59):
The women had a great time, but there was real
tension that was always being afraid of of washing out,
of not making it through the program. So those those
little celebrations become very important. Uh. And and so to
have to have the coin tossed from someone like Jack
the Cochrane or from each other. Um, it was a
(25:20):
big part of that that's fun tradition, that's that they had.
I was so glad to hear from Kate about this
particular point. I watched a lot of interview footage and
read written interviews with women who had served with the WASP,
and most of them were done as part of WASP
(25:41):
reunions or when museums were open, and uh in one
case a parade float that was built for the Rose
Parade that we're going to talk about later. And so
most of the time when people when these when we're
being interviewed, they were talking about um, their patriotism and
their passion for flying, and this huge sense of camaraderie
that they had with the other women just because of
(26:02):
the context where they were being asked the questions. And
so it wasn't until this part of the interview with
Kate that it really sunk in what an enormously stressful,
high pressure situation this was, in addition to just the
fact that it was happening during wartime. So before we
get to this last chunk of today's part of the interview, Tracy,
do you want to pause again and have a little
(26:22):
sponsor break. Let's do that, alrighty. Not all of the
women who started the WASP training program made it all
the way through to earn their wings. And as we
close out today's installment, Kate and Tracy are going to
talk about why that was the case when we haven't
(26:49):
really talked about this, but a lot of women didn't
make it all the way through the program because it
was really hard, like eighteen eighteen hundred and thirty works did,
but only a little over actually graduated. Great. Well, um,
that's right. So thousand apply eight thirty year accepted to
(27:12):
training and then a thousand and seventy four graduate because
the total number of the WASP is eleven hundred and two,
but that includes those wafts, those first who were really
highly qualified and didn't go through the training. But yeah,
only a thousand and seventy four graduate um from the
training program. And it's it's interesting and a lot of
(27:33):
people don't realize this that, um, you know, the women
get washed out for a number of different reasons. Uh,
insufficient flying is is the biggest problem. H And that's
that's standard. Uh. Some of the wast to talk about
this and say, look, there were girls who were and
they say girls so um that that we're good pilots,
(27:54):
but just it all moved so fast that they just
couldn't keep up. Or you know, if you get sick
and you missed your flight training, you could wash back
to another class, but you know, then you're behind. So
there were there were all these different issues. Uh. The
interesting thing about this washout rate, right, this non graduation rate,
(28:15):
is that it parallels the men's washout rates. And so
what the army our forces would do is they they
based the number of graduates that they would have out
of a particular class. Right, there were eighteen classes of WASP.
They were designated by the year they were they were
going to graduate, right, so forty three um, and the
(28:38):
women had a w for for women, and then you know,
forty three three is the third class to graduate, in
ninette seven is going to be the seventh class to graduate,
and it's and it goes on out and they're eighteen classes.
And the men were designated the same way, you know,
forty three one three to forty three three whatever. And
(29:00):
if you parallel the men's classes to the women's classes,
the percentage of the washout rate is the same. Or
or very close. It's because the Army Air Forces were
looking at the losses in Europe and in the Pacific
of pilots and guessing how many new pilots they were
(29:21):
going to need. And so some classes have a much
lower washout rate than others because the Army Air Forces thought,
we're going to need more pilots, we need to graduate
more pilots. Okay, let them get away with that or
that um and and some classes they have a fifty
washout rate because they're like, oh my gosh, we just
we don't need as many pilots. Let's, you know, find
(29:43):
something else for them to do. Well. The men, when
they washed out, they would be moved over into you
know and be a navigator or be a bombardier or
have different positions. Where the women, if they washed out,
their bed was rolled up and they were sent home.
Uh So it was a different experience for these washouts.
(30:03):
But you know, some legitimately were washed out. You know,
most were legitimately washed out because of different different clauses.
But that percentage um was was really based on what
was going on in the war and expectations like that.
That's both fascinating and heartbreaking. The idea that that we're
(30:25):
basically replacing people. I think that's an important point. That
we were replacing people, right, I mean, that's that's what
was going on in the war, is you were you
were expanding the number of pilots we had right uh,
in combat, but especially in before that. The P fifty
(30:45):
one saved lives, right that aircraft because it can take
the bombers all the way into Germany, you know, and
protect them. But before the P fifty one was ready
to go with those long range tanks, um, we we
had a lot of pilots who are being lost and
we had to replace them. And the main purpose of
(31:06):
the loss was to release men from domestic flying so
they could go and fly in combat. It was it
was a war. It was for the war, you know.
It wasn't it wasn't just an experiment to see what
women could do. There's an experiment to see what women
could do so men could go and fight. Uh. And
(31:28):
And that I think is an important thing. You know,
these women are very fun and very cool, and and
it has been a joy to study them for the
last twenty years. But but they have to be put
into perspective of what their purpose was um and that's
to replace men, uh and to release men who could
go and fight and that. Okay, I know this is
(31:55):
a very downer place to end an episode. It's such
an important note though. The WASP were really really incredible.
They were hugely dedicated, they worked incredibly hard. They broke
a lot of new ground for women in both aviation
and in the American Armed Forces. But really all of
this came about because the men who had been doing
those jobs were first needed elsewhere, and a lot of
(32:18):
times it was because the people who had been doing
those jobs elsewhere had been killed in the line of duty.
So I know it's a sad place to pause for
the day, but we're gonna have lots more to talk
about in our next episode on Wednesday. So from here,
Tracy's fabulous interview gets into what sort of work the
WASP actually did once their training was over, and so
(32:38):
that's gonna be for next time. Uh, and we will
pick up with the work that they did ferrying planes
and people as well as towing targets for practice with
live ammunition. But for right now, Tracy, do you have
some listener mail for us? They do? I have listener
mail from Amy and she writes to us, actually about
two episodes, one that you researched and one that I researched,
(32:58):
So I'm gonna read the whole thing. And uh Amy says, Hello,
Holly and Tracy. I've been listening to the podcast for
about a year and love what you do. Thank you
for your time and effort in researching these interesting topics.
I'm writing about two different podcasts. First on Sir Isaac Newton.
When I was studying physics, my professor told the class
a story about his early years. A point tidbit that
(33:20):
stood out to me was the oddness of his childhood home.
Specifically the matriarch of the family. I think it was
his grandmother, but it may have been his mother boarded
up the windows in the house to avoid paying additional taxes,
which were at the time based on the number of
windows a home displayed, So not only was he isolated,
but his home was always dark. My professor indicated that
(33:41):
this may have contributed to his eccentric behavior later in life.
Second on Katherine Dexter McCormick. She is one of my
heroes and I was thrilled to see your podcast about her.
I attended m I T and lived in McCormick Hall
in two thousand four, during the anniversary of Catherine's graduation
from m I T. It is a gorgeously decorated and
(34:02):
outfitted home on the shores of the Charles River. The
design of the dorm was extremely deliberate based on Catherine's wishes.
There are several large living rooms on the main floor
of the Green Room and the Brown Room, which contained
pianos and beautiful antique furniture. Many of these pieces of
furniture belonged to Catherine, and we're used to smuggle contraception
into the country. There was also a dining hall in
(34:23):
the building, which Katherine insisted upon so that the women
living in the dorm did not have to cook their
own meals each night before classes in the morning. McCormick
Hall is the only single sex dorm left on campus.
As a memorial to Catherine and her efforts for women's
suffrage and women's health, and to m I t s
dedication to advancing women in science and engineering. And then
(34:43):
she goes on to thank us and to suggest some
more episode topics. Thank you so much, Amy, that's such
a good, a great note. His We've had a few
folks right in who either went to m I T
or are from their surrounding area and rode in with
personal details about about mccormacall, but this is my favorite one.
(35:03):
If you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast, where at history Podcasts at how
stuff works dot com. And we're also on Facebook at
facebook dot com slash miss in history and on Twitter
at miss in History. Are tumbler is miss in history
dot tumble dot com. We're also on panterrist at Pegris
dot com slash miss in History. You want to come
to our parent company's website, which is how stuff Works
dot com. You can put the word airplane into the
(35:25):
search bar. You will find all sorts of information about airplanes,
how they work, the history of aviation, lots of green stuff.
You can also come to our website, which is missed
in history dot com, where you will find show notes.
You will find an archive of every episode that we
have ever done. In terms of today's episode, there will
be lots of links to places where you can see
pictures and learn a lot more about the women Air
(35:46):
Force Service pilots. So you can learn all that and
a whole lot more at how stuff Works dot com
or miss and History dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is It, How stuff to
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Tracy Wilson
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