More WASP Stories Honoring Women Pilots

This was sent to me by my friend Jay Buckley. I can't improve on the way he tells the story of three WASP lady pilots that he knew. The stories are funny and reveal the tough character of these women.

"I knew three gals that were WASP's.
Billie Jo Reid was the wife of one of the original owners of the McDonald franchises in Denver. As I believe he had 19 outlets. Billie Jo flew in several 99 races sponsored by her husband Carl. She also flew the company King Air.

The other two were Pat Sullivan and Betty Clark. After the war they started a crop dusting business in Steamboat and moved to Rifle, CO. Betty was from Rifle and there was more business there and in Grand Junction. They operated out of both areas.

Betty did most of the flying and Pat ran the loading, office operations and field scouting. In 1970 I took my plane down to help Betty out for few days, it turned into an all summer contract flying both out of Rifle and Grand Junction.

Betty and I flew back up to Rifle one evening as Pat had said we had some alfalfa fields to scout and spray. These were big fields, 40 acres. The fields in Junction were 5 and 10 acre patches, yank and bank type, power lines and houses.

We met the farmer out in the field that evening to inspect the insect damage. There was plenty of evidence of alfalfa weevil feeding and damage. Pat came running up to us and showed the farmer a handful of weevil. The farmer took one look and said they were all dead, got in his pickup and drove away.

Pat had collected some weevil from a pasture near the airport and put them in an aspirin bottle. Wanting to convince the farmer he had a problem, she shook the weevil out in her hand to show him. Sure enough they were dead, the aspirin had killed them. We lost the job.

Betty and Pat have both passed away. I'm not sure about Billie Jo, I haven't seen her since 1976 and her health was not good then.

One more story about Betty. A United DC-4 was flying from Denver to Grand Junction and lost an engine somewhere east of Rifle and another engine was miss firing so the pilot elected to set the plan down at the Rifle airport. The runway was pretty short but he got in stopped before going off the west end.

A maintenance crew came in from Denver to access the damage and how they were going to get the plane out of there. The consensus was the runway was too short so they were going to have to disassemble the plane and either truck it back to Denver or on to Grand Junction and reassemble the plane there. Trucking it out of there was going to be a real challenge. This was before the intra state highway l-70.

Betty and the mechanics sat around for a bit that evening having a toddy or two and Betty told them if they would replace the two engines they could fly the "damn thing" out of there. We after many phone calls to United in Denver it was decide it may be possible.

The two engines were replaced and a crew showed up to fly the plane to Grand Junction. After walking the runway, doing some calculations the crew said there is no way they would try to fly the plane out even with minimum fuel. There were more calls to Denver between the mechanics, pilots and operations explaining the situation.

Betty had about all she could stand and said she would fly the "damn thing" out of there for $500 and she didn't need a crew only someone to raise and lower the flaps and the gear and if they couldn't find someone she could even do that.

It was agreed to give it a try. They pushed the plane to the far end of the east edge of the runway. The main gear was just on the runway, most of the fuselage was overhanging a ravine at the end of the runway.

Betty and one of the mechanics that volunteered stood on the brakes while she ran the engines up to maximum power. The plane was literally jumping up and down. She released the brakes and roared down the runway. About two thirds of the runway, the plane was air borne. The flight was uneventful to Grand Junction.

A few days later Betty received a phone call and a letter from the CAA, the predecessor to the FAA, about the flight. She wasn't rated in a DC-4, inadequate crew members and so on. She hung up on the guy and filed the letter where we filed most of the letters from the feds. Betty had ferried B-17's so she was no stranger to four engine aircraft.

Sorry about the rambling Rob, but those were three gals I real admired.

Jay"

Honoring Women Pilots this Week

Hazel Ying Lee, American Hero
Though she served her country in WWII, a Portland cemetery initially refused her family a burial plot because she was Asian.

WASP Pilot, Aviation Pioneer

Name in English: Hazel Ying Lee

Name in Chinese: 李月英

Name in Pinyin: Lǐ Yuèyīng

Gender: Female

Birth Year: 1912 in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.

Died: 1944

Profession (s): Military Pilot
Education: Commerce High School, High School Diploma, 1929; Pilot’s license, 1932
Awards: 2004, Oregon Aviation Hall of Honor Member, Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum
Contribution (s): During a time of rampant anti-Chinese bias and discrimination against women, Hazel Ying Lee defied the odds as one of the first Chinese American women to get a pilot’s license and later the first to fly for the U.S. Army. When she obtained her pilot’s license in 1932 only one percent of American pilots were women and only a handful of them were Chinese American women.

In 1943, Lee became the first Chinese American woman to join the “Women Airforce Service Pilots” (WASP) program created to replace male pilots needed in combat with women. By American law and custom of the time, women weren’t allowed to hold military jobs that could potentially involve combat, although quite a few military nurses did come under enemy fire during World War II. Previously, Lee had volunteered to join the Chinese Air Force twice to help the war effort and to join her husband already serving with them. Although the Chinese Air Force needed pilots, Lee was rejected each time because she was a woman.

Lee was one of the first women to pilot fighter aircraft for the U.S. Army under the WASP program, but work for the WASP program was often dangerous and exhausting with seven-day work weeks. Female pilots like Lee delivered military aircraft from their manufacturers to airfields across North America. Delivering aircraft that were fresh from the assembly line, WASP pilots were often the first to discover malfunctions. Lee died in 1944 when her plane collided on a runway with a malfunctioning plane whose radio had failed. Both planes had accidentally been directed to land on the same runway at the same time. Hazel Lee was one of the last of the 38 WASP’s killed during the war.

After Lee’s death, the Lee family went through a lengthy but ultimately successful battle with a Portland cemetery that refused to bury any Asians. Lee was laid to rest in a non-military funeral, since WASP pilots were classified as civilians during WWII, and did not receive military benefits or military funerals. Lee and other WASP pilots would not be recognized with military status until 1979.

Lee showed that Chinese American women could compete as equals in aviation with any man. She was a woman who knew what she wanted and chased her dreams to fly even at the cost of giving her life for her country.
Written by AsianWeek Staff Report · Filed Under Chinese American Heroes, Features
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Honoring Women Who Served--Lena Mae O'Neal--WAVE

Lena Mae O'Neal in a close-up from a group photo. (Courtesy of Nancy Hart, O'Neal's niece)

A photograph of Peggy O'Neal stands in front of her US Navy WAVE uniform. The immaculate and complete uniform, with cap and leather purse, was donated to me by a colleague Nancy Hart. Peggy was Nancy's aunt.

Peggy's WAVE uniform, looking as new as the day she got it, stands in a place of honor in my small museum. Note her name "L.M. ONEAL" stenciled on the WAVE-issued purse.

The WAVES were the women's arm of the United States Navy during World War Two. Many women served in jobs that would otherwise have been done by men, thus freeing the men to fight in the war effort.

A colleague of mine at work, Nancy Hart, had an aunt named Lena Mae O'Neal. Ms. O'Neal went by Peggy. Peggy served in the WAVES in World War Two as a cook. She was stationed in San Diego, California and in New York. A few years ago, her niece Nancy gave me Peggy's entire WAVE uniform, complete with purse and cap. This set is a priceless artifact and one of the crown jewels of my collection.

Peggy O'Neal was born in 1917 in Springfield, Missouri. In 1939, she went to California. Her brothers and sisters were all involved once the United States entered the war. Her oldest brother, James O'Neal, taught pilots to fly in Oklahoma. Her older sister Betty was a secretary on several different bases. Her brother Frank O'Neal, was injured in the Phillipines. While being transported on a hospital ship, the ship was bombed by the Japanese and Frank was killed. Her brother William O'Neal was in the Marines, and brother Emmitt was in the Coast Guard. Another sister, Dorothy, worked as a 'Rosie the Riveter' for McDonnell Douglas, building aircraft. Of the eight children in the O'Neal family, seven were involved in the war effort in some way.

Peggy passed away a few years ago. Today we honor her service and that of her siblings.

A wartime recruiting poster shows a young WAVE prepared to serve her country.

The United States Navy's history website has the following information on the WAVES:

"After a twenty-three-year absence, women returned to general Navy service in early August 1942, when Mildred McAfee was sworn in as a Naval Reserve Lieutenant Commander, the first female commissioned officer in U.S. Navy history, and the first Director of the WAVES, or "Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service". In the decades since the last of the Yeomen (F) left active duty, only a relatively small corps of Navy Nurses represented their gender in the Naval service, and they had never had formal officer status. Now, the Navy was preparing to accept not just a large number of enlisted women, as it had done during World War I, but female Commissioned Officers to supervise them. It was a development of lasting significance, notwithstanding the WAVES' name, which indicated that they would only be around during the wartime "Emergency".

Recruiting had to be undertaken (or at least managed, as the number of interested women was vast), training establishments set up, an administrative structure put in place and uniforms designed. The latter effort produced a classic design that still has many elements in use nearly six decades later. Difficulties were overcome with energy and indispensable good humor, and within a year 27,000 women wore the WAVES uniform.

These women served in a far wider range of occupations than had the Yeomen (F). While traditionally female secretarial and clerical jobs took an expected large portion, thousands of WAVES performed previously atypical duties in the aviation community, Judge Advocate General Corps, medical professions, communications, intelligence, science and technology. The wartime Navy's demand for them was intense as it struggled to defeat Hitler and Mussolini in Europe and the Japanese in the Pacific.

At the end of the conflict, there were well over 8,000 female officers and some ten times that many enlisted WAVES, about 2 ½ percent of the Navy's total strength. In some places WAVES constituted a majority of the uniformed Naval personnel. And many remained in uniform to help get the Navy into, and through, the post-war era.

Saluting Rosie the Riveter

My friend Maurice says I'm long overdue for a story about the role of women in the war effort. He is right. This week I am going to devote all my blog articles to the role of women in World War Two.

Maurice sent my an article that appeared in yesterday's online edition of Army Times. I quote it here:

Real-life Rosies set to fly on WWII planes

The Associated PressPosted : Friday Aug 31, 2007 11:46:58 EDT

NEW YORK — Anne King was 19 and earning $12 a week in a dime store when she was recruited in 1942 to learn how to make airplane parts. She worked at Republic Aviation on Long Island as a mechanic and riveter on P-47 Thunderbolt fighters and other aircraft.
King and five other women who performed wartime factory work were set to gather Friday at what is now Republic Airport in Farmingdale and take rides in a B-17 Flying Fortress and a B-24 Liberator "as a tribute to their war efforts," said Hope Kaplan, a spokeswoman for the American Airpower Museum on the grounds of the airport.

Exhibitions by vintage aircraft are holiday fixtures at the museum, but this is the first time any of the women, the "Rosie the Riveters" who helped build World War II aircraft, have had a chance to fly in them, Kaplan said.

King, who turns 85 Saturday, said she was "not the least bit nervous" about her first flight in a vintage bomber.

"I'd like to ride in the B-24," said Josephine Rachiele, 82, who was also scheduled to take a tribute flight. "My friend Bernadette's father was a waist gunner on a B-24 and I would like to tell her what it's like."

Rachiele recalled that when she first went to work as a riveter at Republic in 1943, "I didn't know a rivet from a nail, and it was so noisy that I was really frightened. The rivet guns shooting rivets and the drill press stomping on metal — it was pandemonium."

At war's end, she said, the women were given the choice of staying or leaving so that returning service members could have the jobs. Rachiele quit but returned in later years to Republic, where she was known both as "Josie the Riveter" and "Rosie the Riveter."

Georgette Feller, 86, said she was "already one step ahead" when she joined Republic Aviation as a riveter.

"My father was an excellent mechanic, and I already knew how to use a rivet gun, and I could tell aluminum from steel," she said.

"It was a great job, but I had trouble with the man who was my first partner — he said he wasn't happy working with a dizzy broad."

Feller knows Friday's flight is a great opportunity.

"I'm at the end of my days and I want every good experience I can have," she said. "That sounds like a good one for me."

While the actual number of women employed in defense plants is uncertain, historians say the war brought about 6 million women into the work force for the first time. They almost always made less money than men working at the same tasks.

In 1943, a promotional film using an actual riveter named Rose at Michigan's Willow Run bomber plant as its model popularized the "Rosie the Riveter" image. A song furthered the cause, as did a Saturday Evening Post cover by illustrator Norman Rockwell, depicting Rosie with her feet resting on a copy of Adolf Hitler's book, "Mein Kampf."

During World War II the United States government sought increased domestic production to supply the war effort while at the same time sending a percentage of the male work force into military service. To help meet the need for a larger labor force, the government created Rosie the Riveter, shown here. The publicity campaign focusing on the fictional poster girl, which ran from 1942 to 1945, encouraged women to support the war by working outside the home. More than 6 million women joined the U.S. domestic work force during World War II.