Experienced Women Pilots Join the WAFS

Another source was the small number of licensed women pilots in the United States. In the summer of 1942, Mrs. Nancy Love, a civilian employee of the Ferrying Division of ATC and a qualified pilot herself, suggested to her boss, Colonel Tunner, that well-qualified women should be hired as civilian ferry pilots.

The extreme need for pilots led the War Department to approve the proposal, and 25 exceptionally qualified women were hired to become members of the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, which was based at Wilmington New Castle, Delaware. Unlike the later Womens Air Service Pilots, commonly known as WASPs, which trained women as pilots, the WAFS was staffed by women who were already experienced aviators, each with more than a thousand hours of flying time.

The WAFS quickly proved its worth as its pilots ferried light aircraft, bombers, transports, and eventually fighters from the factories to the military depots where they were accepted for military service. Unlike the male pilots who flew overseas routes to the combat zones, the women were restricted to domestic duties. Tunner approved the use of women on overseas routes, but an inaugural mission with Nancy Love and Betty Gillies at the controls was halted in Newfoundland after the two women flew a B-17 there in preparation for ferrying it to England.

Famous Female Pilot Had Pull With Eleanor Roosevelt

Although the overseas flight was halted by order of Army Air Forces commander General Arnold, many of the WAFS believed the order was initiated by Jacqueline Cochran, a famous female pilot with ties to Eleanor Roosevelt, who had persuaded the president to authorize the establishment of the Womens Air Service Pilots. Cochran’s training program for women pilots for noncombat duties was approved shortly after the WAFS entered service.

Rather than have two separate programs for women pilots, Arnold elected to place the WAFS under Cochran’s control, though Nancy Love continued in her position as WAFS commander. A flamboyant and ambitious woman who had managed to climb above her origins as the daughter of a Florida sharecropper, Cochran was provided a Lockheed Hudson by the Army Air Forces. The purpose is unclear, but Cochran had made a highly publicized flight to England in the Hudson a few weeks before the B-17 ferry mission was scheduled, and the WAFS believed she didn’t want to be upstaged.

ATC Casualties Much Lighter Than Anticipated

Jackie Cochran’s WASPs provided some pilots for the ATC’s Ferrying Division as well as for other noncombat duties. But the WASPs were inactivated as a result of events that boosted the ranks of available pilots for the Air Transport Command. By the spring of 1944 the War Department realized that casualties among aircrews were significantly lighter than had been anticipated early in the war and fewer new pilots were needed in the combat squadrons. Consequently, the civilian-run primary flight schools around the country were being shut down and the instructors were losing their draft ineligibility status.

The former instructors were reassigned to air-transport squadrons after being commissioned and placed on flight status as service pilots. Simultaneously, large numbers of combat pilots were returning from overseas and could be utilized as transport pilots on domestic and overseas routes. The WASPs were disbanded, but the ATC found itself with the pilots it needed to man its worldwide fleet.

Worldwide Organization

To meet the airlift requirements in these large areas, the Air Transport Command (ATC) was divided into nine wings (or in 1944, divisions) and were assigned geographical sectors. Each division was responsible for the movement of supplies, equipment, and key personnel within its sector and coordinated its activities with other divisions to provide a worldwide delivery system. The Navy provided a similar operation to its forces with the much smaller Naval Air Transport Service (NATS). This report focuses on the activities of ATC.

Principal Aircraft

The Douglas C-47, a conversion of the successful commercial DC-3 airliner, proved to be a mainstay in all theaters of operation. Its mission was enhanced by the Curtiss C-46 which had twice the carrying capacity of the C-47. For the long over-water flights, B-24 bombers were modified as cargo planes and designated C-87s. The premier long-range plane, originally to be a Douglas DC-4 commercial airliner, became the C-54.

Europe, Africa, and the Middle East Theaters

North African Campaign and the Middle East

The oldest of the air routes under ATC jurisdiction (and throughout 1942 the most important) reached from Florida, south to Natal, Brazil, then across the South Atlantic to Africa and the Middle East. It provided a lend-lease supply line to British forces fighting in the Near East. The battle lasted from 10 June 1940 until the German surrender on 13 May 1943. After the U.S. entry into the war on 7 December 1941, ATC participated in the North African Campaign, called Operation Torch, by bringing supplies to U.S. forces as well. It also supported Fifteenth, Twelfth, and Ninth Air Forces operating from locations along the Mediterranean coast and Cairo, Egypt.

Transport aircraft often stopped at Ascension Island in the South Atlantic on the flight from Natal, Brazil; to Accra, Ghana; or Kano, Nigeria. Eastbound flights continued through Central Africa to Khartoum, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and to India to link up with the China-Burma-India Division. After Lagens Field (now known as Lajes) in the Azores was opened in late 1943, flights went from the U.S. east coast via Newfoundland and the Azores to Casablanca, French Morocco, and then across North Africa to Egypt, Iran, and India. This new route to India was much shorter than the 14,000-mile flights from Florida across the South Atlantic.

European Campaign

One of the difficulties ATC had was the winter weather over the North Atlantic. Until Lagens Field in the Azores was opened in late 1943, eastbound operations over the North Atlantic ceased because of very high winds and other adverse conditions. When the field became operational, all eastbound flights resumed, and by March of 1944 most transport flying between the United States and Great Britain or North Africa went by way of the Azores.
Bermuda was used as a weather alternate to Newfoundland. When able, flights to Prestwick, Scotland, continued to be flown via Labrador and Iceland. Through the winter of 1943-44, ATC provided a sizable eastward lift for the movement of key personnel, mail, and critical cargoes to the European and Mediterranean theaters. From January 1944 the monthly lift increased from 350 tons and 785 passengers to 1,178 tons in June and 1,900 tons and 2,570 passengers by July. Seventy percent went to Great Britain and 30% to North Africa.

ATC provided emergency airlift to Eighth Air Force, delivering incendiary-bomb fuzes, jettisonable fuel tanks for fighter planes, and other equipment. Pontoons were hastily carried to the Fifth Army in Italy.

In addition to their typical cargo, ATC carried 3,570 pounds of whole blood daily to Paris. Thousands of battle casualties were returned to the U.S. for medical care.

In the last five months of the war in Europe, over 10,000 tons of air cargo were carried overseas by ATC. It proved to be a safe, dependable airlift service.

Asiatic Pacific Theater

The Aleutian Islands Campaign (June 1942 – August 1943)

The Japanese believed that control of the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, was of strategic importance to prevent a possible U.S. attack across the Northern Pacific. They bombed Dutch Harbor on 3 and 4 June 1942 and occupied Kiska and Attu.

ATC responded and sent many planes to Edmonton, Canada, a major railhead and U.S. Army supply depot. There they loaded troops, ammunition, medical supplies, food, weapons, and other vital equipment and made daily round trips to Dutch Harbor. They also flew in a complete hospital as the one in Dutch Harbor had been partially demolished by Japanese bombing.

Throughout the ongoing battle with the Japanese occupation of Kiska and Attu, American and Canadian forces and Eleventh Air Force were supplied by ATC until all Japanese forces withdrew on 15 August 1943.

The India-China Airlift (July 1942 – December 1945)

In 1942, shortly after the United States entered the war, China stood between more than a million Japanese troops and the southeast Asia region, including American forces. After China’s ocean, rail, and road supply routes were blocked, all supplies had to be moved by air over the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains, an area named The Hump by Allied pilots.
The India-China airlift was dangerous because there were no radio navigation aids, maps were unreliable, and the weather was unpredictable.

Daily operations for 42 months resulted in delivery of 650,000 tons of materiel. Most of the personnel were from ATC with support from Britain, India, Burma, and China. Thirty-four thousand military personnel and 640 aircraft were involved. Five hundred forty-nine aircraft (86%) were lost or destroyed, and 1,659 personnel (5%) were killed or missing.

ATC was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation at the personal direction of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944–the first such award made to a non-combat organization.