I just started in on reading more about the WASP pilots

and realize what what a clusterphuque that most of the program was. The only part that seems to have come out OK was the WASPs themselves that did a better job statistically than their male counterparts. The women themselves did and incredible job and deserved a lot more than they received. 

One thing I noticed is a cross country delivery by a WASP generally took a day less than it did by a lot of men. That was attributed to 'WASPs don't carry address books', meaning they didn't goof off and visit girlfriends, relatives, whoever along the way.

One of the readers here said it may make me angry the way there women were treated and angry in not the word for it. I'm livid.

I read where some mechanic that thought 'women don't belong in the cockpit' put sugar in her fuel tanks. The plane crashed and I believe the woman survived. I'm sure the author would have mentioned if she was killed, but still. That in my book was attempted murder.

Then there was the hotshot lemon rinsed stud that was most likely thinking with his richard and started flirting with a WASP in midair and caused a collision. The woman's plane augered in and I think she was too stunned to hit the silk because afterwards they found her canopy was still latched. She didn't stand a prayer.

OK. I probably could have lived to some extent with the hotshot pilot crap but what really irks me to no end is the hotshot got off scot-free and it was glossed over with the 'boys will be boys' attitude.

Both of these people (and probably a lot more) should be getting out of Leavenworth maybe this Tuesday of next year. What bull$hit!

Actually in terms of man hours spent and so on and so forth the program really wasn't profitable in one sense. Generals, colonels and other ranking officers seemed too stupid to know what to do with them even though a 72 year old man 75 years later does. You leave them alone and let them do their job.

The question as to militarizing them kept popping up and Congress got involved and when that happens. They more often than not screw up everything they touch. An example of this is that in 1942 we lost 3 submarines to the Japanese. It was attributed to Japanese depth charges being too weak and set to a shallow setting. 

Enter some dopey congressman that said that out loud in Congress and by early 1943 the Japanese had sunk 6 of our submarines.

Quick fix. Leave them Civil Service and give them the pay, allowances, base priviliges, and the assimulated rank of a 1LT and call it good. Civil Service would have served to keep them out of the military and not subject to all the bull$hit that comes with it. Then on 3 Sept 45 had them declared veterans so as to give them a GI bill.

You just know that bigger than $hit that general officers (and a few pompous colonels) would have tried to scoop the attractive women to be their personal pilots although there was a fix for that one, too. I suppose they could have sent out a memo to all flag officers that if they even thought about it they would be reduced to their permanent rank (where applicable) and sent to some far flung remote miserable hell-hole outpost to count mess kits for the rest of the war. The bottom of the memo saying "THIS MEANS YOU."

The woman didn't just deliver airplanes. Some of them towed targets which was risky business because the shooters were using live ammunition to shoot at the targets with. A number of planes got hit. I have no idea of casualties but I read some were hit by errant rounds.

Other women towed gliders, some delivered cargo and a handful were trained to dogfight and were used as sparring partners by their male counterparts. I can imagine how that one worked out. I can just picture Joe College, hotshot pilot, lady killer and captain of the Hometown State College football team slinking back to the barracks after having just had his fanny waxed upstairs by a 105 pound little bubbly skinny, freckle-faced redhead tomboy with a big smile and a mouthful of teeth. Poor baby.

At one point early on after it's development a lot of men were leery as hell to fly the then new B-29. Quick fix. Dorthea Johnson and Dora Struthers were sent by Hap Arnold and trained by Paul Tibbets  to fly one to Alfamogordo and landed with a large crowd attending. The grumbling stopped instantly.

I believe Paul Tibbets used these women for other Manhatten Project related things. 

I can now see why Jackie Cochran convinced a black woman to withdraw her application. In the context of the times and circumstances Jacke was right in doing so because she already had her hands full fighting sexism and adding racism to the pot would have probably been the end of the entire program.

I would imagine that in 1943 that delivering an airplane to the deep south would not be an enjoyable experience for a black woman, either. There were places where German POWs could eat but black GI's were not. Jim Crow was the rule there. Even the army was segregated.

The women themselves did a better than incredible job but the way the program and the women were treated is a real black eye to our nation's history.

The more I read, the more I wonder how we managed to win WW2 with all the politics, infighting, incompetence and backstabbing that went on until one realizes that WW2 wasn't won by a professional army. It was won by citizen-soldiers that were pissed off at being there and wanted to get it done and over with so they could go home and get along with their lives.

On the home front it was won by our 'anything for a buck' businessmen and a lot of hardworking people in the defense industry. Fully a third of these were women that took off their aprons and left the kitchen for the defense plants. Rosie traded her spatula for a rivet gun.

FWIW I bought 3 books on eBay about the WASP program and only about 1/3 of the way through the first one (Clipped Wings) and already I'm pissed off.  

  

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY