Chapter 2

At eight o'clock on the morning of December 7, 1941, shadows of the first Japanese bombers darkened ship decks in Hawaii's Pearl Harbor. In less than two hours, the surprise attack that damaged or destroyed all eighteen vessels anchored there also ended debate about US involvement in World War II. The sudden entrance into battle brought to light serious manpower and material shortages in the national defense industries. To handle those shortages, Federal agencies created the Defense Plant Corporation and within two years, the agency financed construction or expansion of more than a thousand factories.

Government and industry's decision to employ a previously neglected female labor force proved an unprecedented success. Women quickly became instrumental in the war effort. Two hundred thousand enlisted in the military and twelve million, many who had never worked outside their homes, took jobs in factories, shipyards, offices, and as civilian workers on military bases. The new supply of labor and strict rationing of everything from shoes and coffee to sugar and gasoline created a record increase in aircraft and weapons production. Eighty-five hundred planes a month rolled out of factories, twice the number manufactured in an entire year before the war. A fact unknown to most was that more than half the planes arrived at bases and ports around the country ferried by civilian women pilots.

There was opposition to women pilots from every level of the public and private sector, but those protests did not stop women from taking to the air. In August of 1943, the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron and Women's Flying Training Detachment combined to form the Women Airforce Service Pilots—the WASP. Twenty-five thousand women applied to the program. Almost two thousand qualified and entered training. Successful graduates tested and ferried military aircraft and performed stateside piloting jobs to free up men for active service.

WASP transported every make of airplane in the American armament, including training, pursuit, and transport planes, along with fighters and bombers. Federal law prohibited women from flying military planes into combat or outside US boundaries.

After graduating, women pilots lived and worked at one hundred and twenty bases around the country. Their uniforms followed strict military code and they took orders as if they served in the armed forces. They did not. They had no life or accident insurance, no death benefits and could not be buried in a military cemetery or receive a burial with flags and honors. WASP could achieve no rank of significance outside their organization, nor could they give orders to men. Those considerable obstacles did not diminish the courage or determination of women hoping to wear the silver wings. Charlotte Mercer was one of those women.

In 1940, Charlotte and her friend and neighbor, Maxine Davies, entered the new Civilian Pilot Training Program at Northwestern University. Developers planned the course for nonmilitary personnel. Their hope was to build a cache of aviators should the US enter the growing conflict in Europe. Promoters expected objections to using colleges and universities for what some considered military training. To allay those fears they opened classes to women, confident that when the public saw women pilots involved they would not the training seriously. Few expected women to apply for the classes. None thought they would find themselves turning female applicants away.

Char and Maxi filled the allotted ten percent of their class of twenty. They finished the sixteen weeks of instruction and received their licenses despite the general disapproval of classmates and instructors. After completion, they continued to earn hours until 1942 when Charlotte's world changed.

The twenty-one-year-old college student entered the library of their large home north of Chicago and found her father dead by his own hand. Next to the gun on his desk was a note of apology and news that except for the house, he had lost their considerable assets. In less than a year, Charlotte and her mother sold their home and moved to an apartment in Chicago. Without money, there was little hope of returning to school and even less of flying. Char took a job at a Woolworths near where she and her mom lived.

"Char, look at this." Maxine ran across the dime stores hard wooden floor waving a newspaper with enough force to extinguish unseen flames. She gulped to catch her breath. "The Army needs women to fly military planes." At the announcement, Char abandoned her customers at the cash register and grabbed the paper, reading until Maxi pulled it from her face. "Char, listen to me. A letter came this morning inviting me to apply, and I stopped at your apartment. Your mom said this came for you." She handed her an envelope from the Women Airforce Service Pilots. "They checked records of women flyers and asked us because we have our licenses and the required two hundred hours." Maxi shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and watched in grinning silence as Char tore open the flap with shaking fingers, and shredded scraps drifted to the floor. When the dime store clerk finished reading, she took a deep breath, gave Maxi a hug, and smiled. She was going to fly.

*

The first step to earning their wings was a personal interview with the training commander at Douglas Aircraft, west of Chicago. If successful, the WASP training base, which shared the Douglas site with a defense plant, would be their home for seven months. Char sat in front of the commander's desk and waited for the serious looking woman to speak.

At thirty-two, Commander Mathison, who led the training program, held dozens of flying records. Under her command, one hundred and eight new cadets started training every seven months. Twenty-eight-year-old Commander Dunaway oversaw the ferrying of planes by graduated WASP who'd earned their silver wings. "Miss Mercer, why do you want to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots?"

Char hoped her face didn't reflect the void in her brain. Anything the commander threw at her when it came to airplanes or aviation she could explain in a heartbeat. She hadn't anticipated a question about why she wanted to join the WASP. "I love flying and want to help end the war." She silenced a groan and waited for the commander to recommend she find a job writing war posters.

"Those are the two most important reasons to sign on. We'll find out if you have what it takes to fly military planes. You'll learn to fly the Army way. The difference will become clear when you start training. Welcome aboard."

Despite what Char considered a lame answer, she and Maxine made it into the program and in six months finished most of the two hundred hours of flight training and four hundred hours of instruction on the ground. Training varied little from that of male pilots. They marched, exercised, studied, and flew planes.

"I hate the Link trainer." Maxi repeated for a third time as they left the building that housed the flight simulator. After thirty minutes of staring at instruments inside a cramped darkened box, she forced her eyes to focus in bright sunlight.

"It's not as much fun as learning in a plane, Maxi, but I'd rather fly in that simulated storm than a real one." The Link trainer taught pilots to navigate by instruments alone, a crucial skill for flying at night or in bad weather. It had a single seat cockpit with an actual instrument panel. Once the roof closed, a pilot could see only dials and hear nothing except orders from an instructor seated outside. Pilot response prompted the machine to react as an airplane would, though a crash was much less painful.

 "I know it's helpful, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Maybe it'd be easier in December or January when it isn't a hundred degrees inside. Between you and me, I think the instructors keep that box jumping to make us sick. I don't ever remember flying through that much turbulence."

"I don't either." It took Char's eyes a minute to adjust, too. As they did, she spotted an approaching A-24 and heard the engine misfire. "Hey, Maxi, why is Babs coming back to the field? She's supposed to deliver that plane to Indiana." The Douglas dive-bomber continued its unsteady approach.

"I don't know, but that engine sounds bad." They shielded their eyes as Babs put the airplane into a turn.

"She's too high. She'll overshoot the runway," Char yelled. Babs realized it too and pulled up. She veered right to circle around again, struggling to keep the plane level.

"There's smoke coming from the engine." Two long black streamers confirmed Maxi's words and poured from the engine following her erratic path. The smoke thickened and mixed with flames. She was too low to jump and seemed unable to gain altitude.

"Come on, Babs, bring it in." Char looked toward the hangers. "Where's that fire truck?" As Babs positioned the plane in line with the runway, the engine sputtered and died. Smoke and flames engulfed the fuselage. "Oh, god, she's coming too fast."

"The cockpit's filled with smoke. She can't see. Why doesn't she open the canopy?" Maxi grabbed Char's arm as the fire truck stopped at the edge of the landing strip, its piercing siren muted, as if holding its breath along with the others.