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40wafs.001
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<text>
<title>
(1940s) Here Come the WAFS
</title>
<history>Time-The Weekly Magazine-1940s Highlights</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
TIME Magazine
June 7, 1943
Here Come the WAFS
</hdr>
<body>
<p> On the parched fringes of Avenger Field at Sweetwater,
Tex., Army Air Forces men saw a new kind of graduation ceremony,
met a new kind of flying graduate.
</p>
<p> Around a wishing well among the administration buildings
clustered 43 bronzed and wind-burned women in slacks and white
blouses, their eyes on a leggy Air Forces colonel. He dug in his
pocket, fished out a silver dollar, tossed it into the well,
where it slid down among dimes and quarters dropped there by
students for luck. (They are fished out periodically for the Red
Cross.)
</p>
<p> Then all trooped off to the flying line, where 43 new
pilots of the WAFS (Women's Army Flying Service) got their wings
pinned on their blouses by their taffy-haired director,
Jacqueline Cochran.
</p>
<p> It was the WAFS' second graduation. When the last diploma
was handed out, the new pilots became members of the Army Air
Transport Command, by next afternoon were fanning out to
ferrying bases at Long Beach, Calif., Dallas, Tex., Romulus,
Mich., and Wilmington, Del. There they joined up with other WAFS
already delivering aircraft from factories to Army tactical
bases.
</p>
<p> Little Girls, Big Ships. Already discarded by military
airmen is the notion that women airmen are good only for flying
light craft like Piper Cubs and Aeroncas. Featured airwomen like
Jackie Cochran long ago kicked the theory on the shins by flying
such "hot" craft as the Seversky P-35, the Lockheed Hudson (one
of which she helped push across the Atlantic). The WAFS' new
graduates had proved it in the mass. They had flown everything
from grasshoppers to snappy two-engined Cessna AT-17s.
</p>
<p> Their instructors (all men but three) proudly reported that
they learned rapidly. Male teachers found that bluster did not
work with these pupils, as it did with some men students. One
instructor's stock warning to careless and irritable trainees:
"Come on now, honey. Let's stay in the cockpit and fly this
thing through."
</p>
<p> WAFS get military drill (at which they excel men), learn
meteorology, navigation and other pilots' lore, wear coveralls
while flying and, in general, are "processed" like men. But
there are some variations. Example: Avenger's pin-neat barracks
have walls of Nile green and white. The cream-colored lockers,
where cosmetics and pink underthings are discreetly kept, are
locked with hasps tastefully pegged with pink golf tees.
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>