#cornelia fort

[adventuressclubamericas]

Adventuresses We Love – Cornelia Fort

After taking his kids to watch a barnstormer, Mr. Rufus Fort of Nashville made his sons promise that they would never learn to fly. He never thought to extract the same promise from his 5-year-old daughter, Cornelia.

So, naturally, Cornelia Fort grew up to be a pilot.

After her first flight, Cornelia was hooked. She quickly earned her pilot’s license and commercial pilot’s license, then took any flying job she could find, including crop dusting and inspecting pipelines from the air. After a year, she became the first woman to be licensed as a flight instructor in Tennessee. It was her role as an instructor that would take her to Hawaii, where she taught soldiers, sailors and defense workers how to operate an airplane.

She was in the air with a student on the morning of 7 December 1941 when the sky suddenly filled with fighter planes, one coming straight for them. Cornelia grabbed the stick from her student and pulled up, narrowly avoiding a collision. Glancing down, she saw the rising sun insignia of a Japanese Zero. Looking over to the west, she saw “…something detach itself from a plane and come glistening down---My heart turned over convulsively when the bomb exploded in the middle of the Harbor.”

Cornelia and her student raced back to the airfield. They’d just scrambled into the terminal for safety when a Japanese fighter strafed the runway.

In the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Cornelia joined the units that would become the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs). She and her fellow recruits went through an intense 4-week training program in Sweetwater, TX, made even more intense knowing the extra weight that was on their shoulders.

"Because there were, and are, so many disbelievers in women pilots, especially in their place in the Army, all of us realized what a spot we were [in]," she said. "We had to deliver the goods or else -- or else there would never be another chance for women pilots in any part of the service."

After her training, Cornelia was assigned to ferry aircraft from one base to another. On 21 March 1943, she was one of a group of pilots ferrying BT-13 Trainers from Long Beach, CA to Dallas, TX. In the air over Merkel, TX, another pilot in the group accidentally clipped her wing, tearing off the wingtip and 6 feet of leading edge. The collision sent Cornelia’s plane into a dive she couldn’t pull out of. She was killed in the crash.

"I want no one to grieve for me. I was happiest in the sky." Adventuress Cornelia Fort was 24 years old.

[searchingforacircuitbreaker]

The Women’s Army Service Pilots (WASP) came to be because the U.S. Army needed pilots but would not accept female applications — so a deal was reached, allowing women to perform training and logistics missions stateside. While technically they remained civilians, serving under the auspices of the Civilian Service Commission, the members of the WASP crews endured the rigors of Army life, and participated in dangerous missions including towing aerial targets for anti-aircraft guns.

In two years of service 38 WASPs gave their lives — but for decades their contributions and sacrifices remained classified. Even after the existence of the WASPs became public, surviving pilots had to fight for recognition.

The WASP program was directed by Jacqueline Cochran, a pilot from Pensacola, who would in the course of her life shatter a slew of aviation speed and distance records.

Cochran personally helped pay for everything from lodging to uniforms.   Because these pilots were still technically civilians – governed by the Civilian Service Commission – they received no honors of benefits. Their bodies were shipped home in pine boxes, at the expense of the families. Cochran and others did their best to help cover the cost.

Despite the Army’s seeming disavowal of the WASPs service, the pilots themselves knew and seem to accept the risks.

Pilot Cornelia Fort died March 21, 1943 — the first woman pilot to lose her life in military service. Before she died, she wrote her own eulogy that expressed the attitude of many of her fellow pilots.

If I die violently, who can say it was before my time? I want no one to grieve for me. I was happiest in the sky – at dawn when the quietness of the air was like a caress, when the noon sun beat down, and at dusk when the sky was drenched with the fading light. Think of me there and remember me, I hope, as I shall you.

In 1977, the WASP program was made public. Later that year, then-President Carter signed legislation that officially considered the WASPs’ service “active duty” and entitled pilots in the program to Veterans Affairs benefits. In 1984, after years of petitioning, all of the WASPs were awarded the U.S. Armed Forces WWII Victory Medal. Those who had served for a year or longer received the American Theater Medal. In 2010, nearly seven decades after the women had served, the WASPs were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

[latinaliceinwonderland]

Meet Cornelia Fort: the first pilot to encounter incoming Japanese fighters at Pearl Harbor

It’s the 1930′s. Nashville debutante turned pilot, Cornelia Fort, becomes Tennessee’s first female flight instructor. Fast forward to when she takes a job as an instructor in Hawaii and is in the air over Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. 

And the story only gets more interesting from there, because, in her words, “one of the reasons I learned to fly was so that if a war came I would not have to knit.”

She would have been 100 years old on February 5th, 2019. To celebrate that, one of her surviving relatives is hitting the road to track down the few remaining artifacts of her life —and making a documentary about it.

She was the first American woman pilot to die on active duty and yet almost no one knows her story.

I know the filmmaker in question and I’m pretty damn excited about this. The film’s crowdfunding campaign is underway right now; it would mean a lot to me if you could take a minute to share and/or support the project!

Back the documentary project on Indiegogo or share it with someone you know who wants more stories about badass women pilots to exist in the world.

If you just want to learn a little more about this remarkable woman:

“Cornelia Fort Who?” Christopher Hoffman, Huffington Post

“The Epic of Cornelia Fort…” Check-Six.com

Daughter of the Air, Large Print: The Brief Soaring Life of Cornelia Fort by Rob Simbeck (Rob’s book is one of the campaign perks, just saying...)

[williamrablan]

Fly Girls - Part 6 -Fallen Angels

Jackie Cochran was sitting at her desk. An oscillating fan helped keep her cool. It was already getting warm in Texas. On the desk in front of her were fuel consumption reports. She had to fill them out every day and forward them to Colonel Tunner for review. It was an almost endless stream of paperwork she had to do and secretly, she envied her girls. At least they were flying. She’d signed up…

Fly Girls - Part 6 -Fallen Angels

[hillwoodguy]

Operation Full Moon

A round-robin from Nashville, Natchez, New Orleans, Mobile to Pensacola and back OPERATION FULL MOON I left Nashville on Thanksgiving morning to be gone that day, but that is a story for another day. I intended to take the Natchez Trace parkway, but in my haste to get on the road, I realized I did not have time to make my destination in Natchez before the required holiday check-in time. So I…

View On WordPress

[keepingthepeaceinouterspace]

It wouldn't be a casual Sunday morning of reading about women in the military if i weren't steaming mad about Cornelia Fort dying in a plane crash because a dude was showing off and clipped her plane. Or the lack of standard protocol for accepting women into WAAC led to some men taking advantage and requiring women to strip naked and run through a hall of men for their physical.

[graphisch]

Nashville Greenway: Cornelia Fort Airpark

[willvastine]

Open // www.willvastine.com