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Pace The News-Journal papers ••• Wilmington, Del. ••• A Simon sitcom D2 Most dangerous sport D3 Living a soap-opera life D9 Thursday,July 18, 1985 [[image - photograph]] Staff photo by Pat Crowe [[caption]] Jan Churchill of Chesapeake City, Md., will deliver the welcome from the Ninety-Nine at Monday's ceremony honoring the WAFS. [[/caption]] [[image - photograph]] [[caption]] Delphine Bohn (from left), Nancy Batson, Kathryn Rawls, Florene Miller, Phyllis Burchfield, Teresa James in 1943 [[/caption]] New Castle-based squad soared into service to aid the country's war effort Women who took flight By SCOTT HUBBARD Staff reporter FEMALE PILOTS who served during World War II in the WAFS, the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, will be honored Monday by the Wilmington Chapter of the Ninety-Nines, the international order of female pilots. The WAFS, mobilized in September 1942, was stationed at the New Castle Army Air Base, now the Greater Wilmington Airport. A plaque acknowledging the women's service in flying military aircraft is to be dedicated Monday at noon in the airport terminal. The WAFS' first director was Nancy Harkness Love. The squadron was part of the Second Ferrying Group, Ferrying Division, Air Transport Command, of what was then the U.S. Army Air Corps. WAFS was the first squadron of women pilots to fly military aircraft for the U.S. Air Force. It was merged later with a group of female pilots trained under Jacqueline Cochran to form the Women's Airforce Service Pilots. Among the members of the New Castle group who will be at the ceremony Monday are: Betty H. Gillies, who was second in command to Love; Nacy Batson Crews; Kathryn Bernheim Fine; Teresa James; Gertrude Meserve Tubbs; and Adela Scharr. Also attending will be six members of Cochran's group who were stationed at New Castle. When Scharr, of Florissant, Mo., accepted her invitation for the ceremony, she wrote that she would be arriving Sunday by train, because "that's the way I arrived in September 1942." Air Force Capt. Rita Victoria De Armond told the Wilmington Chapter of the Ninety-Nines on June 13 that, as early as 1940, test pilot and aircraft developer Love had contended that there were at least 40 female pilots capable of flying "pretty complicated stuff," who could well serve as substitutes for men pilots. She suggested to the Plans Division of the Office of the Chief of Air Corps that women were qualified to help fill the ranks. The women she considered each had 1,000 or more hours of flying time. Her suggestion and subsequent recommendations for the use of women in the Air Corps were refused by the Chief of the Army Air Corps, Maj. Gen. Henry H. "Hap" Arnold. He believed there were enough men for the Air Corps and that women could serve better in commercial fields. There was a general concern whether women had enough stamina and whether their physiology would affect their usefulness as military pilots. But the idea of using women to ferry small Army aircraft from factories to domestic airfields persisted. As it became obvious that more pilots were needed to ferry the growing numbers of new planes, the Air Corps suggested that women be hired as civil-service employees until their capabilities were established. See PILOTS –– D5 [[images - two photographs]] [[caption]] Grey Green (left) in the uniform of the Air Transport Command, and Teresa James as she delivered the 10,000th P-47 Thunderbolt pursuit plane in 1944. [[/caption]]
