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enough male pilots to handle available aircraft.
   Shortly thereafter, the British Air Commission, with the approval of General Arnold, requested Miss Cochran to recruit and bring to England, for ferrying duties, a group of American women pilots. In the spring of 1942, 25 American women pilots went to England in a uniformed civilian capacity with the British Air Transport Auxiliary under 18-month contracts. They were the first organized group of American women pilots to serve in the air in World War II. One of this group, Mary Nicholson of Greensboro, N.C., lost her life in the service. Others retired and some continued to do ferry work in England. This group represented a preliminary step in the development of a large-scale Army Air Force women's pilot program in the U.S.

At home a women's pilot program was activated between September 10 and 14, 1942. An experimental squadron of experienced women pilots, headed by Mrs. Nancy Harkness Love, was formed to do ferry work for Air Transport Command, with only four to six weeks of transitional training to acquaint them with operation of military aircraft, military organization, routes and related procedures. They were known as WAFS- Women's Auxiliary Flying Squadron. Concurrently, Miss Cochran returned from England to inaugurate a women's pilot training program with headquarters at Fort Worth, Texas. The two programs were independent. The WAFS, located at Newcastle Army Air Base, Delaware, consisted of 30 women, and all but two completed training and went into operational duties. The announcement that a program to train women pilots was coming into being brought a flood of inquiries. The time was late 1942, and the U.S. had come as close as it ever had to total mobilization. Every able-bodied man in America was scrutinized for military or other military support or civilian essential jobs. American women, with their men off to war, wanted to do their part, too, and many went to work in defense plants and held other "men's" jobs. This was the era of "Rosie the riveter." 
 Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first President to realize that America's great hidden source of manpower was womanpower. It was the use of womanpower in industry, in fields previously unthought of as anything but man's work, that enabled aircraft manufacturers to raise production to new highs. As aircraft rolled off the assembly line, it was increasingly apparent that the pool of male pilots, trained and in-training, was insufficient. 
 Miss Cochran insisted that her women pilots be clean-cut, stable young women, of the proper age, educational background and height, who could prove the required number of flying hours, duly certified in a long book. Recruitment began with flying teams of Miss Cochran's representatives visiting every section of the country. Candidates were interviewed, then permitted to make formal application only if they looked good to the interviewer. Next, they were scheduled for physical examinations by a flight surgeon. All the results were sent to Miss Cochran, then Director of Women's Flying Training in A-3 of the Flying Training Command General Staff at Fort Worth. Central selection was continued until April 1944 when applicants were required to take the Aviation Cadet qualifying examination. In cases where a woman was already in a government or war industry position, a letter of release was required from the War Manpower Commission for her to transfer to the Women's Pilot Training Program. Minimum requirements for the original WAFS were: 21 through 35 years of age, high school education, commercial pilot license with 200 hp rating, not less than 500 hours of logged and certified flying time, American citizenship and cross-country flying experience.
For student pilots, the age, education and citizenship requirements were the same. Required flying time, however, was 200 hours and there was no hp minimum. A medical examination by an Army flight surgeon and a personal interview with an authorized recruiting officer also were required. 
It was recognized that 200 flying hours were a great deal to require but the idea was to bring the most experienced women into the program as smoothly and quickly as possible. The pool of women with this amount of experience was rapidly drained, and quickly and successively the needed flying hours were reduced to 100 and finally to 35 hours, which minimum remained until the end of the program.
 Where did these women even come from? Literally, everywhere. One had first soloed in the 1920's in one of the old "Flying Jennys." One had been a professional parachute jumper. There was a former Hollywood stunt girl. There was one who had been a Powers model, another a movie starlet. Of course, there were a goodly number of schoolteachers and married women whose husbands also were serving somewhere in the world. 
The first recruits converged on the Municipal Airport at Houston, Texas. In the absence of barracks, auto courts were taken over. The first flying equipment they saw was motley, obtained from surplus or obsolete

AEROSPACE HISTORIAN

[[image caption]] Colonel Jacqueline Cochran, Director of Women Pilots, AAF, and Brigadier General Stearley, Commander of First Tactical Force, review WASP of the Target-towing Squadron at Camp Davis, North Carolina. [[/image caption]]