Women in Air force and Aerial combat.

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Women Airforce Service Pilots

The female component of the U.S. air forces, known as the WASPs. Three years before the United States entered World War II, one of America’s prominent women pilots, Jacqueline Cochran, suggested that women pilots could serve in noncombat flying roles to free men for emergency war-preparedness duty. Because there was no pressing manpower problem, the Army demurred.

By 1942, however, the supply of aviation cadets could not meet demand. In September 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Cochran director of the Woman’s Flying Training Detachment (WFTD). Cochran’s job was to supervise and coordinate the training of women pilots for assignment to the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) of the Air Transport Command.WAFS’s job was to ferry new fighters and bombers to air bases throughout the United States. In 1943, the WFTD merged with WAFS to form the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), with Cochran as director and Nancy Love as executive commander.

By 1944, combat losses were below predictions, and large numbers of USAAF pilots were rotating home to take over stateside duties. General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, who had gone on record that “women can fly as well as men,” announced the WASP program would end on 20 December 1944.WASPs were summarily sent home without military benefits. However, on 23 November 1977 President Jimmy Carter signed legislation giving the WASPs veterans’ benefits— more than 30 years after they had been disbanded. WASPs delivered 12,650 planes of 77 different types. They ferried more than 50 percent of all the high-speed pursuit planes. More than 25,000 women applied to WASP; of the 1,830 women admitted, 1,074 graduated.They flew more than 60 million miles; 38 lost their lives in accidents.

Mrs. Cochran.

 

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Only since the 1990s have women consistently been allowed to serve in direct air combat roles in most Western militaries. Though women flew in a variety of noncombat capacities in the United States and other nations during World War II, and even in three air combat wings in the Soviet Union, in postwar years these practices were sharply curtailed.

The U.S. military, by virtue of its size and prestige, has in recent decades played the most influential role in openingdoors to women in air combat. The process began in 1973 with the transition to an all-volunteer force and its attendant increase in demand for qualified personnel. That same year, for the first time six women earned the status of naval aviator, followed shortly by women earning their wings in the Army (1974) and the Air Force (1977). Though after 1976 women were allowed into the three U.S. military academies, their continued restriction to noncombat roles remained a serious career obstacle. By the 1980s, it had become increasingly clear that U.S. women were already participating in missions that involved combat in all but name, holding the lives of millions in their hands as ICBM launch-control officers, and coming under fire as helicopter pilots during the 1989 invasion of Panama.

The 1990–1991 Gulf War demonstrated to the American public how integral women had become to U.S airpower. They loaded laser-guided bombs onto F-117s, directed from AWACS aircraft F-15s as they intercepted and destroyed Iraqi MiG-29s, commanded Patriot missile batteries as they engaged incoming SCUD missiles, and flew refueling and supply aircraft, often deep into Iraqi airspace. Two women were taken as prisoners of war, including Major Rhonda Cornum, a flight surgeon on a Black Hawk helicopter downed while attempting the rescue of a fellow pilot behind enemy lines. Thirteen women were killed during Operation DESERT STORM, including a Chinook helicopter pilot, Major Marie T. Rossi, even though women were restricted to noncombat roles.

Entering the post–Gulf War era, the final frontier for women in air combat was fighter and bomber aircraft. In 1988, Canada quietly led the way when two women joined operational CF-18 squadrons for the first time. In December 1991, all U.S. legal impediments to women flying combat missions were removed, but the various services succeeded in delaying a final decision until the 1992 election. The Bill Clinton administration, under pressure from the unfolding Tailhook scandal, finally settled the matter on 28 April 1993 when Defense Secretary Les Aspin announced that virtually all remaining restrictions on women pilots were lifted. By 2000, U.S. women pilots were fully integrated into their respective services, having flown numerous combat missions over Iraq and the former Yugoslavia.Women pilots today fly in the armed forces of pioneering nations like the United States, Canada, and Denmark and in many other Western air forces as well.

Major Rhonda Cornum

Major Marie T. Rossi

 

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The WAF ( Women Air-force )

Between 1948 and 1976, the U.S. services were gender-defined. There were Women Marines, WAVES (Navy), WAC (Army), and WAF, Army Air Force, Air Force).Women had served in the military nurse’s corps from 1902; thousands flew during World War II in the nonmilitary Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying squadron (WAFS) and the Women’s Air force Service Pilots (WASP).

Under the defense reorganization of 1948, the services began accepting women with restrictions: no more than 2 percent of the force; highest rank would be colonel; many career fields would be off-limits, including flying and combat. Over the next two decades, the Air Force had difficulty filling even its 2 percent ceiling, averaging just more than 1 percent during that time; by the mid-1960s, fields that had been open in the 1940s and 19 0s were closed to women.

Colonel Jeanne M.Holm took over WAF in 1965, doubling its size, modernizing uniforms, and expanding career opportunities. She became the first female Air Force brigadier (1971) and major general (1973).Women’s rights grew in the 1970s. Women entered the ROTC in 1972, the Air Force Academy in 1976. Seven percent of the veterans of DESERT STORM are women; by the mid-1990s, women competed for 99 percent of Air Force slots, excluding only direct combat.

 

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Women in the Aircraft Industry (World War II)

Rosie the Riveter campaign poster:

During World War II, women worked in the aircraft industries of each of the major combatants. Though Nazi propaganda prevented the mass employment of German women until late in the war, Germany did force women drawn from throughout the occupied territories of Europe to work in wartime industries. In Japan, traditional restrictions on the role of women were relaxed as war fortunes waned, and by 1944 millions of women and even schoolgirls were working to produce war material. Probably no nation so nearly approached the “total war” ideal of mobilizing an entire society as did the Soviet Union; many women were integrated into the aircraft industry, just as they were integrated into almost every facet of the Soviet war effort.

In Britain, women were already present in the prewar workforce in large numbers, but the nature of their employment was dramatically altered by the war. From 1939 to 1943, the number of women working in wartime manufacturing increased by 1.5 million; statistically these women were older and far more likely to be married. Changes in the area of aircraft motor production and repair were typical for engineering as a whole, with the number of women workers growing from less than one in 10 before the war to more than one in three by 1943.


It was in the United States, however, that the image of the wartime female worker would become the most famous, exemplified by the popular propaganda figure Rosie the Riveter. Women had worked in the U.S. aircraft industry since at least the 1920s, but during World War II their numbers rose dramatically.According to one survey, the number of women in the aircraft industry increased from 143 in April 1941 to 65,000 in October 1942. By 1944, approximately 40 percent of workers in Los Angeles–area aircraft plants were women, a percentage typical for the nation as a whole. Images of women defense workers abounded: Popular movies of 1943 included Swing Shift Maisie and Ginger Rogers’s Tender Comrade, both set in aircraft factories; songs of the era in-cluded “The Lady at Lockheed” and “We’re the Janes Who Make Planes.”Perhaps the best example of all this is the song “Rosie the Riveter”(written in 1942 by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb and popularized the following year by the Four Vagabonds):

“Keeps a sharp lookout for sabotage, sitting up
there on the fuselage, that little girl can do more than a male
can do,Rosie the Riveter.”

These popular images have led to some misconceptions and exaggerations, however. The majority of American women during the war stayed at home, and wartime factories usually employed more men than women.Among those women who did join the industrial workforce, fewer than 10 percent had husbands in the service; as in Britain, about half of women defense workers had already been in the national workforce for years—it was just that now they were allowed into occupations formerly reserved for men.Wartime pressures resulted in the breaking of racial barriers as well as sexual ones, as this period saw tremendous increases in the number of African American and Hispanic women participating in defense industries. Still, it was the massive success of the Rosie the Riveter campaign that has had the most lasting impact, and it is the image of the white former homemaker that is most firmly planted in American historical memory.

Women working in defense industries faced a variety of obstacles. One in three had children at home under the age of 14, yet formal child care programs were rare. Though the amount of money women could make often increased dramatically compared to prewar jobs, they were often paid far less than the men working alongside them. In theory, racial discrimination was prohibited in all defense industries by President Franklin D.Roosevelt’s 1941 Executive Order 8802, but in practice African Americans were often given the most menial jobs available—or even rejected outright by potential employers. The majority of women workers polled in 1944 planned to continue working after the end of the war, and partly as a result of this government and corporate ad campaigns of this time increasingly emphasized the importance of women returning to the home at war’s end. The massive postwar defense industry layoffs hit women especially hard; in the Los Angeles area, for example, the proportion of aircraft work being done by women fell from its wartime high of 40 percent to 18 percent by 1946 and 12 percent by 1948.

Despite these problems, in retrospect the glass was probably at least half-full for the some 300,000 American women that worked in the aircraft industry during World War II. Postwar attempts to return Rosie to her happy home were only partially successful. By the early 1950s, the percentage of women working in the Los Angeles–area aircraft industry had rebounded back to 25 percent. Although most Rosies did return home in postwar years, their outlook was forever broadened, and the wartime experiences of these women played an important if hard to quantify role in generating the discontent of the 1950s that manifested itself in the feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Not surprisingly, women workers in World War II have received much historical attention in the last few decades, both scholarly and popular.

Of particular note is the Rosie the Riveter Revisited oral history project, conducted by Sherna Berger Gluck in the Los Angeles area in the early 1980s, and the creation in October 2000 of the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California.

 

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Soviet Women pilots

Soviet airwomen achieved a historic record in service to their country. Tamara Fedorovna Konstantinova was a senior lieutenant and deputy commanding officer, 999th Ground Attack Regiment/ 277th Ground Attack Division/First Air Army/3d Baltic Front. She was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union on 29 June 1945.

Konstantinova was born in the Tver’ region in 1919 and eventually became an instructor at the Kalinin Flying Club (Tver’) in 1939. After war began, she was rejected for service at the front due to an alleged shortage of aircraft. She initially risked her life as a truck driver delivering ammunition. She then secured transfer to a communications subunit, where she flew the Po-2 and distinguished herself by evading German fighters. Upon joining the 566th Ground Attack Regiment in March 1944, she acquired a brand-new Ilyushin Il-2. She and her air gunner, Aleksandra Mukoseyeva, formed a cohesive and effective team. In December 1944, she became deputy squadron leader after transferring to 999th Ground Attack Regiment. In West Prussia alone Konstantinova flew at least twice as many missions as other pilots did in a comparable period, maintaining she was fighting for two: her late husband and herself. By March 1945, Konstantinova had flown 66 operational missions and earned many decorations. After the war she flew light passenger aircraft out of Voronezh. In 1948, she was seriously injured during an emergency landing and permanently grounded.

Anna Aleksandrovna Timofeyeva (née Yegorova) was senior lieutenant and chief navigator, 805th Ground Attack Regiment/197th Ground Attack Division/Sixteenth Air Army/1st Belorussian Front. She was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union on 6 May 1965. Timofeyeva was born in the Tver’ region in 1916. Upon graduating from the Kherson Flying School, she became instructor at Kalinin Flying Club (Tver’). At the beginning of the she war flew with 130th Independent Communication Squadron of the Southern Front. After a Messerschmitt set her unarmed machine afire, Timofeyeva became determined to fly combat aircraft. She checked out in the Il-2 in early 1943 after flying only twice with an instructor, a difficult feat for such a complex aircraft. She received her baptism of fire over the Black and Azov Seas and soon became a skilled combat pilot and deputy squadron leader. She took part in fierce air battles over Taman’ Peninsula and flew many missions in aid of Malaya Zemlya marines, attacking enemy tanks, ships, rail junctions, and airfields while coping with fatigue and heavy losses.

On 26 May 1943, she participated in voluntary laying of a smokescreen to enable ground troops to break through the enemy lines. Her daring was rewarded with decorations by the commander of Fourth Air Army himself. After completing a two-month course for navigators in Stavropol, she received a new version of the Il-2. Dusya Nazarkina, formerly an armorer, became her gunner and rear set of eyes.When their wing reached the 1st Belorussian Front, Timofeyeva was appointed chief navigator. On 20 August 1944, during her 277th mission, she was shot down in flames east ofWarsaw. In the Küstrin POW camp her life was saved by fellow inmates from both East and West. Upon release from the camp she was transferred to the reserves.Her 1965 Hero of the Soviet Union award was delayed by her internment in the POW camp.

 

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Soviet Women’s Combat Wings (1942–1945)

Soviet Women combat wings were founded in Engels, near Stalingrad, by Marina Raskova, when male pilots were not readily available.

They were organized as follows:

46th Taman’ Guards Bomber Regiment.
Wing Commander: Yevdokiya Bershanskaya.

A component of 4th Air Army, initially designated 588th Bomber Regiment. The unit remained all-female throughout the war, being equipped with U-2 biplanes (These were renamed Po-2 in 1944 in honor of their creator, N. Polikarpov). Originally a trainer, they were converted for short-range night bombing and flown by a two-woman crew. The 46th was operational in May 1942 and by mid-1943 consisted of four squadrons, including a training unit. It operated in Ukraine, Caucasus, Crimea, Belarus’, Poland, and Germany. The unit made more than 24,000 sorties and produced about 25 Heroes of the Soviet Union125th “M.M. Raskova” Borisov Guards Bomber Regiment. Wing commanders: Marina Raskova and Valentin Markov.The unit was subordinated to Fourth, Sixteenth, and Third Air Armies. It was initially designated 587th Bomber Regiment and comprised of two Petlyakov (Pe-2) dive bomber squadrons. The aircraft were equipped with five machine guns. The aircrews consisted of pilot, navigator , bombardier, and radio/operator-gunner (the last were mostly men, initially). Technical personnel also included men. The 125th went into action near Stalingrad then operated successfully over North Caucasus (hence honorific of “M.M. Raskova&#8221, Orel-Bryansk sector, Smolensk, Belarus, the Baltic, and East Prussia. The 1134 medium-range sorties it delivered produced five Heroes of the Soviet Union.

586th Fighter Regiment.
Wing commanders: Tamara Kazarinova and Aleksandr Gridnev.

Using Yak-9 fighters, its personnel protected industrial centers, rail junctions and bridges in Saratov,Voronezh, Kastornaya, Kursk, Kyiv, Zhitomir, Budapest and Vienna. One squadron, including the future aces Lidya Litvyak and Yekaterina Budanova, was sent to Stalingrad. The unit included some male technicians and fighter pilots. The 586th was not without problems. Aleksandr Gridnev alleged that Kazarinova had contributed to several unnecessary deaths of subordinates. In addition, after her transfer to Moscow’s Air Defense HQ; he held her responsible, for the wing’s apparent mistreatment by the authorities.

 

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Soviet Women pilots

Anna Aleksandrovna Timofeyeva
On 26 May 1943, she participated in voluntary laying of a smokescreen to enable ground troops to break through the enemy lines. Her daring was rewarded with decorations by the commander of Fourth Air Army himself. After completing a two-month course for navigators in Stavropol, she received a new version of the Il-2. Dusya Nazarkina, formerly an armorer, became her gunner and rear set of eyes.When their wing reached the 1st Belorussian Front, Timofeyeva was appointed chief navigator. On 20 August 1944, during her 277th mission, she was shot down in flames east ofWarsaw. In the Küstrin POW camp her life was saved by fellow inmates from both East and West. Upon release from the camp she was transferred to the reserves.Her 1965 Hero of the Soviet Union award was delayed by her internment in the POW camp.

During an August 1944 mission to destroy German forces at the Magnuszew bridgehead near Warsaw, Yegorova's plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire. Her tail gunner was killed, and the plane was heavily damaged and crashed. Rolling inverted, Yegorova was burned as she left the plane at a low altitude; her parachute only partially opened and she suffered broken bones and other internal injuries on hitting the ground. She was given first aid by the German captors, then taken to a prisoner of war camp where her wounds were tended by Dr. Georgy Sinyakov. Back at her air base, Yegorova was presumed dead and 'posthumously' granted the status of Hero of the Soviet Union.

On January 31, 1945, Yegorova was liberated after Soviet forces overran the Kustrin prisoner camp where she was being held. Yegorova was interrogated as a potential traitor continuously for eleven days at a filtration camp for returning Soviet prisoners. After others vouched for her injuries and her conduct, she was released but invalided out of the Soviet Air Forces for medical reasons in 1945.

Yegorova was the subject of a feature article in the Literaturnaya Gazeta in 1961, and in 1965, she was finally awarded her Hero of the Soviet Union medal.

Her medal was delayed by the stupidity that lead to the persecution of many that were captured sadly some times Russia treated her heroes with less respect than the enemy did.

 

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Valeriya Khomyakova (1914–1942)

Russian female military aviator in World War II. Valeriya Khomyakova was one of the women who volunteered to fly in the Soviet Women’s Air Regiments in 1941 and was assigned to the 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment, where shewas appointed deputy squadron commander.

On the night of 25 September 1942, she intercepted and shot down a German bomber over Stalingrad. This was the first victory achieved by a woman pilot at night (Klavdiya Nechaeva and Lidya Litvyak both had scored day victories). She was killed in a flying accident on the night of 5–6 October 1942.

 

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Lidya Litvyak,

World War II Soviet fighter ace and the most successful female fighter pilot. idya Vladimirovna Litvyak (known as Lilya) was born in Moscow on 18 August 1921. She learned to fly prewar and worked as a flying instructor. In October 1941, she volunteered for the Women’s Aviation Regiments organized by Marina Raskova, being selected for the 586 IAP (Fighter Air Regiment). In September 1942, she was one of a flight of four women pilots transferred to a male-pilot IAP. Initially greeted with skepticism, she was transferred out of several units before finding a home in the 73 GIAP (Guards Fighter Air Regiment), where she earned the respect of the other pilots. She flew 168 missions and scored 11 personal and three group victories, plus one balloon, and was herself shot down twice and wounded twice.Western reports that Captain Olga Yamshikova scored 17 victories are due entirely to mistaken translation. Litvyak was shot down on 1 August 1943, but because her death could not be confirmed she was denied the honor of Hero of the Soviet Union (HSU). After her body was found in 1989, she was awarded a posthumous HSU on 5 May 1990.

Raskova (née Malinina),Marina Mikhaylovna (1912–1943)

Soviet major; commanding officer of the 587th Dive- Bomber Regiment (renamed 125th “M.M. Raskova” Borisov Guards Dive-Bomber Regiment). She formed three omen’s combat wings in Engels, near Stalingrad, in 1941–1942. Earlier, she was a navigator of an ANT-37 named Rodina (Homeland)—pilot Valentina Grizodubova, copilot Polina Osipenko—on a pioneering nonstop flight from Moscow to the Pacific (6,450 kilometers) on 24–25 September 1938. Raskova was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union for this feat, becoming one of the first three Soviet women to be thus honoured.

She acquired specialized knowledge of navigation while employed at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy. Raskova was the first Soviet woman to earn the diploma of professional air navigator and became an instructor at the academy. She received flight training at the academy’s expense.

A senior navigator in Moscow’s May Day air shows, she participated in important flights from 1935, including the Rodina flight. On this occasion, her pilot—short of fuel— had no choice but to land immediately. Fearful of nosing over, he ordered Raskova,who was positioned in the forwardcabin, to bail out.As a result, she spent 10 days wandering in the taiga, a difficult ordeal to survive.

When Raskova’s bold proposal to form a women’s air group was finally accepted in 1941, she was faced with the difficulty of transforming civilians into disciplined military personnel. After she died in a crash during a heavy snowstorm on 4 January 1943, her subordinates pledged to become worthy of bearing her name and qualify as Guards regiment, which they did in 1943. In the same spirit, her No. 2 Squadron’s tactics, as applied in the air battle of 4 June 1943, became a model for Soviet bomber aviation. A pupil of famous navigators A. Belyakov and I. Spirin, she cultivated the best qualities in everyone. Raskova was a talented organizer and a bold dreamer, with a personality that endeared her to subordinates. This was the key to her success. Her ashes were placed in the Kremlin Wall beside those of Osipenko.

 

[cadet79]

Hello,

I'm looking for a good image of Jeanne M. Holm as reference material to do an art project. Is the woman in this picture Jeanne M. Holm? If you can let me know the original source so I can validate that it's her, I would very much appreciate it.

I don't want to say it's her if it is not.

Thank you for letting me know.