AIR: Ladybirds to Britain

America’s 3,258 women pilots last week got an invitation to spread their wings for Britain. In Manhattan famed Aviatrix Jacqueline Cochran, who flew a bomber to Britain last June, announced that she was setting out on a tour of ten U.S. cities to recruit female flyers for the British Air Transport Auxiliary. The project was blessed by CAA and the War Department, also by Jacqueline’s great & good friends, Mr. & Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt.

The first batch of 25 ladybirds will go first to Montreal, for physical examinations and transition tests (to check their ability to switch from light to heavy aircraft), then take off for London. Where they will go after that is anybody’s guess. Only 50 British women are now serving as ferry pilots—shuttling planes about England, but not on long hops. Formerly restricted to training craft, they now fly every type of combat plane, except four-motored bombers (Flying Fortresses, etc.).

Miss Cochran (wife, in private life, of Tycoon Floyd B. Odlum) expects to find 375 U.S. women pilots, to augment 200 U.S. males now flying in the Air Transport Auxiliary. Women who get in will be paid an average $4,000 a year. First candidates are expected to be in Britain, ready for service, within five weeks.