Army & Navy – Home by Christmas

One adjunct of the U.S. Army Air Forces will be out of operation by Christmas—and its members do not like the idea a bit. Last week, with appropriate regrets, General “Hap” Arnold, boss of U.S.A.A.F., announced that the WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilots) would be disbanded on Dec. 20.

In a way, the WASPs, who had done a man-sized job of flying for the Army, had asked for it. Through their head woman, famed speed-flying Jacqueline Cochran (wife of tycoon Floyd B. Odlum), they had demanded the same military status as the WACs, WAVEs, SPARs and Women Marines. In spite of Hap Arnold’s earnest support of the plan, which would have made Jackie Cochran a colonel, Congress had turned thumbs down.

Then the Air Forces’ ladies, fed up with civilian status, gave their ultimatum. Said Jackie Cochran: the WASPs should get military status or be washed out altogether. As Congress showed no disposition to change its-mind, there was no choice for Hap Arnold. Admitting that there were now enough men to carry on the WASPs’ jobs, principally ferrying of Army aircraft, he swung the washout brush, picked the December date “to permit the WASPs to reach their homes by Christmas.”

Home is where most WASPs will land, according to Mrs. Hazel Taylor, their public-relations officer, who predicted: “Their careers will be marriage.” Jackie Cochran’s own “tentative” plan is to run an orphanage on the Odium ranch in California. But airmen who heard such intimations of renunciation wondered. Flying is a habit hard to break.