Fly Girls – Part 1 – The Old Woman

Over the next several blogs, I want to tell the story of the women who flew during WWII. I hope I do them justice.

Prelude to Flight:

It’s no surprise to anyone who follows me that I’m a movie buff. One of my personal favorites is “Night at the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian.” Amy Adams plays Amelia Earhart. If you’re unfamiliar with the movies, this is the premise. There’s this artifact from ancient Egypt that has the power to bring things to life. In this case, the wax figures and statues that fill a museum. They just don’t come to life. They are those people. At least, that is, till the Sun comes up. Then it’s back to wax or stone. If you haven’t seen these movies, check them out. They’re awesome.

But I’m getting away from my story.

Amelia is walking through the Museum of Flight and Space. There, she and the character played by Ben Stiller encounter a group of Tuskegee Airmen. The leader of the group stops, snaps her a salute and thanks her.

“For what, Captain?” she asks.

“For clearing the runway,” he answers. “They said we couldn’t fly, either.”

But this story isn’t about Amelia. So much has been written about her that I’d be doing her a disservice by trying to add to it.

Instead, I’m going to focus on a different group of women.

Very few of them meant to be in the spotlight. And those that did have it shone on them didn’t stay there long. They were ordinary women from all walks of life.

But they did have one passion they shared with the legendary Amelia.

They loved to fly!

The Old Woman-

“The first time I saw Pueblo, Colorado, it was the most welcoming sight I’d ever seen,” the old woman said.

I don’t know how old she was. When you’re in your thirties, anyone over fifty is old. She sat in the middle of a small group of men. All of them wore leather flight jackets. Like modern day aviators, the jackets were festooned with patches. Some patches were squadrons they’d flown with. Others were airplanes. One sported a B-17 patch while another had a patch with a P-51 on it. The newest patch I saw on any jacket marked the pilot as a F-4 Phantom driver.

The lady wore a jacket with a WAF patch. Her patches included the T-6, P-40, P-51, and both the B-17 and the B-24.

They were all sitting on bar stools against a wall with artwork. Somehow, that looked perfectly natural. I assumed these men and the woman had spent their time sitting on stools, drinking beer, and swapping stories.

What wasn’t expected was these aviators were surrounded by a sea of children. The children’s ages ranged from about eight to ten years old.

The kids were hanging on their every word.

The woman’s face had weathered from exposure to the sun that burnt through the cockpits of the aircraft she’d flown. Her hair was white. But her voice was still crisp and clear as if she’d be calling a tower for permission to land. She was short but sat tall and proud next to the men on the chairs.

“Why was that?” asked one of the school age children clustered about.

She smiled like what she was about to say wasn’t a big deal. “One of my engines was on fire. Landing sounded like a good idea.”

I was doing Emergency Management in the San Luis Valley at the time. Thanks to Government cutbacks, we’d recently lost our National Weather Service office in Alamosa. That function had now been incorporated into the Pueblo office.

I’d gone over the hill to get to know these guys and see their operation. I’d was eager to keep the relationship I had with the National Weather Service because we relied on them. But I’d deliberately arrived early so I could visit the Pueblo Weisbrod Aircraft Museum in Pueblo, Colorado. While that’s it’s official name, others call it the International B-24 Museum. 

Here’s why. Back in 1942, the Pueblo Army Air Base was established. It’s mission, train the bomber crews for B-24s. Thousands of men went through it. One of the more famous was Actor Clark Gable who became a gunner instructor. The museum is dedicated to the aircraft and men who went through that base for training.

Like any air museum, there’s aircraft on display. They include a B-29 and a B-47. There’s MIGs and an F-16.

But there’s no B-24.

Aside from models and parts, there isn’t even one inside.

Simply put, they don’t have one. And unless it’s a replica, they’ll probably never get one. During the war, almost twenty thousand B-24s were built. Today, there’s only 13 known survivors, and only two are airworthy.

But here’s these old timers talking about flying B-24s out of Pueblo.

And she’s talking about an emergency landing with an engine on fire.

I imagined a younger her, looking out the window of the cockpit at the burning engine. Her and her co-pilot went through their procedures to handle it. They cut the fuel to the engine, feathered the prop, and then looked at the airfield in the distance. I bet her voice was calm as she requested an emergency landing.

“It happened as I was getting close to Pueblo. I was delivering the plane there, so it wasn’t a big deal.”

Spoken like a true aviator.

Years later, I would kick myself that I didn’t take advantage of the situation. What I should have done was sit down with all the kids. I should have listened with wide eyed wonder to stories I might never hear again.

Instead, I walked away like an idiot obsessed with schedules.

Coming Soon – Fly Girl – Part 2 -Two Women.

Pueblo Army Air Base History