Fly Girls – Part 8 – Blood in the Cockpit

While I was writing this installment, I had a flashback to my basic training days. It was one of those lessons that was more an aside than anything else. I don’t recall exactly what we were doing that day but we were out in the field. Our drills took us off the road we’d been going down and into the nearby woods.

“We’re going to teach you how to engage low flying aircraft using your M-16s.” they said.

We were told to lie on our backs with our legs bent and slightly apart. That was supposed to add stability to the gun platform we were becoming. Then we pointed our M-16s up in the air. With a low flying aircraft coming in, we were supposed to pull the trigger. The idea was to form a wall of lead that the aircraft would have to fly through. While we might not shoot it down, we might cause some damage to it.

The idea always sounded a little half-baked to me. I mean a Mig doing six hundred miles an hour? By the time we fired, the plane would back in its hanger and the pilot in his jammies. A Hind is so heavily armored, the crew might not even know they were being shot at. Maybe I’ll go through the Ukraine engagements and see if anyone actually did this.

Hang on to that training scenario of us being trained to engage low flying aircraft.

Flash back to WWII.

They’re doing it for real. And their Sargent is giving them their safety briefing.

“You will see and hear an airplane coming in. Said airplane will be towing a target. You will shoot at the target. Not the airplane.”

One young private leaned against his buddy. “He must think we’re really stupid.”

One of the drills then took a rifle and lay on the ground. Pointing the rifle up, he demonstrated the exact same maneuver we’d copy decades later.

“Everyone got that?” their drill asked. No one asked for a repeat. “Ok,” he said. They fell in, and then wer marched out into the thin woods where they were stopped.

“The airplane will make a pass overhead. Then we will assume the position. The aircraft will make a second pass. You will engage the target it is towing. Again. We’re shooting at the target, not the the airplane.”

What could possibly go wrong?

***

This A-24 had seen better days. The A-24 was a single engine dive bomber better known as the SBD Dauntless. This airplane had distinguished itself at places like Midway and the Coral Sea. But now these aircraft were just old. They’d been used, abused, broke, fixed, abused some more, and eventually sent away when replaced by newer models.

Some came here to Camp Davis North Carolina. They were old and poorly maintained now. Worse, they were running 90% octane aviation fuel rather than the 100 proof the hungry engines drank. The machines were trouble waiting to happen.

The young woman charged with this mission this morning almost didn’t make the flight. The old engine on the plane just didn’t want to turn over.

After a little work, a little pleading, a little cursing, they got it running. She lifted off into the sky a few minutes late.

A young soldier sat in the back seat where the gunner would have sat.

“You OK back there,” she called over the intercom.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. His voice was scratchy over the intercom.

“Now, you understand the job. You let the target out when I say so.”

They’d taken off with the target towed behind them. His job was to extend it out a little more.

“I got it. And they shoot at it?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, isn’t that kind of dangerous?”

She chuckled. Yes it was. But she wasn’t about to say anything. A few airplanes had come back with bullet holes, but so far, nothing serious.

“It’ll be okay.”

“How do they know if they hit it?”

“The bullets are dipped in paint. The paint comes off when it goes through the fabric. After the last pass, we drop the target, and they look at it and decide who hit it.”

Then it was time to stop talking. They were coming up on the range.

“Run out the target,” she said.

The target fluttered further back from the airplane. The wind caught it and flattened it out into a long thin cone behind the airplane. A few plane lengths wasn’t much of a safety margin.

It would have to do.

“It’s out,” he said.

“Ok,” the girl said. “We’re going to make a pass over the range. Then we turn around and come back. Then they shoot at the target.

They flew low and slow over the training range. She had a glimpse of soldiers lying on their backs and looking up at her looking down.

“Coming round,” she said. She made the circle a little wider than she knew the airplane could do. She wanted to keep the target streaming properly.

“Here we go,” she said mostly to herself.

They were coming back up and over the range. Speeds just right, altitude fine.

On the ground the instructors yelled one more time, “Remember, shoot at the target the plane is towing. Not the airplane.”

The soldiers pointed their rifles skyward as the plane came in.

“Fire,” the instructor said.

Dozens of rifles fired skyward.

She never heard the rifles fire. Over the engine that would have been difficult. But she felt it. The plane seemed to shudder just a little. She knew they’d taken a couple of hits.

Over the intercom she heard the soldier cry out.

“You OK back there?” she called again.

“Ah, Somethings wrong here.”

Without thinking she looked over her shoulder. That didn’t do anything for her. She’d have almost had to turn around in the seat to have seen him.

“What’s wrong?”

It was a few seconds before he answered. “I think they shot me!”

“What!”

“I’ve been shot.”

She was already turning towards base. She was supposed to make a couple of passes, but her order didn’t say anything about someone getting shot.

“Where?”

“My foot,” he said. “There’s blood coming out of my boot.”

“OK. Listen. I’m headed for the base. Can you let the target go?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

The drag the target caused ceased. She saw it flutter away.

She got on the radio and called the base. “My tow operator has been shot,” she radioed. “Need an ambulance to meet us.”

The radio operator was as surprised as she had been. “Where?”

“He says in the foot. I’m about five minutes out.”

As she lined up to land, she saw the ambulance and the fire truck racing to meet her.

“We’re almost there,” she assured him.

He didn’t answer. He’d passed out from fright and pain.

The above account has been somewhat fictionalized. But towing a target was one of the more dangerous duties a WASP could possibly pull.

Was anyone ever shoot down. No.

Were they wounded. Yes.

And since the aircraft were such hunks of junk, death and injuries lurked around every take-off and landing.

Lois B. Hailey had this say about the risks at Camp Davis, N.C. and tow target training. “The Navy equipment we were using had been worn torn out in Pacific flying, and we would have many landing gear and some engine failures. We did not have the high octane [100] gas required for the A-24 and A-25 and using a lower octane [90] may have been the source of some troubles. One of our group Mabel Rawlinson was killed in our first night checkout flying.”

On August 23, 1943, Mabel Rawlinson was receiving some additional training in the A-24. In this case, night flying. Shortly after take off, the airplane began having issues. Her and her instructor turned and while coming in for landing, the airplane struck the treetops around the field. The crash killed them both.

A month later, Betty Taylor Wood was killed when her plane came in for a crash landing. With her was the camp Chaplin as a passenger. The plane hit an embankment, flipped upside down, and they were both killed.

Some the WASPs escaped the cockpit and became some of the first to fly remote control aircraft. These were old decommissioned bombers and crews were engaging them with life rounds.

The below list is index extracted from ‘On Final Approach’ [Granger, Bryd Howell, 1991 ISBN; 0-9626267-0-8] and refers only to tow target, radio-controlled, anti-aircraft gunnery operations at the following bases. Additional operations took place at several of the below.

Tow Target & Anti-Aircraft Artillery Training Bases that WASP were assigned to:

Aloe Army Air Field, Texas: WASP flew AT-6s. Towing targets & instrument instructors

Buckingham AAF, Florida: WASP flew B-17s as co-pilot, AT-6, BT-13s. Flying with onboard gunners firing at targets towed over the Gulf of Mexico

Deming AAF, New Mexico: A sub-base of Biggs. AT-6s, B-25, B-26, P-47

DODGE CITY AAB, Dodge City, KS: WASP flew B-26s as tow target pilots for air-to-air gunnery practice by novice gunners using live ammunition.

Eglin AAB, Florida: Fixed gunnery tow target pilots. PQ-8 radio control gunnery targets, A-20, B-25, P-39, P-47, B-29, UL-61, A-36

Harlingen, Texas: WASP flew B-26 as tow target pilots for flexible gunnery school.

Kingman AAB, Arizona: WASP flew B-26s for flexible gunnery school.

Laredo AAB, Texas: WASP flew B-26s as tow target pilots

Las Vegas AAF, Nevada: WASP flew B-17, B-26, P-39, AT-10, and AT-6 as utility, tow target, photographic shooting, range estimation

March AAB, California: WASP flew PQ-8 & PQ-14 radio controlled drone target; B-26, B-37 tow target pilots, A-25 ground artillery target; B-24 searchlight and tracking missions.

MOORE AAB, Texas: WASP flew AT-6, UC-78, C-45 as tow target pilots

Muroc Lake, California: Used as temporary duty (TDY) for WASP from Camp Davis to demonstrate radio-controlling PQ-8 carrying a bomb.

Otis AAB, Massachusetts: WASP flew PQ-8, PQ-14, and C-45 for radio controlled target drones.

Peterson AAB, Colorado: WASP flew at Fighter Interceptor School and as tow target pilots in the AT-23 and TB-26.

Pratt AAB, Kansas: WASP flew L-2 and L-5 tracking and search missions, B-26 in tow target

Salinas AAB, California: WASP flew B-25, PQ-14, BT-13, AT-11, AT-10 in radio controlled target flights

South Plains AAB, Texas: WASP flew B-25 &C-60 as trained pilots to tow CG-4A gliders at low altitude, mostly at night.

Tyndall AAB, Florida: WASP flew B-26 as tow target pilots for air-to-air live gunnery practice

YUMA AAF, Arizona: WASP flew B-26, AT-11, BT-13 as tow target pilots