Lyceum & Book Club - Week 34 - Sample Stories of Women Pilots of 1947

Listed in the August 10, 1947 issue (Vol 2, No. 18) of the ”Southeastern Airport News - only newspaper dedicated to the advancement of personal flying” - edited and published by a woman, Mrs. Gladys Pennington.

Virginia M. Bennis - interest in flying began in 1939 when the Air Hoppers Gliding & Soaring Club flew their gliders only a short distance from her parents’ farm at Hicksville, Long Island, NY. She began instruction in 1940. She always worked in the aviation circle - either at air fields, on aviation magazines or for an airplane manufacturing company while spending her weekends flying. She married her flight instructor in 1942. Now both run the Gliding & Soaring School.

Ruth (Clifford) Hubert - obtained her flight instructor rating at the Robert Flying Service in Lakeland, Fl before the war and had worked in this capacity with the same company before joining the Women’s Airfare Service Pilots (WASPS).

When she graduated from the WASPS training, she was assigned to be a test pilot on At-6s.

When the WASPS were disbanded, she worked as a flight instructor at the municipal airport in St. Petersburg, where she met and married her husband, who is the president of Florida Aviation Corporation, the oldest aviation business house in the state.

She specializes in low acrobatics.

Peggy Lennox - flew more than 44 different types of aircraft, including the largest bombers manufactured by the U.S. and Great Britain. Logged more flying hours than the average airline pilot. Included is this line about her - “and has been admitted by some old-timers who have flown with her that she can do a better job of flying under any adverse conditions than they can in right-side up and level flight on a clear day.

She was affiliated with the Air Transport Auxiliary overseas during the war. She was one of a group of 24 women from the US who were accepted by the ATA to ferry planes for the Royal Air Force in combat zones. The ATA was made up of both men and women pilots who were on an equal footing with equal pay and equal responsibility.

Since the war, she has resided with her father in St. Petersburg where she has been a flight instructor at the municipal airport, but at the time of publication, she was looking for a job flying two to four engine transport.

Jean Broadhead - unlike most of the women in the aviation business in 1947, she did not gain her training through the WASPS or similar services. At the time of the war, she was too young to enlist and was not a qualified pilot. But she went to work for Embry-Riddle company which at the time of the war was training several hundred cadets as “line boys” where she hoped to be able to build up her own flying time and skills for when she was old enough to enlist in the WASPS. When she was finally accepted as a WASPS - unfortunately at that very moment, Congress voted to disband the WASPS and her future as a WASPS was cut off before it began. Since then she has worked at an overhaul base and had the occasional ferrying job.

Caro Bayley - former WASP, in 1947 was an instructor at an airport. Article says of her, “There just isn’t any plane manufactured today or during the war that Caro wouldn’t try to fly. She flew most of them during the war to the amazement and embarrassment of many big strapping men who were convinced that flying was strictly a man’s job.

Her family was known for the manufacture of the Bayley “T” Hangars in Springfield, Ohio. She became interested in Sailplane flying when the WASPS were disbanded, through piloting the “tow-plane” for the famous Champion Stunt Sailplane Pilot, Capt. Kim Scribner in his TicoTico.

She also delivered Ercoupes to Havanna for the Miami Aviation Center on two different occasions.

The story goes that she earned the nickname “Gear” in the WASPS because she always carried extra cushions to enable her to reach the controls.

And one other entry on this page that deserves mention: in an article on Randolph W. Mai of Jacksonville,Fl. Although his day job is as a manager with Gulf Life Insurance Company, he was the organizer, president and first General Chairman of the Southeastern Air Show and Exposition, it says,” And ’tis said that one of the things which he demanded above all things was that the ladies be given an opportunity to participate in whatever way they chose.”