Lyceum & Book Club - Week 34 - excerpt about aviation in the 1940s

Excerpt from the book “ Invisible Stars: A Social History of Women in American Broadcasting”

In addition to the WAACs, the Navy began its own unit, known as the WAVES. While most female movie and radio stars themselves did not hurry to sign up for either, a few of their children did, such as the daughter of radio actress Irene Rich. As for her celebrity mom, Irene Rich volunteered with the Women’s Ambulance and Defense Corps. Meanwhile, when the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve debuted in 1943, among the first to volunteer were Ruth Moss, whose celebrity interview programs were heard on New England’s Yankee Network, and golf champion Patty Berg; both became Second Lieutenants.

Still another women’s military unit, for pilots, was the WASPs. Individual female aviators were already aiding the war effort. Peggy Lennox, as an advertisement for cigarettes announced proudly, was an aviator who was training future pilots. The “Army Times” newspaper was very pleased to find that a few of the new instructors hired by the military were women, including Fran McVey, another women flyer, who had been hired to teach a course about the proper use of machine guns. But there was no organized group of women aviators in the military, although Jacqueline Cochran, one of the most prominent women flyers and a member of the Ninety-Nines, had been trying since the war began to persuade the military to put the skills of her aviator colleagues to use in the service of the country. Cochran proposed a new unit, a squadron of women pilots who could ferry supplies and do other important jobs, using their flight skills. She submitted her plan several times but to no avail. Then, Eleanor Roosevelt mentioned it in her newspaper column, giving the impression that she thought the idea had merit. The First Lady’s influence led to the creation in late 1942 of a unit of women pilots known as the WASPs (Women’s Air Force Service Pilots). The women transported supplies, but they also served as test pilots and trainers. Cochran was named their first director. For many years after the war, the contributions of these courageous women would scarcely be mentioned; they were not even considered veterans and were awarded no benefits. This would not change until November 1977, when an act of Congress belatedly rectified the injustice somewhat.

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One interesting (radio) program that was carried by CBS was “American Women”, which paid tribute to the accomplishments of women in the war effort. NBC also aired a four-week public service program that praised the work of women in the military; it was called “Now Is the Time”. Jane Tiffany Wagner, one of NBC’s managers and director of Women’s War Activities, gathered up an all-female staff (she even borrowed engineer Muriel Kennedy from the NBC affiliate in Boston, making Kennedy the first woman to ever engineer an NBC program), and the NBC women produced the entire series. According to Newsweek, most of the men around the NBC studios regarded the project with amusement and seemed to be waiting for it to be over, since the women Wagner had assembled for her staff included numerous office assistants whom she trained as script girls, announcers, and even actresses. Instead of being impressed by what Wagner had accomplished, one man commented that he could hardly wait to get his secretary back. While this comment may have been made partly in jest, it does speak volumes about the commonly held attitude that women who achieved during the war were not trying out for a new career. Rather, their achievements were regarded as temporary; some of what they did was impressive, but everyone knew that once the war ended, women would go cheerfully back to their “normal” subordinate position.

These attitudes were expressed in a memo published int he July 1943 issue of the magazine “Mass Transportation” by L.H. Sanders, who instructed male managers on how to handle their new women employees. He advised not hiring older women because they are “cantankerous and fussy”; but hire women who are slightly overweight because they will be grateful to have a job and are “more even tempered and efficient”; and make sure you tell your female workers exactly what you want them to do because “women make excellent workers when they have their jobs cut out for them, but …they lack the initiative in finding work themselves.” Sanders also reminded bosses that women would probably need more frequent breaks than men did and that female workers worked best when supervisors did not yell at them.

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Of course, not everyone was happy about all this social change. Women in some defense jobs wore pants - which, to traditionalists, violated the biblical precept found in Deuteronomy (22:5) which said women were forbidden from wearing a man’s garments. For women war correspondents also, wearing skirts just was not practical. One woman journalist was even wearing pants when she met the pope. Eleanor Packard, of United Press, had no intention of making a fashion statement; she simply had not had a chance to change into a dress. Interestingly, Pope Pius XII seemed rather amused than offended: “You’re an American, I see,” he remarked. “And you have been reporting the war?” She replied yes and he smiled understandingly. But not all such encounters went that smoothly, especially when matters of the “proper place” of women and minorities were concerned.