page_title: Women Airforce Service Pilots
section_title: WASP training
hierarchical_section_title: Women Airforce Service Pilots / WASP training
caption_attribution_description: English: The picture was taken by my mother, Lois Hailey, a member of WASP class 43-3. I scanned it to jpg format and added the text. Here is a link to the file on my WASP web site: http://wwii-women-pilots.org/class43-3/images/43-3_Jan-1943.jpg
context_page_description: The Women Airforce Service Pilots was a civilian women pilots' organization, whose members were United States federal civil service employees. Members of WASP became trained pilots who tested aircraft, ferried aircraft, and trained other pilots. Their purpose was to free male pilots for combat roles during World War II. Despite various members of the armed forces being involved in the creation of the program, the WASP and its members had no military standing.
  WASP was preceded by the Women's Flying Training Detachment and the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron. Both were organized separately in September 1942. They were pioneering organizations of civilian women pilots, who were attached to the United States Army Air Forces to fly military aircraft during World War II. On August 5, 1943, the WFTD and WAFS merged to create the WASP organization.
  The WASP arrangement with the US Army Air Forces ended on December 20, 1944. During its period of operation, each member's service had freed a male pilot for military combat or other duties.
context_section_description: The WASP training spanned 19 groups of women. The first group was the Originals, who were the first group of the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), led by Nancy Love.
  The second group was The Guinea Pigs which were Jacqueline Cochran's first class of women pilots for the Women's Flying Training Detachment (WFTD). The Guinea Pigs started training at the Houston Municipal Airport (now William P. Hobby Airport) on November 16, 1942, as part of the 319th Army Air Force Women's Flying Training Detachment (AAFWFTD). This was just after the WAFS had started their orientation in Wilmington, Delaware. Unlike the WAFS, the women that reported to Houston did not have uniforms and had to find their own lodging. The "Woofteddies" (WFTD) also had minimal medical care, no life insurance, crash truck, or fire truck, and the ambulance was loaned from the Ellington Army Airfield, along with insufficient administrative staff, and a hodgepodge of aircraft—23 types—for training. As late as January 1943, when the third class was about to start their training, the three classes were described by Byrd Granger in On Final Approach, as "a raggle-taggle crowd in a rainbow of rumpled clothing", while they gathered for morning and evening colors. There was also a lack of equipment, such as a Link trainer, that was necessary for training.
  The first Houston class started with 38 women with a minimum of 200 hours. Twenty-three graduated on April 24, 1943, at the only Houston WASP graduation at Ellington Army Air Field. The second Houston class, started in December 1942 with a minimum of 100 hours, but finished their training just in time to move to Sweetwater, Texas and become the first graduating class from Avenger Field on May 28, 1943. The third class completed their advanced training at Avenger Field and graduated July 3, 1943. Half of the fourth class of 76 women started their primary training in Houston on February 15, 1943, and then transferred to Sweetwater. Later in the summer of 1943, both the WAFS and WFTD were combined into the WASP. The first group to train as WASP started in Sweetwater in September 1943 and were designated as Class 44-W-2.
  Each WASP had a pilot's license, but was retrained to fly the Army way by the U.S. Army Air Forces at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas. More than 25,000 women applied for the WASP, but only 1,830 were accepted into the program. During the course of their training, it was reported that 552 women were released for lack of flying proficiency, 152 resigned, 27 were discharged for medical reasons, and 14 were dismissed for disciplinary reasons. After completing four months of military flight training, 1,074 of them earned their wings and became the first women to fly American military aircraft. While the WASP were not trained for combat, their course of instruction was essentially the same as male aviation cadets. They received no gunnery training and very little formation and aerobatic flying, but went through the maneuvers necessary to be able to recover from any position. The percentage of those eliminated compared favorably with the elimination rate for male cadets' in the Central Flying Training Command.
  WASP recruits were required to complete the same primary, basic, and advanced training courses as male Army Air Corps pilots and many of them went on to specialized flight training. They spent around 12 hours a day at the airfield with half the day spent practicing actual flight and the other half studying. By graduation, WASP recruits had 560 hours of ground school and 210 hours of flight training. They knew Morse code, meteorology, military law, physics, aircraft mechanics, navigation and other subjects.
caption: Start of WASP training – class of 43-3 in January 1943. Photo by Lois Hailey.
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