Jackie Cochran's Proposal
to Eleanor Roosevelt for
Women Pilots in National Emergency
Proposals for the use of women pilots by the Army had been advanced several years before the decision was finally made to use them. As early as September 1939, Miss Jacqueline Cochran, who had just been awarded the Aviatrix trophy by the International League of Aviators for the third successive year, outlined to Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt her ideas on the need for planning to use American women flyers in a national emergency. "In the field of aviation," she wrote, "the real 'bottle neck' in the long run is likely to be trained pilots." Women could be used effectively in "all sorts of helpful back of the lines work," as, for instance, in flying ambulance planes, courier planes, and commercial and transport planes, thereby releasing male pilots for combat duty.
This requires organization and not at the time of emergency but in advance. We have about 650 licensed women pilots in this country. Most of them would be of little use today, but most of them could be of great use a few months hence if properly trained and organized. And if they had some official standing or patriotic objective (rather than just fly around an airport occasionally for fun) there would be thousands more women pilots than there are now.
Miss Cochran noted that Germany, Russia, England, and France had already begun to use women pilots in their air forces. As for the United States, she did not believe that it was "public opinion that must be touched, but rather official Washington," particularly Army or Navy officials.*
Although expressed in general terms, Miss Cochran's proposal contained the essential elements of the program which was later put into effect: an official organization of a rather large number of women pilots; a training program for them; and a variety of uses to which they would be adapted by the armed services to release men for combat.
* A copy of this letter was forwarded to the War Department. Jacqueline Cochran to Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, 28 Sep. 1939, in AG 231.21, Women Pilots [W.P.]
Source: AAF Historical Study No. 55 prepared by CWO J. Merton England in 1946.
