TWU preserving stories of Women Military Aviators

Nov. 11, 2024 – DENTON – There is a generation of women you have probably heard of. Brave, skilled aviators who flew every aircraft in the United States inventory, transporting planes and training male pilots destined for combat in World War II. The Women Airforce Service Pilots. The WASP. Generation 1.

There is a generation of women you probably have seen on the news. Brave, skilled aviators who fly some of the most iconic fighters and bombers in the United States inventory. And do so in combat. In July 2023, a Navy F-18 pilot became the first American woman to shoot down an enemy aircraft. Generation 3.

In between is a generation you may not have heard of. Brave, skilled aviators who flew for 20 years around the world. Flew near — and occasionally through — combat zones. The first women to graduate from U.S. Navy and Air Force training. Women who did the heavy lifting to finally remove the combat exclusion on American women pilots. Generation 2.

The Generation 2 pilots and the Texas Woman's University library are working to make sure the public knows Generation 2 as well as it knows Generations 1 and 3, and to ensure those aviators are never forgotten.

TWU played an instrumental role in celebrating and memorializing Generation 1. Recognition of the WASP came from years of determined effort by the WASP themselves and the work of TWU historian Kate Landdeck, whose years of research and interviews resulted in The Women with Silver Wings: The Inspiring True Story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II, published in 2020 and the best-selling book ever written by a TWU faculty member. The TWU library is the official archive of WASP documents, photos, and oral histories.

The Women Military Aviators, Inc., and the TWU library, the WMA's official archivist, are organizing a similar program for Generation 2.

Because what a story it is to tell.

Women have a long history in military aviation. In 1914, Russia's Eugenie Shakhovskaya became the first woman to become a military pilot, flying reconnaissance missions. In 1937, Turkey's Sabiha Gökçen became the first woman fighter pilot. In World War II, Russia's Lidya Litvyak and Yekaterina Budanova became and remain history's only women aces.

But the United States long wrestled with the question of women military pilots. They became indispensable in World War II, but the WASP were shut down after the war. The demand built again during the 1960s and 70s before the Department of Defense capitulated and allowed women pilots. Among them were Colonel Marcy Atwood, the first woman to command a flying training squadron, the first Air Force officer to command a Navy squadron, and served in a KC-135 in Operation Iraqi Freedom; Colonel Kathy Cosand, a member of the first class of women in Air Force pilot training and flew C-141s for 25 years; and Lt. Colonel Margie Varuska, who was in the first class of women to attend the Air Force Academy and served in the 1983 invasion of Grenada.

"And when Desert Storm in 1991 came around, there were so many of us embedded across the entire service, reserve, National Guard and active duty," Atwood said. "It was to the point where they couldn't pull us out and get the mission done. So they just deployed us. We just went forward."

And blazed the trail for today's women combat aviators, who benefit from the Top Gun image of modern military aviation. Generation 2 was suddenly lost in Generation 3's contrails.

"So then it was sexy," Atwood said. "Women are on the front lines, flying fighters, doing dog fights, flying the long range bombers, dropping bombs. This is so cool. All the war-story movies that everyone grew up with, women are doing that now. Really cool.

"Completely forgot the 20 years before that where we were doing our jobs," Atwood added. "From flying every other airplane in the inventory to training other men how to fly fighters, and showing that women could perform without sleep, fly all night long, fly across the ocean without GPS before there was GPS, and just use a sextant and make it happen. Even the young women flying fighters didn't realize the history behind those who enabled them to fly those fighters. They would be guest speakers somewhere, and they would talk about the WASP, and then they would talk about their training and their missions and what they did."

The Generation 2 pilots admit to shouldering some of the blame for their anonymity.

"We looked at ourselves and said, ‘our fault,’" Atwood said. "We haven't archived our stuff. We haven't told our own story. We haven't written books. The younger generation won't know about us unless we tell them."

That tide is turning. Books have been written, more are coming, and the drive to archive the personal stories and history is growing.

Generation 2 did have its moment in the spotlight back in the day.

"They let us start flying in '73, and it was a big deal," Atwood said. "You can look back, we've got all the newspaper articles in the archives here of all of the big deal that the DoD (Department of Defense) made out of the first women pilots to graduate from Navy training, first women air force pilots to graduate."

And to be clear, Generation 2 doesn't have many complaints about their careers. Well, no more than any other member of the armed services who dealt with bureaucratic inefficiencies that gave birth to such acronyms as SNAFU and FUBAR. Running out of holsters so tucking pistols into their flight suit pockets. Flight suits and gloves that didn't fit. No women's bathrooms in aircraft hangars.

But Generation 2 aviators got to do what they loved: fly a variety of military aircraft all over the world, whether in support of combat operations or natural-disaster relief. However, they were not just forbidden from flying in fighters and bombers, they were not allowed to fly in combat zones, so there was hesitancy to send them near where the bullets flew. Problem was, they had become so indispensable it was impossible to disentangle them from the missions that had to be flown.

"I flew into Grenada three times during the hostilities," Varuska said. "I was flying C-141s out of Charleston, and nobody asked if I was female. They just put me on the schedule and I went. There was danger there, but nobody said anything. People on the west coast, when they were given those missions, they go, well, women can't go there because it's a combat situation. I had already been. When it came time to give medals and ribbons for that operation, it took almost two years for me to get one because I wasn't supposed to be there."

The planes Generation 2 flew were some of the largest, most powerful aircraft ever constructed. The C-141 Starlifter, which can carry 70,000 pounds of cargo or 154 fully-equipped troops. The KC-135 Stratotanker, which can carry 83,000 pounds of cargo. And the massive C-5 Super Galaxy, which can carry 281,000 pounds of cargo and transport main battle tanks.

"If there was a natural disaster, who's there?" Cosand said. "The 141 is there bringing in the supplies. We're there to help. If there was a medical airlift, we were the ones doing it. Even though we weren't in fighters, we were definitely on the tip of the spear. And I got to experience a lot of that. I went on missions in Africa. I flew one mission out of Mombasa, Kenya, out to Diego Garcia, down to Mauritius, and back to Mombasa in one day. I mean, that, to me, was probably the most exciting day of my aviation career."

It got pretty exciting during Desert Storm, too.

"We had 44,000 pounds of cluster bombs in the back of our airplane," Cosand said. "Taking off at emergency war weight on a less than 8,000-foot runway that was covered with snow and ice. Three weeks earlier, a C-5 had crashed taking off from that runway. That was probably the most dangerous takeoff I've ever made in my life."

"We were in situations like that, but we couldn't defend ourselves," Varuska said. "We couldn't shoot back. So that was one of the reasons we wanted to be able to fly everything so that we could defend ourselves if we needed to."

The performance of the Generation 2 aviators and a concerted campaign from men and women who wanted to see an equal distribution of the workload in all services started to make progress with Congress. After a presidential commission studied the question for two years, the exclusion on women in combat finally ended. In 1994, the Direct Ground Combat Definition and Assignment Rule was rescinded, and in 2013 the Combat Exclusion Policy was lifted.

"It was a big effort, and it didn't just happen," Varuska said.

Now the WMA wants to make sure the story of all of those aviators – Generations 1, 2, 3 and beyond – are told.

"Just groundbreaking and amazing," Cosand said. "I think what we want to do is, a lot of times we want to be very humble. And for most part, we are humble.

"On the other hand, it's not bragging if it's true."