Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Women pilots share war stories, camaraderie

Las Vegan Frances Tanassy recalled how things were much tougher for Women Airforce Service Pilots than their male counterparts during World War II.

"The fighter planes were one-seaters, so there was no instructor like in training, and we had to figure out how to land them the first time," the 79-year-old Las Vegan recently told a class at Helen C. Cannon Junior High School.

"As a woman, you had one bad landing and you were out, where the men got three bad landings before they washed out. We had to fly under all kinds of conditions, including taking planes to Montana in winter in the snow. But women had safer flying records than the men."

Tanassy, who was Frances Snyder in her flying days, was joined by 88-year-old Lillian Glezen Wray of Burbank, Calif., and 85-year-old Helen Case Johnson Cannon -- the 25-year-old school's namesake -- in sharing their adventures with about 100 students. Fellow WASPs Elaine Harmon, 82, of Silver Springs, Md., and Ruth Groves Kearney, 83, of Richmond, Va., addressed another class at the school.

WASPs were civil service employees during the war. They tested and ferried planes but saw no action.

The WASPs were unceremoniously dismissed near war's end, when seasoned male combat pilots came home and took their jobs, as was customary at the time.

In 1977 then-President Jimmy Carter signed a bill into law officially recognizing WASPs as military veterans with all the rights and privileges of veterans.

"I wanted to be a pilot ever since I was 9 years old and watched a small plane land in a field near my home," Cannon, a former member of the Clark County School Board, told the students. "I had to graduate, work my way through college and help put my sisters through college before I could earn some money to pay for flying lessons. In the WASPs, they paid me to fly -- not much though.

"Back then, we weren't old ladies with canes like you see now," she said. "We were young, healthy and some of us were real pretty too."

Cannon, a Las Vegas resident of 48 years, hosted the informal reunion of eight WASPs. A month ago she contacted Cannon JHS Principal Kim Grytdahl to set up the speaking engagement.

Four of the women, Sarah Gleeson of Keysport, Pa., Betty Riddle of Tulsa, Okla., Jane Fohl of San Clemente, Calif., and Margaret Risdal of Houston were not able to attend the gathering.

The ceremony included a brief musical tribute by the school's jazz band and girl's glee choir. They ended their performance with a rousing rendition of the Air Force hymn "Up in the Wild Blue Yonder."

Cannon and Wray said they did not get to do as much flying as Tanassy, who joined the WASPs two years before them, but they said they were proud to have tested AT-6s and other craft and occasionally get to ferry a plane.

"One Saturday they kept paging this lieutenant so-and-so but when he didn't answer, they asked for a WASP to fly the plane," Wray said. "I had been told never to volunteer, but in this case I did because I wanted to fly. I was told to fly in formation with other planes, and I had never done that before, but I did it.

"Later I learned it was difficult to get men pilots to do such flights on a Saturday afternoon, because they feared they wouldn't get back in time for their Saturday night dates."

Tanassy specifically addressed the girls in the audience, saying her generation proved "girls can do everything they want. It's just as easy for a woman to fly a plane as a man."

One student asked Cannon if she could still fly, to which she replied, "I could get a plane in the air, but I don't know about the landing."

Cannon, who after the war served as a flight instructor at an all-girls' school, said rather than pilot a plane, she would love to one day be a passenger in a USAF Thunderbird air demonstration jet at Nellis Air Force Base.

Cannon told the students that, like the Thunderbirds, the WASPs are an elite group. Of the 35,000 women who applied, only 1,830 were accepted and only 1,074 earned their silver wings. WASPs flew more than 60 million miles in 77 different types of aircraft, and 38 of them were killed in noncombat mission crashes.

Female Air Force pilots now are allowed to fly combat missions. Harmon, who attends numerous reunions and WASP conventions, said those women often have paid tribute to the WASPs.

"A number of them have said we definitely paved the way," Harmon said. "Like many of the WASPs, I haven't flown since the war. We got out, started raising families and didn't have the money for baby sitters, let alone the money to pay for such an expensive hobby as flying planes.

"Still, being a WASP was a remarkable experience and I have had a ball since I became a veteran, reuniting with old friends and sharing our experiences."

archive