This Week In AFLCMC History: March 20 - 26, 2023

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  • By Air Force Life Cycle Management Center History Office
21 Mar 1997 (Women’s History Month/Mobility & Training Aircraft Dir.) 

On this date, Col Marcelyn A. Atwood made history when she became the first woman to take command of a Flying Training Squadron and the first USAF officer to command a Navy squadron at Pensacola, FL. Her unit, US Navy Training Squadron 10 (the VT-10 “Wildcats”), trained Air Force and Navy pilots. In addition to training in the T-1 Jayhawk and T-39 Sabreliner, she also flew the KC-135, the RC-135, and the E-4B. Even after her retirement, Col Atwood remained active in supporting the USAF and women’s aviation. Atwood is in the photo above (kneeling, front left) with other trailblazing women aviators wearing the last flight suits they wore on Active Duty at the 2023 Women in Aviation International Conference in California. (Photo: USAF) 
 
22 Mar 1995 (Engineering Directorate) 
 
Today, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) designated Wright-Patterson AFB’s Five-Foot Wind Tunnel a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark. Designed by E.N. Fales, this wind tunnel was constructed at McCook Field in 1921, then moved to Building 19, Wright Field (present-day Area B) in 1929. The ASME commemorative plaque reads, in part, “This early example of the modern wind tunnel was conceived and built by the Air Service Engineering Division when little aerodynamic theory or data existed as a basis for its design. Yet, when completed, this wooden tunnel was considered the most efficient in the world […]” The tunnel was operation-al into the early 2000s, before being disassembled and placed in storage at WPAFB. 

23 Mar 1964 (Armament Directorate) 

 The McDonnell GAM-72A Quail missile, later re-designated the ADM-20, made its first operational test flight (nicknamed “Shotgun”) at Eglin AFB. The Quail was designed with folding wings to be carried by B-52 Stratofortresses, where it was launched from the air as a decoy missile. The idea was that multiple B-52s on a bombing run would deploy the guided decoys, at which point the decoys would confuse enemy air defenses by flying at similar speeds and altitudes to the B-52s—making it difficult for defenders to distinguish between targets. Over time, as radar improved, this became less effective and the missile was retired in 1978. 

24 Mar 1998 (Bombers Directorate) 

25 years ago, the B-2 Spirit was sent on its first overseas deployment exercise. The 11-day deployment, named Island Spirit, saw two B-2 aircraft flying to Anderson AFB, Guam. The main goal was to ensure that the aircraft’s low observable (“stealth”) features would remain intact for a prolonged period at a forward operating base. They also participated in a maximum bomb drop to test the bomber’s capabilities (with all bombs on target). Approximately a year later, the B-2 would participate in its first live operation as part of Operation Allied Force, where it destroyed 33% of all of the operation’s Serbian targets. Its first combat deployment would come during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003). 

25 Mar 1948 (Tinker AFB, 75 Years Ago) 

In last year’s Heritage Hangar, we reported on the highly-destructive 1948 tornadoes at Tinker AFB. These were unusual because one followed the other with only five days between them. The first occurred on 20 Mar 1948 (with the pictured C-54 being one of its casualties) and the second on the 25th. What is notable about the second tornado, occurring 75 years ago this day, was that it was successfully predicted by Tinker AFB meteorologists Capt Robert C. Miller and Maj Ernest J. Fawbush. This made it the first successful tornado forecast in history. Although most weather scientists in this era believed that tornadoes could not be predicted because they formed too rapidly, Commanding General of the Oklahoma City Air Materiel Area, Fred S. Borum, directed his weather team to look into whether predicting similar events would be possible shortly after the first tornado struck. Captain Miller and Maj Fawbush quickly pored over weather data and found many of the key indicators that are used even today to predict tornadoes. When they noticed these indicators on the 25th, they issued their tornado forecast at 2:50 p.m. The tornado hit shortly after 6 p.m. Today, tornadoes are routinely watched for when the conditions for them are right—thanks in part to these early pioneers. 

26 Mar 1943 (Women’s History Month/Mobility & Training Aircraft Dir.) 

On this day, 80 years ago, 2d Lt Elsie S. Ott (married name Mandot) of the U.S. Army Nursing Corps became the first woman to be awarded an Air Medal for her role in advancing aeromedical evacuation. Having never been on an airplane before, she was short-notice assigned to participate in the first-ever intercontinental aeromedical evacuation on 17 January 1943. She flew more than 10,000 miles in a DC-3 transport with five seriously ill patients from Karachi, India to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., only aided in her work by a male medic. Prior to the advent of long-distance aeromedical evacuation, which she helped to usher in, this route would have taken approximately three months. By air, they made it there in less than a week. 

Women’s History Month Highlight, 20 Mar 2008: Ann Baumgartner 

“But what kind of girl would want to fly an experimental jet? A pioneer like me, maybe?”  Orville Wright had just answered his own question, immediately after posing it to Wright Field’s only female test pilot, Ann Baumgartner. Wright had gotten to know her during socials and frequent visits to the Flight Test Section over the course of 1944.

While his pioneering achievement was well known, Miss Baumgartner’s was just about to be written into history. “You must fly that jet. I’ll be rooting for you,” he concluded. Ann Gilpin Baumgartner was born in August 1918. Her father was a patent lawyer and engineer with a passion for early aviation and astronomy (he was friends with Edwin Hubble, namesake of the NASA telescope). Her mother was an artist from an upper-crust British family. Ann grew up in northern New Jersey, just a short ride from New York City. Her parents provided a rigorous and exceptionally diverse classical education: art and literature in equal measure with math and science, also riding horses, learning ballet, mountain climbing, and fox hunting. Her high school class also got a visit from the famous aviator Amelia Earhart. 

Baumgartner attended the all-women Smith College as a pre-med major. After graduating in 1939, she took a trip to Europe just as Hitler invaded Poland to start World War II. She returned to the US aboard a refugee ship and went to work for a medical research company back in New Jersey. There, she watched planes fly over New York City and became determined to learn to fly. To pay for flying lessons, she worked in public relations for Eastern Airlines, headed by WWI ace Eddie Rickenbacker, and wrote features for the New York Times. Ann accumulated flying hours in hopes of becoming a commercial pilot, while also working as an aircraft 
spotter and flying for the Civil Air Patrol. 

The Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) program stood up in 1942 to employ female pilots stateside for jobs as ferry and transport pilots. Their training program paralleled that of male military pilots, though they were technically civilian employees. Baumgartner applied for and was accepted into the third WASP class, starting in January 1943, though a bout of the measles paused her training and she finished with the fifth class that September. 

Baumgartner was assigned to the only group of WASPs outside of Air Transport Command. Her unit served as target aircraft for ground radar, searchlight, and artillery crews, in addition to towing targets for aerial gunnery practice. One of their more notable projects was piloting remote-controlled drones from other aircraft. She recalled that they experienced significant resentment and hostility from male counterparts, resulting in substandard care for their aircraft and possibly even deliberate sabotage, while those women who consented to dating male pilots received choicer assignments. 

In February 1944, Baumgartner and fellow WASP Betty Greene received orders to Wright Field (now WPAFB Area B). They had been requested by the Aero Medical Lab (now the AFRL 711th Human Performance Wing) as test subjects in the development of high-altitude clothing and equipment for female pilots. In charge was Dr. Randy Lovelace, a pioneer in the development of flight equipment, who was also good friends with WASP founder Jackie Cochran. He later became famous for his clinic that conducted the medical exams (along with Wright Field) of NASA’s first Mercury astronaut candidates and then ran a group of female pilots through those same tests to prove that they met (and exceeded) the criteria established for the space program. 

Baumgartner and Greene conducted many test flights while wearing the various prototypes of the cold-weather gear, for which they were heavily instrumented—presaging the experience of the astronauts. Baumgartner worked with one of the Aero Med Lab’s female scientists to design a “female relief tube” for urination during long-duration flights, which she later tested herself in-flight with an unsuspecting male passenger in the back of her 2-seat dive bomber. 

With Col Lovelace’s encouragement, Baumgartner applied for a transfer to Wright Field’s Fighter Flight Test organization. To her surprise, she was accepted in March 1944, first as the Assistant Operations Officer, but with the potential for test flying. There, she was surrounded by the best experimental test pilots in the country, if not the world, most of whom were also combat veterans. Baumgartner found greater acceptance (and curiosity) from this group as the sole WASP on base than she had in any of her previous experiences. 

Her first assignments were “administrative flights,” such as transporting senior officers, before moving on to flight tests that mostly involved new equipment developed by the Wright Field Labs, such as high-altitude cameras, pressurized cabins, gun sights, and radar. 

Baumgartner developed a reputation for her precision flying—a characteristic demanded for these sorts of flight tests, which continued at Wright Field into the 1960s. She temporarily transferred to Bomber Flight Test, where she flew for several historic projects, including early aerial refueling and evaluation of a captured German Ju-88 bomber that now resides in the National Museum of the USAF. Most significantly, she flew special long-range, heavily-loaded flights of modified B-29s that were surreptitious tests for Project Silverplate—the Wright Field-managed effort to convert B-29s to carry the atomic bomb. Once back at Fighter Flight Test, Baumgartner flew many other foreign aircraft and more advanced American designs now coming to fruition, but which were mostly disappointing. 

The lone exception was the Bell YP-59A, the production prototype version of America’s first jet aircraft that had flown in late 1942. The plane sat under wraps at Wright Field in the fall of 1944, as Flight Test’s most eagerly awaited acquisition, when the commander announced that “their WASP” would be among the first to test it. On the afternoon of 14 October 1944, Ann Baumgartner took to the skies over Wright Field in that YP-59, becoming the first woman anywhere to fly a jet-powered aircraft—an accomplishment un-matched for another decade. But just two months later, Congress disbanded the WASPs, ending Baumgartner’s work at Wright Field in February 1945. 

While in Dayton, Baumgartner met an aeronautical engineer assigned to Wright Field who had worked on an aircraft for which she had done test flying. The two married in May 1945, just after the defeat of Germany. Now known as Ann B. Carl, she returned to writing, raised two children, and later resumed her flying career as an airline instructor pilot. She passed away on 20 March 2008—15 years ago today.