Female pilot

[NiiranenVR]

USA had female pilot in WW1 

Here's a photo from a Danish newspaper today, and written that's a photo of American female pilot 

 

I dont have the FC ( yet) .....but maybe someone is interested

[Cynic_Al]

59 minutes ago, Sire said:

USA had female pilot in WW1 

Here's a photo from a Danish newspaper today, and written that's a photo of American female pilot 

 

 

Does it say what was there exact role?

[AndyJWest]

Does it give a name? Because I can't find any evidence of this via Google. Marie Marvingt seems to have flown in combat during WWI, but she was French.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Marvingt#World_War_I_and_the_French_armed_forces

[NiiranenVR]

Well , 

It was 10 photos from ww1 , and pic before was wemen making bombs and Ammu, - and then this pic that's wemen also was direckt in the war - and written here are pilots from America 

 

How informed they are - the paper I don't know -.......

 

but I have read about ' nightwisxhes ' ww2 and I think it's a great story 

[AndyJWest]

I think it is highly unlikely that women pilots served in the U.S. military during WWI. There were certainly a few American female pilots by then, but if any had actually taken part in the war it would surely have been commented on. 

 

Newspapers are poor sources for history in general, and captions for photographs are frequently wrong even for contemporary events.

[NiiranenVR]

Yes , its the true .....?...but 

Here a link 

https://www.gettyimages.in/detail/news-photo/women-enlisted-in-the-air-force-united-states-of-america-news-photo/873495706

[AndyJWest]

Well if there were any female American pilots in military service during WWI, the USAF seems not to know anything about it. They note that Katherine Stinson  (who was qualified, if anyone was) was rejected by the War Department,  who told her it was "a man's job". 

https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/139663/flying-schoolgirl-inspired-early-aviators/

 

Personally I'd consider the USAF a better source for this than a Getty caption to a photograph from an Italian illustrated magazine. 

[Cynic_Al]

6 minutes ago, AndyJWest said:

Personally I'd consider the USAF a better source for this than a Getty caption to a photograph from an Italian illustrated magazine. 

 

From the documentaries I've watched involving USAF personnel, they appear to be a reliable source of only one thing and in inexhaustible quantity.

[unreasonable]

3 hours ago, Sire said:

USA had female pilot in WW1 

Here's a photo from a Danish newspaper today, and written that's a photo of American female pilot 

 

I dont have the FC ( yet) .....but maybe someone is interested

 

Yes they could be American pilots - but not necessarily in the air force or in France; indeed I would say almost certainly not and the newpaper caption is misleading if it is intended to be read as "combat actions" rather than "activities in wartime". Need to ask a Dane.   Far more likely to be a display/stunt team of some kind, possibly doing war bond sales shows if the year given is correct. Look at the strange object on the top of the helmet in the middle: that is not any kind of military kit with which I am familiar, but could be a loop for a safety line for a wing walking stunt.

 

Google thinks this photograph shows "recreational fishing" btw    If anyone knows where it comes from that would be interesting. edit: TBH I am sceptical about the 1917 data as well - more likely to be 1920s.

Edited November 11, 2018 by unreasonable

[AndyJWest]

The photo is from Getty Image archives, as Sire linked above. Getty says it is from "L'Illustrazione Italiana, Year XLIV, No 31, August 5, 1917", but I'm sceptical about the date too. The uncropped Getty image shows more of the aircraft, but not enough to positively identify it, I think. As for wing-walking, I don't think it was done as a regular stunt until after WWI. Could be barnstormers/wing-walkers if the date is wrong though. Katherine Stinson, who I mentioned earlier, flew air mail for the U.S. postal service in 1918,  but I've not been able to confirm whether they employed other women. If Stinson is in the photograph, she is the smallest of the six that the uncropped Getty image shows - she was so small the press called her 'the flying schoolgirl' even at the age of 21. 

[unreasonable]

Thanks - insomniac browsing at 3.00 am and missed the link.

 

First thought for the plane type was one of the JN type, although the engine louvres do not quite match. But I do know what the strange helmet is for and it has nothing whatever to do with women in fighting roles.  See picture below culled from this page  https://waterandpower.org/museum/Aviation_in_Early_LA_(Page_1).html  I think this team were male but the trick must be similar.

 

 

[HagarTheHorrible]

4 hours ago, unreasonable said:

Thanks - insomniac browsing at 3.00 am and missed the link.

 

First thought for the plane type was one of the JN type, although the engine louvres do not quite match. But I do know what the strange helmet is for and it has nothing whatever to do with women in fighting roles.  See picture below culled from this page  https://waterandpower.org/museum/Aviation_in_Early_LA_(Page_1).html  I think this team were male but the trick must be similar.

 

 

 

 

The mind bogles.  Darwin was well and truly around in the early days of aviation.

[AndyJWest]

16 hours ago, unreasonable said:

Thanks - insomniac browsing at 3.00 am and missed the link.

 

First thought for the plane type was one of the JN type, although the engine louvres do not quite match. But I do know what the strange helmet is for and it has nothing whatever to do with women in fighting roles.  See picture below culled from this page  https://waterandpower.org/museum/Aviation_in_Early_LA_(Page_1).html  I think this team were male but the trick must be similar.

 

 

Yup. I think you're right about the helmet. As for the plane, Jenny's varied quite a bit, so we can't be certain. The Jenny was certainly a favourite for barnstormers. I've had a good search via Google, and haven't found any other photos that help though. If we could confirm the magazine publication date, or figure out some other way to date the photo we might be able to narrow it down a bit, but otherwise I think all we can safely say is that they aren't military pilots, though they probably qualify as brave (or foolhardy) enough.

Edited November 12, 2018 by AndyJWest

[HagarTheHorrible]

51 minutes ago, AndyJWest said:

 

Yup. I think you're right about the helmet. As for the plane, Jenny's varied quite a bit, so we can't be certain. The Jenny was certainly a favourite for barnstormers. I've had a good search via Google, and haven't found any other photos that help though. If we could confirm the magazine publication date, or figure out some other way to date the photo we might be able to narrow it down a bit, but otherwise I think all we can safely say is that they aren't military pilots, though they probably qualify as brave (or foolhardy) enough.

 

I'd be very surprised if it wasn't a Jenny. 

 

I also wouldn't be overly surprised if they were indeed wing walkers and maybe the photo is a little later than indicated.  If it comes from a Danish paper it might be a miss-understanding or miss-translation on the part of the original journal.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oAzdbd0J2A

 

They are just F**king NUTS.

[unreasonable]

Interesting to speculate what was going through the mind of the editor or reporter when they put that photo and caption together. 

 

Note that it does not explicitly say that the photo is of female pilots in war roles - it says (Google) "More however participated in direct warfare." Note the full stop; then:  "Here is a group picture of American pilots from 1917".  They could have just as easily put in a photo of cats: the two ideas are not logically related.

 

The human mind works mostly not through logic but through the association of ideas: hence almost everyone looking at that will think that they are looking at a picture of female pilots who took part in direct warfare in 1917.

 

Then there is the motivation: was the creator of that piece too ignorant to know that this is not a military photograph, too lazy or too pressed for time to check? (It took me ten minutes).   Given that most people with humanities degrees now appear to believe that the concept of objective truth is merely another mechanism of patriarchal oppression and that there is only narrative, perhaps they simply did not care as long as it can be made to support their preferred narrative?

[AndyJWest]

13 minutes ago, unreasonable said:

...most people with humanities degrees now appear to believe that the concept of objective truth is merely another mechanism of patriarchal oppression and that there is only narrative...

 

Nice story, bro. 

 

As for what was going through the editor or reporters mind, I suspect it was the need to meet a deadline. Getty says it is a 1917 photo of women enlisted in the US air force, and I see no particular reason to assume that the average Danish journalist would have enough historical knowledge to query it. Not unless Danish journalists are a lot better educated than their British or American counterparts.  Which is one reason why I prefer to either look at primary sources myself, or rely on those better qualified in the relevant subject (even if they have humanities degrees).

[unreasonable]

I have a humanities degree too (two, actually), but philosophy - at least when I did it -  and economics at least still try to determine truth even if their vision of it is sometimes misguided, as indeed do some historians. Hard to say the same about communications and gender studies. 

 

Indeed deadlines always come into play. But one still wonders about the intent of the piece: hard to say from this extract alone. I cannot find the whole article online. 

[HagarTheHorrible]

I tried a search, to see if I could come across the photo with a different caption, without success, or if I could maybe link any of the women to other photos of female pilots, but again without any degree of certainty, although a couple appeared close.  They do appear to be wearing some form of uniform, but it is also a quite common look for woman pilots from this era.  There is a picture, of the famous female pilot, Bessy Coleman wearing a very military style uniform, but on closer inspection it is a stage prop rather than an indication of service.

[J2_Trupobaw]

Wartime newspapers aren't reliable source of information, unless one's researching history of propaganda ;). 

(The sexists obsession about pilots who happened to be women on this forum never ceases to amaze me, btw...)

[unreasonable]

The newspaper is Danish and the OP says it was from "today": so this is not about wartime propaganda, but today's propaganda.

 

Just change the label on the button a little and we have your second comment to a T.  

 

  

Edited November 13, 2018 by unreasonable

[[PFR]Sarpalaxan]

27 minutes ago, J2_Trupobaw said:

(The sexists obsession about pilots who happened to be women on this forum never ceases to amaze me, btw...)

Well it is only natural to be drawn to the Exception rather to the norm. That's why we play the pilot and not the guy stuffing Bullet holes or fuelling the thank. That's why we have all those Skins of Pilots with impressive Records. We know much more about past nobility and there live than we do about the common folk.

[HagarTheHorrible]

Quite frankly the women who did the wing walking are about as brave, or nutty, as they come.  You wouldn't catch me, in a thousand years, doing what they did.  Hell, even an elephants balls would pale in comparison to the ones swinging from those girls.  Pilots, by comparison were pussies, as it were .

[HagarTheHorrible]

I think the "wing walkers helmet" was a bit of a red herring.  Here is a similar helmet (with coat hook loop ?)   I still find it unlikely that the US army would have been training female pilots in 1917.  Aeronautical schools for training military pilots had only just been established in mid-1917, I would find it very difficult to believe that they could find the time or resources to train pilots that couldn't be used at the front.  That said, nothing is impossible.

 

https://aviation.osu.edu/about-us/history

 

[unreasonable]

I suppose the Black Cats could have been hanging on by their teeth...  but your picture shows what looks like a normal flying helmet with a very small loop on the top, presumably so they could be hung on a rack as you say. Whatever the lady in the middle of the OP's picture is wearing on her head, it looks nothing like those on the lasses to the left and right or the men in your picture. The top loop is attached by very heavy duty crosspiece, which is what first caught my eye. In addition there are some sort of straps attached to the sides of the helmet, just in front of the ear pieces.  

 

Unfortunately I cannot find another similar picture but will keep looking - nothing like a sexist obsession with lady pilot's apparel to keep one motivated.

 

On the subject of flying helmets  want this one for my FC RFC pilot:

 

 

 

There is also this said to be of Lt.Luke who was a US WW1 flier - and died in action. It looks like the other pictures of him so I expect this is a correct attribution.

His helmet also appears to have the big crosspiece on the top.....maybe the straps on the dame are undone chinstraps.

 

 

Plus they probably shopped at Sears and Roebuck.    So Hagar seems to right about the helmet.

 

http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/article-summary/1920s_aviation_clothing

Edited November 13, 2018 by unreasonable

[LukeFF]

4 hours ago, HagarTheHorrible said:

That said, nothing is impossible.

 

It simply didn't happen, bottom line, end of story. I've conducted enough research on American aviation in WWI to know they were training zero women to be military pilots. 

[NiiranenVR]

Well ...... Sorry I maked you do the hard work .......

Maybe Trump are right ......about newspapers .....allso in Denmark 

 

( Bad jokes ....I know ) 

[HagarTheHorrible]

41 minutes ago, Sire said:

Well ...... Sorry I maked you do the hard work .......

Maybe Trump are right ......about newspapers .....allso in Denmark 

 

( Bad jokes ....I know ) 

 

 

Not it at all.  I enjoy the chase and besides I learned a lot along the way.  I'd still like to know who they are though.

Edited November 13, 2018 by HagarTheHorrible

[AndyJWest]

I've been able to track down an archive of l'illustrazione italiana, and the photo does appear in the edition that Getty states, dated August 1917. Which rules out post-WWI barnstormers. The caption reads "Signorine americane arrolatesi come aviatrici di guerra". One doesn't need to speak Italian to figure most of that out, but the Google Translate result (""American ladies arrested as war aviators") seems implausible, and I've not been able to find the word 'arrolatesi' online at all. Could be a misprint, or a word that has gone out of use I suppose. Does anyone know an Italian speaker who can figure out what exactly the caption means?

 

http://digiteca.bsmc.it/?l=periodici&t=Illustrazione italiana(L`)#

 

Edit: Further thoughts -

 

Getty Captions the image as 'Women enlisted in the air force...' . Google translates 'enlisted' as 'arruolate', which is fairly close.  If this is the correct translation, it might I suppose be true. Could women have been enlisted into the U.S. air force, or (as with the British services) enlisted into a women-only auxiliary service, to serve in non-combat roles? The women in the photo could thus be non-aircrew air force personnel, dressed in helmets for a photoshoot.

 

Edit 2:

Just checked, and it appears that the U.S. army (which would have included the Air Corps)  didn't enlist any women during WWI.  There were volunteer organisations (notably of nurses) which provided support though. 

Edited November 13, 2018 by AndyJWest

[unreasonable]

Good find - although the way the web-page is organized makes it hard to look at the original magazine in detail.  (It is week 31 1917)    There is no text apart from the caption: it is just a page of interesting but unrelated images. "People and things of the day".

 

"Signorine americane arrolatesi come aviatrici di guerra".  Does not translate well as "Women enlisted in the airforce" but more as "Women enlisted as military pilots".  There is no evidence that I can see in the magazine that the caption is literally correct: for all I know they could just be modelling the Sears and Roebuck line of aviator wear.  Perhaps we are not supposed to be taking the "enlisted" part literally.

[AndyJWest]

Yeah, 'aviatrici' is clearly 'aviatrix' (feminine form of 'aviator'). Not that it matters really, since a photo caption in an Italian magazine isn't the sort of source anyone should give much credibility to in this regard. We know there were women pilots in the U.S. by 1917. We know that at least one of them ( Katherine Stinson) offered to enlist, and was rejected. If women served in the U.S. army in any capacity, I'm sure it would have been remarked on. I think we can safely assume that the caption is either an error, or not intended to be taken literally. It could even be a mistranslation into Italian of an English-language source.

 

 

 

[Lederhosen]

a link to a women that actually flew 5 bomber missions in 1915. She volunteered to fly as a pilot when she heard that a certain squadron

wasn't flying due to many pilots being sick at the time. Officialy this never happened, but it did.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Marvingt

[Red_Von_Hammer]

On 11/21/2018 at 9:44 AM, lederhosen said:

a link to a women that actually flew 5 bomber missions in 1915. She volunteered to fly as a pilot when she heard that a certain squadron

wasn't flying due to many pilots being sick at the time. Officialy this never happened, but it did.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Marvingt

Yeah, someone covered this already, but nice reference material to remember at any rate

Anyway, in the picture it says:
Flere deltog dog også i direkte krigshandlinger. Her er det en gruppe kvindelige amerikanske piloter i 1917.

Which translates to: Many also directly participated in hostilities. Here is a group of female American pilots in 1917.
It's a typical Scandinavian sensationalism trick, the period used in between, notice that trick? Those are two DIFFERENT sentences.
Meaning, many women participated in hostilities (which is true).
And THEN we can take a look at the picture of the American female pilots and description of them.
The women in the picture were females, they were pilots, but that's it, the women in the picture were not COMBAT pilots.
Don't get the two mixed up.

There were female combat pilots in WW1, such as Marie Marvingt, but that's not who the second sentence in that text and picture refers to.
From the best of my knowledge, all of them were relegated to bombing and recon, maybe not single seat scout pilots, but combat none the less.
Here's an interesting read:
http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/women_combat_pilots_ww1.html


Edit: There were female combat pilots in WW2 as well (many of them flew fighters, several made Ace status such as the White Lily of Stalingrad) but that's for the BoX section

Edited December 7, 2018 by Red_Von_Hammer

[unreasonable]

Indeed. It would be logically equivalent to say "Many also participated in hostilities. Here is a herd of alpaca".

 

Most of the time people think by the association of ideas, not through logical deduction, and journalists and politicians know this and exploit it shamelessly. 

[Red_Von_Hammer]

Exactly.
To bring up the worst case scenario (I won't be pointing fingers, no names shall be mentioned), that kind of sensationalist material mixed in with facts, to make it seem plausible/believable, ruined a certain sim.
Meaning, those who quoted it probably had the best of intentions, but, some (at the time) ruthless people used it for lobbying HARD, more or less over dead bodies.
Wherever an inch was given, a mile was taken.
Historical content was saturated with directly false data, and, as a result simply compromised the end product (for which many kind souls paid hundreds and hundreds of hard earned dollars) beyond repair.

Edited December 7, 2018 by Red_Von_Hammer
Typing falw :)