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FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. (AFNS) -- Last year, a young female
pilot recently showed her 91-year-old guest the F-16 Fighting Falcon
she flies at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz. She thanked Betty "Tack"
Blake several times as she talked about her job, so Blake finally
asked the young captain why she was thanking her.
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Betty 'Tack' Blake is believed to be the
only living graduate of the first Women's Airforce Service
Pilot training class during World War II. The class began with 38
women pilots on Nov. 16, 1942, but only 23 graduated on April 24,
1943. They weren't known as WASPs until the merging of the Women's
Flying Training Detachment and Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron
on Aug. 5, 1943. (U.S. Air Force graphic by Sylvia Saab)
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"Because you started it," the captain said. "If you
hadn't been successful, we wouldn't be doing what we're
doing today."
Blake is believed to be the only living
graduate of the first Women's Airforce
Service Pilot training class during World War II. The class
began with 38 women pilots on Nov. 16, 1942, but only 23
graduated on April 24, 1943. They weren't known as WASPs
until the merging of the Women's Flying Training Detachment
and Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron on Aug. 5, 1943.
"We were an experiment," said Blake, who now lives in
Scottsdale, Ariz. "We were a guinea pig class, as they
called us, because they didn't think women could learn to
fly military planes."
Blake began flying at the age
of 14 in 1934, and became even more interested in airplanes
when she met Amelia Earhart at the University of Hawaii in
January 1935. Earhart traveled to the islands in her quest
to become the first pilot to solo the 2,408 miles across the
Pacific Ocean between Honolulu and Oakland, Calif. Blake was
the only child in the audience, so she was seated in the
front row for Earhart's speech. Afterward, Earhart sat
beside Blake and invited her to the airport to see the
twin-engine Beechcraft she would be flying the following
day.
"She was very excited to know I was learning to
fly," Blake said. "She told me to keep going and do
something exciting and show that women could fly. She had a
lot of people fighting against her who didn't think women
could do it."
Blake flew tourists around the Hawaiian
Islands in an open-canopy biplane near where she grew up in
Oahu before the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. She recalls the
time as two different lives, before and after Dec. 7, 1941.
The night before the attack, she was invited by Navy
ensigns to the officers club to celebrate her 21st birthday.
The next morning, she watched the attack from the balcony of
her family home on a hill above Pearl Harbor.
"My
family didn't drink, so I'd never had a drink in my life,"
Blake said. "That was my first taste of liquor (at the
party). The next morning, when Pearl Harbor happened, I was
in bed with the worst hangover I ever had.
"My
younger brothers woke me up, and we all went to the balcony
of my house, and we watched all these planes coming over the
mountain behind us going toward the ocean. When the planes
went over us, they looked like AT-6 (Texans), but they were
(Japanese Mitsubishi A6-M Zeroes). They had big orange suns
painted on the bottom of their wings. Then, we saw them as
they started diving toward the ocean in front of us. Their
machine guns started going off, and you could see the
bullets hitting the water and bouncing up.
"We had
been having so much fun before Pearl Harbor. We were having
fun every night, and suddenly it stopped."
Two
ensigns Blake dated were killed at Pearl Harbor, and a
third, who became her first husband several months later,
also would have died if her father hadn't intervened. He had
invited Robert Tackaberry to spend the night after the party
so his daughter wouldn't have to drive him back to his ship
at night.
"It saved his life," Blake said. "His cabin
on the (USS) California was below the water line, and they
dropped a bomb right in the water beside the ship. His
roommate was asleep, and it killed him. So my father always
reminded my future husband he'd saved his life."
Blake, who worked at Pearl Harbor as a secretary before she
married Tackaberry, moved to the East Coast when he was
reassigned to a ship in Erie, Penn. A couple of years later,
she was selected for the first women's pilot training class
in Houston, near Ellington Field.
Unlike the casual
way women pilots are regarded today, Blake recalls a much
different attitude during World War II. However, she had an
advantage her fellow classmates didn't. She was already
accustomed to getting along with men from growing up with
two brothers in a neighborhood filled with boys.
"I
got along fine with them because I'd grown up with boys,"
Blake said. "I knew how to joke, spit through my teeth and
crack my jaws with them. That was very fortunate because
some of the girls were in tears if a boy made a crack. I
just joked back. They were always my pals.
"But a lot
of the men were not happy having the women fly the same
planes they were flying. They watched us like hawks, and if
we did anything wrong, it was back at our base before we
could get back."
After completing training, the
graduates from the first class were given their choice of
assignment and job. Blake chose ferry command at Long Beach,
Calif., because she figured she'd be able to fly home to
Honolulu. She never got the opportunity, but met her second
husband, who was also assigned to Long Beach. Blake was part
of a group of pilots who shuttled aircraft from factories to
sites where they could be sent overseas. There was some
discussion of using WASP pilots as co-pilots for overseas
flights, but the war in Europe ended before it could happen.
"So, I didn't get checked out in a lot more planes that
I would've liked to have flown because they brought all the
men pilots back and didn't need us anymore," she said. "They
gave us three days' notice, and it was, 'Goodbye, girls.'"
Blake ferried about 35 aircraft models, in addition to
the AT-6 and others she flew in during training. But one
airplane still remains her favorite even today.
"The
P-51 (Mustang) was definitely my favorite," she said.
"Whenever one goes overhead, and there are still a few of
them flying around, I hear that sound and instantly know
it's a P-51. It was reliable. I liked the engine, and I just
felt safer in it than anything else."
Blake recently
attended a funeral for the only other living graduate from
the first WASP class, who also lived in the Phoenix area.
The class of 1943 that was the source of the young Luke AFB
pilot's gratitude is down to just one.
"Now I'm the
only one left, and I hope I'm here for a while," Blake said.
By USAF Randy Roughton
Air Force News Service
Copyright 2013
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