WASP Paula Ruth Loop
Class 43-W-2
(25 Aug 1916 - 7 Jul 1944)
(excerpt from To Live and Die a WASP)
Paula Ruth Loop was born in 1916 about 15 miles from the
family farm in Manchester, Oklahoma. She was the first child of Elton Loop and
Nettie Bartlett. She grew up near the town of Wakita, on the 160 acres claimed
by her grandfather, George Loop, in the Oklahoma land rush of 1893. As the
oldest child, Paula soon learned how to milk cows, can fruits and vegetables,
sew, clean
house, cook and take on all the chores expected of a farm child. She
was a hard worker and when her three brothers and sisters began to arrive in
1920, she easily moved into the role of babysitter and attentive teacher. …
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| Paula Loop in college |
In early 1939, President Roosevelt asked Congress for $7.3
million to establish a Civilian Pilot Training program administered by the
Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA), forerunner of today’s
Federal Aviation
Administration. Europe was already moving toward war and there was a sense that
if war broke out, the United States might need more pilots for self defense and
also combat pilots if the country was drawn into the conflict.
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| Paula Loop CPT at Ponca City, Oklahoma Airport |
In December 1939, CAA announced that it would offer 700
flight scholarships to non-college students between the ages of 18 and 25 who
didn’t have access to the pilot training program. … Students paid $30, which
include a medical examination, ground school expenses, and insurance, with all
other costs paid for by the CAA. At the end of the ground training, a
competitive examination determined which 10 students received free flight
training. There was one restriction. Of the final ten selected, only one could
be a woman.
Maintaining a grade point average of 94.9, Paula was the
first
Oklahoma woman to receive one of the flight scholarships, entitling her
to 35 hours of flight training at the Ponca City Municipal Airport. After her
solo flight on September 22, 1940, she received her private pilot’s license.
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| WASP Paula Loop Class 43-W-2 |
With the announcement in September of a training program
that would allow women to fly military aircraft, Paula, and eventually over a
thousand other women, were finally able to use their flying ability in support
of the United States war effort. She applied and met all qualifications, the
most stringent of which was proving that she had flown over 200 hours. On
December 13, 1942, she reported for training at the Howard Hughes Airport,
One of her first assignments was to ferry a BT-13 Valiant
two-seat trainer, from Enid, Oklahoma to Seattle, Washington. …
Before leaving Sacramento, California, on her way north
Paula wrote the last words the Loop family ever heard from their
In July 1944, just
a few weeks shy of her 28th birthday, and 330 miles away from her
destination, Paula died alone in a fiery
crash.
Paula Loop’s trainer
airplane, a BT-13 Valiant, had begun slicing through tall cedars in the middle
of the afternoon. The left wing, nearly intact, sheared off from the fuselage
and dropped about 150 feet from where the airplane ultimately struck the
ground. The 60-gallon left wing fuel tank, still attached to the plane, erupted
on impact, its contents exploding in a violent fire that quickly turned the
remaining fuselage into a twisted skeleton framework of metal.
Why Paula’s plane
had suddenly crashed, just a few minutes after refueling and takeoff from the
Medford, Oregon airport, was never determined.
RIP
Paula is why I began writing To Live and Die a WASP.
