Susan Parker Clarke - the 25th WASP (Womens Airforce Service Pilots) to Die During WWII

 

WASP pilot Susan Parker Clarke

WASP Susan Parker Clarke 44-W-2

Flying BT-13 fm Fairfax AAF, Kansas City, KS w/passenger, Lt Harry Thomas. Sudden veer, loss of altitude, cartwheel crash.

(5 Aug 1918 – 4 Jul 1944)

Lt. Harry Thomas : (27 Aug 1921-4 Jul 1944)

 

Lt. Harry Thomas

(excerpt from To Live and Die a WASP )

 Twenty-five-year-old Susan Parker Clark, the 25^th WASP pilot to die in WWII, was born the third of four daughters in Cooperstown, New York, August 5, 1918.

On July 4th, schoolchildren across the country were eagerly anticipating a loud and glittering evening of fireworks, as the nation celebrated its 168th birthday. Just before noon, Susan Class 44-W-2, daughter of George Hyde Clarke and Emily Clarke Cooke, had taken off in South Carolina from Columbia Army Air Base. With her in the BT-13 Valiant was Lieutenant Harry Thomas, an aviator who had received his wings and commission the previous May. Thomas was on leave and hitching a ride toward his hometown, Pulaski, Virginia, for a visit with his wife and young son. He had been flying with Susan since Atlanta, where she had agreed to let him ride with her on her scheduled trip up the East Coast.

On July 4, 1944, she was flying another ferrying flight up the East Coast of the country. Flying at 1,500 feet, about three miles out from the Columbia Army Air Base, the South Carolina sky was partly cloudy with a light wind and temperatures in the mid 70s.

Some eyewitnesses said they thought a bird or something that wasn’t an airplane had struck Susan’s BT-13. Others reported they had seen a B-25 flying nearby, and still others said they hadn’t seen anything that could have caused a problem. Almost everyone agreed that the craft suddenly banked left and, with its engine roaring, nosed down at a 45-degree angle into the ground. The left wing struck the earth; the plane began to cartwheel, the shattered body of the craft threw out metal pieces all along the way, and then, the fuel tanks erupted in flame. There was no time to jump—no time to escape.

The next day, Jackie Cochran sent Susan’s mother a telegram. “I hope this will convey to you how deeply we all feel about Susan’s death,” Cochran said. “May God give you strength to find comfort in the fact that when she was called upon to make the supreme sacrifice, she was serving her country in the highest capacity permitted women today.”

Susan was buried on the outskirts of Cooperstown in Lakewood Cemetery; her grave just a few feet away from her brother, Lieutenant George Hyde Clarke, Jr, who had died in a B-25 accident a year earlier. Burial for Lt. Harry Thomas was in the Oakwood Cemetery in Pulaski, Virginia, Harry’s hometown.

RIP