WASP Beverly Jean Moses
Class 44-W-5
(21 December 1922 - 18 July
1944)
(Excerpt from To Live and Die a WASP)
Twenty-year-old Beverly Jean Moses was one of the youngest
of all
the WASPs. Born December 21, 1922, in Des Moines, Iowa, she was the
daughter of Alex and Sylvia Moses, and the couple’s fourth child. Her father
was an automobile mechanic and her mother supplemented the family income with
her cooking and catering.
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| WASP Beverly Jean Moses, High School Graduation |
The crash of Beverly Moses’ AT-11 Kansan on July 18, 1944,
in the Spring Mountains west of Las Vegas, is still one of the most mysterious
of all the accidents that claimed 38 WASP lives.
It was a month when the high temperature never dipped below
100 degrees on the ground, and in the cooler air above, winds occasionally swirled
around the mountain slopes.
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| AT-11 Kansan |
Beverly (44-W-5) was flying as co-pilot on the twin engine
Kansan, used by the Army to train navigators, bombardiers, and gunners. She had
drawn straws with her former classmate, Mildred Taylor, to win the right to
take the right-hand seat. Lieutenant Frank Smith
was the pilot of this
instrument training flight, and onboard with him and Beverly were instrument
flight instructors, Staff Sergeant James Reagan and Corporal Kenneth Langston.
They left Las Vegas Army Airfield late in the morning, flew their practice
missions, and then landed to refuel at Indian Springs Army Airfield, about 40
miles northwest of Las Vegas. At Indian Springs, Sergeants Bernard O’Reilly and
Herbert Stretton, both gunnery instructors, climbed aboard and moved toward the
rear gun positions. Just before 3:00 o’clock, the AT-11 lifted off with her
crew of six and began flying over the Nevada desert. About an hour
later, Lieutenant
Smith received orders to fly toward Charleston Mountain and search the area for
a parachute that someone believed they had seen falling in the area. It was the
last anyone would hear from the AT-11.
 |
| WASP Pilot Beverly Jean Moses |
Ironically, Beverly’s plane crashed just 23 miles northwest
of
where, two and a half years earlier, a Transcontinental & Western Air,
DC-3 airliner, flew into Potosi Mountain, killing Clark Gable’s movie star
wife, Carole Lombard and 21 others.
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| RIP |
