Next to last WASP (Women Airforce Service) pilot to die in WWII

WASP Katherine Applegate Keeler Dussaq. Class 44-W-1.

(1905 – 26 November 1944)

 (Excerpt from To Live and Die a WASP)

WASP Katherine Keeler Dussaq

The day after WASP Hazel Lee Louie died (25 November 1944); 39-year-old Kay Dussaq (Class 44-W-1) was in trouble over Western Ohio. Perhaps it was the freezing rain, the fog, or ice, but at about 8:45 in the evening Kay’s AT-6 was going down near New Carlisle, Ohio. For some reason, Kay was not wearing her safety harness, and when the plane crashed, she struck her head on the control stick and died instantly.

Katherine Applegate was born in Dayton, Washington, March 14, 1905. Hers was an Oregon pioneer family. In 1846, her great uncle,

WASP Katherine Keeler Dussaq

Jesse Applegate, had blazed the Applegate Trail into the Oregon Territory. Her Father, Arthur McClellan Applegate, had risen from laboring in a flourmill to manager of several flour mills in Oregon and Washington. He had married Kay’s mother, Clare Moritz, in November 1898. Kay was their third daughter and grew up in Dayton with her three sisters and two brothers. After graduation from Harrington High School, she

attended Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, and then the State College of Washington in Pullman. In 1924, she was one of 70 students out of 700 applicants accepted by Stanford University, in Palo Alto, California. She graduated in 1927 with a degree in Psychology.

In 1929, she and one of her friends from Stanford, Leonarde Keeler, went to Chicago and began working at Northwestern University in the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory. Kay and Leonarde married, August 14, 1930.

They divorced in May 1941 and the following December Kay married Rene Dussaq. Dussaq was a popular lecturer. Within days of their marriage, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and in March 1942, Dussaq enlisted. Kay closed her consulting business and went to work for the Piper Aircraft Cooperation in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania.

Kay applied to the WASPs and began training at Avenger Field, August 9, 1943. By graduation the following February, she had raised her total flying time to over 400 hours. Her assignment was Sioux Falls Army Base in South Dakota, but soon she transferred to Randolph Field, near San Antonio, Texas.

WASP Katherine Applegate Keeler Dussaq

Because of her flying hours, and the recognition she had attained during her decade of scientific crime fighting, at age 39, Kay moved quickly from staff pilot to Coordinator of WASP activities. Just before her fatal flight, Kay had received another promotion. She moved to Training Command Headquarters in Houston as WASP Executive for all three training commands.

After her crash Kay was returned home for burial in the Dayton, Washington City Cemetery.

RIP

History Snoopin': Peter and the Pencil of Light

Peter and the pencil of light

by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, November 25, 2019

When winter snows blew against his family’s Swiss chalet, the boy was stuck at home.

While milking cows, brushing horses, and spreading straw, he dreamed of places he had only

seen in schoolbooks.

Obstalden, Switzerland

Finished with his tedious chores, Peter Britt restlessly looked through frosted windows hoping to see the town below. By the fireplace, with pencil in hand, he sketched from memory for hours and waited for warmer days.

In the summer, he wandered. He ran up the steep green meadows behind his house, found a comfortable place to sit and began to draw and paint.

Peter loved this ancient village of Obstalden. He was born here in 1819. A serious boy, he taught himself to draw, and his sketchbooks were filled

The Walensee, Switzerland

with images of the town square and the medieval tower that stood there. He took painting lessons and experimented with color, capturing grayish mists as they rubbed against the deep blue-green waters of Whale Lake, the Walensee.

As a young man, Peter was a traveling portrait painter, who never strayed far from the family farm — and never far from his lovely lady, Amalia Grob. They shared poems and postcards, and she braided hair into lockets for Peter to carry with him. He painted her as the Madonna with children in her arms. They were going to marry, but her father said no. Portrait painters, he said, were as bad as actors and gypsies.

When Peter was 25, his mother died. Already, the village economy was failing, and the family was frustrated. Peter and 10 others, including his 70-year-old father, packed their entire lives into wagons and left Switzerland for France. There they began their voyage across the Atlantic.

The bustling docks of New Orleans greeted them in May 1845. They headed up the Mississippi River to Illinois where a Swiss colony had been established.

Peter Britt Portrait of George Davenport

Peter set out to solicit portrait commissions. He couldn’t have dreamed how instantly successful he would be. In the middle of the Mississippi, at the Rock Island home of Colonel George Davenport, Peter painted a portrait of the man who gave Davenport, Iowa, its name. Peter painted a copy of this famous man and used it as his calling card.

As he wandered up and down the river, managing just enough in commissions to pay for food, and

Peter Britt

lodging, a new opponent loomed — photography. Overnight, customers chose photographs over paintings. They were faster, cheaper, and they were NEW.

Peter studied this wooden box that was now destroying his life. Perhaps he could bring his artistic training to the chemistry of this new invention and produce better photographs than untrained competitors.

John Fitzgibbon

The best-known photographer in the area was John H. Fitzgibbon, a fiery Irishman and master photographer, who advertised that he would “teach the art for a moderate fee.”

“It is my intention,” Fitzgibbon said, “to save this beautiful art from the degradations of quacks and charlatans. Within our grasp we have the enchanter’s wand, our pencil of light, and with it we command the sun to stand still.”

The fee was steep, but Peter paid it, and learned his lessons well. He had saved enough money to

Peter Britt and his Voightlander Camera

buy a Voightlander camera, one of the finest instruments in the world, and also the camera Fitzgibbon had personally selected for him. By the fall of 1847, Peter opened his own studio in Illinois.

No one knows what makes a wanderer decide to wander, but in 1852, Peter Britt was on the move again.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.

A Thanksgiving heartbreak - WASP Hazel Ying Lee Louie

A Thanksgiving heartbreak

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, November 19th 2018

 

It was an unusually warm Thanksgiving afternoon in Great Falls, Montana.
With partly cloudy skies, light winds and temperatures holding in the low 50s, operations at the nearby Army airfield were running with clockwork precision.

Great Falls Army Airfield, Montana

Yes, Nov. 23, 1944, was a holiday, but with a war on, this wasn’t a time for Air Corps pilots to take a break. Here, at the last U.S. stop on the Alaska-Siberia Air Route, rapid, nonstop landings and takeoffs continued well into the evening. Pilots were ferrying brand new aircraft from manufacturers across the country to Montana and then on to Alaska. From there, Soviet pilots, America’s allies, would fly them on to the Soviet Union.

#WASP Hazel Ling Lee Louie

In the early afternoon, the Great Falls tower gave Women Airforce Service Pilot Hazel Ying Lee Louie permission to land. Because her flight from the Bell Aircraft factory in Niagara Falls, New York, had been delayed by a snowstorm in North Dakota, she was anxious to land.
What Hazel didn’t know was that Lt. Charles Russell, in a much faster airplane, was attempting an emergency landing from behind without control from the tower. His radio was out and he didn’t see Hazel below him. When the controller saw the impending collision, he ordered both pilots to pull up and abort. Russell never heard the order, but Hazel did, and immediately pulled up and smashed into the belly of Russell’s descending plane. There was a loud explosion and a huge fireball as both aircraft fell to the runway.

WASP Hazel Lee Louie's P-63  at Great Falls AAF

Hazel was born and raised in Portland. The 32-year-old’s parents had come from China in 1910 and opened a grocery and variety store.
In September 1931, the Japanese Army invaded Manchuria and began bombing civilians.

Japanese Invasion of Manchuria

American-Chinese were outraged and donated

money to fund flight training in the United States for pilots who would fly and fight for China. The newly formed Chinese Flying Club of Portland began accepting memberships, and, by May 1932,

WASP Hazel Ling Lee and friend, Portland, Oregon

36 students, including Hazel Lee and one other woman, were in the air over the Columbia River.
Hazel left for Shanghai in March 1933, hoping to

fight with the Chinese national air force. She was disappointed to learn that women weren’t allowed to fly combat. Instead, she flew cargo and passengers, and by the spring of 1935 she was a flight instructor who occasionally dropped propaganda leaflets over the countryside. After six years in China, she came home.
She stopped flying and traveled to New York in an attempt to forget the devastation she’d seen. There she worked for the Chinese government, supporting the Chinese war effort by buying necessary war materials. While there, she reunited with Clifford Louie, now a major in the Chinese air force. They had learned to fly together in Portland and had left for China together.
After formation of the WASP in 1942, Hazel joined them as quickly as she could. Two months

after graduation, and barely a year before her Thanksgiving collision in Montana, Clifford and Hazel married, but they would never see each other again.
Just after 2 o’clock, the flaming airplanes fell to the runway. Lt. Russell managed to get out and run to safety with minor injuries, but Hazel, knocked unconscious and trapped in the burning plane, had to be pulled out and rushed to the base hospital, There, she died a painful death two days later.
Officials at Portland’s Riverview Cemetery at first opposed Hazel’s burial because she was Chinese, but they later relented. On Dec. 1, 1944, Hazel Ying Lee Louie’s parents buried their daughter in a vaulted gravesite overlooking the Willamette River.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “To Live and Die a WASP, 38 Women Pilots Who Died in WWII.” Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or WilliamMMiller.com.

"Nutty Jack," the Human Fly

“Nutty Jack”

by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

November 18th, 2019

 

Thirty-one stories above Seattle, with bare fingers wedged into cracks and crevices, “Nutty” Jack Williams was clinging to a building.
With a ledge 6 feet above him, he crouched for a moment on a concrete windowsill, judging the distance and catching his breath. From out of the window, a hand gave him a towel and Jack wiped the sweat from his palms.

Harry C, Gardiner, Human Fly

Then, his muscles tightened and he shot upward, his arms outstretched, grasping for the ledge. A thousand voices gasped in horror as his body swung back and forth until it suddenly went horizontal and bounced upward, landing safely on the ledge.
Teasing the crowd, he stood up, pretending to be dizzy. He wavered, pushed his jersey into his trousers, adjusted his black slouch hat, then wiggled his toes in his comfortable “sneaks” and began to climb again.

Harry C. Gardiner, Human Fly

On the 42nd floor, his head was just below a cornice jutting 5 feet out. He coiled his body then catapulted upward and outward. With one last swing, he was up and safe and lying breathless on the roof.
Seven ladies fainted, heads turned away in fear, and others just froze in disbelief.
“Nutty” Jack Williams, who claimed to have “climbed everything in the world with a smooth face on it,” including the well-shaven faces of his skeptics, was a well-known “Human Fly,” and one of the best in the country.
He had carried a bathing beauty on his back to the top of the Waldorf Hotel in California. He had climbed the Washington Monument, countless state capitol domes, and the 63-story Woolworth building in New York City, the tallest building in the world.

John Jammie Reynolds, Human Fly

Jack’s career began in Cleveland as a teen member of an acrobatic troupe. He said he had saved a young girl trapped in a skyscraper after fire department ladders couldn’t reach her. He used bare hands to climb up and bring her down.
In December 1918, he left Seattle heading for Medford, planning to climb the tallest building in the Rogue Valley, the five-story Hotel Medford (the sixth story wasn’t added until 1925).
For a man who had been at the “top of the world,” the buildings of Southern Oregon offered him little difficulty, but because the railroad ran through Medford and the town had offered some traveling money and a free place to stay overnight, Jack couldn’t pass it up.
Jack’s moneymaking routine was the same as all the other “human flys.” Find a town with a worthwhile cause and agree to split any money he made — 70% for Jack and 30% for the cause.
It was an easy climb to the top of the Hotel until he reached the large cornice at the top. The crowd briefly booed when he asked for a rope, but began to cheer again when he made it to the roof and climbed to the top of the flagpole.
He put $19.82 in his pocket, gave $8.50 to the local Red Cross, and left town for good.
Jack Williams disappeared from newspapers around 1925, and his fate still is unknown. Some say he fell to his death in Tennessee, others say he changed to wing walking on airplanes.
 

John Jammie Reynolds, Human Fly

Swallowed up by the Great Depression, traveling daredevils were about to disappear. It was just too dangerous and not enough money in the world to take that kind of risk.
Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.

Veterans Day: WASP Pilot Kay Gott Chaffey

Remembering WASP Kay Gott Chaffey

Class 43-W-2

Thank you dear lady.

(18 July 1920 – 21 August 2017)

 Eyes of a veteran

by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

November 11, 2019

Kay found her final rest just over a year ago in Arlington National Cemetery.

 

WASP Kay Gott Chaffey's Funeral-Arlington National Cemetery

Kay Gott Chaffey served for over two years as a WASP pilot during WWII. She and 1,073 other women learned to control the latest military aircraft, including bombers and fighters, flying over 60 million miles on various missions for the U.S. Army Air Corps.

Although they could not fly combat and were restricted to the United States, the women flew the very same missions that thousands of male Army officers were flying at the same time — and doing it under military discipline for less pay, without military benefits, no insurance, and even having to pay for their own meals and lodging.

WASP Kay Gott Chaffey

The WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilots) had been promised a commission in the Army, but Congress refused to approve it, so the women flew as civilians, never receiving their veteran status until 1977.

I was lucky and honored to meet Kay just a year before she died at age 98. I was giving a talk about the WASP at the Medford library and, arriving early for setup, I found a smiling woman with sparkling eyes already sitting in the front row. We began to talk.

Five weeks earlier, Kay had fallen and severely injured a leg. All that time, she was marooned at her Rogue Valley Manor home. When she heard of my talk, she insisted friends bring her. I suspect she not only wanted to share her experiences, she also needed to see if I knew what I was talking about.

 

WASP Kay Gott Chaffey

During the war, when men called women girls, some wondered why a woman would volunteer for such dangerous duty when she could have stayed safely at home. Kay laughed at that.

“There was a war on and someone needed that airplane if we were to win that war,” she said. “We did serve, and we served our country well.”

The only woman in her Civilian Pilot Training class, WASP Kay Gott Chaffey

Kay learned to fly in the federally funded Civilian Pilot Training Program at the College of Idaho. The government aimed to train pilots just in case the U.S. was pulled into the European war. Kay was lucky. For every 10 students in a class, only one could be a woman. Kay was that woman.

While studying for a commercial pilot license, she applied to the newly formed WASP program and, on Dec. 13, 1942, began her training in the program’s second class. It was the same training given to male aviation cadets — six months of flying, marching, calisthenics and classroom studies of navigation, Morse code and military law.

“My job was to move airplanes,” she said.

Kay flew 17 types of aircraft from coast to coast, including the P-51 fighter and the B-25 bomber.

“The danger was no less because a woman was flying versus a man flying,” Kay said.

She was flying just behind Portland WASP Hazel Lee at Great Falls, Montana, when Lee’s plane was struck by a male pilot’s plane, killing Lee in a flaming crash.

Kay lived an energetic life with gusto. She flew

Former WASP Kay Gott Chaffey Dances at Humboldt State University

relief for the Red Cross and others during the 1964 flood, graduated from the University of Oregon with a master’s degree, taught dance and physical education for 32 years at Humboldt State University in California, and wrote three books — two about the WASP.

When my WASP talk was over, I looked over at Kay and cautiously asked, “How’d I do?”

I’ll always remember her big thumbs up, the smile on her lips, her infectious laugh, her shout of “Great!” — and those sparkling eyes.

Thank you, Kay. And thank you for your service.

 

WASP Kay Gott Chaffey

 RIP

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “To Live and Die a WASP, 38 Women Pilots Who Died in WWII.” Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.