To Live and Die a WASP: Womens Airforce Service Pilot Margaret Sanford Oldenburg

WASP trainee Margaret Sanford Oldenburg

First of #The38 to die.

(29 July 1909 – 7 Mar 1943)

(Excerpt from To Live and Die a WASP)

SISTERS BEGIN TO FALL

It had been a relatively quiet Sunday afternoon. A few of the women had taken advantage of the improved weather to fly some training flights. Margy Oldenburg had talked to her husband in California by phone at noon and then checked out a parachute and met Norris Morgan, her civilian instructor, on the flight line. They would fly a Fairchild PT-19, a basic trainer airplane used to introduce pilots to military aircraft before moving them up to more demanding planes.

Margy Oldenburg began her training in Houston, February 16, 1943, just 19 days earlier. At 33 she was one of the older student pilots, and at first, a bit shy. But soon she was entertaining small groups of trainees by singing the Hawaiian songs she had learned while visiting friends on the

WASP Margaret Sanford Oldenburg

islands. “She had a smile for everyone,” one student said. Born Margaret Burrows Sanford near Cleveland, Ohio in 1909, the youngest daughter of Percy and Mary Sanford, her family had moved to New York by 1915. … She married Jacob Oldenburg in late 1940. Jack, as he preferred to be called, was a salesman for a metal works company and had left his home in Ohio just a few years before. He was a member of the United States Naval Reserve.

Norris Morgan, Margy’s instructor, had been flying since 1933. Born and raised in Galva, Illinois, Morgan was a graduate of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, with a degree in agricultural engineering. After graduation, he worked with his uncles in Illinois’ first hybrid seed company, known simply as Morgan Brothers. … In late 1942, 41-year-old Norris Morgan

volunteered for wartime duty as a civilian flight instructor. …

Just about 6 in the evening, March 7, 1942, the base siren in Houston began to wail an emergency call. Because it was a Sunday, many of the women trainees had already left the Houston base for home. Those who remained had never heard the siren sound that way before, because now it was announcing an accident, and there hadn’t been an accident at Houston since classes began the previous November. An unexplained spin had suddenly sent Margy’s PT-19 hurling straight down into a pasture seven miles southeast of the Houston Airport. She and Norris smashed into the ground at such speed that both of them died instantly….

The women of the 319th were still in shock. Margy Oldenburg was the first of their sisters to die. They had known the dangers before they signed up, and yet, they never really believed there would ever be any trouble. Now they would try to remember to fly carefully. They would exude confidence in their flying abilities to family and to everyone on the outside. They were sure that this need not happen again, but inside, in their deepest thoughts, they hoped that they’d never make a mistake.

 #RIP