To Live and Die a WASP: Collision at Avenger Field

16 April 1944 

Collision and Death of Two Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP)

The 38

Jayne Elizabeth Erickson 44-6

(14 Apr 1921)

&

Mary Holmes Howson 44-4

 (Feb 16, 1919)

Women Airforce Service Pilots Jayne Erickson & Mary Howson

Excerpt from To Live and Die a WASP:

At Avenger Field on April 16, 1944, Elizabeth Erickson (44-W-6), with 111 days still left before graduation, was almost half way through her training.

 

Twenty-five-year-old Mary Howson (44-W-4) was in the homestretch, with just 38 days to go. It was a warm Sunday afternoon with a light, southeasterly breeze—a good day for flying.

 

Mary, flying solo, was the last of her classmates to approach for a landing.They were completing a 530-mile roundtrip training flight around San Antonio.

 

Elizabeth was practicing touch and go landings. Previously, she had made three of these practice landings with her instructor, but now, she was alone in the cockpit and lining up for another landing.

 

Both women were flying AT-6 Texan trainers. For some reason, the ground controller didn’t notice that the women were both at 800 feet and descending from opposite directions. Both were on their next to the last turn, in preparation for their final approach to the runway. Elizabeth and Mary were on a collision course. …

Women Airforce Service Pilots Jayne Erickson & Mary Howson

Just after 1:20 p.m., Mary Howson and Elizabeth Erickson’s AT-6s slammed into each other. As the planes began tumbling, Mary managed to unfasten her harness, climb out of the cockpit, and jump, but she was too low and her parachute never completely opened. Elizabeth had no chance at all. She was trapped in her cockpit and unable to jump. Both women died instantly just a few yards apart.

The following evening, all of the trainees and training staff attended a memorial service for both women in the Avenger Field gymnasium. Classmates took up a collection to send both friends home.

Mickie Carmichael (44-W-4) accompanied Mary home for her funeral and burial in the Washington Memorial Chapel Churchyard, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

Elinor Fairchild (44-W-6), Elizabeth’s friend, accompanied Elizabeth to her burial in Seattle’s Lake View Cemetery.

RIP     

To Live and Die A WASP : Evelyn Genevieve “Sharpie” Sharp

3 April 1944- 

WAFS (Womens Auxilary Ferrying Service)

& WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots)

Evelyn Genevieve “Sharpie” Sharp
#The 38

WASP Pilot Evelyn Sharp

 Dies when one engine on her P-38 loses power on takeoff.

(20 October 1919 - 3 April 1944)

WASP Pilot Evelyn Sharp

WASP Pilot Evelyn Sharp

Excerpt from "To Live and Die a WASP"

On April 3, at 10:29 in the morning, Evelyn Genevieve Sharp lifted off from the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania airport in a twin-engine fighter, a Lockheed P-38 Lightning. She had been flying the fighter all the way across the country, on a delivery flight from the Lockheed plant in Long Beach, California to Liberty Army Airfield in Newark, New Jersey.

Following standard takeoff procedure, she immediately retracted her landing gear when she left the ground and almost instantly she noticed black smoke beginning to pour from the plane’s left engine. Barely 700 feet in the air, her engine shut down. Evelyn threw the rudder hard right, trying to keep the plane from rolling over. She feathered the left prop and cut its throttle. There wasn’t enough power to get higher or stay much longer in the air, so she scanned the countryside, looking for a way to land without hitting any of the homes and buildings below. She veered left, across the Susquehanna River toward Beacon Hill, where the population was scattered. With no time to let down the tricycle landing gear, Evelyn smashed into the ground in an abrupt belly landing, her forward motion only stopped by a forest of trees. The steering column pushed up, forcing Evelyn’s head into the canopy. Her neck was broken, and after only a minute in the air, she was dead.

Mounds of flowers were everywhere on April 9, 1944. Although she hadn’t lived in her hometown for over four years, the people of Ord, Nebraska and the surrounding countryside came to her Sunday funeral services by the hundreds. Her mother and father came by train from their new home in Nevada, to bury their only child in the town that called Evelyn their “favorite daughter.” Fellow WASP and classmate, Nancy Batson, and two servicemen were there to pay their respects. Nancy had accompanied Evelyn’s body to Ord, bringing with her $200 donated by the WASPs at New Castle Air Base in Delaware, to help pay for the funeral.

  Airport in her hometown, Ord, Nebraska, named in her honor.

Sharp Field, Ord, Nebraska

RIP Sharpie!

 

To Live and Die a WASP: The Tragedy of Betty Stine

WASP Betty Pauline Stine 44-W-2

(13 September 1921 - 25 February 1944)

#The38

(Quote from To Live and Die a WASP)

Betty Stine, WASP Class 44-W-2 prepared to leave on her final cross-country flight before graduation. …

Betty graduated from Santa Barbara High School in June 1939 with dreams of becoming an airline

WASP Pilot Betty Stine

stewardess. Her father, Jake, was born in the oil fields of Oklahoma, but when his mother died when Jake was eight years old in 1909, his father sent him to live with Jake’s grandparents, in Castleberry, Texas, near Fort Worth. … There, in late 1920, Jake married Mary Allen.

Betty, their only child, was born the following September. Because Jakes uncle was humorist Will Rogers, he named Betty after Will’s wife, Betty Blake. For his daughter’s middle name he chose Pauline, after Pauline McSpadden, a daughter of one of Will Rogers’ sisters. …

On February 24, 1944, Betty, along with 12 of her classmates, were returning to Avenger Field from their final cross-country training flight. Graduation

was 16 days away. She had just taken off in an AT-6 Texan from Blythe Army Airfield in southeastern California, and had crossed over the Colorado River into Arizona. A little after 4:00 in the afternoon, officials believe an exhaust spark set fire to the fabric-covered portion of the Texan’s tail assembly. With the tail on fire and about to separate from the plane, Betty bailed out over the mountains surrounding Quartzite, Arizona; less than 25 miles from Blythe.

Lewis Aplington, owner of mines around Quartzite, saw the burning plane and Betty’s parachute dropping to the ground. It took over 45 minutes for Aplington and two other miners, riding in a truck, to find her in the rugged terrain. Betty was unconscious, but still alive. The high winds had dragged her chute over sharp rocks and

Plomosa Mountains, Quartzite, Arizona

boulders and her body was beaten, broken, and bloodied. …

Returned to a nearby Army base hospital, she died within hours. The 22-year-old’s body was sent home for burial in the Santa Barbara Cemetery.

 

WASP Betty Stine and Her Instructor

If only Betty Stine had known how to control her parachute on the ground in strong winds, she never would have died. Officers at Avenger Field hadn’t anticipated the need for advanced training in parachute jumps and landings, but Betty’s death had changed all of that almost immediately. …

RIP

To Live and Die a WASP: Mary Ann “Marian” Toevs

WASP Mary Ann “Marian” Toevs

#The38

Class 43-W-8

 13 May 1917 – 18 February 1944)

Marian Toevs’ parents, John and Nelle, were at their daughter’s graduation, proudly pinning on Marian’s silver wings. After the ceremony, they

returned to Aberdeen, Idaho, where Marian had a week to relax in her girlhood home. On January 1, 1944, she reported to LeMoore Army Airfield, an

BT-13

Army flight training school in California’s Central

Valley. Her primary assignment was to test fly BT-13 and BT-15 airplanes, recently repaired by the field’s maintenance crew. …

Marian was born May 13, 1917, in Aberdeen, Idaho, where her father, John, owned a grocery store and ran a successful wholesale dry goods business. For a number of years he was also the superintendant of Aberdeen’s Agricultural Experiment Station. Marian had four brothers and

WASP Marian Toevs

was her parent’s only daughter. Marian graduated from high school in 1935, and that fall began studies at Albion State Normal School, a small teachers college in Albion, Idaho. Two years later, with a teaching certificate in hand, Marian spent the next three years teaching. …

Early in the morning, Friday, February 18, 1944, Marian checked out a parachute, walked to the flight line, and climbed into a BT-13. She fired up the engine, completed her preflight check, then taxied out to the runway. Sources say she was

BT-13s

flying to Fresno, California, and perhaps that was her ultimate destination, but Fresno is barely 30 air miles from LeMoore, hardly enough time in the air to fully checkout a previously damaged or faulty airplane. Add the fact that Marian’s BT-13 finally wound up nearly 125 miles northwest away from Fresno, in the eastern foothills of San Jose, California, and a simple flight to Fresno just doesn’t make any sense. If Fresno was her ultimate destination, she was first flying a much longer cross-country flight.

Twenty-six-year old Marian crashed just a block away from where her Uncle Otto Toevs lived in a San Jose, California neighborhood. 

She had visited with Otto and his wife just two weeks before and it was Uncle Otto who ultimately identified her body for authorities. “The motor was still going when it hit,” Anthony Gullo said. He had been only 75 feet from the crash. …

After Marian’s crash, Marian’s body was returned to Aberdeen for her funeral. 

As she was laid to rest, Edgar Toevs, Marian’s cousin, was one of the speakers.

 

 “She had given everything she had,” Edgar said, “and she did all she could.”

 RIP

WASP Mary Louise Webster - Last On-Duty Women Airforce Service Pilot to Die During WWII

9 December 1944

Mary Louise Webster, Class 44-W-8

Last On-duty WASP's to Die.

(30 June 1919 – 9 December 1944)

Mary Webster and a two-man crew were flying into a cold front with intermittent snow and rain and temperatures dropping. Their UC-78 Bobcat, nicknamed “the bamboo bomber,” was taking them on a cross-country training flight to Chicago

"Bamboo Bomber"- At-17

from Frederick Army Airfield in southwestern Oklahoma. Following her graduation that October, Mary had reported to Frederick for advanced training in B-24 Liberator bombers. With only 11 days remaining until WASP deactivation, it should have seemed ridiculous to continue training; yet, there she was, flying

WASP Pilot Mary Louise Webster

between Tulsa and Claremore, Oklahoma

Born June 30, 1919, Mary was the seventh of eight children and the second daughter.

Mary graduated from the Holy Names Academy, a private Catholic all-girls high school in Seattle. After graduation, she studied for two years at the Seattle Business College and earned her diploma. Although believing business was her best career choice, Mary had always dreamed of flying, and when Central Washington State College announced a Civilian Pilot Training course in May 1940, Mary leaped at the chance. It wasn’t easy being one of only three women accepted in the program. “I knew Mary and I liked her,” a fellow student later told a reporter. “But there was a reluctant acceptance about her being in the program with the men. There were jokes that she

should be home raising kids.”

… After graduation from Avenger on October 18, 1944, and following her 10-day furlough, Mary reported to Frederick Army Airbase to begin her advanced training. A month later she was riding in the Bobcat with Lieutenant George Crowe at the controls. Crowe was from Wisconsin and had turned 21 just a few days earlier. … Also with them was 22-year-old Sergeant Melvin Clark, a married Oklahoma native who had been assigned to

Frederick when the base opened in September

WASP Mary Louise Webster

1942.

An hour out from Frederick on December 9, the UC-78 was flying at 9,000 feet above the clouds, when Crowe noticed ice forming on the wings. He radioed the air controller and received permission to descend; hoping warmer air would keep more ice from forming. Now, deep in the clouds, the aircraft began to fall and Crowe lost control. The UC-78 fell straight down and crashed, killing everyone aboard.

RIP