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     

History Snoopin': Oregon WASP Pilot Marie Ethel Chiler Sharon - Service and Sacrifice for Country

Service and sacrifice for country

---

by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

March 16, 2020

The B-25 began to rattle and shudder violently against extremely hard winds, gusting at 45 mph.

Lt. Hinton Daniel and WASP pilot Marie Sharon frantically fought to maintain altitude and control. Suddenly, the nose wheel door began to twist with a screeching metallic sound. The hinges gave way in the wind and the door flew away, slamming into the right side motor. Sixty-five miles south of Omaha, Nebraska, there was smoke, the engine failed, and the bomber lunged into a nose-first dive. It shattered in pieces as it hit the ground and buried itself deep into a farmer’s field.

Born Marie Cihler in Forsyth, Montana, April 21, 1917, Marie was a Women’s Airforce Service Pilot, a WASP, one of 1,074 women who flew military airplanes within the United States for the U.S. Army Air Corps during WWII.

This was one of Marie’s navigational training flights in the bomber. She was working toward a Class IV Army pilot rating, a rating allowing her to fly two-engine medium bombers and heavy transports. Only 59 of the WASP women would ever earn that rating.

It had been a nomadic life for Marie. By 1922 the family had moved 300 miles west to Helena, Montana, and within a few years, they were on the move again, this time to Vancouver, Washington, just across the Columbia River from Portland. Here, on Sept. 5, 1930, there was a shocking tragedy.

“While his little daughter fought in vain to prevent him from taking his life,” the newspaper reported, “John Cihler, [Marie’s father] swallowed poison at his home last night and died a short time later. His act followed a quarrel with his wife.” That “little daughter” was 13-year old Marie.

Marie, her mother, and older sister moved to Portland, where Marie graduated from Jefferson High School. Before the war, she worked as a stenographer and cashier for a retail laundry.

She had once again followed her mother and was living in Bend when she signed up for the WASP program. Before she began her training at Avenger Field, in Sweetwater, Texas, Feb. 13, 1943, Marie married Horace Sharon. Shortly after the wedding, he joined the Navy and left for the war.

Marie was the 16th of 38 WASP pilots who died during the Second World War. She rests near her father in Wilhelm’s Memorial Mausoleum in Portland. Lt. Hinton, her flight instructor, lies in Augusta, Georgia’s Westover Memorial Park.

WASP Marie Ethel Chiler Sharon 43-W-4

(21 April 1917 – 10 April 1944)

RIP

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

https://mailtribune.com/lifestyle/service-and-sacrifice-for-country

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 

 

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