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!

 

The loss of WASP - Evelyn Genevieve “Sharpie” Sharp

3 April 1944- 

WAFS (Womens Auxilary Ferrying Service)

& WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots)

Evelyn Genevieve “Sharpie” Sharp

WASP Pilot Evelyn Sharp

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

(20 October 1919 - 3 April 1944)

RIP

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

 

Cornelia Fort - Second Womens Airforce Service Pilot to Die on Duty During WWII-

Pilot Cornelia Clark Fort

 WASP (Womens Airforce Service Pilot)

WAFS (Womens Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron)

Second woman to join Nancy Love's WAFS.

Second of  the 38  WASP pilots to die during WWII.

Her BT-13 collides near Merkel, TX.

21 March 1943

(5 February 1919 – 21 March 1943)

(excerpt from To Live and Die a WASP 

 

At dawn on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Cornelia left her apartment across from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and drove to John Rodgers Field for another day of takeoff and landing practice with one of her students. Just after 6:30, up in the air in one of the company’s yellow Interstate Cadets, with her student at the controls and flying in for another touch and go landing, Cornelia looked casually around. “I saw a plane coming closer,” she said. “It was in violation of the air traffic rules.” She waited for the plane to give ground as it was required to do, but when it didn’t, “I jerked the controls away from my student and jammed the throttle wide open to pull above the oncoming plane,” she said. “He passed so close under us that our celluloid windows rattled violently and I looked down to see what kind of plane it was.” With a large red sun along its fuselage and on its wings there was no doubt—Japanese! She

could see smoke rising from the harbor and Cornelia tried to convince herself it was only an exercise—a simple drill. “Then I looked way up and saw the formations of silver bombers riding in,” she said. “Something detached itself from an airplane and came glistening down. My eyes followed it down, down, and even with knowledge pounding in my mind, my heart turned convulsively when the bomb exploded in the middle of the harbor.”

 Now it was a dash for the relative safety of the ground. A shadow passed over and a burst of bullets spattered around and into her plane’s body. “Suddenly,” she said, “that little wedge of sky above Hickam Field and Pearl Harbor was the busiest, fullest piece of sky I ever saw.” Her student was mystified, and when Cornelia landed, still running across the field toward the hangar with machine gun fire strafing the ground in front of her, the oblivious student asked her when he would ever be able to solo. Her response was curt and to the point. “Not today, brother. NOT TODAY!”