Air University Review, July-August 1977
Jacqueline Cochran
I WAS asked by a congressional committee and testified on women being sent to the military academies. I thought it was a waste of money and effort on the part of our government to give women the same course that is furnished the military cadets. I also believed then, as I do now, that it was a disruptive force to have the military academies invaded by women. There are some things that I don't think women should be permitted to do. I naturally assumed that we would never put women into combat.
I have read the article by Kenneth P. Werrell, who advocates that women be put into combat. If for no other reason than because women are the bearers of children, they should not be in combat. Imagine your daughter as a ground soldier, sleeping in the fields and expected to do all the things that soldiers sometimes have to do! It presents to me an absolute horror!
I don't think that you can draft women for war and pick out the jobs that they would be allowed to do. I think that you can have women in the service, as we did in World War II, where their jobs are defined, but I think it would be very difficult to assign some to combat and be selective as to the types of jobs they could do. I believe that if women were ever drafted into combat, the mothers and fathers would be up in arms.
Indio, California
Lieutenant Colonel Jacqueline Cochran (Mrs. Floyd B. Odlum), AFRES, a command pilot in the Civil Air Patrol, is a business executive and aviatrix, best known for her aviation achievements. She was the first woman to pilot a bomber across the North Atlantic. General Henry H. Arnold appointed her director of women's flying training in the U.S., and she was the first American woman to enter Japan at the end of the war. She has established and still holds more international speed, distance, and altitude records than any other person and has logged approximately 15,000 hours at the controls of airplanes of all types. Miss Cochran, shown in the jet in which she set five records, is author of The Stars at Noon (1953), an autobiography.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
Air & Space Power Home Page | Feedback? Email the Editor