Pilots Women

Candalyn Kubeck never would have wanted to be remembered this way. An avid flier, whose grandfather piloted biplanes in the 1920s, she began taking lessons as a teenager, eventually logging nearly 9,000 hours in the air. By the time she was hired by ValuJet in 1993, she believed that her accomplishments spoke for themselves, regardless of the fact that she was among that rare 2.5% of commercial pilots who just happen not to be male.

They flew flimsy wood-and-canvas planes into hails of deadly flak and wore no parachutes. They preferred to commit suicide by crashing rather than be taken as POWs. Their German enemies dubbed the daredevil female Soviet pilots the Nachthexen: the Night Witches. For Russians, May 9--Victory Day, marking the defeat of the Nazis in World War II--is the most glorious holiday, when memories of the nation's past as a great power are revived.

They flew flimsy wood-and-canvas planes into hails of deadly flak and wore no parachutes. They preferred to commit suicide by crashing rather than be taken as POWs. Their German enemies dubbed the daredevil female Soviet pilots the Nachthexen: the Night Witches. For Russians, May 9--Victory Day, marking the defeat of the Nazis in World War II--is the most glorious holiday, when memories of the nation's past as a great power are revived.

High in her cherry-red helicopter, Jennifer Murray has had only a teddy bear for company most of the time. Sometimes, if the wind is good, the skies clear and the flying easy, she lets her thoughts drift to Amelia Earhart, who also flew alone on an epic journey. Almost 70 years ago, Earhart became the first woman to pilot a plane solo across the Atlantic Ocean, only to die later in an attempt to circumnavigate the globe.

Wearing a jumpsuit and a mouthful of braces, 11-year-old Victoria Van Meter made aviation history Thursday by becoming the youngest female pilot to fly from one edge of the continental United States to the other. Her nearly 3,000-mile journey began Monday in Augusta, Me., and ended amid shouts of "Amelia!"--as in Amelia Earhart--as Victoria, assisted by her flight instructor, banked over a steep mountain and smoothly landed her single-engine Cessna 172 at a small airstrip.

Air Force Lt. Jeannie Flynn had never been one to buck the system. Even though she had graduated first in her pilot training class early last year, she knew the Air Force would turn down her request to fly its top fighter plane. Women were, after all, prohibited from serving in combat. When the expected denial came, Flynn quietly switched to Plan B and enrolled in a flight instructor course in California, hoping that some day the clouds would lift over her primary target.

The love affair began when a 7-year-old girl went on a family outing after church one Sunday afternoon. Kim Ernst and her family sat snugly in a six-passenger airplane, soaring over Orange County landmarks such as the Disneyland Matterhorn. "I just remember being so in love," said Ernst, a Fullerton resident. "I didn't care if the plane ran out of fuel. I just wanted to stay up there forever." She vowed to return to the air, fulfilling that promise years later, when she got her pilot's license.

Katherine Sui Fun Cheung stepped onto the world's stage and into its heart in 1932, as the first licensed Asian American aviatrix in the nation. She was a barnstorming mother whose dream took a "hammerhead turn" as she began performing vertigo-inducing aerobatics across the country. She flew open cockpit planes upside down and is among the select few surviving the Golden Age of Aviation.

Twelve-year-old Vicki Van Meter soared up, up and away Sunday in a bid to cross the Atlantic in Amelia Earhart's path. Van Meter took off from Augusta State Airport, circled about 200 well-wishers below and dipped her wings before heading toward her first stop in Newfoundland. Her flight instructor is on board because she is too young to fly alone. "If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything," the sixth-grader from Meadville, Pa.

Two weeks ago, the seven women aviators of squadron VAQ-34 were sure their days flying military jets were numbered. Their job was to use their F/A-18 Hornets to play the "bad guy" in training exercises, jamming ship and aircraft radar and serving up electron beams that simulate incoming missiles. But their squadron will be decommissioned Oct. 1, courtesy of defense cuts. So will two other squadrons with the same mission in Florida and Washington state.

Pioneer aviator Evelyn "Bobbi" Trout learned to fly "out in the sticks," soaring over apricot trees and walnut groves in a sparsely populated land with few houses. It was the late 1920's, and that land was the San Fernando Valley around what is now Van Nuys Airport--then known as Los Angeles Municipal Airport. The Van Nuys Airport Aviation Expo next weekend will pay tribute to Trout, 93, one of the most prominent women in aviation history.

It is always perilous to proclaim anything as "the first" of its kind. Inevitably there's someone who drags out musty letters as reproachful proof otherwise. One English newspaper was so uneasy about this that its writers were under orders not to cite anything as "the first" but rather to use the fudge-phrase "one of the first"--until a friend of mine dutifully and puckishly referred in print to George Washington as "one of the first presidents of the United States."

The love affair began when a 7-year-old girl went on a family outing after church one Sunday afternoon. Kim Ernst and her family sat snugly in a six-passenger airplane, soaring over Orange County landmarks such as the Disneyland Matterhorn. "I just remember being so in love," said Ernst, a Fullerton resident. "I didn't care if the plane ran out of fuel. I just wanted to stay up there forever." She vowed to return to the air, fulfilling that promise years later, when she got her pilot's license.

Katherine Sui Fun Cheung stepped onto the world's stage and into its heart in 1932, as the first licensed Asian American aviatrix in the nation. She was a barnstorming mother whose dream took a "hammerhead turn" as she began performing vertigo-inducing aerobatics across the country. She flew open cockpit planes upside down and is among the select few surviving the Golden Age of Aviation.

She was 32 and a bride of just one month when her warplane disappeared during World War II after takeoff from what is now Los Angeles International Airport. Because of a misplaced flight plan, Gertrude Tompkins Silver of the Women's Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) and the new P-51D Mustang she was ferrying in 1944 weren't even missed for three days.

The first female Air Force fighter pilot to die in a crash became disoriented while pulling out of a practice bombing dive on a moonless night, causing her A-10 to plow into the ground at about 400 mph, according to a report. As Capt. Amy Svoboda tried to maneuver her ground attack jet over an Arizona desert training range on May 27, she lost track of which way was up--first flying at a steeply angled bank, then virtually upside-down--an accident investigation board reported.

To those in uniform, most civilians still don't get it. The celebrated and ultimately perplexing case involving Air Force 1st Lt. Kelly J. Flinn never was about the sin of adultery. It was worse than that. "Adultery was a part of the picture. But a larger part was her responsibility as a pilot and an officer and the things required of her and of anybody in the military: true faith and allegiance to the code," said Air Force Maj. Gary A.

Whenever Julie Gereben flew with her parents in an airliner, she would always go up to the cockpit to watch the pilots. And when the pilot of a small airplane asked her if she wanted to take the controls for a few minutes during a sightseeing flight over Mt. St. Helens, she didn't hesitate. Susan Karkman realized she wanted to be a pilot while flying in a Piper Cherokee from Poland back to her home in Sweden so she could attend her sister's wedding.

Amelia Earhart, who in 1932 became the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo, has deep roots in the San Fernando Valley. She mysteriously vanished over the Pacific Ocean in July 1937 while attempting to circle the world. Earhart, who was born 100 years ago today, came to the Valley in the 1920s, attended USC, flew Lockheed planes out of Burbank, married publisher George P. Putnam and moved to Toluca Lake, where she was a regular at Lakeside Golf Club.

The Navy neither discriminated against nor gave preferential treatment to the first group of women aviators to fly combat planes, according to a report released Tuesday by the Navy's inspector general. But the report also concluded that some male senior officers were guilty of maladroit leadership that irritated the women and angered their male colleagues by appearing to either show favoritism or a paternalistic condescension.