marine air wrote:
I got my first class medical renewed today by Dr. Charlie Smith, M.D. He flew B-29's on the opening day of Korea. He had a wooden model of a B-29 signed by Paul Tibbets in his examining room.
He told me that when Col. Tibbets was training his men a few of them were complaining about the rigors and difficulty of the training. So COl Tibbets trained a couple of female pilots and let them demonstrate the B-29 to the male pilots. End of complaining pilots!
Ellen and I attended a talk that General Tibbets gave in Dallas a number of years ago, and Dora Dougherty gave a little talk as well. His description of the Ladybird project was great to listen to--he took some pride in those two women showing the guys how to do it! His matter-of-fact telling didn't take long, but you could just imagine how the big bad AAF airmen felt when two petite girls dropped out of the nosegear well.
If memory serves, they flew demos at Alamogordo, Clovis and one other Pilot Transition station before higher H.Q. shut down the program.
Here is a link to the story:
http://www.wallawalla.edu/westwind/arch ... r/b29.html
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