WASPs not being allowed burial at Arlington

Another one of those “clean out the basket” stories from while I was away comes to us from the hallowed ground of Arlington National Cemetery. There was a quiet change made to the guidelines for interment there roughly one year ago which impacts a small but rightfully vocal group of citizens and their families. It involves the few remaining members of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (or WASPs) from World War II. It seems that the Army is no longer accepting the remains of the female pilots for burial alongside the Honored Dead who rest there. (Fox News)

I’m not sure what McHugh was thinking when he made this move, or more to the point, how he explained it at the time. I suppose there could technically be an argument to make saying that the WASPs weren’t officially part of the military and didn’t fly combat missions so they should somehow be classified differently, but it’s a weak and rather offensive one. True, they were defined as a “paramilitary” unit and they were specifically assigned non-combat missions to free up the men to fly in combat. But as has been documented repeatedly, they were granted veteran status nearly forty years ago and clearly aided the war effort in a direct fashion which involved flying military aircraft.

I rather doubt that McHugh was doing this because he’s secretly part of the He Man Woman Hater’s club, though the decision casts him in a very bad light. More likely, he was examining the quickly diminishing available space for burials at Arlington and making a ham handed attempt at finding ways to make the land stretch further. That excuse probably shouldn’t be given too much weight, though, since there are barely 100 WASPs left alive today.

The land issue at Arlington isn’t going to go away no matter how this fracas is resolved. Some relief was achieved last year when space for more than 50,000 additional urns of ashes was added and 27 acres to the north of the current fields was opened up. That new real estate will allow for 30,000 additional graves, which is a great start, but we are still burying an average of 7,000 veterans per year there so it’s far from a permanent solution. Also, just getting those 27 acres was a battle because people were fighting against having some of the old growth trees in the area taken down.

Arlington is an actual problem in search of a solution and I believe one can and must be found. It’s going to take a combination of willingness and sacrifice on the part of both the government and private citizens, but a path can surely be carved outward to extend the grounds of Arlington… not through government fiat, but the good will of a nation willing to offer up the proper honors to our heroes. If we can’t solve this one then the nation may be culturally past the point of no return.

I disagree. These women performed a vital role during the war and combined flew 60 Million Miles transporting aircraft, some I think even to England.

They more than put their lives on the line just as much as the men in the Army Air Corps did. The rules have been stretched since W.W. II to include a number of people and categories that allowed burial at Arlington.

Here is a link for info on the WASP’S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_Airforce_Service_Pilots

I am including some statistics I came across a few years ago and the terrible toll the Army Air Corps suffered during W.W. II. The worst were all the accidents right here in the U.S.. Those women put themselves in that same danger day and day out. If we are only taking about such a small number then I think they more than earned it.

Amazing WW2 Aircraft Facts

On average, 6,600 American servicemen died every month during WWII (about 220 a day).

276,000 aircraft were manufactured in the US .
43,000 planes were lost overseas, including 23,000 in combat.
14,000 were lost in the continental U.S.

The staggering cost of aircraft in 1945 dollars

B-17 $204,370. P-40 $44,892.
B-24 $215,516. P-47 $85,578.
B-25 $142,194. P-51 $51,572.
B-26 $192,426. C-47 $88,574.
B-29 $605,360. PT-17 $15,052.
P-38 $97,147. AT-6 $22,952.

From Germany ‘s invasion of Poland Sept. 1, 1939 until Japan ‘s surrender on Sept. 2, 1945 equals 2,433 days. America lost an average of 170 planes a day.

A B-17 carried 2,500 gallons of high octane fuel and carried a crew of 10 airmen.
9.7 billion gallons of gasoline were consumed.
108 million hours were flown.
460 thousand million rounds of aircraft ammo was fired overseas.
7.9 million bombs were dropped overseas.
2.3 million combat flights.
299,230 aircraft used.
808,471 aircraft engines used.
799,972 propellers.

The US lost 14,903 pilots, aircrew and support personnel plus 13,873 airplanes -— inside the continental United States. There were 52,651 aircraft accidents (6,039 involving fatalities) in 45 months.
Averaging 1,170 aircraft accidents per month—— nearly 40 a day.

It gets worse.....
Almost 1,000 planes disappeared en route from the US to foreign climes. But 43,581 aircraft were lost overseas including 22,948 on combat missions (18,418 in Europe ) and 20,633 due to non-combat causes overseas.

In a single 376 plane raid in August 1943, 60 B-17s were shot down. That was a 16 percent loss rate and meant 600 empty bunks in England. In 1942-43, it was statistically impossible for bomber crews to complete the intended 25-mission tour in Europe .

Pacific theatre losses were far less (4,530 in combat) owing to smaller forces committed. The B-29 mission against Tokyo on May 25, 1945, cost 26 Superfortresses, 5.6 percent of the 464 dispatched from the Marianas.

On average, 6,600 American servicemen died per month during WWII, about 220 a day. Over 40,000 airmen were killed in combat and another 18,000 wounded. Some 12,000 missing men were declared dead, including those “liberated” by the Soviets but never returned. More than 41,000 were captured. Half of the 5,400 held by the Japanese died in captivity, compared with one-tenth in German hands. Total combat casualties were 121,867.

The US forces peak strength was in 1944 with 2,372,000 personnel, nearly twice the previous year’s figure.

Losses were huge-—but so were production totals. From 1941 through 1945, American industry delivered more than 276,000 military aircraft. That was not only for US Army, Navy and Marine Corps, but also for allies as diverse as Britain , Australia , China and Russia .
Our enemies took massive losses. Through much of 1944, the Luftwaffe sustained hemorrhaging of 25% of aircrews and 40 planes a month.

Experience Level:
Uncle Sam sent many men to war with minimum training. Some fighter pilots entered combat in 1942 with less than 1 hour in their assigned aircraft..
The 357th Fighter Group (The Yoxford Boys) went to England in late 1943 having trained on P-39s, then flew Mustangs. They never saw a Mustang until the first combat mission.

With the arrival of new aircraft, many units transitioned in combat. The attitude was, “They all have a stick and a throttle. Go fly `em.” When the famed 4th Fighter Group converted from P-47s to P-51s in Feb 44, there was no time to stand down for an orderly transition. The Group commander, Col. Donald Blakeslee, said, “You can learn to fly 51s on the way to the target.”

A future P-47 ace said, “I was sent to England to die.” Many bomber crews were still learning their trade. Of Jimmy Doolittle’s 15 pilots on the April 1942 Tokyo raid, only five had won their wings before 1941. All but one of the 16 co-pilots were less than a year out of flight school.

In WW2, safety took a back seat to combat. The AAF’s worst accident rate was recorded by the A-36 Invader version of the P-51: a staggering 274 accidents per 100,000 flying hours. Next worst were the P-39 at 245, the P-40 at 188, and the P-38 at 139. All were Allison powered.

Bomber wrecks were fewer but more expensive. The B-17 and B-24 averaged 30 and 35 accidents per 100,000 flight hours respectively— a horrific figure considering that from 1980 to 2000 the Air Force’s major mishap rate was less than 2.

The B-29 was even worse at 40 per 100,000 hours; the world’s most sophisticated, most capable and most expensive bomber was too urgently needed to be able to stand down for mere safety reasons.

(Compare: when a $2.1 billion B-2 crashed in 2008, the Air Force declared a two-month “safety pause”).
The B-29 was no better for maintenance. Although the R3350 was known as a complicated, troublesome power-plant, only half the mechanics had previous experience with it.
Navigators: Perhaps the greatest success story concerned Navigators. The Army graduated some 50,000 during WW2. Many had never flown out of sight of land before leaving “Uncle Sugar” for a war zone. Yet they found their way across oceans and continents without getting lost or running out of fuel - a tribute to the AAF’s training.
At its height in mid-1944, the USAAF had 2.6 million people and nearly 80,000 aircraft of all types.
Today the US Air Force employs 327,000 active personnel (plus 170,000 civilians) with 5,500+ manned and perhaps 200 unmanned aircraft. That’s about 12% of the manpower and 7% of the airplanes of the WW2 peak.

SUMMATION: Another war like that of 1939-45 is doubtful, as fighters and bombers have given way to helicopters and remotely-controlled drones, eg. over Afghanistan and Iraq.
But within our living memory, men left the earth in 1,000-plane formations and fought major battles five miles high, leaving a legacy that remains timeless (for which we should be grateful).

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