An Interview with Betty Blake
From A Peek at the Peak, January 2006 issue
Prologue
North Scottsdale resident Betty Blake served in the military as a pilot from October 1942 through December 1944. As one of the first female military pilots, she helped breakdown cultural barriers within the military and pave the way for the many female pilots who serve our country today.
The interview below is from Since You Asked, Arizona Veterans Share Their Memories, published by Cactus Shadows High School, Arizona History Project. The Peak thanks Cactus Shadows High School and Barbara Hatch, Arizona Heritage Advisor 2004-2005, for enabling us to publish this article. We also thank Betty Blake for taking the time to meet with us and sharing her enthusiasm for life, extraordinary experiences, and photographs, some of which appear below.
Editor
Betty Blake
Thank You, Amelia
By Maggie Gorraiz
Betty Guild Tackaberry Blake was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in the 1930s. Growing up with two brothers and a neighborhood full of boys, she became quite a tomboy. While growing up, Blake read all sorts of aviation books about Lindbergh and Louise Thaden – all the books about pilots.
Inspired by Earhart
At the age of 14, Blake’s father took her to a lecture at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. That night, she met Amelia Earhart, the world famous female pilot. Earhart invited Betty to go out and watch her take off in her Lockheed Vega plane to fly solo to Oakland, California. The next morning, Blake and her father went to the Army Air Corps Base at Wheeler Field to see this momentous event. As Earhart taxied her plane from the hangar, however, she noticed a defect. So she taxied right back to where her ground crew was standing and yelled a four-letter word. After the scene, Blake and her father left and were unable to see the takeoff. Nonetheless, she was hooked.
First Flight
Two months later, in high school, Blake was the catcher for the boys’ baseball team. The pitcher, a couple of years older than she, received his private pilot license and asked her to be his first passenger. That day, he picked her up and drove her to the airport to take off in his little J-3 Cub.
“As we started walking towards the plane, I would have given anything to get out of it. It just looked like a few wires covered with fabric. I didn’t think it would even get in the air. I would have given anything not to get on that plane, but 1 couldn’t lose faith because I was the only girl on the team. Everybody knew I was going to do this, so I had to go. The minute we landed, I was all ready to go again.”
Secret Flying Lessons
After her first plane ride, Blake was set to go to flying school. A little school located at the airport and owned by Ollie Andres gave her the chance. She was hired to do paperwork, sending out monthly statements to students. In return, she received free flying lessons with the instructors. Due to her age, however, Blake was not able to fly solo without her parents’ permission.
“I didn’t dare tell my father. He didn’t know I was going to the airport. Everybody’s tan in Honolulu ’cause you’re at the beach so much. I would tell him I was going to the beach and I would hitch rides with anybody that would take me up to the airport, which was ten miles away, near Pearl Harbor.”
For two years, Blake went to “the beach” and had more than enough flying hours to solo. Determined as ever, she told her father, who soon agreed to the lessons, and Blake received her private license. She flew open-cockpit biplanes, hopping islands with one or two passengers. On the side, she went so Civilian Pilot Training (CPT) at the University of’ Hawaii. She was the first girl in the program there.
Pearl Harbor Attacked
Blake and other members of the first graduating class of the Womens Air Ferrying Service.
On December 7, 1941, Betty was at home with Ensign Robert Tackaberry, a young sailor from the USS California, when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Fortunately, Ensign Tackaberry was at the Guild home and not on the ship at the time. Betty and “Tack” did see the attack, however, from her home above Honolulu. She felt lucky that she had cancelled an island tour for Sunday or she might have been the “first casualty” on December 7th. Betty’s father helped get Tack back to his ship, though they had to hide in the Pearl Harbor gatehouse until the second raid ended. Later Betty was secretly married to this lucky young ensign by the man who wrote “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition,” a popular wartime song. When her husband returned to duty, Betty continued her dream of flying.
One of the First
In 1942, the Women’s Air Ferrying Service, or WAFS, started accepting application for female pilots in Delaware. Black quickly went down from Philadelphia to sign up. However, she was turned down because she was short fifty hours of the required flying time. Shortly afterwards, she received a letter from Jackie Cochran, appointed by General. “Hap” Arnold, the director of the Women’s Flying Training Detachment (WFTD) to be in the first class. Only two hundred hours were needed for the class. The 23-week training program began in Houston, Texas, at Howard Hughes Field. Later, classes moved to Sweetwater, Texas. There were 32 women in her class. They were dubbed. “Guinea pigs” because they were the first class of that kind. Blake graduated on April 24, 1943, at Ellington Field, Houston, in the first WFTD class 43-W-l of 23 women.
Blake appeared on the cover of “Roger,” an USAF magazine.
One of the Few
Blake chose to be stationed in Long Beach, California, near most of the major airplane factories, ferrying planes. She was one of the first five gals along with 2,000 male pilots. She remembered that “A lot of them were married and their wives were back east having babies and things. So there were lots of lonely men out there. About the third night they had put up a 24-hour guard around our officers barracks because they were climbing through the windows.”
Ferrying Planes
They often flew seven days a week, ferrying planes fresh off the factory assembly line to selected military bases across the country. The women flew anything from P-51 Mustangs, a single seated fighter plane, to twin-engine C-47 transports and four-engine B-17s and B-29s. It was imperative for the pilots to break in a new plane’s engine, flying it at different RPMs and miles per hour. They followed commercial airline routes, calling in to radio stations every 50 miles along the route to check in. Groups of pilots always stayed in touch by meeting at the Red Cross canteens or the local coffee shop to talk about flying – “hangar flying,” they called it.
Changing Attitudes
Most men were hesitant to think that women could handle the planes. One day, Blake was co-piloting a DC-3 (C-47) with another WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots) to Fort Wayne, Indiana. Blake and her co-pilot drove over to the plane they were going to ferry. Standing there was a big, husky sergeant – in disbelief when two girls got out of the jeep to fly his plane.
“On takeoff he stood between our seats and I looked at him after we got into the air and he’s just perspiring. His face is red and he’s got perspiration running off. Poor man was scared to death. Well, we got to El Paso, which was our first fuel stop, and I stayed in the plane. And he said he’d go out and tell the ground crew to gas up. We could hear them razzing him about flying with two women pilots. I made a perfect landing in El Paso. I used to make wheel landings instead of the three-point landings. It’s a lot easier to land. So I made a wheel landing and I just greased it on that day. I was really working on it, too. And I heard him say, ‘That’s the best god-damned landing I’ve ever had in that airplane.’ Boy, was I proud when I heard him say that.”
After the war, Blake lived in Paradise Valley and raised horses.
Bad Problem
One particular time, Blake was very concerned about not making it to her destination when flying a P-39 from Niagara Falls to Montana. She was about fifteen minutes east of Rochester when smoke started coming out of the engine.
“I’m 16,000 feet in the air. I am looking down at beautiful grass, just pasture sort of land below me. And I’m thinking I better out of this plane. I better bail. I didn’t want to bail out; I really never wanted to bail. Never had to. I looked back – in this plane the engine is behind the cockpit – and thought, maybe there isn’t as much smoke as I thought there was. I’ll wait another second. I literally went through the whole procedure, the whole practice procedure and everything. Checked all the straps on my parachute and waited another second, looked back and thought there was a little less smoke. So I thought I’d wait another second and I’m getting closer to Rochester where I could land. It wasn’t a scheduled stop but I knew they had a field there. I was really shaking.”
Blake finally landed, collapsing to her knees as she got out of the plane. She recalls, “They pulled the side off the engine and it was absolutely black. It had an oil leak, but they said it could have caught fire and just blown up with all that 100-octane gas in it. I knew it was back there; as everybody says, you should have bailed out.”
After Discharge
Blake with Senator Barry Goldwater.
After two successful years flying as a WASP, Blake was deactivated in 1944. Afterwards, she did many interesting jobs, including being a link trainer (simulator) and piloting planes for SNAFU Airlines.
She also flew shrimp from New Orleans to Los Angeles – smelly. She soon remarried and moved to Arizona with her second husband, George Blake, a Pan Am pilot who had also been in the Air Force; together they raised three sons. All of them are pilots.
Blake is still in love with flying today and has even been in a jet F-16 simulator earlier this year. Blake and the other WASP have forever changed what was possible for women across the world. General Arnold once said, “You WASPs … have shown that you can fly wingtip to wingtip with your brothers. The entire operation has been a success. It is on record that women can fly as well as men. I salute all WASPs! We of the AAF (American Armed Forces) are proud of you; we will never forget our debt to you.”
Maggie Gorraiz was a senior at Cactus Shadows High School when she interviewed Betty Blake. In Since You Asked, Ms. Gorraiz writes, “I interviewed BettyTackberry Blake in the beginning of the school year. She was so strong, independent, and sassy. Her story of being one of the first WASP, truly inspired me to go the distance with my dreams.”
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