| BOOK REVIEW: Jerrie Cobb, Solo Pilot 1997, published by the Jerrie Cobb Foundation.
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�I have this feeling that life is a spiritual adventure, and I want to make mine in the sky.�
Chapter 1: Circus Club To The Great Plains Part I: Year 1947, Age 16
The summer of my sixteenth year, life couldn�t have been sweeter. On my birthday in March I passed the tests for my pilot�s license.
In May I graduated from high school, after a long struggle. Now it�s June, and I�m flying to my heart�s content in a faded yellow 1932 Piper Cub. There�s nothing like flying to set your spirit free!
Feeling free as the breeze, I�m thinking this is what life is all about. It�s not about money or power or prestige or sex. It�s about exploration and adventure and freedom and faith. It�s about living with a heart full of joy because the world is so beautiful. We don�t need a map for the journey. We only need to wander, and wonder.�
Jerrie Cobb: Solo Pilot is not so much an autobiography as a series of chapter-long vignettes of the life of its author.
She learned to fly a biplane at age twelve and got her pilot�s license at age 16. This was in 1947, when women were expected - by the majority of both men and women - to be wives and mothers only. Women had had to go to work during World War II, but lost their jobs in droves when the service men returned home. While women continued to work after the war, the perception was that they would do so only until they got married, when they would retire to devote themselves solely to their families. Jerrie Cobb wanted more - she loved to fly and she wanted to make it her career.
It was her determination and refusal to quit which saw her become one of the greatest pilots ever - male or female. She ferried bombers and fighters worldwide, was elected Woman of the Year in Aviation, worked as a test pilot and set four World Records, and received the Amelia Aerhart Memorial Award.
From 1959-1963 she participated in the Mercury program, along with 25 other women, and not only passed the same tests as the male astronaut candidates but scored higher in those tests than did any of the men. Yet, by 1963 American policies dictated that women would not be sent into space and so the rules were changed. Candidates could not be astronauts unless they had jet plane experience - which automatically disqualified the women.
At the age of 32, she follows her spiritual journey to the jungle of the Amazon, where she has spent the rest of her life flying over the uncharted lands, serving the indigenous people. She was honored by various South American governments for pioneering new air routes across the Andes and over the Amazon jungle. President Nixon awarded her the Harmon Trophy as the top woman pilot in the world. And for her humanitarian work, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Jerrie Cobb: Solo Pilot is a must read for all individuals interested not only in the history of aviation and the space program, but also in the life of a fascinating and heroic woman. It�s a must read, even though a few essential parts of the story are missing. By confining her biographical chapters to only certain parts of her life, we never get a full view of the woman. Especially so since she ends her biography in 1969, with �I slip into my damp hammock still tied under her left wing [Juliet, the name of her plane], cover up with an old mosquito net, and sleep like a baby, the rest of the night that man walked on the moon.�
From the age of 16 she was on her own, barnstorming across the midwest and sleeping underneath her plane at night. How did her parents feel about this? Her siblings? Was she ever lonely - afraid? (Of course, midwest America in 1947 was a much more innocent and safer place than it is today.) She tells us about pilot Jack Ford, the first man who gave her a job as a pilot, ferrying planes around the world. They fall in love, they have a relationship, but in the next chapter it�s over and we don�t know why. Did he die? Did he leave her, or did she leave him? She never tells us.
The most important gap is Chapter 11: Flight to Space? This should be Jerrie Cobb�s story of the four years she spent in the Mercury Project, performing tests, dealing with her fellow candidates, excelling, only to be betrayed at the end by her fellow (male) candidates and the NASA hierarchy. However, instead of her personal story (which could have and should have been a complete book) we are given only copies of excerpts from articles from Life (�A Lady Proves She�s Fot For Space Flight�), Time (�From Aviatrix to Astronautrix), Oklahoma City Times (�Woman Astronaut Is Down To Earth About Spaceflight�), various photos, excerpts from the Congressional Hearings which decided the future of the female candidates, and finally, a brief newspaper article about Cobb after the Russians put the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, into space. �I really mean it when I wish her well, Godspeed and a good flight. I�m glad a woman made it. But I�m sorry she�s not an American.�
The story of the Mercury 13 is told, (see below) but it�s really rather a tragedy that it also isn�t told by the greatest of them all - Jerrie Cobb.
What she does give us is a series of windows, giving us fascinating and empowering views of a woman who knew what she wanted and set out to achieve her goals, despite the fact that they were atypical for the girls, and women, of her day. Today�s Avengerous women can look at her and find a role model.
Buy Now
as well as in: Promised The Moon
Table of contents for Jerrie Cobb, Solo Pilot:
Introduction
Book I: Early Flying Years
1. Circus Cub to the Great Plains, Part I
2. Cicus Cub to the Great Plains, Part II
3. Slow Start To A Dream
Book II: Ferrying Fighters, Bombers, Worldwide
4. T-6 to Lima, Part I
5. T-6 to Lima, Part II
6. B-17 to Paris, Part I
7. B-17 to Paris, Part II
Book III: Jack, World�s Record, Astronaut?
8. Jack, Part I
9. Jack, Part II
10. Aero Commander To A New World�s Altitude Record
11. Flight To Space?
Book IV: Flying In The Amazon Jungle
12. Juliet Charlie To Amazonas
13. Juliet Charlie To The Rio Putamayo
14. Juliet Charlie To The Amazon Headwaters
15. Shamans Fly To The Moon
Index
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