Jacqueline Cochran working in her office. Photo by Bernard Hoffman.
Gallery of Jacqueline Cochran
1943
Camp Davis, Holly Ridge, North Carolina
Director of Women Pilots aviatrix Jacqueline Cochran, AAF, and Brigadier General Ralph F. Stearley review WASPs of the target-towing squadron at Camp Davis, Holly Ridge, North Carolina, 1943. Photo by PhotoQuest.
Gallery of Jacqueline Cochran
1942
Low-angle view of Flight Captain Jacqueline Cochrane, leader of a group of female US pilots who ferry warplanes from factories and US bases to the front, June 13, 1942. Cochrane is the holder of numerous US and international speed and altitude records. Photo by PhotoQuest.
(Original Caption) New York City: Floyd B. Odlum, utilities magnate, and Mrs. Odlum, the former Jacqueline Cochran, noted aviatrix and winner of the women's Bendix trophy race in 1937, are pictured as they arrived here from Europe on the Liner Europa.
Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt today presented the Harmon Trophy to Jacqueline Cochran as America's outstanding aviatrix during 1937. This trophy is awarded annually by the Ligue Internationale des Aviateurs to perpetuate the memory of the famous World War Lafayette Escadrille Corps. Photo shows Mrs. Roosevelt shaking hands with Miss Cochran, while in the back row are Mrs. Helen MacCloskey Rough, one of America's outstanding woman flyers and Mrs. Alexander de Seversky, wife of the President of the Seversky Aircraft Corporation. Photo by George Rinhart/Corbis.
Low-angle view of Flight Captain Jacqueline Cochrane, leader of a group of female US pilots who ferry warplanes from factories and US bases to the front, June 13, 1942. Cochrane is the holder of numerous US and international speed and altitude records. Photo by PhotoQuest.
Director of the Women's Pilot Training AAF Flying Training Center Flight Captain Jacqueline Cochrane (center) talks informally to a group of trainees at Avenger Field, Sweetwater, Texas, 1943. Cochran's group consisted of female US pilots who would ferry warplanes from factories and US bases to the front. Photo by PhotoQues.
Director of Women Pilots aviatrix Jacqueline Cochran, AAF, and Brigadier General Ralph F. Stearley review WASPs of the target-towing squadron at Camp Davis, Holly Ridge, North Carolina, 1943. Photo by PhotoQuest.
DC- President Harry Truman is shown awarding the famed woman flyer, Jacqueline Cochran, the Harmon International Trophy for "Most Outstanding International Achievements in the Arts and Science of Aeronautics for the Preceding Year." Discussing yesterday's assassination attempt, the President told Miss Cochran, "They (Peurto Rico) have had the best treatment they ever had in their history."
Jacqueline Cochran, foremost American woman pilot, returned here after flying a Lockheed-Hudson bomber to England from Newfoundland. She is pictured here in the trophy room of her East 52nd ST. home. She said she was "terribly enthusiastic over the magnificent job," girl flyers are doing in England, and determined to do what she could to form some sort of similar organization over here.
President Eisenhower shakes hands here with Jacqueline Cochran, who received the Harmon Trophy along with major Charles Yeager, (second from left), on November 17th. Miss Cochran and Major Yeager were the first man and woman to fly faster than sound. Also shown during the brief ceremony at the White House are Air Force Secretary Harold Talbott and Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson, (R).
Connections
husband: Floyd Odlum
Friend: Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart
Friend: Chuck Yeager
Chuck Yeager gets into the back seat of a F-15 prior to reenacting his famous flight 65 years earlier in which he broke the sound barrier.
Jacqueline Cochran is one of the most outstanding women in 20th-century aviation. During World War II, she recruited women to fly for the British Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), and then returned to the United States to lead the Women's Flying Training Detachment (WFTD) and later became the director of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP).
Background
Jacqueline Cochran was born on May 11, 1906, in Pensacola, Florida, United States as Bessie Lee Pittman. She was the youngest of the five children of Mary (Grant) and Ira Pittman, a skilled millwright who moved from town to town setting up and reworking saw mills. While her family was not rich, Cochran’s childhood living in small-town Florida was similar to those in other families of that time and place.
Discovered at age 6 that her parents were actually foster parents. They had agreed to raise her in exchange for a tract of land. The foster parents never revealed her real parent's names nor why she was renamed Jacqueline. She chose the last name "Cochran" from a phone book.
Education
Jacqueline grew up in poverty and had little formal education. Her formal education lasted only 2 years. She couldn't even write.
A prominent client secured her admission to nursing school. She recalled that "the formal academic requirements for entry had been waived for me, as promised," Cochran wrote in her autobiography. "I'm certain that hospital had never admitted a second-grade dropout to the program before." Following training, Cochran abandoned hope of passing the state board exam. "My handwriting alone, not to mention my rudimentary arithmetic, would never have allowed me to pass. "
Cochran began taking flying lessons at Roosevelt Airfield, Long Island in the early 1930s and learned to fly an aircraft in just three weeks. She then soloed and within two years obtained her commercial pilot's license. A lack of formal education left her terrified of the written phase of her pilot’s exam. She pleaded with former boyfriend Mike Rosen to help her prepare for the challenge. By the time Jackie began her hands-on flight training, she had invested countless hours in study and discussion. The budding pilot’s next hurdle was convincing the examiner to allow her to take the test verbally. As would be the case again and again in her life, by sheer force of will, Jackie prevailed.
Career
Underage, Cochran worked mixing dyes when she secured promotion by threatening her employer with disclosure to child labor authorities. A year later, Cochran moved to Montgomery, Alabama, to work in another salon.
She went to work for a Florida country doctor where a license wasn't a necessity. Fearful the quality of treatment she and the doctor were providing was worse than none at all, Cochran left medicine and moved to Pensacola, Florida, where she became part owner of a beauty shop. There she picked "Cochran" out of the phone book.
In 1929 she moved to New York City and blustered Charles of the Ritz into offering her a salon job she ended up turning down.
Cochran confided her idea of becoming a traveling cosmetics saleswoman. Her husband Floyd said success could only come from covering a large territory. "Get your pilot's license," he told her. In the year they met, the two made a wager: if Cochran could get her license in three weeks, Odlum would pay the $ 495-course fee. Cochran won the bet. Took to the Skies Immediately Emboldened by her success, Cochran set out on a solo flight to Canada, learning compass navigation from a helpful fellow aviator along the way.
A commercial pilot's license followed, as did Cochran's entry in her first race in 1934, the MacRobertson London-to-Australia race. With a great deal of effort by Cochran and others working on her behalf, she secured a plane with which to enter the race, one manufactured by the Granville Brothers called a Gee Bee. Cochran flew the race with copilot Wesley Smith. Malfunctioning flaps put the pair down in Bucharest, Rumania, and out of the race.
One year later, in 1935, Cochran entered her first Bendix Trophy Cross-Country Air Race, a race that is to aviators what the Kentucky Derby still is to horse breeders. The year before she had managed to get the race open to women but didn't make it to the starting line herself. Cochran finished third in the 1937 Bendix and won the famous race in 1938; the same year First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt awarded her the first of 15 Harmon Trophies she would win. That first trophy was her recognition for setting three-speed records. After winning the 1938 Bendix race from Burbank, California, to Cleveland, Ohio in 8 hours, 10 minutes and 31 seconds in a Seversky Pursuit, Cochran set a new women's west-to-east transcontinental record of 10 hours, 7 minutes, 10 seconds.
In 1935, the same year she entered her first Bendix race, Jacqueline Cochran Cosmetics began manufacturing operations. A popular product was Cochran's "Perk-Up" cylinder, a container holding enough makeup for any woman traveling light. "I would take one on all my trips, all my races." There were many more races, victories, and records. In 1939, Cochran established a women's national altitude record and broke the international open-class speed record for men and women. The following year she broke the 2, 000 km international speed record and the 100 km national record. During this time one of Cochran's dearest friends was fellow aviator Amelia Earhart, who Cochran met in 1935.
Cochran assured readers of her autobiography she and Earhart were not competitors. Earhart flew for distance; Cochran was after speed, but she later did pursue distance and altitude. Earhart shared in Cochran's interest in parapsychology, first sparked by Odlum. Cochran and Earhart used what they considered extra-sensory powers to locate the crash sites of downed aircraft. Earhart's husband, George Putnam, was skeptical and someone Cochran considered less than a friend. "I didn't like that man at all."
In spite of the achievements of Cochran and others, women aviators had to fight for the right to serve their country during World War II. Cochran was in the forefront of the battle. In June 1941, Cochran became the first woman to pilot a bomber across the Atlantic Ocean. However, because she had some difficulty operating the plane's hand brake during practice flights, she was forced to turn the controls over to a male pilot on take-off and landing. The flight was a milestone male pilots fought all the way. Cochran was accused of wanting to make the flight for publicity reasons. Male pilots also charged that allowing women to fly bombers would take work away from themselves. Someone tried to prevent Cochran's flight by holding up a required visa.
British women ferrying planes for their country's war effort gave Cochran the idea to start a similar program in the United States. She told President Franklin D. Roosevelt her plan over lunch. Cochran was against integrating women aviators into the U. S. war effort on a piecemeal basis. Perhaps she did have extra-sensory powers; it would be many years after the war before women aviators would receive recognition for their contributions.
In preparation for a larger effort in the United States, Cochran organized a group of 25 female American aviators to ferry planes for Great Britain's Air Transport Auxiliary. The British program was a success, and the United States decided a similar program also would work. In 1942, Cochran was assigned the task of training 500 women pilots. The number would eventually grow to more than 1, 000. A bill had been introduced in Congress to militarize Cochran's pilots and incorporate them into the Army Air Corps, giving them military benefits. This is what Cochran wanted as she saw plans for a separate Air Force. She fought attempts to make her pilots part of the Women's Army Corps.
In 1943, the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) was formed, and Cochran was named director of women pilots. Among the obstacles the women pilots and Cochran overcame was the belief women's flying ability was affected by their menstrual cycles. More than 25, 000 women applied for WASP training; 1, 800 were accepted and 1, 074 graduated. The women aviators flew about 60 million miles for the Army Air Forces with only 38 fatalities, about one to every 16, 000 hours of flying.
Cochran lost the battle to have the WASPs militarized in 1944, denying the women pilots military benefits including the GI bill. The WASP program was deactivated at the end of 1944. In 1977, Congress passed a bill giving the WASPs honorable discharges and declaring them veterans. It took two more years to make it official.
Cochran's aviation career continued well after the war, as did other activities. She was the first woman to enter Japan after World War II, and she traveled to the Far East as a correspondent for Liberty magazine. In 1956 she ran, unsuccessfully, for a California congressional seat, campaigning by flying her plane around her own district. The same year Cochran set nine international speed, distance and altitude records in a Northrop T-38 military jet. In 1963, Cochran set the 15-25 km course record in a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, going 1, 273. 109 mph, and broke the 100 km course record with a speed of 1, 203. 686 mph. The following year she began resetting her own records in the Lockheed F-104G Starfighter. In the 15-25 km course, she set a record of 1, 429. 297 mph; for the 100 km course her record was 1, 302 mph; and for the 500 km course, she set a record of 1, 135 mph.
While Cochran never knew her heritage and often claimed that she didn't want to know, she clung to the Catholic religion. It was her only lifelong link to the past.
Politics
A lifelong Republican, Cochran, as a result of her involvement in politics and the military, would become close friends with General Dwight Eisenhower. In the early part of 1952, she and her husband helped sponsor a large rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City in support of an Eisenhower presidential candidacy.
The rally was documented on film and Cochran personally flew it to France for a special showing at Eisenhower’s headquarters. Her efforts proved a major factor in convincing Eisenhower to run for President of the United States in 1952 and she would play a major role in his successful campaign. Close friends thereafter, Eisenhower frequently visited her and her husband at their California ranch and after leaving office, wrote portions of his memoirs there.
Politically ambitious, Cochran ran for Congress in 1956 from California’s 29th Congressional District as the candidate of the Republican Party. Her name appeared throughout the campaign and on the ballot as Jacqueline Cochran-Odlum. Although she defeated a field of five male opponents to win the Republican nomination, in the general election she lost a close election to Democratic candidate and first Asian-American congressman Dalip Singh Saund. Saund won with 54,989 votes (51.5%) to Cochran’s 51,690 votes (48.5%). Her political setback was one of the few failures she ever experienced and she never attempted another run. Those who knew Cochran have said that the loss bothered her for the rest of her life.
Views
Quotations:
"In a contest of power and friends, I knew I could win, so I contacted the American consul in Montreal, who called the Passport Department in D. C. and, voilà the visa arrived sooner than someone else ever predicted."
"I felt that a few good women pilots amidst all the men would simply go down as a flash in the historical pan. I wanted to make a point with my planned program."
"I have found adventure in flying, in world travel, in business, and even close at hand... Adventure is a state of mind - and spirit."
"I might have been born in a hovel but I am determined to travel with the wind and the stars."
"It comes with faith, for with complete faith there is no fear of what faces you in life or death."
"Capacity never lacks opportunity. It cannot remain undiscovered because it is sought by too many anxious to use it."
Personality
Jacqueline thought women could compete with and often surpass men, but being ladylike also was a Cochran priority. Before stepping from the cockpit, she usually paused to apply lipstick. No longer a teenager mixing hair dye in someone else's beauty parlor, Cochran set about building her own cosmetics empire. Despite her lack of formal education, Cochran had a quick mind and an affinity for business and her investment in the cosmetics field proved a lucrative one.
Although Cochran denied her family and her past, she remained in touch with them and provided for them over the years. Some of her family even moved to her ranch in California after she remarried. However, they were instructed to always say they were her adopted family. Cochran apparently wanted to hide from the public the early chapters of her life and was successful in doing so until after her death.
Not only was Cochran competitive with herself; she was competitive with others. When she was a child, Cochran was forced to give a cherished doll, her only doll, to a younger sister in her foster family. When they were adults, the younger sister sought Cochran's aid in New York City. Cochran gave it but demanded her childhood doll as payment.
Physical Characteristics:
"Jackie Cochran was one of the prettiest women I ever saw,” recalled journalist Adela Rogers St. John. “I doubt if her pictures ever did her justice, because pictures can’t reproduce those big, soft brown eyes, the shimmering hair or the lovely clear skin."
Quotes from others about the person
"It was a marvelous period of history, made possible by Jackie Cochran. When you consider how competitive this woman was with other women equal to her, it's amazing that she worked so hard for our benefit." - WASP member Margaret Boylan
"We all accepted Jackie. But it wasn’t because she wasn’t feminine when she wanted to be. She could be very soft, very feminine. Some women resented Jackie. Why? Because she was a man’s woman. Where the men were talking war stories, that’s where Jackie Cochran would be. I think at times she was somewhat wistful that she wasn’t able to have better associations with women. But, obviously, it would have taken a lot of time away from the things she wanted to do. She was always so busy. She even drove her cars like fast planes. She played so many roles well. She could be very, very feminine and she could be very hard and critical." - Air Force Major General Fred Ascani.
"Jackie wasn’t a woman who had many close female friends. I remember how she used to drive like the wind…and insist on doing it. We had a lot of fun together, even when she was creating a crisis a minute…which was something she’d do all the time!" - Helen LeMay, wife of Air Force General Curtis LeMay.
"She was right there upfront. Tremendously competitive. She had to win, but that’s what made her so great." - Senator Stuart Symington.
"I didn’t agree with Jackie about the desert but there was no disagreeing with Jackie. Nobody was like her. She was an amazing, intelligent woman. She always loved clothes and had beautiful outfits…she’d come in from breaking one of those records, wash her own hair, and be ready to go again. People always said she had a hairdresser, but she usually did her own hair." - Vi Strauss Pistell.
"Jackie never walked through a room if Floyd was there without going over to him to give him a little pat. Jackie and Floyd had a kind of sixth sense about each other. They could always tell when one or the other was in trouble. They just knew, without communicating directly." - Glennis Yeager.
"So darn independent, so strong-willed and so naturally intelligent. Jackie and Floyd communicated constantly during their marriage. They would seem so separate, but they were actually inseparable in a sense." - Yvonne Smith, a long-time family friend.
"Jackie was an irresistible force…Generous, egotistical, compassionate, sensitive, aggressive – indeed an explosive study in contradictions – Jackie was consistent only in the overflowing energy with which she attacked the challenge of being alive. Always passionately convinced of any viewpoint she happened to hold (Jackie did nothing by halves), she raced through life, making lifelong friends and unforgetting enemies…" Maryann Bucknum Brinley.
Interests
Aviation, parapsychology, nursing
Connections
In about 1920, Bessie married Robert Cochran and gave birth to a son, Robert, who died in 1925 at the age of 5. After the marriage ended, Bessie kept the name Cochran and began using Jacqueline or 'Jackie' as her given name.
In 1932 on a trip to Miami, she met Floyd Odlum, the successful businessman whom she would marry in 1936. "Every orphan dreams of marrying a millionaire, but I had no idea at first that Floyd Odlum was worth so much money."