Autumn, 1942, Delaware
Barbara wanted no special treatment because of her friendship with Jackie Cochran, so she trained extra hard at the New Castle Army Air Base near Wilmington, Delaware. She learned to become a "Woofteddy," a member of the Women's Flying Training Detachment, (WFTD) of which her friend was the director, which was part of the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS). First, however, before she could become a WFTD instructor, she had to become a WAFS ferry pilot.
After being briefed by a young woman in khaki flying overalls, she filled out WAFS application forms, then joined some of the other recruits in a barracks where she would be billeted. She had her own but very small room with just a cot, dresser, mirror, and a rod for a clothes closet.
The next day Barbara stepped into the cockpit of a shiny new two-seater P-47 fighter plane with a check pilot aboard. After familiarizing herself with the instrument panel and exercises she would be required to perform, she took a flight test. Resisting the temptation to put the plane into an Immelmann turn, she executed all the spins and snap rolls required, and landed. She had expected some sign of approval from her check pilot, but got none. Two hours passed before she learned the results of her flight test. She had passed it.
The day after that, Barbara reported to the flight line with other recruits and went up in an A-24 dive bomber with another check pilot. After putting the plane through a series of flight maneuvers including stalls, spins, and lazy eights, she landed the plane without incident but again got no immediate response.
Within an hour, however, a check pilot she had not met before told her she had been accepted into the WAFS. She was issued khaki flight overalls, a leather jacket, pair of goggles, a parachute and, which delighted her most of all because she never had one, an Army Air Force white silk flying scarf.
Considered a civilian and not officially a "fly boy," at least she began to feel more like a "fly girl," although being paid only $250 a month, less than male pilots, and having to buy her own dress uniform.
But her WAFS training had just begun. What followed was a forty-day orientation period before she would be allowed to fly even the smallest planes.
It's a piece of cake!, Barbara repeated often to herself during the next six weeks as she and many of her fellow recruits were instructed in how to fly planes such as PT-19s which they had been flying for years. Some, like Barbara, had been doing barrel rolls and dives in them years earlier, as stunt pilots. When not in the skies, she was taking intensive ground school instruction she already knew by heart.