WWII test pilot soared beyond barriers

But in 1942, 24-year-old Sara Payne Hayden wanted something unheard of -- to fly military planes.

Despite her family's objections, Hayden was one of the few women to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots, the first female pilots in the US armed forces. Her job: to test-fly previously damaged planes to make sure that they were ready for the men headed for combat.

"We did things the men weren't expected to do," said Hayden, now 87, who still fits into her petite 62-year-old navy blue WASP uniform. "I did not think about the danger or anything. I had a job to do, and I did it. And you just knew you had to have it right. There wasn't any room for mistakes."

Hayden, along with a Tuskegee airman and other notable World War II pilots living in Massachusetts, will be honored at Hanscom Air Force Base today , the 65th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Thirty-eight WASPs were killed during the war, according to the National Museum of the US Air Force. Only about 350 of the 1,074 WASPs, who flew within the United States for the Army Air Corps , are still alive.

Hayden, who lives with her husband in Methuen, has vivid memories of her short time as a military trailblazer, and the many years afterward when she and other WASPs were not fully recognized.

"People paid absolutely no attention to us," she said yesterday. "It was barely even mentioned that we were in World War II. But I knew I was there."

The early 1940s were an uneasy time for Americans. Most of the military-age men had gone to war, Hayden said, and there was little news filtering back to the States about how the campaign was going. Women wanted to contribute to the war effort, too.

One late night in September 1942, Hayden, a secretary in Charlotte, N.C., went to the movies and saw a newsreel showing female pilots flying airplanes from one base to another.

According to the Air Force museum, the War Department as early as 1930 had considered using women as pilots, but the chief of the Army Air Corps had called the idea "utterly unfeasible," stating that women were too "high-strung."

But after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the military was running short of male pilots. They decided to start an experimental civilian program to see if women were as capable as men at flying military aircraft.

Hayden was hooked.

"And back then, I had no idea how to fly. I didn't know a propeller from a tail wheel. Our planes today don't have tail wheels anymore, but in the old days they did," she chuckled.

"I have no idea what motivated me to do it. Maybe it was the many boyfriends I had who were pilots," Hayden said, pausing. "Nah, it wasn't that."

Her parents weren't as thrilled.

"My father thought it was absolutely ridiculous for me to leave a good job and go off to do something like that," Hayden recalled. "They weren't entirely approving, but they weren't paying for it, I was."

Joining the program wasn't easy. First, Hayden had to log 35 hours of flying time to simply apply, so she borrowed $200 to pay for lessons and accumulate 40 hours in the cockpit. Of more than 25,000 applicants, Hayden was among 1,800 women accepted into the program, though only 1,074 graduated.

The women were bold, Hayden said, they wanted to fly, and had thought that they would be treated the same as the men. But they were disappointed. While some instructors and Army Air Corps officers were happy to have them on board, sexism seemed to prevail at times.

"There was this instructor who didn't like anything I did," she recalled. "If I wanted to turn before he hollered, I was wrong. If he hollered before I turned, I was wrong. He told me he didn't like to teach women, and he didn't care what happened to us anyway."

Though the WASPs were not allowed to fly outside the United States or in combat, they performed dangerous duties. Some dragged targets behind old planes, Hayden said. "The men on the ground had live ammunition," she recalled. "You hoped they didn't miss."

WASPs, assigned to more than 120 airfields, also performed less daring missions, such as ferrying thousands of servicemen and new aircraft from base to base, and teaching men how to fly new B-29 bombers.

Hayden said the women were also used as backup pilots in case of problems during experiments involving remote controlled planes, or to look over the repair work of damaged twin- or four-engine bombers and test fly them to make sure they were fixed, the primary duty Hayden performed before the WASPs were deactivated in December 1944.

"You . . . have shown that you can fly wingtip to wingtip with your brothers," said General H.H. Arnold , speaking before the last WASP graduating class, according to several historical documents.

The WASPs paved the way for future female pilots in the military. The US Navy enlisted the first full-fledged female military pilots in 1974. Just this year, the first female pilot joined the Thunderbirds, the US Air Force's elite demonstration team.

Still, it took until 1979 for WASPs to be recognized as veterans, entitling them to benefits, said Hayden, who now spends her time as the group's Veterans Affairs chairwoman.

Her job now includes locating surviving WASPs and the families of deceased WASPs making sure they get the proper military grave markers.

"We didn't think about the discrimination," Hayden said. "We didn't know we were blazing a trail."

Megan Tench can be reached at mtench@globe.com.