Woman on the wing
Veteran pilot Jan Wood is a proud part of aviation history

Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jun 30/99) - Los Angeles pilot Jan Wood has more than earned her wings since her early days of flying with the Women's Aircraft Services Pilots (WASP).

During the Second World War, the USAF took applications from 25,000 women who wanted to aid the war effort by test piloting new aircraft.

Wood was one of 1,084 women accepted into the elite class of America's first female military pilots.

"I was a test pilot for the twin engine school," Wood recalled. "The mechanics would work on the airplanes, we'd the them up and check them out and check them off."

By the war's end, 38 of the WASP had been killed in the line of duty and the male pilots were coming home.

"We were disbanded in the December of '44," she said. "The men were coming home from overseas after flying 25 missions and there was a surplus of men pilots, so I went back to school teaching."

She returned to Los Angeles and worked as a substitute teacher for two years.

In 1948, Wood bought a small two-place Taylorcraft side-by-side airplane, which she flew around on short trips, until she hopped a flight North with a friend.

"I got a trip in an Aircoupe up to the tip-top of Alaska, from out of the Los Angeles area," Wood recalled. "With our 40 pounds of luggage and spaghetti stuffed into the map compartment."

"We went into the Eskimo villages and stayed with them and just had a wonderful time -- I'm an adventurous person as it is and I got back and I just thought, 'hmmm...'"

Trip of a lifetime

In her seventh year of teaching, Jan was offered a sabbatical leave. While beachcombing on Catalina Island, she decided to fly her own plane around the world.

She bought a three-year-old 1953 Cessna 170 "tail dragger" and set out on what became a 13-month adventure, criss-crossing the globe.

"I just cruised and I had a lot of time and had it all plotted out," Wood said. "I went up and down Europe seven times."

"When it got too cold in Norway, I'd go down to the Mediterranean, when it got too hot down there, I'd go back up North someplace."

The highlight of the trip was in the people she met along the way, she said.

"I picked up 13 different people -- men and women of all kinds and sorts," she smiled.

The U.S. Army newspaper kept up with the news on the adventurous female flier.

"The Stars and Stripes kept track of me where ever I flew, they were all asking, 'Where's that woman pilot now,'" she recalled, laughing. "I just had so much pleasurable fun."

Wood teamed up with a female journalist from Denmark and the pair set out for the east.

"We strutted around the Sahara and the Middle East -- anywhere that Pan American would fly, because I knew I'd find someone there who'd speak English."

She had experienced a lot of problems with her Cessna, that the Turkish government jailed her and her friend for suspected espionage.

"I had so many delays and forced landings that I was jailed as a spy in Turkey," she said. "It was an emergency landing and they have to let you land and they did."

"But as soon as they did they surrounded us and said, 'We've heard about you. You've been landing in too many of these military fields.'"

The American flight agency, which eventually became the FAA, received word on her imprisonment.

"The civil air patrol eventually heard about our plight and that I was impounded and finally, after three days they sent a telegram saying we were cleared."

The two women carried on through the middle East, the host of parties with kings and their harems, sultans and soldiers.

A hit with the guys

"There were 200 men stationed at Sarja who hadn't seen a woman in more than two years, so we just had a wonderful time when we popped in on them," she exclaimed.

Finding parts for her plane became quite a task, she said.

"I had a broken right brake as I travelled through three countries and finally got into the tip-top of Pakistan, where there was a (Cessna) 180 that had fallen against a mountain and the only thing they had retrieved was the landing gear -- which had exactly the same brakes as I needed."

"I'm three paint jobs later four times into Africa, twice into China and six years ago, I finally found Canada and the Northwest Territories," Wood said. "And that has just ... I said, 'no more!' I'm never going to go to any of those other places -- this is too beautiful."

"There is just too much culture, the people are nice -- they're airplane orientated, the political is all so very intriguing and exciting that one day I'm going to fly right across this great country."