Amanda Vaughn
Northern News Services
Wednesday, July 18, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - Jan M. Wood is a little unsteady on her feet, but her mind makes up the difference in spades.

Wood, who attended the Midnight Sun Float Plane Fly-in on the weekend, was a female war pilot, and then went on to have a lengthy aviation record that lasted well into her 80s.

Jan M. Wood at the Wardair dock with flying enthusiast pals, from left to right, John Gillett, Ted Millar and Dyke Noel. - Amanda Vaughan/NNSL photo

While women weren't flying in combat during the war, they were doing everything else, and making history while they were at it, as the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP.

Wood said WASPs went through the same air training as the men, and performed tasks such as flying planes that pulled targets for the combat pilots to practice firing at. She also said she ferried planes, flew test runs on repaired planes and participated in training exercises, just like the boys.

The WASP were disbanded at the end of the war, and while many of the women were stuck unemployed, Wood had set herself up with a teaching certificate, and went on to teach in the Los Angeles School District. However, she was not finished flying.

In 1956, she took a 13-month sabbatical from her job to fly around the world. She bought herself a 1953 Cessna 170, and literally took off for adventure by herself. During her trip, Wood said she made six or seven trips around Europe, and then continued east.

"After the big rains had came and went from the Far East and Asia, I flew in there as well," she said, going on to list off Iraq and Singapore and many other countries where she landed.

Her 13 months ran out while she was still in Asia, and Wood said she shipped her plane home to Van Nuys, California on a Japanese freighter.

Wood continued to fly after returning to work in Los Angeles. She has taken several trips around the U.S. and into Mexico and Canada.

She continued to fly until just recently, when, at the age of 84, she finally decided to retire her wings.

"I felt a weakness in the mind," was Wood's reason for retiring from the cockpit. Though one of her fellow Midnight Sun Fly-in visitors, Ted Millar, mentioned Wood had taken the helm of his plane on Saturday afternoon, and had done "just fine."

After trying to sell her plane to a cousin who ultimately decided aviation was too expensive a hobby, Wood donated her '53 Cessna to the Pearson Air Museum in Oregon.

"I phoned them up and asked them if they'd like an airplane," said Wood.

Pearson's representatives were very enthusiastic about her donation, and Wood said in advance of her arrival in Yellowknife last Wednesday she had been at a ceremony at Pearson to mark her donation.

Prior to enlisting with the WASP, Wood almost ended up as one of the many "Rosie the Riveter" girls, who did many other industrial jobs to assist the war effort as well.

"He (the enlistment officer) said he didn't think I'd like riveting, that I had too much imagination," she laughed.

For photos from the Fly-In, get Friday's Yellowknifer.