{"id":9781,"date":"2011-12-21T08:41:08","date_gmt":"2011-12-21T13:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/?page_id=9781"},"modified":"2019-01-10T16:19:48","modified_gmt":"2019-01-10T21:19:48","slug":"scene-again-student-pilot","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/recent-favorites\/scene-again-student-pilot\/","title":{"rendered":"Scene Again: Classroom in the Sky"},"content":{"rendered":"

From high in the sky, the Maine landscape looks like \u201ca land of lakes, all within a stone\u2019s throw of each other,\u201d wrote Catherine Winne \u201941 in the Oct. 30, 1940, issue of The Bates Student<\/em> following one of her pilot training flights.<\/p>\n

As the Student<\/em> reported earlier that October, Winne “will go down in the annals of history as the first co-ed to learn to fly while attending Bates College.”<\/p>\n

Winne got the opportunity to fly through the federal Civilian Pilot Training Program. Created by the Civil Aeronautics Administration in 1938 to increase the number of civilian U.S. pilots, the CPTP gave flight training to hundreds of thousands of men and women, mostly college students.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Catherine Winne \u201941 poses in front of what is likely a Piper J-C Cub in November 1940 at the Auburn-Lewiston Airport. The trainees also flew the Aeronca 65 Super Chief.\u00a0(Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/p><\/div>\n

The program is specifically credited with creating a path for African Americans to eventually become military pilots, notably the Tuskegee Airmen. In Maine, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, and UMaine offered chapters, as did several high schools and American Legion chapters.<\/p>\n

The Bates chapter was started in October 1939. Initially, women were given 10 percent of the slots, which meant two spots among 20 at Bates. With the start of World War II, women were excluded.\u00a0The Bates fliers flew the famous Piper J-C Cub and a pre-war Aeronca model<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Though the record is unclear as to whether Winne, who died in 2007, ultimately earned a license, she was certainly an active part of the program.<\/p>\n

On Nov. 13, 1940, the Student<\/em> reported that “it is planned to have a brief farewell ceremony before Catherine Winne ’41, first co-ed to take the flight course, embarks on that long-awaited solo hop.” At the time, she and the other Bates would-be pilots had “averaged about seven hours of flying time, and several of the embryonic aviators are waiting to go up for the first time alone.”<\/p>\n

\"Bates<\/a>

Bates students pose in front of the Piper J-C Cub at the Auburn-Lewiston Airport in November 1939. The woman standing next to the plane, at left, might be Doris Howes Parmenter ’37. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

A fine athlete who coached tennis for the Woman’s Athletic Association in her senior year, Winne was among at least two other female Bates trainees. Another was the late Pauline Giles \u201941, who attended classroom sessions but may not have flown.<\/p>\n

The third was graduate Doris Howes Parmenter ’37, who worked at Bates after graduation. Indeed, the\u00a0Bates Magazine<\/em> obituary for Parmenter<\/a>\u00a0suggests that she had the distinction of being the “first Bates woman to solo” with the CPTP.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew it was a pre-screening thing for military pilots.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The CPTP\u2019s military importance was readily known, especially after Germany invaded Poland and France.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew it was a pre-screening thing for military pilots,\u201d said retired Marine Col. Armand Daddazio \u201942 in 2010. A CPTP trainee as a Bates student, Daddazio saw active duty in air defense artillery in the Pacific during World War II.<\/p>\n

\"From<\/a>

From left, Armand Daddazio \u201942, Raymond Harvey ’42, and John Daikus ’40 listen to flight instructor Randy Mulherin (right) during Civilian Pilot Training Program training at the Auburn-Lewiston Airport on Nov. 25, 1939. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/p><\/div>\n

He was on Tinian when the USS Indianapolis <\/em>delivered the atomic bomb destined for Hiroshima.<\/p>\n

\u201cHeadquarters called to ask for officers for a work party,\u201d Daddazio said. \u201cWe pointed out that officers don\u2019t go on work parties. The reply was, \u2018Well, they do on this one!\u2019 For security, they wanted officers to unload the bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daddazio, who died in 2016, did not fly during or after the war. Initially interested in the Army Air Corps, he instead chose the Marines. \u201cThe casualty rate ended up pretty bad for the flying services,\u201d he recalled. \u201cMaybe the dear Lord didn\u2019t want me to fly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":276,"featured_media":0,"parent":12725,"menu_order":15,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_dimp_site_id":"","_dimp_override_contact":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"class_list":["post-9781","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/276"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9781"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14084,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9781\/revisions\/14084"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}