Florence Wheeler Former WASP Teaches the Link Trainer

Monday, Jul 21, 2025 | 0 comments

The next week during the editing process of She Flew Bombers, WASP Florence Wheeler brought in a photograph of her proudly sitting atop link trainer that she was qualified to teach and test the required 19 hours of practice to all the WASP gals on the army base.

Passing the test and safely practicing in the link trainer was a qualification before the gals could fly the “biggies” like fighter, bomber, and transport aircraft.

This amazing small box mechanical simulator airplane had stubby little wings and a tail and never left the ground. The training pilot goes inside the link trainer with a covered black hooded canvas that blocks her vision and learns to hunt for the controls by touch only.

The astonishing link trainer (invented in 1920) simulated flying under any harsh conditions teaching a WASP what controls to use.

Instructor WASP Wheeler with a headset on sat at the large map table that was connected to the link trainer by electrical cables or hoses. Florence traced the student’s “flight path” by a mechanical arm or ink plotter from the table. She gave verbal commands to the training pilot who also had earphones on. Wheeler controlled the turbulence, or wind force in any direction and the fuel gauge.

Newbie pilots learned how to navigate the plane’s instruments as Florence gave instructions such as unlock controls, push rudder and thrust stick. The movable base had pumps on it and simulated pitch, roll and yaw of a plane and would tilt and rotate the cockpit. Trusting blindly in the instruments was crucial to learn in emergency situations. Students called it a “claustrophobic torture chamber!”

The amazing link trainer taught safe instrument flying without risking real aircraft, saved fuel and reduced crash risks during training. It prepared thousands of WW II pilots for emergency blind-flying conditions.

During World War II, 38 Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) died in the line of duty while serving their country and were never in combat nor left the United States. The primary cause of death for the pilots was flying over 77 types of aircrafts in which the accidents were caused by mechanical failure, weather-relate crashes, pilot error, mid-air collisions, and training accidents, and ferrying new aircraft from the factories where the planes were often untested! Some women died during takeoffs or landings. Others went down in storms or experienced mechanical failures over remote terrain. Sometimes there were over 50 pilots practicing in one air space!

Cornelias Fort, 24 years old was the first female WASP pilot to die on active duty and perished in a mid-air collision while ferrying an airplane.

Because the female pilots were paid by civil service, the military did not pay for their funeral services and their families had to pay to ship their bodies home.

It wasn’t until 1977 that the U.S. Congress granted the WASPs veteran status. The WASPs were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for their service.

Florence Wheeler went to Washington, DC with her son to receive the Congressional Gold Medal for her service.

It took until May 20, 2016 to grant the WASPs military status to be buried in Arlington Cemetery.

Edwin Albert Link, Jr. (in glasses) with the oldest surviving Link Flight Trainer (serial number 3) on the 25th anniversary of the prototype’s first ‘flight’. This example survives in storage with the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum. (image via Binghamton University Library)

Chanute_Field_Link_Trainers_1943

Florence Wheeler former Woman Airforce Service Pilot Edits She Flew Bombers

Thursday, Jul 10, 2025 | 0 comments

Florence was delighted to edit the manuscript as requested by my editor.

However, she did not know to use a computer, and I had to expensively print out the 252-page manuscript.

Florence, as a former pilot instructor taught and flew many of the World War Two planes during the war to the army bases for the men to fly into combat, so of course she had a personality of a perfectionist.

When she came to my house, she set down the ground rules of the volunteer job of editing. Florence arrived every week like clockwork as she instructed me to make hot cocoa a specific way for her to drink.

She brought her copy of the manuscript that was sprinkled with red circles.
I politely told her I did not need her to edit the entire manuscript just the piloting parts, but Florence quickly dismissed that idea!

I slowly became grateful instead of annoyed for this amazing woman who told me the many fascinating stories of her teaching pilot training at the Sweet Water Springs, Texas army base in 1943. I added many of these stories which enhanced my book.

One week she brought over photographs of her being throw into the wishing well which were hilarious!

Before a training pilot went up in a plane for a solo test flight it was a rite of passage to throw in a lucky penny in the large circular wishing well that was in the middle of the Sweetwater Spring army base. If she passed the solo test, her baymates would swing her into the water to retrieve her lucky penny. She would come out soaking wet, a reward in in the sticky humid Texas heat and marvelously satisfied with the accomplishment. I loved looking at the photo of Florence being thrown in with her cute pigtails getting soaked!

Stay tuned for next time: Florence teaching the link trainer, a mechanical simulator that did not leave the ground!