Jerrie Cobb
Jerrie Cobb | |
---|---|
Classen High School | |
Known for | Part of the Mercury 13 (Mercury 13 was a group of women who had training to see if women could go to space) |
Aviation career | |
First flight | 1943 |
Geraldyn M. Cobb (March 5, 1931 – March 18, 2019), commonly known as Jerrie Cobb, was an American
Cobb set three aviation records in her 20s: the 1959 world record for non-stop long-distance flight, the 1959 world light-plane speed record, and a 1960 world altitude record for lightweight aircraft of 37,010 feet (11,280 m).
Early life
Born on March 5, 1931, in
As a child growing up in Oklahoma, Cobb took to
Career
Facing
When Cobb became the first woman to fly in the 1959 Paris Air Show, the world's largest air exposition, her fellow pilots named her Pilot of the Year and awarded her the Amelia Earhart Gold Medal of Achievement.
Cobb played women's softball on a semi-professional team, the Oklahoma City Queens, to save the money to buy a surplus World War II
By 1959, at age 28, Cobb was a pilot and manager for
In November 1960, following a number of crashes of the Lockheed L-188 Electra, American Airlines' marketing department identified that the aircraft's reputation was poor among women, which was adversely affecting passenger bookings. American Airlines had no female pilots so, in an attempt to win over passengers, the airline invited Cobb to fly the aircraft on a highly publicized four-hour test, her first turboprop flight.[10][11]
In May 1961 NASA Administrator James Webb appointed Cobb as a consultant to the NASA space program.[4]
Medical testing
Although Cobb successfully completed all three stages of physical and psychological evaluation that were used in choosing the first seven Mercury astronauts, it was not an official
Although she never flew in space, Cobb, along with twenty-four other women, underwent physical tests similar to those taken by the Mercury astronauts with the belief that she might become an astronaut trainee. All the women who participated in the program, known as First Lady Astronaut Trainees, were skilled pilots. Dr.
private clinic without official NASA sanction. Cobb passed all the training exercises, ranking in the top 2% of all astronaut candidates of both genders.[13]
In 1962, Cobb was called to testify before a Congressional hearing, the Special Subcommittee on the Selection of Astronauts, about female astronauts.[14] Astronaut John Glenn stated at the hearing that "men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes", and "the fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order".[15] Only a few months later, the Soviet Union sent the first woman into space,[8] Valentina Tereshkova. Soon afterward, Tereshkova ridiculed Cobb for her religious beliefs but sympathized with the sexism she encountered: "They (American leaders) shout at every turn about their democracy and at the same time they announce they will not let a woman into space. This is open inequality."[16]
Along with other Mercury 13 participants, including Jane Briggs Hart, Cobb lobbied to be allowed to train alongside the men. At the time, however, NASA requirements for entry into the astronaut program were that the applicant be a military test pilot, experienced at high-speed military test flying, and have an engineering background, enabling them to take over controls in the event it became necessary. Since all military test pilots were men at the time, that effectively excluded women.[17] Liz Carpenter, the executive assistant to Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, drafted a letter to NASA administrator, James E. Webb, questioning those requirements, but Johnson did not send the letter, instead writing across it: "Let's stop this now!"[18][2][19]
Later life and death
Cobb then began over 30 years of missionary work in South America with MAF, performing humanitarian flying (e.g., transporting supplies to indigenous tribes), as well as surveying new air routes to remote areas. Cobb "pioneered new air routes across the hazardous Andes Mountains and Amazon rain forests, using self-drawn maps that guided her over uncharted territory larger than the United States".[20]She has been honored by the Brazilian, Colombian, Ecuadorian, French, and Peruvian governments.[4][21] In 1981, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work.[6]
In 1999, the National Organization for Women conducted an unsuccessful campaign to send Cobb into space to investigate the effects of aging, as John Glenn had done.[6] Glenn's main purpose was to observe the effects of a micro-gravity environment on the body of an aged individual. Specifically, NASA wanted to see whether the effects of weightlessness had positive consequences on the balance, metabolism, blood flow, and other bodily functions of an elderly person.[22] Cobb believed that it was necessary to send an aged woman on a space flight as well, to determine whether the same effects witnessed in men would be witnessed in women. At 67, Cobb, who had passed the same tests as John Glenn, petitioned NASA for the chance to participate in such a space flight, but NASA stated "it had no plans to involve additional senior citizens in upcoming launches".[23] Many aviators and astronauts of the time[who?] believed that was a failed chance for NASA to right a wrong they had committed years before, but Cobb never reached her ultimate goal of space flight.[24]
Cobb received numerous aviation honors, including the Harmon Trophy and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale's Gold Wings Award.[4]
On March 18, 2019, thirteen days after her 88th birthday, Cobb died at her home in Florida.[24][25][26]
While independent filmmaker Mary Haverstick was researching a documentary she wanted to make about Cobb in 2009 to 2011, she was warned by a high-ranking woman from the US Department of Defense not to delve too deeply into Cobb's life. Her curiosity aroused, further research led Haverstick to discover that another woman,
In popular culture
Laurel Ollstein's 2017 play, They Promised Her the Moon, (revised in 2019) tells the story of Jerrie Cobb and her struggle to become an astronaut.[30]
Sonya Walger portrays the character Molly Cobb, based on Jerrie Cobb, in the 2019 alternate history TV series For All Mankind, in which Cobb becomes the first American woman in space. Episode four of the first season, "Prime Crew", is dedicated to her memory.[31]
Cobb is portrayed by Mamie Gummer in the 2020 Disney+ series The Right Stuff.
Awards
- Amelia Earhart Gold Medal of Achievement
- Named Woman of the Year in Aviation
- Named Pilot of the Year by the National Pilots Association
- Fourth American to be awarded Gold Wings of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, Paris, France, Europe
- Honored by the government of Ecuador for pioneering new air routes over the Andes Mountains and Andes jungle
- 1962: received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement[32]
- 1973: awarded Harmon International Trophy[33][34] for "The Worlds Best Woman Pilot" by President Richard Nixon at a White Houseceremony.
- Inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame as "the Most Outstanding Aviatrix in the US
- Received Pioneer Woman Award for her "courageous frontier spirit" flying all over the Amazon jungleserving primitive Indian tribes
- 1979: Bishop Wright Air Industry Award for her "humanitarian contributions to modern aviation".[35]
- 2000: inducted into "Women in Aviation International Pioneer Hall of Fame".[36]
- 2007: Honorary Doctor of Science degree from University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh.[37]
- 2012: inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame.[20]
References
- ^ Bartels, Meghan (April 19, 2019). "Jerrie Cobb, Record-Breaking Pilot and Advocate for Female Spaceflight, Has Died". Space.com. Retrieved January 19, 2020.
- ^ a b c Gant, Kelli. "Women in Aviation". The Ninety-Nines Inc. Retrieved March 12, 2010.
- ^ "Record free-fall". Life. August 29, 1960. Retrieved November 14, 2023.
- ^ a b c d e f Internet Encyclopedia of Science, Aviation Pioneers Accessed March 12, 2010
- ^ John Shepler "Astronaut Jerrie Cobb, The Mercury 13 Were NASA's First Women Astronauts" JohnShepler.com. Accessed March 12, 2010
- ^ a b c d e "Geraldyn M. "Jerrie" Cobb (1931–)". Hargrave, the Pioneers. Monash University, Australia. Retrieved March 12, 2010.
- ISBN 9780375758935.
- ^ a b Jerrie Cobb. "Introduction". In Dena Hall (ed.). Jerrie Cobb, Solo Pilot (autobiography). Archived from the original on November 16, 2014. Retrieved March 12, 2010 – via jerrie-cobb-foundation.org.
- ^ "Cobb, Jerrie 2003". Hall of Fame Honorees. University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. Archived from the original on August 9, 2018. Retrieved April 2, 2015.
- ^ Davis, Lou (February 1961). "Electra On Public Trial". Flying Magazine. Retrieved October 8, 2019.
- ISBN 9780553288452.
- AP News.
- ^ Hahn, Michael (May 13, 2010). "Jerrie Cobb Poses beside Mercury Capsule". Great Images In NASA (GRIN). Archived from the original on December 24, 2011. Retrieved August 15, 2017.
- ^ Qualifications for Astronauts: Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on the Selection of Astronauts Archived December 11, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, U.S. House of Representatives, 87th Cong. (1962)
- ^ "Why Did the Mercury 13 Astronauts Never Fly in Space?". Popular Science. July 17, 2016.
- ^ Tanya Lee Stone. Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream. Candlewick Press, Somerville, Massachusetts, 2009 p. 64.
- ^ "The Space Review: You've come a long way, baby!". www.thespacereview.com.
- ^ Stephanie Nolen. Promised the Moon: The Untold Story of the First Women in the Space Race. Penguin Books Canada, Toronto, 2002. p. 300.
- ^ a b "Cobb, Geraldyn "Jerrie" M." The National Aviation Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on July 12, 2019. Retrieved April 18, 2019.
- ^ "Mercury 13". www.uwosh.edu.
- ^ Wittry, Jan (April 3, 2015). "John Glenn Returns to Space". NASA. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ^ Ackmann, Martha (November 1998). "Right Stuff, Wrong Time: Mercury 13 Women Wait". The Christian Science Monitor – via ProQuest.
- ^ a b Berger, Eric (April 18, 2019). "Jerrie Cobb, one of the most gifted female pilots in history, has died". Ars Technica. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ^ Seelye, Katharine Q. (April 19, 2019). "Geraldyn M. Cobb, Who Found a Glass Ceiling in Space, Dies at 88". The New York Times. Retrieved April 21, 2019.
- ^ Smith, Harrison. "Jerrie Cobb, decorated pilot once in line to become first female astronaut, dies at 88". The Washington Post. Retrieved May 11, 2023.
- Weekend Australian Magazine(book extract). pp. 22–27. Retrieved November 15, 2023.
- ISBN 9780593727812.
- ^ Andy Kroll (November 15, 2023). "The Filmmaker and the Superspy". The New York Times. Retrieved January 15, 2024.
- San Diego Union-Tribune. Archivedfrom the original on April 8, 2019.
- ^ Miller, Liz Shannon (November 8, 2019). "For All Mankind Recap: The Glass Ceiling". Vulture. Retrieved January 19, 2020.
- American Academy of Achievement.
- ^ Jerrie Cobb jerrie_cobb_facts.html "Jerrie Cobb, Facts" (autobiography), jerrie-cobb.org. Accessed March 13, 2010 Archived October 17, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Krebs, Albin (September 21, 1973). "5 Top Pilots Cited". The New York Times. Retrieved March 13, 2010.
- ^ "Jerrie Cobb – Fact Sheet". jerrie-cobb-foundation.org. Archived from the original on June 7, 2010. Retrieved March 13, 2010.
- ^ "Jerrie Cobb". Women in Aviation International. Archived from the original on January 2, 2010. Retrieved March 3, 2010.
- ^ Commendation-Cobb University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh Accessed March 12, 2010
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the
Further reading
- Ackmann, Martha (2003). The Mercury 13: The Untold Story of Thirteen American Women and the Dream of Space Flight. Random House. ISBN 0-375-50744-2 – via Internet Archive.
- Haynsworth, Leslie; Toomey, David (1998). Amelia Earhart's Daughters: the Wild and Glorious Story of American Women Aviators from World War II to the Dawn of the Space Age. New York: William Morrow Publishers. ISBN 978-0-688-15233-8.
- Teitel, Amy Shira (2020). Fighting for Space : Two Pilots and Their Historic Battle for Female Spaceflight. New York: Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 978-1-5387-1604-5.
- Weitekamp, Margaret (2004). Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America's First Women in Space Program. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-7994-9.
External links
- Lovelace's Woman in Space, nasa.gov
- "Cobb, Geraldyn M. 'Jerrie' ", Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture
- The Jerrie Cobb Foundation, Inc.
- http://www.mercury13.com/jerrie.htm Archived May 26, 2019, at the Wayback Machine
- Had NASA believed in merit
- https://www.thoughtco.com/errie-cobb-3072207
- Jerrie Cobb at IMDb
- Jerrie Cobb papers, 1931-2012 MC 974; Vt-260; DVD-147. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts