Cornelia Fort was a flight instructor on Oahu and that Sunday morning she happened to be giving a flying lesson. They were doing touch-and-go's on an airstrip near Pearl and she had to take the controls away from the student to avoid a mid-air with a Zero that was making an emergency landing on the same strip, believed to be have been just coming off the first attack run on the fleet.
Fort was an heiress, her father the founder of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company, a long-time sponsor of the Grand Old Opry, and whose name you will have heard mentioned if you've listened to the Opry radio show. The Cornelia Fort air park, located next to the grounds of the present-day Opryland complex, was named in her honor (although most passers-by assume it's the site of some old fort named after a guy called Cornelia).
Fort was bigger, stronger, faster and smarter than most of the other kids and she grew up more tomboy than debutante. As a child in the 1920s she witnessed her father forcing her older brother to take an oath never to fly in an airplane but he never dreamt he would need to have his daughter take the same pledge.
When war ensued Fort joined the Womans Auxiliary Ferry Service (WAFS). She was killed in 1943 in the crash following a mid-air collision with an Army Air Corps pilot who was attempting to impress her with his flying prowess while they were participating in a formation flight to Love Field in Dallas.
Fort was only 24 years of age at her death and already had logged more than 1100 hours of flight time. She was the first of the 38 WAFS who would give their lives in the service of their country in aviation mishaps before the war was over.
Welcome to the Canteen, Paal Gulli…
Thank you for sharing a great story of history.