The Aviatirx's Dawn: A Wasp Story
Copyright© 2025 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 2: The Fire of Discipline
Weeks 2-6, August 1943
The alarm bell clanged at 0530, and Ellie jerked awake with her heart hammering. For a disorienting moment, she didn’t know where she was—then the hard cot, the dim barracks, the sound of groaning women brought it all back.
Texas. Avenger Field. Week two.
Her body ached everywhere. Her shoulders from yesterday’s calisthenics. Her legs from marching. Her brain from six hours of ground school followed by two hours of night study. She’d been here eleven days and felt like she’d aged eleven years.
“Up! Up! Up!” Lieutenant Morrison’s voice cut through the pre-dawn darkness. “Formation in fifteen minutes! If you’re late, you’re running laps!”
Bay A scrambled. Seven women stumbling over each other in the cramped space, fighting for the sinks, yanking on the drab coveralls that were their daily uniform. Ellie had learned to sleep in her underwear to save precious minutes in the morning.
“Has anyone seen my other boot?” Ginny wailed, hopping on one foot.
“Under your cot,” Hazel said without looking up. She was already dressed, already making her bed with military corners that would pass inspection. How she managed to be put together at 0535 every morning was a mystery none of them had solved.
“Thanks!” Ginny dove under her cot, emerged with the boot, and hopped toward the door while trying to lace it.
Jackie appeared from the latrine, her face pale, her glasses slightly fogged. “I think I’m getting an ulcer,” she announced. “Can you get ulcers from stress? That’s a thing, right?”
“Ground school in twenty minutes,” Marta said, ignoring the question. She was studying flashcards while buttoning her coveralls with one hand. Aircraft silhouettes. They had a recognition test today—fifty aircraft shown for three seconds each, and they had to identify make, model, and whether it was friend or foe. “B-17. B-24. B-25. B-26.”
“If I see one more B-something, I’m going to scream,” Sofia muttered, but she was studying her own flashcards, lips moving silently.
Pearl moved through the chaos with calm efficiency, making her bed, helping Ginny with her boot laces, and somehow finding time to straighten Jackie’s collar before they all rushed out the door.
Outside, the August dawn was already brutal. The sun hadn’t fully risen, but the air was thick and hot, promising another day in the high nineties. Two hundred women formed up in neat rows on the parade ground, and Lieutenant Chambers walked the lines with eyes that missed nothing.
“DuBois! Your collar’s crooked!”
Jackie’s hands flew to her collar.
“Sanchez! When’s the last time you polished those boots?”
Marta’s jaw tightened, but she said nothing.
“Better.” Lieutenant Chambers continued down the line. When she reached Hazel, she stopped. Ellie held her breath. But the lieutenant simply nodded and moved on. There was nothing to criticize. There never was with Hazel.
“Present arms!”
They saluted. Held it.
“At ease! Today is Wednesday, August eleventh. Twenty-three women washed out yesterday, which means twenty-three of you moved up in the rankings. Don’t get comfortable. We’ll cut another twenty before the week is out. Ground school, 0600. Flight line, 1300. Dismissed!”
Ground school was held in a stifling classroom with inadequate fans and no mercy. Their instructor, Captain Reynolds—a former airline pilot who’d been grounded due to a heart condition—stood at the front with a pointer and a map of the United States.
“Navigation,” he announced. “Specifically, dead reckoning navigation without radio aids. Because when you’re ferrying a P-47 from California to New Jersey and your radio dies over Kansas, you’d better know how to read a map and a compass, or you’ll end up in Canada. Which would be embarrassing.”
Nervous laughter rippled through the room.
“Miss DuBois.” Captain Reynolds pointed at Jackie. “You’re flying from Wichita to St. Louis. Heading?”
Jackie stood, her face flushed. “Um. East?”
“East.” Captain Reynolds’ voice was flat. “East is a general direction, Miss DuBois, not a heading. When you’re in the cockpit of an aircraft traveling two hundred miles per hour, ‘east’ is the difference between landing at your destination and running out of fuel over the Ozarks. Try again. What’s your heading?”
Jackie’s hands trembled as she pulled out her navigation tools—protractor, ruler, chart. Around her, two hundred women watched in sympathetic silence. They’d all been there.
“Zero ... nine ... zero degrees?” Jackie’s voice was barely audible.
“Ninety degrees. And that would take you due east, which would put you somewhere over Illinois. Check your chart. Account for magnetic variation. Try again.”
Ellie watched Jackie’s face crumple slightly. The woman was brilliant with theory—she could calculate fuel consumption and weight-and-balance problems in her head—but put her on the spot, make her work fast, and she froze.
“One ... zero ... five degrees?” Jackie tried again.
“Better. Close enough. Sit down.” Captain Reynolds moved on. “Miss Ying. Same question. Wichita to St. Louis. Heading?”
Hazel stood. “One hundred three degrees magnetic, sir. Flight time approximately two hours twenty minutes in a BT-13 at cruise power, accounting for prevailing westerly winds.”
Captain Reynolds blinked. “Correct. Sit down.”
Marta shot Hazel an appraising look. Competition, Ellie thought. Marta needed to be the best, and Hazel simply was the best. That was going to be interesting.
The morning ground school covered navigation, then shifted to meteorology. Cloud types. Weather systems. How to read a surface analysis chart. When to scrub a flight and when to push through.
“Aviation weather is not a suggestion, ladies,” Captain Reynolds said. “It’s a fact. You cannot negotiate with a thunderstorm. You cannot charm your way through ice. And if you think you can fly through conditions that would ground a male pilot just to prove you’re tough, you’ll prove you’re dead instead. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir!”
By the time they broke for lunch, Ellie’s head was spinning. She’d filled three pages of notes in handwriting that was starting to deteriorate into illegible scrawl.
The mess hall was marginally cooler than the classroom, but not by much. Bay A claimed their usual table, and for several minutes, they just ate in exhausted silence.
“I’m going to fail that navigation test,” Jackie said finally, pushing her Salisbury steak around her plate.
“No, you’re not,” Pearl said firmly. “We’re going to study tonight. All of us. We’ll drill you until you can do it in your sleep.”
“I can’t think fast enough,” Jackie said miserably. “Give me time, give me my tools, and I can plot any course you want. But put me on the spot like that and my brain just ... stops.”
“Then we practice being put on the spot,” Sofia said. She’d pulled out her compact and was checking her lipstick—a small act of defiance against the military drabness around them. “We’ll fire questions at you randomly. You’ll learn to think under pressure.”
“I don’t know if that’s something you can learn,” Jackie said.
“It is,” Hazel said quietly. She was eating methodically, the way she did everything. “When I was learning to fly, my instructor would deliberately distract me. Shout at me. Bang on the instrument panel. He said if I couldn’t handle him yelling, I couldn’t handle an emergency.”
“That sounds abusive,” Ginny said, horrified.
“It was effective.” Hazel met Ginny’s eyes. “And he was right. The first time I had an engine fire, I didn’t panic. I just flew the plane.”
“You had an engine fire?” Ginny’s eyes went wide.
“Loose fuel line. Caught fire on takeoff. I shut down the engine, dumped fuel, and landed on a road.” Hazel shrugged. “The plane was fine. I was fine. But if I’d panicked, I’d be dead.”
Silence fell over the table.
“Well, that’s terrifying,” Sofia said finally. “But also kind of inspiring? I can’t decide.”
“Welcome to aviation,” Marta said dryly. “Where everything is terrifying and inspiring in equal measure.”
“Speaking of terrifying,” Ellie said, changing the subject, “anyone else notice how many women have washed out already? We’ve lost almost thirty from our class.”
“Thirty-two,” Marta corrected. “I’ve been counting.”
“Why?” Ginny asked.
“Because I want to know what the failure rate is. If it’s above fifty percent, that’s one thing. If it’s above seventy percent, that’s something else.” Marta’s expression was grim. “We started with two hundred fourteen women. We’re down to one hundred eighty-two. That’s a fifteen percent attrition rate in less than two weeks.”
“Jesus,” Sofia breathed.
“They’re trying to scare us,” Pearl said. “Wash out the ones who aren’t serious. The ones who thought this would be glamorous or easy.”
“Or the ones who had one bad day,” Jackie said quietly. “Sarah Jenkins from Bay C washed out yesterday because she got airsick during aerobatics. One incident. Gone.”
“That’s not fair,” Ginny protested.
“No,” Hazel agreed. “It’s not. But fair isn’t part of the equation.”
At 1300, they assembled on the flight line. The Texas sun was at its peak, and the concrete apron radiated heat like a griddle. The Stearman biplanes sat in neat rows, their yellow paint blindingly bright.
Ellie’s instructor was a crusty former barnstormer named Dutch Keller. He was sixty if he was a day, with skin like leather and eyes that had seen everything twice. He didn’t smile much, but he didn’t yell either, which made him one of the more tolerable instructors.
“Vance,” he said as Ellie approached her assigned aircraft. “Pre-flight.”
She’d done this a dozen times now, but it still made her nervous. She walked around the Stearman, checking every surface, every wire, every control. Prop for nicks. Oil level. Fuel. Tires. Control cables. Rudder. Elevators. Ailerons.
“Good,” Dutch said when she finished. “Now tell me what you’re looking for.”
“Anything that doesn’t look right, sir. Loose bolts. Frayed cables. Leaks. Damage.”
“And if you find something?”
“I don’t fly until it’s fixed.”
“Even if your instructor tells you it’s fine?”
Ellie hesitated. This felt like a trap. “Even then, sir. If something doesn’t feel right, I don’t fly.”
Dutch’s weather-beaten face split into what might have been a smile. “Good answer. Climb in.”
The Stearman’s cockpit was cramped and hot. Ellie strapped herself in, adjusted her goggles, checked her instruments. Behind her, Dutch settled into the instructor’s seat.
“Today we’re working on precision maneuvers,” his voice crackled through the speaking tube. “Lazy eights, chandelles, steep turns. The Army doesn’t care if you can fly. They care if you can fly exactly the way they tell you to. Start her up.”
Ellie went through the startup procedure. Prime the engine. Crack the throttle. Mixture rich. Magnetos on. “Clear!” she shouted, then hit the starter.
The engine coughed, caught, and roared to life. The whole aircraft vibrated. Ellie felt the familiar thrill run through her—this was it, this was real, this was flying.
She taxied to the runway, went through her run-up checks, and waited for clearance.
“Clear to go,” Dutch’s voice said. “Show me what you’ve got.”
Ellie advanced the throttle. The Stearman surged forward, tail came up, and then they were airborne, climbing into the bright Texas sky. For a moment—just a moment—all the stress and fear and exhaustion fell away. This was why she was here. This was freedom.
“Altitude two thousand feet, heading north,” Dutch instructed. “Show me a lazy eight. And I want it precise. Entry altitude, exit altitude within fifty feet. Speed within five knots. Go.”
Ellie started the maneuver. A lazy eight was a graceful, looping figure-eight pattern flown across the horizon. In theory. In practice, it required constant attention to altitude, airspeed, coordination, and attitude. Her first attempt was sloppy—she gained two hundred feet and lost ten knots of airspeed.
“Again,” Dutch said.
She tried again. Better, but still not precise enough.
“Again.”
And again. And again. By the fifth attempt, her arms ached from holding the stick, her legs ached from working the rudder pedals, and her head ached from concentrating so hard.
“Better,” Dutch said finally. “That last one was almost acceptable. Now show me a chandelle to the right.”
They drilled for an hour. Chandelles. Steep turns at sixty degrees of bank. Stalls and recoveries. Every maneuver had to be perfect—the Army didn’t want pilots who could fly well enough. They wanted pilots who could fly to a standard.
By the time Dutch said, “Take us home,” Ellie was exhausted.
She entered the traffic pattern, descended, and lined up for landing. This was the part that always made her nervous. Landing a tailwheel aircraft was an art—too fast and you’d bounce, too slow and you’d stall, too much rudder and you’d ground-loop.
She crossed the threshold, pulled the power, and eased back on the stick. The Stearman settled onto the runway with a squeak of tires. Not perfect, but good enough.
“Better,” Dutch said as they taxied back. “You’re learning to fly the Army way instead of the farm way. Keep it up.”
Coming from Dutch, that was high praise.
Sofia’s flight didn’t go as well.
Ellie was sitting in the shade of a hangar, filling out her logbook, when she heard the yelling. She looked up to see Sofia standing at attention in front of her instructor—a hawk-faced man named Lieutenant Graves who had a reputation for being brutal.
“That was the sloppiest excuse for precision flying I’ve ever seen!” Graves was shouting. “You fly like you’re dancing, Miss Rossi! This isn’t a ballet! This is the United States Army Air Forces, and we have standards!”
Sofia’s face was flushed, her jaw tight. “Yes, sir.”
“Your lazy eights looked like drunken spirals! Your chandelles were off altitude by three hundred feet! And your steep turn was so uncoordinated I thought we were going to spin in!”
“Yes, sir.” Sofia’s voice was strained.
“If you can’t learn to fly by the numbers, you won’t last another week. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed. And practice your procedures tonight. I’ll test you again tomorrow, and if you haven’t improved, we’ll have a conversation about whether you belong here.”
Sofia saluted stiffly and walked away. Ellie caught up with her behind the hangar, where Sofia was leaning against the wall with her eyes closed.
“Hey,” Ellie said quietly. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Sofia’s voice was tight.
“That was rough.”
“I’m fine, Ellie.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I said I’m fine!” Sofia snapped. Then she sagged. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m just—” She made a frustrated gesture. “I can fly. I’m a good pilot. But they want robots, not pilots. They want me to fly by checklist and procedure and numbers, and that’s not how I fly. I feel the aircraft. I don’t think about what the airspeed indicator says—I feel when the speed is right. But that’s not good enough for them.”
“Then you have to learn their way,” Ellie said. “I’m having the same problem. Back home, I flew by instinct. Do what felt right. But here, if you don’t fly by the book, they wash you out.”
“I know.” Sofia rubbed her eyes, smearing her mascara. “I know. I just hate it. I hate having to fly like a machine when flying is supposed to be about freedom and joy and—” She broke off. “God, I sound like a child.”
“You sound like someone who loves flying,” Ellie said. “Which is exactly why you’ll figure this out. Because you want it enough.”
Sofia managed a weak smile. “Thanks. I think.”
That night, Bay A turned into a study hall.
They’d pushed all their footlockers together to form a makeshift table, and now they sat in a circle with their manuals, charts, and flashcards spread out between them.
“Okay, Jackie,” Pearl said, holding a blank chart. “Amarillo to Oklahoma City. Give me a heading.”
Jackie pulled out her tools, hands trembling slightly. They all watched as she plotted the course, measured the angle, adjusted for magnetic variation. The room was silent except for the scratch of pencil on paper.
“Zero ... five ... seven degrees,” Jackie said finally.
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