Jerrie Cobb

Geraldyn M. Cobb (March 5, 1931 – March 18, 2019), commonly known as Jerrie Cobb, was an American pilot and aviator.

She was also part of the Mercury 13, a group of women who underwent physiological screening tests at the same time as the original Mercury Seven astronauts, and was the first to complete each of the tests.

Born on March 5, 1931, in Norman, Oklahoma, Cobb was the daughter of Lt. Col. William H. Cobb and Helena Butler Stone Cobb.

From birth, Cobb was on the move, as is common for many children of military families.

Weeks after she was born, Cobb's family moved to Washington, D.C., where her grandfather, Ulysses Stevens Stone, was serving in the United States House of Representatives.

After Ulysses Stone lost a re-election bid, the family moved back to Oklahoma, where he and Cobb's father worked as automobile salesmen.

Once the United States became involved in World War II, Cobb's family moved once again, this time to Wichita Falls, Texas, where Cobb's father joined his active U.S. National Guard unit.

The family later moved again to Denver, Colorado, before finally returning to Oklahoma after World War II, where Cobb spent the majority of her childhood in Ponca City.

As a child growing up in Oklahoma, Cobb took to aviation at an early age, with her pilot father's encouragement.

She first flew at age twelve, in her father's open cockpit 1936 Waco biplane.

At 16, she was barnstorming around the Great Plains in a Piper J-3 Cub, dropping leaflets over little towns announcing the arrival of circuses.

Sleeping under the Cub's wing at night, she helped scrape together money for fuel to practise her flying by giving rides.

By the age of 17, while a student at Oklahoma City Classen High School, Cobb had earned her private pilot's license.

In 1948, Cobb attended Oklahoma College for Women for a year.

Facing sex discrimination and the return of many qualified male pilots after World War II, Cobb took on less-sought-after flying jobs, such as patrolling pipelines and crop dusting.

She went on to earn her multi-engine, instrument, flight instructor, and Ground Instructor ratings, as well as her airline transport license.

At the age of 21, she was delivering military fighters and four-engined bombers to foreign air forces worldwide.

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 37010 ft. In 1960, Life Magazine named her as one of nine women of the "100 most important young people in the United States".

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 Fairchild PT-23 so that she could be self-employed.

By 1959, at age 28, Cobb was a pilot and manager for Aero Design and Engineering Company, which also made the Aero Commander aircraft that she used in her record-making feats.

She was one of the few female executives in aviation.

By 1960, she had accrued 7,000 hours of flying time.

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.

In May 1961 NASA Administrator James Webb appointed Cobb as a consultant to the NASA space program.

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 NASA program, and she was unable to rally support in Congress for adding women to the astronaut program.

At the time, Cobb had flown 64 types of propeller aircraft, but had made only one flight in a jet fighter, in the back seat.

As a NASA historian wrote:

"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. Randy Lovelace, a NASA scientist who had conducted the official Mercury program physicals, administered the tests at his private clinic without official NASA sanction. Cobb passed all the training exercises, ranking in the top 2% of all astronaut candidates of both genders."

In 1962, Cobb was called to testify before a Congressional hearing, the Special Subcommittee on the Selection of Astronauts, about female astronauts.

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".

Only a few months later, the Soviet Union sent the first woman into space, 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."

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.

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!"

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.

She received her commercial pilot's license a year later, on her 18th birthday.