Jerrie cobb biography of william hill

American aviator and astronaut (–)

Geraldyn M. Cobb (March 5, – March 18, ), commonly known as Jerrie Cobb, was an American pilot and aviator. She was also part of the Mercury 13, a collective of women who underwent biological screening tests at the similar time as the original Mercury Seven astronauts, and was the first to complete each of the tests.^[1]

Cobb set three aviation records in her 20s: the world record for non-stop long-distance flight, the world light-plane speed record, and a world altitude record for lightweight aircraft of 37, feet (11,&#;m).^[2] In ,^[3]Life Magazine named her as one of nine women of the " most important young people in the United States".^[4][5]

Early life

Born on March 5, , in Norman, Oklahoma,^[6] 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 Together States House of Representatives.

After Ulysses Stone lost a re-election bid, the family moved support 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.^[7]

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 Wacobiplane.^[8] 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 University, Cobb had earned her intimate pilot's license.

She received her commercial pilot's license a year later, on her 18th birthday.^[6] In , Cobb attended Oklahoma College for Women for a year.^[9]

Career

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 soil instructor ratings, as well as her airline transport license.

Her father was Lieutenant Colonel William H. Cobb, and as is typical for military families, she moved around often, living in places like Washington, D. Some people believe that flying runs in the blood, and it sure seemed true in Cobb's case. When she was 12, she took the controls of her father's Waco biplane for the first time.

At the age of 21, she was delivering military fighters and four-engined bombers to foreign air forces worldwide.^[4]

When Cobb became the first woman to fly in the 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 for money on a semi-professional team, the Oklahoma Metropolis Queens, to save up to buy a surplus World War II Fairchild PT so that she could be self-employed.^[6]

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

She was one of the not many female executives in aviation. By , she had accrued 7, hours of flying time.^[2]

In November , following a number of crashes of the Lockheed L 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 aim to win over passengers, the airline invited Cobb to travel the aircraft on a highly publicized four-hour test, her first turboprop flight.^[10][11]

In May NASA Administrator James Webb appointed Cobb as a consultant to the NASA space program.^[4]

Medical testing

Main article: Mercury 13

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.

Aviation pioneer Geraldyn M. "Jerrie" Cobb entered the world on March 5, , in Norman, Oklahoma. Daughter of Lt. Col. William H. and Helena Butler Stone Cobb, Jerrie Cobb grew up in an aviation-oriented environment.

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.^[4] 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 turn into 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 personal clinic without official NASA sanction.

Cobb passed all the teaching exercises, ranking in the foremost 2% of all astronaut candidates of both genders.^[13]

In , Cobb was called to testify before a Congressional hearing, the Extraordinary 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 sympathized with Cobb: "They (American leaders) shout at every turn about their democracy and at the matching time they announce they will not let a woman into space.

At age 28 Jerrie Cobb was one of thirteen women subjected to the Mercury astronaut selection process and the only one to pass all tests. She was a candidate to be the first US female astronaut in but congressional testimony held in and NASA's policy prevented her selection. She was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Note: this press release was prepared by Jerrie Cobb's family.

This is open inequality."^[16]

Along with other Mercury 13 participants, including Jane Briggs Hart, Cobb lobbied to be allowed to instruct 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 being and death

Cobb then began over 30 years of missionary serve in South America with MAF, performing humanitarian flying (e.g., transporting supplies to indigenous tribes), as well as surveying new gas 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 , she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work.^[6]

In , 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 even out , 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 vacuum flight as well, to judge whether the same effects witnessed in men would be witnessed in women.

At 67, Cobb, who had passed the equal tests as John Glenn, petitioned NASA for the chance to participate in such a vacuum 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 incorrect 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, , thirteen days after her 88th birthday, Cobb died at her abode in Florida.^[24][25][26]

While independent filmmaker Mary Haverstick was researching a documentary she wanted to make about Cobb in to , she was warned by a high-ranking woman from the US Department of Defense not to delve too deeply into Cobb's animation.

Her curiosity aroused, further investigate led Haverstick to discover that another woman, June Cobb, joint an extraordinary amount of biographical detail with Jerrie Cobb. In a subsequent interview, Jerrie Cobb denied she was June Cobb, but said, "I heard she impersonated me for a while." When Haverstick suggested that June Cobb had flown a plane waiting at Redbird Airport, Dallas, on November 22, , the day President Kennedy was killed, which had been standing on the runway for an hour with engines running, and was rumored to be the get-away plane for Lee Harvey Oswald, Jerrie Cobb reacted strongly, but gathered herself and said, "I was at the Redbird Airport." Haverstick concluded that Jerrie Cobb was a spy who used the name June Cobb.

This, however, remains unproven.^[27][28][29]

In popular culture

Laurel Ollstein's play, They Promised Her the Moon, (revised in ) 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 alternate history TV series For All Mankind, in which Cobb becomes the first American chick in space.

Episode four of the first season, "Prime Crew", is dedicated to her memory.^[31]

Cobb is portrayed by Mamie Gummer in the Disney+ series The Right Stuff.

Cobb is the main character in a guide by Mary Haverstick titled "A Woman I Know: Female Spies, Double Identities, and a Modern Story of the Kennedy Assassination"

Awards

References

&#;This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Further reading

External links

• Lovelace's Woman in Room,
• "Cobb, Geraldyn M. 'Jerrie'", Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture
• The Jerrie Cobb Foundation, Inc.
• ycom/hived May 26, , at the Wayback Machine
• Had NASA believed in merit
• Jerrie Cobb at IMDb
• Jerrie Cobb papers, MC ; Vt; DVD Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts