The Stars at Noon
by Jacqueline Cochran
Jacqueline Cochran said that her life’s story “went from sawdust to stardust,” a reference to a transition from an impoverished childhood in the sawmill camps of the South to a celebrated career as a trailblazer in the wild blue yonder. From the outset, her drive and determination come across in her plain-spoken memoir. During her hardscrabble youth, for example, she worked to acquire a treasured doll. Sadly, that toy was snatched from her the same day she bought it, but she vowed to track it down and retrieve it, which she did years later.
Inspired to believe her dreams could come true by a kindly teacher who introduced her to books, Cochran set out for New York in 1929 to make it big. An inveterate networker, she persuaded the head of one of the city’s top beauty salons to hire her. At a dinner party she met successful financier Floyd Odlum, whom she eventually married. He suggested that she take up flying to facilitate the growth of a far-flung cosmetics business she had started.
Once she had tasted flight, there was no going back. Aviation became her main focus. She began accumulating a string of record-setting flights and racing wins, most notably the cross-country Bendix Trophy race in 1938.
With war clouds looming, she championed the organization of a group of women pilots to relieve the military’s all-male cadre from noncombat flying duties. Her friend Hap Arnold, chief of the Army Air Forces, endorsed the idea. During WWII she directed the organization that resulted from her vision, the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP).
After the war ended, Cochran kept soaring to new heights and faster speeds. On May 18, 1953, she pushed an F-86 through the sound barrier, becoming the first woman to fly supersonic.
The Stars at Noon, published in 1954, is a thrilling narrative filled with enough exhilarating vignettes to inspire many squadrons of aspiring fliers. But serious students of history should also read Jackie Cochran: Pilot in the Fast Lane, published in 2004 by Doris L. Rich, who reveals the complete and unvarnished truth about Cochran’s career. It corrects misrepresentations from earlier works and also covers the remaining 26 years of Cochran’s eventful life not chronicled in The Stars at Noon. We learn, for example, that Jackie was not orphaned, as she had claimed, and her real name was Bessie Pittman. She assumed a new identity when she moved to New York, reportedly plucking the name Jacqueline from a telephone directory. Her last name, Cochran, came from a salesman with whom she had a liaison at age 14. They eventually married, but divorced after six years.
At the outset of America’s space program, Cochran opposed female participation in the astronaut corps, dashing the hopes of women pilots. Some claimed that her paradoxical views stemmed from her eagerness not to be outshone by other women. Late in life, despite advancing age and declining prestige, Cochran continued to strive for new aerial milestones. In 1963, at the controls of the hot Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, she became the first woman to fly faster than twice the speed of sound.
Jacqueline Cochran died on August 9, 1980, following a long illness. In accordance with her wishes, tucked inside her coffin was the doll that had meant so much to her, and which had come to symbolize her iron will.
Originally published in the May 2014 issue of Aviation History. To subscribe, click here.
