Betty Pauline Stine
September 13, 1921 – February 25, 1944
Class: 44-W-2
Entered Army Air Force flight training: Avenger Field, Sweetwater, Texas, September, 1943
Betty Pauline Stine was a 22-year-old Army Air Forces flight trainee who died on February 25, 1944, from injuries sustained after she bailed out of a burning AT-6 near Quartzsite, Arizona. She was sixteen days from the scheduled graduation of WASP Class 44-W-2. Because she did not graduate, she is not included among the 1,074 women who earned WASP wings. She nevertheless gave her life while undertaking the same military flight curriculum and is remembered among the 38 women who died in connection with the wartime women pilot program.
Her father, Jacob Edward Stine, was the son of Mary “May” Rogers Stine. May was a daughter of Cherokee Nation leaders Clement Vann Rogers and Mary America Schrimsher Rogers and a sister of William Penn Adair “Will” Rogers. Betty Stine was therefore Will Rogers’ grandniece and a great-granddaughter of Clement and Mary Rogers. Her given names reportedly honored Will’s wife, Betty Blake Rogers, and Pauline Elizabeth McSpadden, another granddaughter of Clement and Mary Rogers. The naming tradition places Betty within a known Cherokee family network rather than merely beside a famous celebrity.
Betty graduated from Santa Barbara High School in June 1939 with dreams of becoming an airline stewardess. Her father, Jake, was born in the oil fields of Oklahoma, but when his mother died when Jake was eight years old in 1909, his father sent him to live with Jake’s grandparents, in Castleberry, Texas, near Fort Worth. There, in late 1920, Jake married Mary Allen.
Betty, their only child, was born the following September. Because Jakes uncle was humorist Will Rogers, he named Betty after Will’s wife, Betty Blake. For his daughter’s middle name, he chose Pauline, after Pauline McSpadden, a daughter of one of Will Rogers’ sisters.
Stine entered Army Air Forces flight training at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, in September 1943 and joined Class 44-W-2. The WASP were civilian employees of the Army Air Forces during the war, even though they trained and flew within a military system. Their duties freed male pilots for other assignments and included ferrying aircraft, towing targets, engineering and test flying, transporting personnel, and serving as flight instructors. Training was demanding and hazardous.
By February 1944, Stine had advanced to the North American AT-6 Texan. Her class was scheduled to graduate on March 11. She was near the end of the program but had not yet earned wings. Historical precision requires describing her as a WASP trainee or a member of Class 44-W-2, rather than as a graduate WASP pilot.
On February 24, 1944, Stine and twelve classmates were returning to Avenger Field on their final cross-country training exercise. After taking off from Blythe Army Airfield in California, Stine crossed the Colorado River in AT-6 serial number 42-44092. The most detailed published narrative states that a fire developed in the aircraft’s tail and forced her to bail out over rugged ground near Quartzsite, Arizona.
Local mine owner Lewis Aplington reportedly saw the aircraft and parachute. He and two other men searched the terrain and found Stine alive but unconscious. Strong winds had caught her parachute and dragged her over rocks, causing catastrophic injuries. She died at a military hospital on February 25 and was returned to Santa Barbara for burial. The available sources create a minor date ambiguity because some identify February 25 as the accident date, while the detailed account places the bailout on February 24 and the death on February 25. The original Army accident report should resolve this.
Later accounts credit Stine’s death with prompting additional parachute training at Avenger Field, including a training apparatus and twelve hours of instruction. The claim is consequential because it would show that her loss directly improved the safety of women who followed her.
Because the women pilots were classified as civilians, those killed did not initially receive the benefits, transportation, or customary honors afforded military dead. Congress recognized WASP service for veterans’ purposes in 1977, and the group later received the Congressional Gold Medal. These later actions cannot restore Stine’s future, but they change the institutional context in which her sacrifice is remembered.
Sources:
Cherokee National Treasure Robert and US Presidential Citizenship Fellow Chelle Lewis Findagrave.com
Honorstates.org
Texas Women’s University
William Miller blog
There have been many books about the Women Airforce Service Pilots of WWII (WASP); however, hardly any about the 38 women who lost their lives while flying for the Army Air Corps. This book tells their story.
