#3-425
Memorandum for General Stratemeyer1
November 27, 1942 [Washington, D.C.]
General Smith, Colonel Moore and Colonel Davison discussed with Mrs. Hobby this morning the problem of allotting to the Air Corps 540,000-odd WAACS in 1943.2 I understand that Mrs. Hobby wanted to know, first, how many replacements that represented; second, how many of these could be trained in the Air Corps Specialist School; third, how many could be trained on the job after the WAAC Corps had given the basic training; and fourth, the priority list.
I understand that the answer to the first question was 318,000 represented in replacements; that the answers to questions two and three were that nothing could be done because the WAAC organiztion was not in the Army. Further, I believe Colonel Moore took up with Mrs. Hobby the question of her attitude toward a separate women's organization for the Air Corps. I don't like the tone of this at all. I want to be told why they cannot train these women, why the present legal status prevents such training. I don't wish anyone in the Air Corps office to take up without my personal knowledge any question of organizing a separate unit, nor any discussion of it except with me first.
Document Copy Text Source: George C. Marshall Papers, Pentagon Office Collection, Selected Materials, George C. Marshall Research Library, Lexington, Virginia.
Document Format: Typed memorandum.
1. Major General George E. Stratemeyer (U.S.M.A., 1915) had been chief of air staff, Headquarters, Army Air Forces since June 1942.
2. Brigadier General Luther S. Smith (U.S. M. A., 1924), Colonel Aubrey L. Moore, and Brigadier General Donald A. Davison (U.S.M.A., 1915) were all assigned to Headquarters Army Air Forces. By Executive Order 9274 (November 19, 1942), the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps had been authorized to expand from 25,000 to 150,000 members, and certain War Department studies had indicated that expansion to more than 1,000,000 might be justified. The Army Air Forces was more favorably inclined to extend full army status to women rather than auxiliary status; it particularly wished to replace its civilian volunteers in the Aircraft Warning Service with full-time military personnel subject to military discipline. The idea of establishing a separate women's branch of the Army Air Forces had been raised as early as December 1941. (Kathleen Williams Boom, "Women in the AAF," in Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds., Services Around the World, a volume in The Army Air Forces in World War II [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958], pp. 508–10; Treadwell, Women's Army Corps, pp. 92–97.)
Recommended Citation: ThePapers of George Catlett Marshall, ed.Larry I. Bland and Sharon Ritenour Stevens (Lexington, Va.: The George C. Marshall Foundation, 1981– ). Electronic version based on The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol. 3, “The Right Man for the Job,” December 7, 1941-May 31, 1943 (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), p. 454.