US Women’s Air Raid Defense

Kyt · Nov 12, 2007

Intrepid Cambria woman manned radar in WWII

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/story/189134.html

Jane Schmitz Sumpter’s life-changing experiences during World War II start like a spy novel.

The 88-year-old Cambria resident is scheduled to share her story as the keynote speaker for Cambria’s Veterans Day ceremonies Sunday.

In early 1943, 21-year-old Jane Schmitz was on an elevator, heading for her job at the Office of War Information on Sutter Street in San Francisco. She had just returned to the mainland from a visit to Hawaii.

A man on the elevator—whom she recognized as being from the floor above hers, where FBI offices were located—asked if she’d like to go back to the islands.

Because of tight censorship, Jack Curtis couldn’t give her many details. Even so, Schmitz said yes, and the very next day she was on her way to a classified mission for the U.S. Army Air Corps, forerunner of the Air Force.

After about three weeks’ training, Schmitz became a “plotter” in the Women’s Air Raid Defense (WARD), protecting the Hawaiian Islands with the then-new technology of radar.

According to Aviation History Magazine, “for the first time, American women had officially replaced male soldiers in a war zone and were directly participating in the defense of American territory.”

Schmitz was one of the first 30 WARDs from the mainland who joined Hawaii residents already doing the highly secretive work.

The book “Shuffleboard Pilots: The History of the Women’s Air Raid Defense in Hawaii, 1941-1945,” said WARDs evaluated “radar reports on all air and surface craft for the Hawaiian Islands area.”

According to the book, if radar plotters had been available around the clock, Hawaiian commanders would have gotten advance warning of the Pearl Harbor attack.

WARDs were paid about $120 a month. The rooms where they worked — nicknamed “The Tunnel”—were dug into the hillsides and camouflaged by large rose bushes, Sumpter said.

The aviation magazine reports that each of the 26 huge workrooms was nearly filled by a plotting board table with a large outline of the Hawaiian Islands overlaid by a grid pattern.

Plotters used shuffleboard-style sticks to move small plastic markers on the grid to indicate where radar had spotted aircraft or ships. Controllers then used Allied flight plans and other information to help identify the plane or vessel.

If it couldn’t be verified as friendly, a fighter pilot would be dispatched to pursue, find and identify the intruder. If it was an enemy, the fighter pilot would be ordered to attack.

Top secret for decades

Plotters’ highly technical work was so secret that, for decades, Sumpter never spoke to outsiders about her “shuffleboard pilot” experiences.

“We were there through an act of Congress,” she said, but as was the case with many working on classified missions, “we existed, … but we didn’t exist.”

Even now, there’s confusion about how to classify the civilian WARDs.

At the Veterans Day ceremony, Sumpter will receive a certificate of special congressional recognition “of outstanding and invaluable service to the community,” from the office of Rep. Lois Capps.

“Stories of service like Jane Schmitz Sumpter’s are an important part of America’s history during World War II,” Capps said in a written statement. “That’s why I want to encourage all veterans and civilians who served our country to share their stories with the (Library of Congress’) Veterans’ History Project, so that their record of service is preserved for future generations.”

The Department of Defense doesn’t formally recognize WARDs, because the women aren’t considered veterans, at least not yet.

Capps’ office is working with the department to see if work by WARDs will qualify for formal recognition.

Social life

WARDs’ lives in Hawaii were laced with hard work and high tension, fun and tragedy.

The high men-to-women ratio in the islands meant off-duty “plotters” were much in demand for social engagements and parties. Some off-the-job encounters were as life-changing as the work the women were doing.

While there, Jane Schmitz met and married a pilot. But three and a half months later, he was killed in the “turkey shoot,” the battle for the Mariana Islands, she said, noting that “his was the first plane shot down.”

But other WARDs had even more tragic experiences: “Some of the other girls actually plotted their own husbands’ final trips.”

Schmitz had entered the civilian mission with a rank of major, and after the war she retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1946.

She became a teacher and married Billy “Mac” Sumpter. They moved to Cambria in 1982. When he died eight years ago, the Sumpters had been married for 52 years.

“It’s been a great life,” she said. “I’ve been very lucky.”
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Kyt · Nov 12, 2007

http://www.historynet.com/culture/womens_history/3031311.html

http://militaryhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/world_war_ii_us_coastal_defense

spidge · Nov 12, 2007

Good to see these stories will live forever.

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