London, Spring, 1944 Shortly after arriving in London by bus from Liverpool, Barbara's dream of flying a bomber in England came true. She was an ATA Girl again, ferrying bombers for the British Air Transport Auxiliary from factories to airfields all over England.
While she was flying a bomber to an airfield near Dover on March 4, the first American bombers with fighter escorts joined their Royal Air Force comrades in dropping their payloads on Berlin. Before the Americans joined them, RAF bombers were dropping new 1,200-pound bombs over German cities. The raids had come at a high cost: well over a thousand bombers and their crews had been lost.
Because no radio broadcasting was permitted on her flights, Barbara flew in silence until she remembered the song of the WASPS she had learned back at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, and sang "Yankee Doodle Pilots,"
We are Yankee Doodle Pilots,
Yankee Doodle, do or die!
Real, live nieces of our Uncle Sam,
Born with a yearning to fly.
Keep in step to all our classes
March to flight line with our pals.
Yankee Doodle came to Texas
Just to fly the Pts!
We are those Yankee Doodle gals.
The year had started out badly for the Germans. Four days into January, on the defensive and fearing his homeland would be invaded, Hitler ordered the mobilization of all children over age ten. Not three weeks later, allied troops made a surprise landing at Anzio, thirty miles south of Nazi-held Rome.
Hundreds of thousands of GIs began arriving in Britain for a massive invasion of Europe under the command of General Eisenhower. It was just not known where or when the invasion would take place.
For Hitler's 55th birthday on April 20, the RAF set a new record for a single raid, dropping 4,500 tons of bombs on his cities. A month later, the Allies began their northward offensive from Anzio. Five days afterward, news reached London that 47 Allied airmen had been shot trying to escape from Stalag Luft III, a Nazi prisoner of war camp in Polish-Czechoslovakian Silesia.
Back in the United States, hundreds of Army Air Force combat pilots were flying to England each week, to be ready for an air bombardment of the French coastline in preparation for the ground invasion.
More WASPS were becoming test pilots in America and being shot at with live ammunition flying planes in target practice.
At the same time, Jackie Cochran was moving ahead with her efforts to get the WASPS officially recognized as a branch of the Army and more pilots were being relieved of stateside duty to fly overseas. This pleased General Arnold very much because among them was his own son.