It’s a ready-made screenplay, filled with a genteel blue-eyed blonde belle with a streak of rebellion, daring deeds, tense high-speed chases of historical significance, and vast societal change – and it’s all true. At a time when many are intrigued about the possibility that aviator Amelia Earhart’s story may have continued longer than previously believed, the story of Cornelia Clark Fort is far less well known except among devotees of aviation history. For those in the know, Fort is cited as the first pilot to encounter a Japanese flyer invading Pearl Harbor and the first female pilot to lose her life in service to the military. For those even further in the know, Fort’s tale has ties to Boulder, Jefferson County, Montana.
FORT’S EARLY LIFE A daughter in a Tennesee family with four sons, Cornelia Clark Fort was born into relative extravagance in 1919. Check-six, an aviation organization that aims to “put people in touch with the past, and learn about the how the events occurred, and how the events changed aviation history, and hopefully some insight into the pilots who truly ‘pushed the envelope,’” says as a child she was chauffered from her “luxurious 24-room mansion” to private schools. She spent two years at Sarah Lawrence College, traveling to Bermuda for spring break, says the Checksix website. According to another aviation history organization, Lost Aviators of Pearl Harbor, “At an early age, in her young, independent heart, the seeds were sown for a direct passion for aviation. After her family had watched a barnstorming pilot demonstrate aviation in a Jenny, at the age of five, young Cornelia listened to her father make her brothers promise they would never fly. As either a sign of her young age, or more likely, a sign of the times, her father felt no need to evoke such a promise from his daughter.” That website says, “At the age of 15, Cornelia grasped that her junior college had been attended by Amelia Earhart, and Cornelia believed the drab environment of Ogontz Junior College inspired Amelia to free herself of those types of bonds” tying the hands of most females of the time. Having made no pledge to her father, Fort took her first flight in the winter of 1940 but kept her aspirations secret until after her father’s death soon after, say multiple aviation history sources. Her first solo flight came in April 1940, she earned her private pilot’s certificate in June of that year, and by March 1941 she held both a commercial license and an instructor’s rating.
FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR After a brief stint instructing at a flying school in Colorado, Fort was offered a job at Andrew Flying Service in Honolulu, Hawaii. Olen Vance Andrew, operator of the flying school, had the pioneer spirit commonly attributed to early aviators. From a job as a linotype operator, he purchased a used plane at a sheriff’s sale and started barnstorming, says Check-six. “Carrying sightseers for one cent a pound and half a cent more for inter-island flights, he leveraged his earnings, bought more airplanes, and transformed his operation into a flying school,” reports Check-six. Convinced she would be of more use teaching defense workers, soldiers and sailors to fly in Hawaii, Fort left Colorado and was on her way to Hawaii in September 1941. There she launched herself into the task, logging more than 300 hours at the controls of three different types of aircraft, including an Interstate Cadet, registration number 37345, before history came calling, says the Lost Aviators site. It was from the cockpit of the Cadet that she became a witness to history on December 7, 1941.
DECEMBER 7, 1941 Later to be dubbed “a day that will live in infamy” by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, December 7, 1941 began much as had all the other Sundays Fort had spent on the island. She arrived early at the John Rodgers airfield that was home to Andrew Flying Service and went up with a student who was a defense industry worker. With the student in control, Fort realized a fast-moving aircraft was approaching. “At first, that didn’t hit her as abnormal, as military aircraft were a common sight in the skies above Hawaii,” recounts Check-six, “But as the distance narrowed she realized this plane was different and that it had set itself to ram her.” Grabbing the controls, Fort pulled the Interstate Cadet up, avoiding the collision and spotting the red insignia of the Rising Sun on the wing of the attacker. “Thus she became one of the few airborne eyewitnesses to the attack,” says the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Check-six goes further, calling her “the first survivor at Pearl Harbor.” That website goes on to quote Fort recounting the billowing smoke she viewed from the air and the chaos that followed as she landed her plane, dodging bullets. Her pilot’s logbook for the day recorded, “Flight interrupted by Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,” and “another airplane machine-gunned in front of me as I taxied back to the hangar,” says Check-six. The airport manager at the private field was killed and two other civilian planes did not return that morning, says War Birds News.
BACK TO THE MAINLAND By the time Fort was able to get out of Hawaii, she arrived home too late to accept an invitation to fly as part of the British Royal Air Force’s Air Transport Auxiliary, a service delivering planes to military forces. For a few months she took speaking engagements, advocating for women being used more widely to help the war effort and urging the purchase of War Bonds. In September 1942, the aviator was invited to join the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, a predecessor to the Women Airforce Service Pilots. She became the second woman accepted into the service as part of the initial 30 WAFS, says Check-six. Fort’s Army Ferrying Division Group ID card describes her as blonde and blue-eyed, 5 foot 10 and 145 pounds. The then23-year-old is identified as “a civilian pilot employed by the Ferrying Division, Air Transport Command.” According to Check-six, the flying jobs given to WAFS often involved “flying in open-cockpit planes in inclement weather without a radio.” Nevertheless, she and her colleagues flew many successful missions to get planes to the troops.
HER FINAL FLIGHT On March 21, 1943, Fort was flying as part of a six-plane formation from Long Beach, California to Dallas, Texas when the landing gear of another plane, piloted by a man, struck the tip of her wing, says Check-six. That sent Fort’s plane into the ground, killing her. “On what should have been a routine mission across Texas, America lost what surely would have been one of the greatest female aviation pioneers,” observes the Lost Aviators of Pearl Harbor. “Cornelia Fort had both a talent and a passion for aviation that society said women shouldn’t have. She would have been one of the female icons that helped society break those misplaced notions.” According to Find a Grave, Fort is buried back in Nashville, Tennessee. Only two weeks past her 24th birthday when she died, her grave marker says simply, “Killed in the service of her country.” A memorial plaque and an historic interpretive marker near the Texas crash site recounts some of her story. An airfield in her hometown of East Nashville named for her, flooded and now part of a park, holds a marker, says the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, quoting her as saying, “I am grateful that my one talent, flying, was useful to my country.”
TIES TO BOULDER Aviator, history buff and restorer of historic planes Tim Talen pointed the Boulder Monitor to Fort’s story. His business, Ragwood Refactory, operates in Jasper, Oregon and Boulder, Montana, restoring aircraft, including Interstate Cadets matching the plane Fort flew on December 7, 1941. “Normally, this story wouldn’t have any tie at all to Boulder,” Talen reported when he first stopped in at the Monitor office. But he said he had reason to believe there was a connection and came seeking an obituary for Olen V. Andrew, the flying pioneer who gave Fort her job in Honolulu. Although the Monitor archives, rendered incomplete by a fire and misuse, did not include that obituary, the Monitor referred Talen to the Jefferson County Heritage Center. There much more than just an obituary came to light. Thanks to the hard work of the volunteers at the Heritage Center, a photo of Andrew in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1933 after buying his first plane, a bi-plane, was uncovered. The fact that he began flying in 1928 and continued to operate Andrew Flying Service until about 1964 was found. And one more fact rose to the surface: Olen V. Andrew lived until 1992, died at Hillbrook Nursing Home near Clancy, and is buried in the Boulder Cemetery. What has not yet been explained is how Andrew, whose death certificate identifies him as a commercial pilot born in Washington state, came to be buried in Boulder. There is one hint. His brother, Boyd Andrew, apparently made his living as a cook and purchased a Boulder restaurant in the 1960s. But research thus far leaves that question unanswered. Talen, who arrived at the Monitor office with the frame for an aircraft tied to the top of his vehicle, said he wished he had all the story a year ago when he had five Interstate Cadets at the Boulder airport. Many of those planes have been or are being restored after serving for years for the National Park Service.
NO MOVIE…YET The obviously intriguing tale of Cornelia Clark Fort has received lots of attention from aircraft history buffs, but has not been made into a movie. She was portrayed briefly in the movie “Tora! Tora! Tora!” which recounts the attack on Pearl Harbor. The very minor role in the 1970 film was played by a female actor named Jeff Donnell. Perhaps obscuring the significance of Fort’s pioneering nature, the actress in “Tora! Tora! Tora!” was in her late 40s, not the early-20s factual situation for Fort. Chances are, Fort would not mind, though. Check-six says Fort wrote a piece about her transport service published in the July 1943 edition of “Woman’s Home Companion” after her death. “Suddenly and for the first time we felt a part of something larger. Because of our uniforms which we had earned, we were marching with the men, marching with all the freedom-loving people in the world. And then while we were standing at attention a bomber took off followed by four fighters. We knew the bomber was headed across the ocean and that the fighters were going to escort it part of the way,” wrote Fort. She continued, “As they circled over us I could hardly see them for the tears in my eyes. It was a striking symbolism and I think all of us felt it. As long as our planes fly overhead the skies of America are free and that’s what all of us everywhere are fighting for. And that we, in a very small way, are being allowed to help keep that sky free is the most beautiful thing I have ever known.”
