This Incredible Pilot: Dora Dougherty-Strother

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tibbets was nearing the end of his rope. The pilots were refusing to fly the B-29 Superfortress. It wasn’t a perfect plane, by any means, but it was the future of World War II. Tibbets just needed to convince his pilots of that. Luckily for him, he had a solution.

Two, actually, and their names were Dora Dougherty and Dorothea Moorman. 

Dougherty was born in 1927 in Minnesota. Her family moved around a bit, from the Land of 10,000 Lakes to New York and back to Chicago. She graduated from high school in 1939 and began attending the all-women’s Cottey College in Nevada, Missouri. While there, Dougherty joined the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP), where she would receive her pilot’s certificate.

Dougherty would put her college education on hold to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) in 1943. Out of 25,000 applicants, she would be one of only 1,857 pilots accepted. 

Like her fellow trainees, Dougherty would attend WASP training at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas. Courses included training in airplanes like the PT-17 and AT-6, with an emphasis on cross-country flying and instrument training. Multiengine training was completed in the UC-78 Bobcat, better known by the moniker “Bamboo Bomber.” 

Following Dougherty’s successful graduation, she initially towed targets for anti-aircraft gunnery practice. 

In 1944, Tibbets selected Dougherty and Moorman to learn to fly the B-29. 

It was Dougherty’s first four-engine plane, but she completed training in only three days. 

While it was the opportunity of a lifetime for Dougherty, the plan was a bit underhanded. Tibbets, in essence, used the women pilots’ obvious skill in the B-29 to shame the men into flying it. 

The plan worked. Dougherty would receive a letter in 1995 from retired Air Force colonel Harry McKeown. 

“You came to show us that the B-29 plane was not one to be feared,” it read. 

You were the pilot that day and demonstrated your excellent flying skills and convinced us the B-29 was the plane that any pilot could be proud to fly. From that day on we never had a pilot who didn’t want to fly the B-29.” 

The program ended after just a few days, however. Air Staff Major General Barney Stiles told Tibbets that the women were “putting the big football players to shame.” Dougherty was sent back to Eglin Field and never flew a B-29 again. She would end her career as a WASP with time in 23 different aircraft. 

Following the end of the WASPs and the war, Dougherty resumed her education, earning a master’s degree in applied psychology and a doctorate in aviation education from New York University. She put that education to good use, working as a human factors engineer for Bell Helicopters, designing pilot interfaces and cockpits. 

Dougherty would also become the sixth woman in the U.S. to receive her ATP certificate and the 27th woman to receive a commercial helicopter rating. In a mere 34 hours of rotor-wing flight time, she set two world records—distance and altitude. 

Even following her retirement in 1986, Dougherty remained a valuable technical consultant for Bell. 

Dougherty would serve as a founding member of the Human Factors Society of America, a fellow in the American Psychological Association, a member of the American Helicopter Society, and member of the U.S. Army Science Board. Following the death of her first husband, Dougherty would marry McKeown in 2002—the same pilot she had helped convince to fly the B-29 all those years ago. 

Dougherty died in 2013 in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the age of 91. Because the WASPs had finally received military honors, she was able to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.