The Mayo aviator who trained World War Two pilots
by Tom Gillespie
A trailblazing Mayo emigrant had the distinction of being the first woman to be recruited to train American fighter pilots during the Second World War.
Aviator Nancy Corrigan was born in Owenduff in Achill on June 21, 1912, the youngest of four daughters.
Her father was a railway worker on the Westport to Achill line. He was killed in a tragic accident and left his wife, Maggie Corrigan, near destitute, forcing each of his daughters to emigrate to the United States.
Nancy emigrated in 1929 at the age of 17 and sailed from Cork to New Jersey and went on to Cleveland, Ohio - a city that has welcomed hundreds of Achill emigrants over the years.
During her time in Cleveland, Nancy decided to take up flying. It was 1932 and flying was very uncommon for women and in addition it was very expensive.
She was earning about $10 a week as a nanny and the cost of a pilot's licence was about $700 so she had to take up modelling to subsidise her hobby.
She left her job as a nursemaid after three years and obtained employment with the John Powers modelling agency in New York. The agency was one of the largest in the US, and the women on its books were known as ‘Powers Girls’.
She worked for the Powers modelling agency for about 10 years, principally as a hand modeller.
Corrigan, according to Wikipedia, qualified as a pilot after less that five hours flying, which was almost unthinkably rapid but such was her budget that she had to, since she couldn't afford many more hours of training. Her story created such an impact that it was reported on in the Cleveland newspapers.
When the US joined World War II her skills were sought after and she took on the role of trainer to fighter pilots and air cadets in Spartan College, Tulsa, Oklahoma. She also taught at Stephen’s College in Columbia, Missouri.
After the conclusion of the war she became only the second woman to earn a commercial pilot's licence in the US.
Over the decades that followed she logged 600,000 miles piloting commercial jets.
During her six years as head of St. Stephen's College, she supervised 600 women on their flight programme who graduated without a single failed test.
She became one of only two women with a multi-engine, commercial-rating pilot's licence in the 1950s.
She retired to Sarasota, Florida, and died of a heart attack in 1983 aged 70 or 71.
Corrigan's life was celebrated with a TV documentary - Nancy Corrigan: Spéirbhean Acla, ‘Sky-Woman of Achill’, first televised on TG4 in January 2015.
"Throughout the course of her career, Nancy obtained virtually every aviation certificate known at the time," outlined Eimear Healy, producer at the Crossmolina production company Gillian Marsh TV, the makers of the TG4 documentary.
"This is a real feel-good story, full of woman’s heart, about a girl who emigrated from poverty in Achill in 1929 and who wasn’t content to be a maid for the rest of her life."
Where her drive and persistence came from, no one knows, and it is family speculation that the landing of Alcock and Brown in Connemara in June 1919, after the first non-stop transatlantic flight from St. John’s, Newfoundland, might have triggered her flying ambition.
For the Kendal Air Show in 1948, and with a record of 5,000 hours in 16 years, Nancy desperately wanted to compete, but the price of putting a plane in the air was beyond her.
She ploughed all her savings into purchasing an AT6 trainer twin-engineering aircraft for the event.
So many successful Corrigans in Cleveland - lawyers, doctors and officials - clubbed together to help with the purchase, that she painted ‘Corrigan’s' on the fuselage of the plane.
Witnesses to the race testify that Nancy was leading when a reckless competitor swooped from above in a move that would have resulted in a mid-air collision and the death of both pilots. Nancy swerved to avoid a crash and finished third.
As one of the racers climbed from the cockpit, the on-course commentator quipped: "Don't lose your handbag!"
"It was a test of skill, aircraft management and bravery - and very dangerous," according to a man who had been instructed by Nancy and who at the age of 85 was still flying.
"She was a natural instructor and patient and one of only two women at the time who managed to break into the commercial corporate field," he recalled.
Nancy took particular inspiration from two Irish female high-flyers - Mary Bailey and Mary Heath - who had already made world headlines by the time she took her first lessons.
Although the Irish Free State had recently come into being, Monaghan's Mary Bailey was inevitably claimed as ‘one of our great British aviatrixes’ by the neighbouring island, which sealed the deal by making her a Dame of the British Empire.
Within months of getting her pilot's licence in 1927, Bailey became the first woman to fly across the Irish Sea and she set a new world altitude record. She followed up with an 18,000-mile distance record.
From Knockaderry in Limerick, Mary Heath's superstardom was cut tragically short. As an aviatrix, she made world headlines in 1928 as the first pilot of either sex to fly from Cape Town at the tip of South Africa to London in an open cockpit plane.
Married to a Lord, she had the world at her feet before she attended the National Air Races in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1929.
Unfortunately, Mary Heath crashed her plane shortly before the competition, which left her with horrific career-ending injuries.
She eventually returned to Ireland with her third husband, setting up a private airline where many of the first Aer Lingus pilots would earn their wings.
The money ran out and the woman who had soared to the highest heights died penniless in a hapless tumble from a London tram in 1939.