For decades, they’ve questioned where she has gone.

Archeologists, divers, sonar technicians and volunteers on search vessels have searched for over 75 years to find Tommy Tompkins, the only missing member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II.

A well-trained fighter plane pilot, Tommy Tompkins Silver took off one day and it was four days before anyone realized she was missing. About the only place you’ll find her is on missing person and mystery websites.

HER EARLY YEARS

It was autumn when Gertrude “Tommy” Vreeland Tompkins (Silver) entered the world to join her two sisters, Margret Vreeland Tompkins Wade and Grace Elizabeth Embler Tompkins Whittall. The three girls lived in Jersey City, NJ with their mother, Laura Towar Tompkins,[i] and father, Vreeland Tompkins, and a household maid from Poland named Anna Wiezek.

Gertrude’s father, Vreeland, was a chemist, with a degree from Rutgers University. He worked for Standard Oil Company. Then in 1895, he founded the Smooth-On Manufacturing Company where Gertrude’s grandfather served as President and Vreeland as head chemist. Vreeland invented the product Smooth-On, an iron cement compound. Interesting, Vreeland’s company, founded in 1895, still exists in 2020 as of this writing and Smooth-On, Inc. is “a leading manufacturer of silicone rubbers, polyurethane rubbers and plastics, rigid and flexible urethane foams, epoxies, polysulfide rubbers, adhesives, coatings, release agents and other material technologies.”[ii] Vreeland was also a founding member of the College of Pharmacy at Rutgers University.[iii]

When Gertrude was eight years old, Vreeland was working as a chemist at Smooth-On. The oldest sister, Margret, was attending private school. The neighbors on their street were bankers, brokers, lawyers and managers. Most homes seem to have live-in help and the children are listed as attending private schools in the 1920 census.

HER LIFE BEFORE MILITARY

By 1930, Gertrude is a teenager, 17, with brown eyes and brown hair.[iv] Her oldest sister, Margaret, is no longer living at home. By this time, Margaret had attended and graduated from Vassar College then married a banker.[v] Gertrude and her other sister, Elizabeth, along with their mother and father, have moved to Summit, New Jersey, about 30 minutes from Jersey City. Elizabeth is attending Wellesley College where she graduates that year.[vi] The household has two servants, both from Ireland, living in the home. One is listed as the household cook and the other as a waitress. Vreeland is now listed in the census as a manufacturer of cement.

According to a memorial biography of her older sister Margret, Gertrude studied horticulture, farmed goats and travel the world.[vii]

Gertrude had a stuttering problem and in turn some social withdrawal and performed poorly in school. Therefore, she was teased often. According to biographer James W. Ure’s book, The Life and Disappearance of World War II Pilot Gertrude Tompkins, her life was marked by her mother’s depression and her father’s relentless search for a cure for her stuttering which included many bizarre treatments.[viii] At one point, she was sent to a psychiatrist to cure her stutter.[ix] Ure spent 16 years researching Tompkins’ life for his book.[x]

Her family sent her to live on a farm in West Virginia during some of her adolescence in hopes that it might help her overcome these issues. This is where she was able to study horticulture and raise goats.[xi] She graduated from Kent Place, a private girls’ school in Summit, New Jersey. Despite her time in the country and schooling, her stuttering continued.[xii]

After these experiences, she went to work with her father at Smooth-On. Sometime after that, in the 1930s, she lived in New York City. [xiii] She graduated from the New York Preparatory School and from the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women.[xiv] The horticulture school is in Ambler, Pennsylvania just north of Philadelphia.

During the following decade, when she wasn’t working with her father, she traveled to fulfill her desire to see all of the gardens and farms of the world. She went to England, Italy, Spain and France. During the winter of 1935 to 1936 she traveled to New Zealand and Australia where it is recalled that she tried to convince Australian officials to raise goats instead of cattle as they were better for the environment, according to the William Miller blog.[xv] Mr. Miller is the author of “To Live and Die a Wasp: 38 Women Pilots Who Die in WWII.”

When she was 20, Gertrude and her sister, Elizabeth, made a voyage to aboard the Britannic arriving in New York on November 13, 1932, getting home in time for Thanksgiving. The ship, which left from Liverpool, was just about two years old, decorated in 1920s style and considered the penultimate in travel.[xvi]

Just prior to the war years, according to the 1940 census, only Gertrude is left at home. She is 28 and living with just her mother and father. Her father is running Smooth-On. The family also has a summer home in Bridgehampton[xvii] on Long Island, New York. Her sister Elizabeth is married and living in Southern Pines, North Carolina and her sister Margaret and husband are living in Olean, New York.[xviii]

Around this time, Gertrude fell in love with an American aviator (name unknown) who was killed in WWII, according to From Whispers to Roars, in their look at her unsolved missing person’s case.[xix] They report that her family believed she developed an interest in flight from him.[xx] Her sister, Elizabeth, told a reporter that Gertrude fell in love with a pilot teaching her to fly.[xxi] Other reports say he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force before the United States entered the war.[xxii]

“She couldn’t stop crying so she focused on learning to fly,” her sister said of Gertrude’s boyfriend’s death.

She learned to fly at an early age.[xxiii] Each woman entering the WASPs carried a civil flying license and at least 200 hours of flight time.[xxiv]

Whatever the story was, one thing that was true that “She didn’t stutter when she was in a plane or the whole time she was in the WASPs,” according to her sister in the William Miller blog.[xxv] WASPs and others who knew her recall she was a pretty, dignified woman who would reveal her sense of humor once she got to know you. She was known as a woman who kept her word.[xxvi]

HER MILITARY STORY

By this time, she is affectionately called “Tommy.”[xxvii] She began her training as a Woman Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas in June of 1943. Her flight group, 43-W-7, graduated on November 13, 1943 after being heralded with a speech by Mrs. Barton K Yount, wife of Lieutenant General Barton K. Yount, Commanding General AAF Training Command and with music by the Big Springs Bombardier School Band.[xxviii] Her class included 101 trainees and 59 graduates.[xxix] Tommy then attended Pursuit Training and graduated in 1944 in Brownsville, Texas.

Assigned to the 601st Squadron, 555th Air Transport Command,[xxx] she was stationed then at Love Field in Dallas, Texas with the 3rd Ferrying Group.[xxxi]

Shortly after her graduation, on December 1, 1943, her parents announced her engagement in The New York Times to Henry “Hank” Mann Silver 2nd, a U.S. Army Staff Sergeant from New York[xxxii] who was stationed in Newport, Rhode Island[xxxiii]. He was a graduate of Phillips Andover Academy and Yale University. Before the war, he worked for Columbia University Press. She had known him several years. Hank was in the process of adopting his sister’s orphaned daughter.[xxxiv] He is sometimes referred to as a Hollywood producer.

During her engagement period, Tommy continued with her duties. During her time with the WASPs, she flew every type of plane produced for the Army.[xxxv] In fact, she had a reputation for being able to handle some of the Army’s fastest aircraft.[xxxvi]

Ten months after their engagement, September 21, 1944, dressed in their military uniforms,[xxxvii] Tommy married Hank at the family summer home in Bridgehampton with a license from Manhattan, New York.[xxxviii] He had been married once before, in 1930 at age 22, to Rhoda Mitchell Satterthwaite.[xxxix]

She returned to her WASP duty two days after the wedding. Back on duty, she never saw Hank again.

HER LAST DAY - October 26, 1944

It was a Thursday when Tommy turned out with 40 other WASPs for a briefing. They were given instructions on ferrying new P512 from the North American Aviation factory in Mines Field at Los Angeles Municipal Airport in Inglewood California to Coolidge Field in Arizona.[xl] By this time, she had flown a total of 753.40 hours.[xli]

The P-51D was the predominant version of the WWII fighter by North American Aviation. It was a single-engine, single-seat fighter designed for the Royal Air Force. It contained a version of the Rolls-Royce Merlin 63 and 66 engines built under license by the Packard Motor Car Company. It could climb to 20,000 feet in 6.4 minutes, according to This Day in Aviation.[xlii]

She took off in a P-51 Mustang S/N 44-15669 at 3:42 in the afternoon but during taxi, she pulled to one side of the runway to have the cockpit repaired. It seems that the canopy would not lock.[xliii]At this point, the new plane had three hours of flight time accrued.[xliv] After that delay, she took off into the wind and into a fog bank[xlv] at approximately 4:00 p.m. with temperatures in the 60s,[xlvi] under a light haze with some fog reported over Santa Monica Bay. She was to ferry the plane to Palm Springs, California[xlvii] then on to Newark, New Jersey. Eventually the plane would be shipped to England.[xlviii] During those days, WASPS were required to make stops at night.[xlix]

She was never seen again.[l]

Due to a series of errors, it was four days later,[li] October 30, 1944, before her home station at Love Field in Texas reported her missing. All other members of her squad had landed in New Jersey. This is how it was four days after take-off before anyone realized she was missing.[lii]

On November 1, 1944, her husband and parents were notified she was missing.[liii]

A massive search, from Santa Monica Bay to Arizona,[liv] was launched. Groups from the Air Force, Coast Guard and Civil Air Patrol,[lv] including a boat with her husband, Hank, onboard,[lvi] searched but no trace of Tommy Tompkins or her plane were ever found. Some 165 aircraft were used and 1,067 hours of flight time were put into the search.[lvii] Even today, searches continue. [lviii]

Her flight records were lost and there is no recorded time for her takeoff. The tower and air traffic controllers had no copies of her flight plan for the day.[lix]

In November of 1944, Gertrude “Tommy” Vreeland Tompkins Silver was classified as missing and presumed dead.[lx]

On June 8, 1994, fifty-years after her disappearance, the headquarters for Air Force Safety Agency conducted a search and reported no wreckage of this accident was located.[lxi]

In October of 2009, a team named UB88.ORG, working with Aircraftwrecks.com and the Missing Aircraft Search Team (Mast) and members of Tommy’s family was formed. The team began another search for the wreckage some 65 years after Tommy went missing. The team included archeologists, divers, sonar technicians and volunteers. Teams of divers explored the sea floor at places where the sonar detected something. Among those on board in the 2009 search was Laura Whittall-Scherfee, niece of Tompkins, according to an ABC news report.[lxii] The same team of searchers found a missing Air Force jet from 1955 earlier in the year.[lxiii]

Because the plane was aluminum, they didn’t expect to find a whole plane. Instead, they hoped to find some steel parts, plexiglass, machine guns and tires.[lxiv] They hit 55 promising sites without success.[lxv] Besides the Airforce plane, the team found two sunken boats but did not find Tommy’s plane.[lxvi]

A fascinating mystery, many theories abound as to Gertrude’s location from those that thought she staged her own disappearance to thoughts that she crashed in the mountains near Palm Springs to those that claimed, without evidence, they found her aircraft. One false report even claimed to find a skeleton wearing a wedding ring.[lxvii] It may have been pilot disorientation. It could have been that faulty canopy. There could have been an engine issue.

An airplane archaeologist, G. Patric Macha, believes her aircraft may have crashed in the shallow water of Santa Monica Bay and is buried underneath layers of sand.[lxviii] One theory about the crash is that the plane stalled because the P-51 has a reputation for stalling at low altitude when the nose was pulled up too quick.[lxix] According to author Ure in a Chicago Review Press interview, “There is still a chance she is in the mountains or deserts between Los Angeles and Yuma, Arizona.”[lxx] In 2005, a man named Frank Jacobs came forward and said he witnessed her crash into the bay as a boy. He said at the time no one believed him. No other witnesses came forth.[lxxi]

The search continues.

Tommy was 32 years old and she had been married 36 days.

Her husband, Hank, lived to be 61 years old. He never married again.[lxxii]

COMMENDATIONS

Congressional Gold Medal[lxxiii]

Purple Heart

United States Aviator Badge

World War II Victory Medal

American Campaign Medal

Army Presidential Unit Citation

Army Good Conduct Medal[lxxiv]

MEMORIALS

A memorial plaque was dedicated in memory of Gertrude Vreeland Tompkins Silver on Veterans Day, 2008. “She soars with the Eagles.”[lxxv]

2014: A Veteran’s Day Memorial Ceremony was held in honor of WASP Gertrude Tompkins Silver and can be viewed on YouTube.

A Memorial Service was held at the Air Force Memorial prior to the Congressional Medal ceremony. A rose was given to each of the families of the 38 WASPs that died. A missing man formation, with the jet peeling away straight up the middle of the arches made for a moving tribute, according to a letter from Gertrude’s niece, Laura Whittall, who attended on her behalf.[lxxvi]

_Without a doubt, as Pat Dillon said, “…women can — and did — do anything as well as the men in the effort to save the world.” That comment is certainly true of the WASPs. _

_~ Laura Whittall, Gertrude Vreeland Tompkins Silver’s _niece[lxxvii]

ABOUT THIS STORY

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen here on Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smart phone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.