It was very sweet revenge on Ken Knowland for working the con game in which Barbara bought the desert property. She just wished she could see his face when he read about it in the Bakersfield newspaper.
What made it particularly sweet was something she learned just hours before the deal was finalized. The previous owner of the Hat Farm had been none other than Kenneth Knowland himself.
The fact had been kept from her original purchasing contract through his mediation with his broker.
Now Knowland was in financial trouble. His airport was not doing well since hers had drained off most of his business including his US Mail contract. The military was not interested in his property because it was too close to an urban community. Barbara's airport and the Hat Farm were far enough away in the open desert so a new airport could be built that could accommodate faster new planes on the drawing boards. Rumors even hinted that some day planes equipped with jet engines might become a reality there.
Barbara also reflected on how she came to be aboard the B-24. Hap Arnold had worked it out with skeptics in high places in Washington that Jackie Cochran should take a dozen or more fellow female pilots with her and go to London. They would check out how British women fliers were making their Air Transport Auxiliary so helpful to their country's war effort. Jackie was to learn their work and organizational issues with ATA officials and hold the rank of flight captain. She would conduct her work with the help of the US Eighth Air Force which was just getting set up in London.
Soon as Jackie had gotten the green light for the assignment, she called Barbara and invited her to be part of the volunteer baker's dozen plus two, to go on a "vacation" to London.
There had been only one hitch in Jackie being approved to become the first woman to ferry a bomber from America to England. Male ferry pilots agreed that she could fly the plane across the Atlantic, but only if one of them was at the controls for both takeoff and landing.
Approaching the landing field at Prestwick near London, Jackie reluctantly gave over the controls to a male counterpart and sat next to Barbara in the plane's bomb-bay.
"I may have been a little facetious about calling our mission a 'vacation,'" Jackie said. "German bombs have been dropping on London and other British cities for almost a month now. When we get there, remember it isn't Springtime in Mayfair or the Ascot Horse Races. London's a war zone."