In "The Tibbets Story", Gen. Tibbets tells of his many flights in C-54s while preparing for the 509th's missions:
"Piloting many of these flights, in the C-54s attached to our unit, were two of the most competent multi-engine pilots I ever hope to meet. Their names were Dora Dougherty and Helen Gosnell. I liked to assign them to the shuttle flights and other missions because they were more dependable than the men. By that I mean that they always returned from a mission when they were supposed to. It was a well known trick among male pilots, and one that was often winked at by their superiors, to find something mechanically wrong with their airplanes during a trip to a base that happened to be located near a city which had interesting sights to see and an exciting nightlife to enjoy. The probability of a "malfunction" increased in almost exact proportion to the number of bars, nightclubs, and available females that a city was known to have. Crewmen have even been known to disable an airplane in some minor way as an excuse to stay overnight, or a weekend. With Dora or Helen in command of an airplane, I didn't have that problem"