Monday, May 26, 2014

Women with Wings (Forget any nonsense about “angels”—these women were tough)



By now, everyone has heard of Amelia Earhart, of course. But I doubt that many of you have heard of the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) of World War II.

During World War II, women began to enter previously all-male jobs, out of necessity, to free up men for combat. Legendary flyer Jackie Cochran envisioned a corps of women pilots who would ferry new planes to the air bases of England and the Pacific, freeing up more men for combat flight duty.

Cochran petitioned General “Hap” Arnold, the head of the Army Air Force, but Arnold was not convinced that “a slip of a young girl could fight the controls of a B-17."  But women pilots can be as determined as men, and Cochran enlisted the aid of none other than Eleanor Roosevelt.

Finally, Arnold was persuaded, and the WASPs were hatched. When the announcement was made, asking for volunteers, more than TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND women applied, and eventually about a thousand were accepted. These women pilots served with great distinction in the war, with thirty-eight of them making the ultimate sacrifice.



On December 7, 1944, in a speech to the last graduating class of WASPs, General Arnold said, “You and more than 900 of your sisters have shown you can fly wingtip to wingtip with your brothers. I salute you . . . We of the Army Air Force are proud of you. We will never forget our debt to you.”

Despite these high-sounding words, the WASPS were treated VERY differently from male pilots; they were given no benefits, they had to pay for their own training, they even had to pay for their own way home after the war!

The WASP records were sealed after the war, stamped “classified” or “secret,” and were not available to the public until 1980. So much for “we will never forget!”

In fact, it wasn’t until 2009 that Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, along with Congresswomen Susan Davis of California and Ilena Ros-Lehtinen of Florida introduced a bill to award the Congressional Gold Medal to all WWII WASP pilots. (This medal is the highest and most distinguished award Congress can award to a civilian.)

The award ceremony took place on March 11, 2010. These brave women finally got the recognition they deserved.

And it took the government a mere 65 years to do it.

There is still no word on whether the WASP pilots will be reimbursed for their travel expenses.


No comments:

Post a Comment