“"1,074 women. 77 types of aircraft. And then they were told to go home."”
In 1942, the U.S. Army Air Forces faced a pilot shortage. Jacqueline Cochran and Nancy Harkness Love proposed an audacious solution: train women to fly military aircraft in the United States, freeing male pilots for combat. The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) was born in two streams—Love’s WAFS ferry squadron and Cochran’s training program—then merged on August 5, 1943, under Cochran’s direction. The only training base was Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas. Over two years, 1,074 women graduated and flew more than 60 million miles. They ferried fighters and bombers, towed targets for gunnery training, tested repaired aircraft, and even flew B-29s to prove the heavy bomber was safe for male crews. Thirty-eight died in service. They were not granted military status, were denied burial honors, and were sent home without veteran benefits when General Hap Arnold inactivated the program on December 20, 1944. It took until 1977 for Congress to recognize them as veterans.
The WASP accident rate was comparable to male pilots in similar duties—a finding that demolished the era’s medical and social preconceptions about women in high-performance aircraft.