Women Airforce Service Pilots
The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) and its predecessor groups the Women's Flying Training Detachment (WFTD) and the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) (from September 10, 1942) were pioneering organizations of civilian female pilots employed to fly military aircraft under the direction of the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. The WFTD and WAFS were combined on August 5, 1943, to create the paramilitary WASP organization. The female pilots of the WASP would end up numbering 1,074, each freeing a male pilot for combat service and duties. The WASP flew over 60 million miles in all, in every type of military aircraft.[1] WASPs were granted veteran status in 1977, and given the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.[2]
Twenty-five thousand women applied to join the WASP, but only 1,830 were accepted and took the oath, and out of those only 1,074 women passed the training and joined.[1][3]
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By the summer of 1941, the famous women pilots Jacqueline "Jackie" Cochran and test-pilot Nancy Harkness Love independently submitted proposals for the use of female pilots in non-combat missions to the US Army Air Forces (USAAF, the predecessor to the United States Air Force or USAF) after the outbreak of World War II in Europe.[4] The motivation was to free male pilots for combat roles by employing qualified female pilots on missions such as ferrying aircraft from factories to military bases, and towing drones and aerial targets. Leading into Pearl Harbor, General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, commander of the USAAF, had turned down both Love's 1940 proposal and the proposal of the better connected and more famous Cochran despite unsubtle lobbying by Eleanor Roosevelt, but essentially promised command of any such effort to Cochran, should such a force be needed in the future.
While the U.S. was not yet fighting in the war, Cochran had gone to England to volunteer to fly for the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA).[5] The ATA had been using female pilots since January 1940 and was starting to train new ones as well. The American women who flew in the ATA were the first American women to fly military aircraft.[5] They flew the Royal Air Force's front-line aircraft—Spitfires, Typhoons, Hudsons, Mitchells, Blenheims, Oxfords, Walruses, and Sea Otters—in a non-combat role, but in combat-like conditions. Most of these women served the war in the ATA. In fact, only three members of the ATA returned to the U.S. to participate in the WASP program.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_Airforce_Service_Pilots
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If those were Federal Dollars used, I want my money back.
