A01=Sarah Parry Myers
AAF pilots
American women pilots
Army Air Force pilots
Author_Sarah Parry Myers
Category=JBSF1
Category=NHW
Category=NHWL
Category=NHWR7
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
female barnstormers
female military pilots
female veterans
first American women in military aviation
Henry Hap Arnold
Jackie Cochran
Jacqueline Cochran
Nancy Love
pilot culture
Sweetwater
Texas
U.S. air force culture
veteran's benefits
veteran's status
WAFS
WASP
WFTD
Women Airforce Service Pilots
women in the Civilian Pilot Training Program
Women pilots in World War II
women veterans
Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron
Women's Flying Training Detachment
World War II aviation
Product details
- ISBN 9781469675039
- Weight: 272g
- Dimensions: 155 x 232mm
- Publication Date: 19 Sep 2023
- Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Established by the Army Air Force in 1943, the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program opened to civilian women with a pilot's license who could afford to pay for their own transportation, training, and uniforms. Despite their highly developed skill set, rigorous training, and often dangerous work, the women of WASP were not granted military status until 1977, denied over three decades of Army Air Force benefits as well as the honor and respect given to male and female World War II veterans of other branches. Sarah Parry Myers not only offers a history of this short-lived program but considers its long-term consequences for the women who participated and subsequent generations of servicewomen and activists.
Myers shows us how those in the WASP program bonded through their training, living together in barracks, sharing the dangers of risky flights, and struggling to be recognized as military personnel, and the friendships they forged lasted well after the Army Air Force dissolved the program. Despite the WASP program's short duration, its fliers formed activist networks and spent the next thirty years lobbying for recognition as veterans. Their efforts were finally recognized when President Jimmy Carter signed a bill into law granting WASP participants retroactive veteran status, entitling them to military benefits and burials.
Myers shows us how those in the WASP program bonded through their training, living together in barracks, sharing the dangers of risky flights, and struggling to be recognized as military personnel, and the friendships they forged lasted well after the Army Air Force dissolved the program. Despite the WASP program's short duration, its fliers formed activist networks and spent the next thirty years lobbying for recognition as veterans. Their efforts were finally recognized when President Jimmy Carter signed a bill into law granting WASP participants retroactive veteran status, entitling them to military benefits and burials.
Sarah Parry Myers is assistant professor of history at Messiah University.
