The Women
Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), was a non-military
organization in WWII, which throughout its existence,
Congress maintained was an experiment. Politics ended
the experiment suddenly and with little notice, but that
did not detract from their work or their remarkable
determination to fly. Twenty-five thousand women applied
to the program. Almost two thousand qualified and
entered training. Successful graduates tested and
ferried military aircraft and completed other piloting
jobs to free up men for active service.
They
transported every make of airplane in the American
armament, which included training, pursuit, and
transport planes, along with fighters, and bombers. Some
WASP received orders to fly planes that males had
refused to fly, such as the B-26 Martin Marauder, also
known as the 'Widow Maker'. The hope was to shame the
men into flying them. Although the ploy successfully
made men feel 'if a woman can do it, anyone can',
eventually even the Army recognized how degrading that
attitude was to the women pilots.
After their training, the WASP lived and worked
at one hundred and twenty bases around the country. They
wore uniforms that followed strict military code and
took orders as if they served in the armed forces. They
didn't. They had no life or accident insurance, no death
benefits and could not be buried in a military cemetery
or receive a burial with flags and honors. WASP could
achieve no rank of significance outside their
organization, nor could they give orders to men. Federal
law prohibited women from flying military planes into
combat or outside the boundaries of the United States,
still, thirty-eight WASP died serving their country.
After the WASP 'experiment' ended, the Pentagon ordered
their files sealed. For over thirty years, no one
talked, wrote, or learned about the pilots and few were
interested in the women who literally kept 'the home
fires burning' while they worked in defense plants and
shipyards.
On July 1, 2009,
President Obama signed S.614. The bill was a bipartisan
effort led by Texas Republican Senator Kay Bailey
Hutchison, and Maryland Democrat Senator Barbara
Mikulski. It awards the Congressional Gold Medal, the
nation's highest civilian honor, to the WASP (Women
Airforce Service Pilots) from World War II.
