Unsung heroes of World War II finally get their due (CNN) {WASPs}

[eppur_se_muova]

By Kevin Bohn
CNN Senior Producer


WASHINGTON (CNN) --
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"I asked an instructor 'Why can't I learn to fly,' and he didn't have an answer...so I decided to find out for myself."

She found an instructor and started taking lessons.

These two women were not only fulfilling a personal dream. Along with 1,100 other women, they would become an instrumental part of the war effort during World War II, becoming the first women to fly U.S. military aircraft.

The Women's Airforce Service Pilots was born in 1942 to create a corps of female pilots able to fill all types of flying jobs at home to free male military pilots to travel to the front.

In the days after the outbreak of the war, Jacqueline Cochran, one of the country's leading female pilots at the time, went to a key general to argue that women would be just as capable pilots as men if they were given the same training.



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more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/22/woman.pilots/index.html

http://www.inbaseline.com/project.aspx?project_id=65950 (If anyone knows a better link to info on this documentary, please post!)

[lapfog_1]

1. One of my proudest moments...

When I worked for NASA in the 1990s, we had a large collection of supercomputers (systems that had a price tag each in the millions). Each computer was named for either a test pilot or for a giant in the mathematics of Computational Fluid Dynamics (examples... Navier, Stokes, Reynolds, Prandtl... test pilots Chuck (yeager), Scott (Carpenter), Amelia (Earhert), etc).

When I got to name one of the systems (by reason of my longevity with the program and position in the organization), I picked "Pancho" (as in Pancho Barnes). A hero of mine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancho_Barnes



I mean, anybody that names their bar for flyboys (and flygirls) the "Happy Bottom Riding Club" is just simply the best!