WASP Women Pilots: WWII's Fearless Women Aviators

During World War II, more than a thousand American women flew military aircraft for the United States Army — ferrying fighters and bombers from factories to bases, towing targets for gunnery practice, and testing planes fresh off the assembly line. They were called the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP, and they were the first women to fly America’s military aircraft. They were also, astonishingly, not considered members of the military at all. They served as civilians, paid less than their male counterparts, denied military benefits, and when 38 of them died in service, their families received no flag, no military funeral honors, and in some cases no help bringing their bodies home.

It took more than thirty years for the country to correct that record. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed legislation granting the WASP veteran status retroactively. In 2010, they received the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the highest civilian honors Congress can bestow. Today, the WASP are remembered as pioneers who opened the cockpit door for every woman who has flown in the American military since. Their story is one of skill, stubbornness, and a long-delayed thank-you.

Two women, one urgent problem

When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, the Army Air Forces faced a pilot shortage. Every qualified male pilot was needed for combat, but someone still had to move planes around the country: from factories to training bases, from bases to ports, from maintenance depots back to squadrons. Two accomplished aviators saw the same solution. Jacqueline “Jackie” Cochran, a record-setting pilot who had won major air races, proposed training women to fly noncombat missions. Nancy Harkness Love, another experienced pilot, proposed using already-licensed women pilots immediately as ferry pilots.

General Henry “Hap” Arnold, commanding general of the Army Air Forces, approved both ideas in 1942. Love’s group became the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), based at New Castle Army Air Field in Delaware, with 28 experienced women pilots — “the Originals” — under Love’s command. Cochran’s group became the Women’s Flying Training Detachment (WFTD), which trained women with less experience. In August 1943, the two programs merged into a single organization: the Women Airforce Service Pilots, with Cochran as director and Love in charge of ferrying operations. Their training base was Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas.

The training was no easier than the men’s. WASP trainees flew the same syllabus, minus combat instruction: primary trainers like the PT-17 and BT-13, then advanced aircraft including the AT-6. They marched, drilled, and studied navigation, meteorology, and military procedure. Of the more than 25,000 women who applied, about 1,830 were admitted, and 1,074 completed training and earned their wings. The washout rate was brutal, and the women who made it through knew they had earned something rare.

What the WASP actually flew

The popular image of the WASP is the ferry pilot, and ferrying was indeed their largest job. WASP pilots delivered aircraft from factories to air bases across the country, flying everything from small trainers to heavy bombers. In total, they ferried more than 12,000 aircraft and flew some 60 million miles, according to the National WWII Museum’s summary of their service. They eventually flew 77 different types of aircraft, including the P-51 Mustang, the P-38 Lightning, the B-17 Flying Fortress, and the B-24 Liberator.

But ferrying was only part of the work. WASP pilots towed targets behind their planes while male gunners practiced live fire — a job that required steady nerves, since the tow plane flew a predictable course while trainees shot at the sleeve trailing behind it. They flew tracking missions for searchlight crews, tested repaired aircraft, and served as instrument instructors. A few qualified on the B-29 Superfortress, the largest bomber of the war, and flew demonstration flights to persuade skeptical male crews that the big plane was safe to fly. One WASP pilot, Barbara “B.J.” Erickson, became one of the first women to qualify in the P-51 Mustang.

The work was dangerous. Thirty-eight WASP died in service, in crashes caused by mechanical failure, weather, and the ordinary hazards of flying powerful, sometimes experimental aircraft. Because they were classified as civilians, their families were not entitled to military death benefits. In at least one known case, fellow WASP pilots pooled their own money to send a fallen comrade’s body home. It is one of the most shameful footnotes of the program — and one the women themselves rarely complained about at the time, because they were too busy flying.

Disbanded, then forgotten — on purpose

By late 1944, the war was turning in the Allies’ favor, and the pilot shortage had eased. Male pilots returning from combat needed jobs, and Congress declined to militarize the WASP, which would have given them military status and benefits. In December 1944, General Arnold announced that the program would be disbanded by the end of the year. The women were sent home with a certificate of service and, for many, a bus ticket — but no veteran status, no GI Bill education benefits, and no access to veterans’ hospitals.

For decades, the WASP were largely written out of the official story of the war. Their records were sealed, and their contribution was treated as a footnote. The women themselves mostly went on with their lives — raising families, flying commercially where they could, or leaving aviation entirely — but they kept in touch, and they kept the record. In the 1970s, when the Air Force Academy began admitting women, the WASP’s cause found new champions, including Senator Barry Goldwater, who had flown alongside WASP pilots during the war as a ferry pilot himself.

The breakthrough came in 1977, when Congress passed legislation recognizing the WASP as veterans, and President Carter signed it into law. The recognition was retroactive but limited: it granted veteran status and access to some benefits, though it could not give back the decades of lost recognition. Still, for women in their fifties and sixties, it mattered enormously. They were, at last, officially what they had always known themselves to be: veterans.

The Gold Medal and the legacy

The final public honor came on March 10, 2010, when President Barack Obama awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II in a ceremony in Washington, D.C. The WASP were the third group to receive the medal in this lineage — after the Tuskegee Airmen and the Navajo Code Talkers — a grouping that tells its own story about who America was slow to thank. By then, only a few hundred WASP were still alive, and many attended in wheelchairs, wearing their old uniforms or scarves.

Their legacy is visible every time a woman climbs into a military cockpit. Women now fly fighters, bombers, tankers, and transports in every branch of the U.S. military, command squadrons, and serve as generals and admirals. The path from Avenger Field to that present was not straight — it took the end of combat exclusion rules in the 1990s and 2010s to fully open — but the WASP proved the foundational point in 1943: women could fly military aircraft, in all weather, under pressure, as well as anyone.

The National WASP WWII Museum in Sweetwater, Texas, on the site of Avenger Field, preserves their story with aircraft, uniforms, letters, and oral histories. The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, displays a WASP exhibit in its World War II gallery. For readers who want to meet the WASP as individuals rather than as a group, the museum’s oral histories and the Texas Woman’s University WASP archive are the places to start. The women are often funny, blunt, and unimpressed by their own legend — which is exactly what makes their story worth hearing in their own words.

The WASP story has also found a second life in books and film. Katherine Sharp Landdeck’s history of the pilots, published in 2020, drew on interviews and letters to reconstruct daily life at Avenger Field — the heat, the homesickness, the practical jokes, and the fierce pride the women took in their wings. Documentaries and museum exhibits have followed the same path, letting the pilots speak in their own voices rather than through narration alone. That first-person record is the best antidote to myth: the WASP were not saints or symbols, but skilled young women doing a hard job well, in an era that had not yet decided whether to let them.

Frequently asked questions

What does WASP stand for? Women Airforce Service Pilots, the organization formed in August 1943 by merging the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron and the Women’s Flying Training Detachment.

How many women served as WASP? About 1,074 women completed training and served, out of more than 25,000 applicants and about 1,830 admitted.

Did the WASP fly combat missions? No. They flew noncombat missions inside the United States — ferrying aircraft, towing targets, testing planes, and training — which freed male pilots for combat duty.

When were the WASP recognized as veterans? In 1977, when President Jimmy Carter signed legislation granting them retroactive veteran status. They received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010.

How many WASP died in service? Thirty-eight WASP died while serving. Because they were classified as civilians, their families initially received no military death benefits.