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WASP: Women Airforce Service Pilots Training 1943; from Army-Navy Screen Magazine No. 16
🕑 Added 2020-03-07 21:52:09 +0000 UTCmore at http://quickfound.net/
'Women Air Service Pilots (WASPs) train in Link trainers, attend classes, drill, fly, receive wings from Jacqueline Cochran, and report to the Air Transport Command...'
Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_Airforce_Service_Pilots
Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) (also Women's Army Service Pilots or Women's Auxiliary Service Pilots) was a civilian women pilots' organization, whose members were United States federal civil service employees. Members of WASP became trained pilots who tested aircraft, ferried aircraft and trained other pilots. Their purpose was to free male pilots for combat roles during World War II. Despite various members of the armed forces being involved in the creation of the program, the WASP and its members had no military standing.
WASP was preceded by the Women's Flying Training Detachment (WFTD) and the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS). Both were organized separately in September 1942. They were pioneering organizations of civilian women pilots, who were attached to the United States Army Air Forces to fly military aircraft during World War II. On August 5, 1943, the WFTD and WAFS merged to create the WASP organization.
The WASP arrangement with the US Army Air Forces ended on December 20, 1944. During its period of operation, each member's service had freed a male pilot for military combat or other duties. They flew over 60 million miles; transported every type of military aircraft; towed targets for live anti-aircraft gun practice; simulated strafing missions and transported cargo. Thirty-eight WASP members lost their lives and one disappeared while on a ferry mission, her fate still unknown as of 2019. In 1977, for their World War II service, the members were granted veteran status, and in 2009 awarded the Congressional Gold Medal...
The WASP training spanned 19 groups of women. The first group was the Originals, who were the first group of the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), led by Nancy Love.
The second group was The Guinea Pigs which were Jacqueline Cochran's first class of women pilots for the Women's Flying Training Detachment (WFTD). The Guinea Pigs started training at the Houston Municipal Airport (now William P. Hobby Airport) on November 16, 1942, as part of the 319th Army Air Force Women's Flying Training Detachment (AAFWFTD). This was just after the WAFS had started their orientation in Wilmington, Delaware. Unlike the WAFS, the women that reported to Houston did not have uniforms and had to find their own lodging. The "Woofteddies" (WFTD) also had minimal medical care, no life insurance, crash truck, or fire truck, and the ambulance was loaned from the Ellington Army Airfield, along with insufficient administrative staff, and a hodgepodge of aircraft—23 types—for training. As late as January 1943, when the third class was about to start their training, the three classes were described by Byrd Granger in On Final Approach, as "a raggle-taggle crowd in a rainbow of rumpled clothing", while they gathered for morning and evening colors. There was also a lack of equipment, such as a Link trainer, that was necessary for training.
The first Houston class started with 38 women with a minimum of 200 hours. Twenty-three graduated on April 24, 1943, at the only Houston WASP graduation at Ellington Army Air Field. The second Houston class, started in December 1942 with a minimum of 100 hours, but finished their training just in time to move to Sweetwater, Texas and become the first graduating class from Avenger Field on May 28, 1943. The third class completed their advanced training at Avenger Field and graduated July 3, 1943. Half of the fourth class of 76 women started their primary training in Houston on February 15, 1943, and then transferred to Sweetwater. Later in the summer of 1943, both the WAFS and WFTD were combined into the WASP. The first group to train as WASP started in Sweetwater on September 1943 and were designated as Class 44-W-2.
Each WASP had a pilot's license, but was retrained to fly the Army way by the U.S. Army Air Forces at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas. More than 25,000 women applied for the WASP, but only 1,830 were accepted into the program...
