The Garden of Learning

Geography

The WASP ferry pilots of WWII served which country?

  • The United States
  • Britain
  • The Soviet Union

The answer is The United States. The USA — the Women Airforce Service Pilots.

The United States. The Women Airforce Service Pilots flew military aircraft inside the country so that men could be released for combat - ferrying new planes from factories to airfields, testing repaired ones, and towing targets while gunners on the ground fired live ammunition at the sleeve behind them.

About 1,100 flew, out of 25,000 applicants, and they flew everything the Army had including the B-29. Thirty-eight died. They were civilians, technically, which meant no military benefits and no flag on the coffin - when one was killed, the other women collected money among themselves to send the body home. The programme was disbanded in December 1944 and they paid their own way back.

It took until 1977 for Congress to grant them veteran status, and until 2010 for the Congressional Gold Medal. Their records had been sealed and classified for over thirty years, so for most of that period the history was not merely neglected but literally unavailable - and when the Air Force announced in 1976 that it would train its first women pilots, the claim of a first went unchallenged because the evidence was in a locked archive.