Earning Their Wings

The WASPs of World War II and the Fight for Veteran Recognition

Sarah Parry Myers

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9781469675046
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War II
• Index: History

Established by the Army Air Force in 1943, the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program opened to civilian women with a pilot's license who could afford to pay for their own transportation, training, and uniforms. Despite their highly developed skill set, rigorous training, and often dangerous work, the women of WASP were not granted military status until 1977, denied over three decades of Army Air Force benefits as well as the honor and respect given to male and female World War II veterans of other branches. Sarah Parry Myers not only offers a history of this short-lived program but considers its long-term consequences for the women who participated and subsequent generations of servicewomen and activists. Myers shows us how those in the WASP program bonded through their training, living together in barracks, sharing the dangers of risky flights, and struggling to be recognized as military personnel, and the friendships they forged lasted well after the Army Air Force dissolved the program. Despite the WASP program's short duration, its fliers formed activist networks and spent the next thirty years lobbying for recognition as veterans. Their efforts were finally recognized when President Jimmy Carter signed a bill into law granting WASP participants retroactive veteran status, entitling them to military benefits and burials.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. I Was Happiest in the Sky: From Air-Minded Barnstormers to Weapons of War
• 2. We Live in the Wind and Sand and Our Eyes Are on the Stars: Identity and Camaraderie in Training
• 3. Looked upon as a Man’s Game: Battling Contested Airspaces at Army Air Force Bases
• 4. Not One of Congress’s Cares: The 1944 Congressional Militarization Bill
• 5. I Never Flew an Airplane That Asked If I Were a Mr. or a Mrs. or a Ms.: Contesting Definitions of a Veteran and Receiving Veterans Status
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index