The Women with Silver Wings

The Inspiring True Story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II

During the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Cornelia Fort was already in the air. At 22, Fort had escaped Nashville’s debutante scene for a fresh start as a flight instructor in Hawaii. She was in the middle of a lesson when the bombs began to fall, and barely made it back to ground. Still, when the U.S. Army Air Forces put out a call for women pilots, Fort became one of just over 1,100 women from across the nation to make it through the Army’s rigorous selection process and earn her silver wings.

The brainchild of trailblazing pilots Nancy Love and Jacqueline Cochran, the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), while not authorized to serve in combat, helped train male pilots for service abroad and ferried bombers and pursuits across the country. Love and Cochran’s social experiment seemed to be a resounding success — until the program was disbanded and the women sent home. But the bonds they’d forged never failed, and over the next few decades they came together to fight for recognition as the military veterans they were. This is a well-researched and soaring account of these pioneering pilots and their role in women's aviation history.