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The Women with Silver Wings: The Inspiring True Story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II
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I Index Overall Rating
Readers
71/100Critics
50/100Scholars
Author:
Katherine Sharp Landdeck
Publisher:
Crown Publishing Group (NY)
Date:
April 21, 2020
The brainchild of trailblazing pilots Nancy Love and Jacqueline Cochran, the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) gave women a chance to serve their countryâand to prove that women aviators were just as skilled as men. While not authorized to serve in combat, the WASP helped train male pilots for service abroad, and ferried bombers and pursuits across the country.
What The Reviewers Say
Based on hundreds of oral histories with surviving WASP women, along with letters, diaries, and government documents, Landdeck explains the women’s vital role ferrying planes, the group’s disbandment, and their fight decades later to be rightfully recognized as veterans.
The origin story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP, is lovingly and meticulously wrought by Landdeck who, as a pilot herself, powerfully illustrates the freedom and independence the cockpit gave these women in both the sky and their lives on the ground. Set against the backdrop of World War II and the Golden Age of Aviation, Landdeck traces the innovative beginnings of the WASP through a rich combination of photos, archives, diaries, interviews, newspapers and reportage.
... a complete and comprehensive story of these women and their organization. [Landdeck's] format has been to focus on the stories of a relative handful of them as a means of emphasizing their 'everywoman' origins, commonalities, and experiences as aviators.
In this breezy and fascinating history that touches on dramas large and small, members of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) come alive.
