Flying Higher: The Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II (review)

Among the growing body of work on women's changing opportunities in the U.S. military during World War II (and the limits to those changes), has landed a new book on the WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots). Wanda Langley's Flying Higher celebrates the female flyers who—though not officially military (and therefore not eligible for GI benefits)—performed crucial military services, such as ferrying planes (sometimes damaged ones) and towing targets for soldiers-in-training. Largely through interviews with former WASPs, Langley delivers the poignant memories of women who loved to fly, illustrating how their dedication and talents enabled them to develop lasting friendships, to travel, to have adventures, and to serve their country—even though they would not be acknowledged as veterans until 1979.

While the women's stories are informative and often moving, it is important to note that this is no scholarly academic text, nor does it pose as one. Flying Higher is a quick read by an author who usually writes for the "young people" market—and, in fact, one can easily imagine its success with a serious middle-school audience. It may also prove useful for researchers of military women during World War II, and in college classrooms, but only if read in conjunction with some of the more substantial works in the field, such as Leisa D. Meyer's Creating GI Jane: Sexuality and Power in the Women's Army Corps During World War II (Columbia University Press, 1996) and Brenda Moore's To Serve My Country, To Serve My Race (NYU Press, 1996).

For example, while Langley offers a critical perspective on the government's reticence to recognize the WASP's military importance, she is silent on issues of race. Was whiteness a WASP requirement as it was in some of the women's branches of the Armed Forces during World War II? There is no mention of race except to compare discrimination against women in the WASP with discrimination against "other minorities," such as African Americans (p. 10). Could African-American women be WASPs? She also offers no historical corrective to propaganda that women's wartime roles in the workforce were filled by housewives who gladly returned to their homes on V-J Day (p. 26). Countless works by feminist scholars and historians tell us that more Rosie-the-Riveters worked before the war than not, and that women's waged labor increased in the postwar years. Anyone planning to use Flying Higher for scholarly or teaching purposes would do well to supplement its light-weight style with some of the critical scholarly texts it leaves behind.