Fly Girls: The Daring American Women Pilots Who Helped Win WWII by P. O’Connell Pearson (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Fly Girls: The Daring American Women Pilots Who Helped Win WWII by P. O’Connell Pearson
Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-5344-0410-6 $16.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-5344-0412-0 $10.99
Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 5-8
When American boots were needed on the ground in the Europe and Asia in World War II, someone had to keep the war machine running smoothly on the homefront. [End Page 302] That meant, of course, searching down the labor pecking order to recruit women and minorities. Anticipating the need for their services, pilots Nancy Love and Jackie Cochran convinced military brass that an untapped resource could easily be readied and trained to transport war planes from factories to bases as the war heated up, and despite backlashes of skepticism at every turn, they were right. Love and Cochran’s combined cadres of pilots formed the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). Pearson covers their achievements—handling every type of aircraft used in the military, and steadily beating their male counterparts at timely delivery of aircraft—and describes also the organizational limbo in which these civilians (who fully expected to become militarized) were subject to military oversight, discipline, and danger, yet were not awarded military pay, rank, or privileges. Sidebars offer succinct commentary on the war and the U.S. military, and plenty of black and white photos underscore how the WASPs were presented in contemporary media as paragons of glamor and adventure rather than hard-working patriots like their brothers-in-arms. Readers with an interest in women aviators may want to follow this title with Stone’s Almost Astronauts (BCCB 4/09) to learn what happened when women tried to soar even higher.
