SPENCER – Lipstick and curls didn’t diminish the hardships faced by Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) during World War II. Imagine flying the planes towing targets for other pilots to practice shooting down. A group of these women based at Camp Davis, near Wilmington, N.C., did that, and were among the country’s first female military pilots. Author David A. Stallman, in a free talk at the N.C. Transportation Museum in Spencer on Saturday, March 1, at 1 p.m., will explore their feats and this little-known women’s history fact.
Women as military pilots in the 1940s was a revolutionary concept, but the shortage of male pilots and the pressing need to expand training and capabilities of the American military force for the war effort led to the creation of a unit of women military pilots. They met resistance from male pilots and from commanding officers. Stallman retells the story of the first women military pilots in his book “Women in the Wild Blue: Target-Towing WASP at Camp Davis.”
Camp Davis was a training center for the Army’s Antiaircraft Auxiliary School, where pilots were trained, supplies and personnel ferried in and out, and targets were towed for gunnery practice. The women also did strafing runs and were part of a secret program to train pilots to fly radio-controlled drone planes. By war’s end they had proven their mettle and flown more than 60 million miles and 78 different types of aircraft.
For additional information about the program and the N.C. Transportation Museum call (704) 636-2889, or toll free at 1-877-NCTM-FUN, or visit www.nctrans.org. The Transportation Museum is in the Division of State Historic Sites within the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, a state agency dedicated to the promotion and protection of North Carolina’s arts, history and culture. Join the Cultural Resources 2008 observance of “Telling Our Stories.” Hear podcasts of information about the Department of Cultural Resources 24/7 at www.ncculture.com.