 Hi everyone. Happy Women's History Month. My name is Tonya Roth. I am a teacher at a high school in St. Louis, Missouri, and I'm the author of Her Cold War, Women in the U.S. Military 1945-1980. I'm so excited to be here today with you all to talk to Professor Sarah Perry Myers. She's an Associate Professor of History at Messiah University, and today she'll be talking to us about her book, Earning their Wings, the Lost of World War II. She teaches courses on 20th Century U.S. History, Gender, Public History, and Military History. Dr. Myers received dialogues on the experience of war grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which focused on generating dialogue with female veterans in particular. Her works appeared in several edited collections released by Paul Grave McMillan and Routledge, and her book, the one we'll talk about today, Earning their Wings, the Wasps of World War II, and Their Fight for Veteran Recognition, recently came out from the University of North Carolina Press. It explores the history of the Women Air Force Service Pilots, a really fascinating group of women in World War II, and we're so excited to get to talk to her today about this. Welcome, Dr. Myers. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to have this conversation. The way the format of this program is going to be that we're going to, I'm going to talk about the book a little bit and give you some context of the Women Air Force Service Pilots of World War II, and then Tanya and I are going to have a back and forth conversation about the role of women during the war and in later years with their organizing. I want to first say thank you so much for spending time. Everyone's time is valuable, so thank you for taking the time to watch this screening, and I also really want to thank the National Archives for not only this invitation, but for the research that I used to write this book. The National Archivists are amazing humans who help all of us the story and so much, so I wanted to definitely be sure to give all of you a large thank you. I am going to share my screen here and start a presentation with you all so that you can get some background context information. All right, so this is the book. It's Earning Their Wings, and it looks at this larger history of women in flights. So the years prior to World War II, who was flying, you know, how are they earning their pilot's licenses, and then I look at the WASP program specifically during the wartime years that I'm going to focus on for this talk, and I look at their organization to try to fight for veteran status. The reason why these women are unique is because they are the only women's unit during World War II that did not receive military status, so what that means is during the course of the war the Congress made decisions about who was granted military status, and so they granted it to the other women's units in the women's Marines, the women at the Army Corps, the women in the Navy, etc., and for the WASP that's going to create a unique story and situation for them. So these women pilots are passionate about flying in the decades prior to World War II. This is a quote from one of the women who become the WASP. Her name is Cornelia Fort. She was in among the first 28 women who were a part of these wartime military flying programs, and this quote really captures how much these women love to fly, and so she talks about how she was happiest at the sky at dawn when the quietness of the air was like a caress, and she goes on to explain this like beautiful picture for us of how much she loves flying and flight in particular, just something that all the women shared. So these women received the same training during World War II as men, with the exception of combat training. So this is a photograph from Life Magazine in 1943 where the women are sitting in ground school classes. They learn everything from how to take apart an engine to navigation to physics, etc., and in this training they're prepared to fly different versions of American aircraft from primary to basic to advanced. After training they are then assigned on bases across the continental United States. This is a staged publicity photo, but I really like how it shows the women in the two different versions of their uniforms, because during World War II women were perceived as controversial for their military roles, and the wasps were very much a reflection of that, particularly because these are women who not only are in new and expanding roles during the war, but also who are performing work that is in no way considered to be traditional for women because they are literally, you know, flying planes and flying alongside male pilots on the home front. So among their assignments you see them fairing planes from factories to bases, so as they're produced in factories they're then taken to military bases so that they can be taken overseas or used for other training purposes. With all of this wartime flying women consistently talk about their interest in, you know, flying as a career, but also flying in the military specifically. One of the things that kind of captures the difference between civilian and military flight is this quote by one of the wasps, Lillian Yonally, in this quote she says, when you take off its power when you push the throttle forward and it pushes you right back into the seat and you go on up, it's beautiful up there, it's a very special feeling. The wasp all talk about this, how flying these larger, you know, if it's a bomber plane or faster planes like pursuit aircraft that flying at high altitudes was not only like the beauty of flight for them like Cornelia Ford talked about but also something that makes them feel a sense of empowerment and also beauty for the profession. One of the really fascinating assignments given to the wasp was that of towing targets. So if you look at the picture on the left it shows you one of the wasps flying with this target attached by cables to the back of her plane. This is, you know, the pictures taken from the perspective of a photographer here so you see a journalist taking this, but women were practicing this maneuver in the sky so basically they flew in the same formation like back and forth repetitively in a very precise way so that men on the ground with the image you see on the right could practice shooting anti-aircraft artillery at these targets. So they're literally shooting, you know, live ammunition at these targets but then they also have men in the skies who are practicing combat by, you know, using pursuit aircraft to fly and shoot bullets at this target. Men also performed this assignment so this was something given to men and women who were serving in the army air force on the home front but what's unique about this is that it, you know, disrupts ideas about protection and who is protected during a time of war and who's put in a position of risk or danger and in particular what you see happen is when women hold this position, so when they're given this assignment by the army air force, they are literally like performing not only dangerous work but work that male pilots feel a little bit resentful of and some of the pilots, male pilots that they're flying with are actually going to ask for other assignments because they start to, you know, diminish or demean these women's roles by calling target towing chores quote unquote or saying that this is like repetitive tedious work that is better suited for women and again like this is highly dangerous it requires a high level of skill and so it's interesting that male pilots are reacting to this way to women entering into new roles but also some pilots quite frankly, you know, in discussions that journal, I can't talk, general Arnold has with the commanding general of the army air force is that they say like we would rather die overseas than at home and so there are men and women who die towing targets that is not from ammunition actually but rather from the planes that these people are flying because you don't want to fly a plane that's in good condition and so you're flying older planes, planes that have been like repaired or sometimes hastily repaired and so there are going to be WASP but also male pilots who die towing targets for these reasons that are outside of their control and have to do with the aircraft that they're flying. The WASP are organized as military though so I said earlier that Congress decides not to grant them military status but they're organized with the intention of that so the army air force assumes that just like other women's units that this is going to be militarized so the issue as you can see here one of my favorite WASP who I interviewed I put her on the left she's one of my favorites just because she was literally the second one that I interviewed and the first one that I ever contacted but they show in these pictures that they're wearing military uniforms that they've been issued by the government they're issued dog tags they take the same oath same training they are given the same type of assignments on the home front they're subject to the exact same rules so they have to you know request military leave when they're on a base they unlike other civilians on base who can just come and go they have to request leave so everything about them is organized in with the assumption that they'll eventually be military what you see happen though is because Congress decides not to grant them military status is that when you have 38 WASP who died during the war this is a photo on the right from some of the WASP annual reunions that they have in Sweetwater Texas which is the site where they trained during the war when they're at these reunions they always have a memorial service for the 38 women who lost their lives during the war those accidents happened for a variety of reasons that mirror male pilot accidents on the home front where you see things that are the results of weather that are a result of the aircraft that they're flying you know all these different varied factors sometimes because of new technologies the image on the left is actually from a newsletter that the WASP created during the war this is a very similar practice that male pilots but also men and other units had where they would write these newsletters for themselves for distribution and it was a way to maintain their culture and maintain connections in the midst of a war effort and so on the left you see one of the WASP who was a trainee who died during training and on the right is a memorial for her instructor who was also in the plane at the time because they were on one of the lessons in flight school and what not having you know military status means is that you have women who are not only disappointed so in this case this is a WASP who is talking about how you know we were really sad when congress didn't grant us military status because you know we were living in it and we've been through training and then all our different assignments and she said it's all we talked about and suddenly in a few days time here you are completely nothing it's such a transition we have to go through afterwards I mean to this day all I have to do is hear a plane go overhead and I'm right with that pilot up there and this reflects the you know demoralized feeling that the WASP had by not being granted military status and the fact that a lot of these women they wanted to have not only aviation crews but also those in the military and so this is a failed opportunity I make several arguments in my book about why congress votes not to grant these women military status one of those reasons is because of the media's portrayal of them there is one journalist in particular who called them a quote lipstick squadron which I thought really encapsulates kind of the heart of their the media coverage of them this is from a life magazine article so on the left you see the cover so the WASP did make the cover of life in 1943 July the image on the right is one of the pictures from the inside of this magazine article so because it is a cover issue it's you know getting attention there's a wide reader subscription of life magazine and in this the WASP were portrayed primarily at leisure in this cover issue so like the image that you see on the right they had very new moments of downtime and leisure but those were the photos that the journalists chose to portray and so I make arguments about how the media portrayal made congress not take them as seriously as professionals it also meant that congress ignored the arguments of general Arnold secretary of war Henry Stimson other top military and government officials who said please you know grant the WASP military status we organize them as such we planned to give them you know that status and so don't waste taxpayer dollars and you know keep this program but congress chose to listen to the voices not just of the media but some others that I get into in the book and voted not to grant them military status and so what the WASP do is you know like Roger said earlier they feel devastated and so when you look at the postwar years they make conversation at their annual unions where they say like you know it really would be nice if we had veteran status but they don't make a large concentrated organized effort for this for a couple decades so once you see the you know 1960s come around in this era of you know a lot of moments happening historically but including the forthcoming like civil rights movement you see women's liberation coming in that moment the WASP make these arguments and discussion about how you know we'd like to seriously try to get available for congress one of the people who helped them with that was general Arnold during world war two's son who in this picture is Colonel Bruce Arnold so in this meeting that you see here you see some of the WASP actually in their uniforms some just dressed professionally they are making a large organized effort to fight for their rights to military status to veteran status in this moment so what this means is that if they're granted it they will have access to medical benefits of the VA with access to military funerals for a lot of the women they want this because of the 38 women who died during the war and they want them to see them get respect because during world war two those women in a lot of cases their families had to pay to ship their bodies home they did not have access to the GI bill after world war two for you know the other WASP and they also didn't have the right for military funerals either even for the 38 who died during the war and so they wanted that right mission and status and so when they're like fighting for this in the 1970s especially what you see happen is congress starts to debate like who has the rights to the title like veteran and some of the things that they talk out which I talk about extensively in the book is that these you know women are saying we were organized this military you know we basically were military we just didn't get it from congress and so they present their case and these veterans in congress like some veterans say yeah we support them because they were a part of our military service or we recognize the WASP or some of the veterans said like no we shouldn't grant them veteran status because this will mean that other groups other civilian groups will try to get veteran status and it will some people had very dramatic comments to make about it including the national level bfw and american legion where they said we don't think that women should these women should get veteran status because it will forever change the the term veteran like it won't mean the same thing anymore and so they're literally situate themselves as stakeholders of this term and say that you know this is this isn't just you know a pandora's box as one of them says but we we need to like keep a tight grasp on veteran and keep the meaning that it currently has and i find that conversation to be really fascinating because it speaks to ideas that even now the american public has when you say the word veteran where people often think like a woman or they think someone fought in combat these women just like other women during world war two did not fight in combat but who otherwise you know fit this like definition even in like popular memory right and so the discussions around it are like fascinating to think about the wasp end up getting veteran status and so it's signed into law in 1977 they receive other recognition in 2010 when they received the congressional gold medal that is not the end of their story i talk in the epilogue of my book about how there are other times where they have to fight for their right to this title veteran even though they've been granted it officially through law one of the examples i look at is of a wasp who is trying to get entered arlington national cemetery in 2016 and so even though they get veteran status just like other female veterans they often feel invisible from the american public so thank you so much that completes the overview section we're going to do questions in a second but i wanted to thank dr tanya roth for this conversation and we're now going to turn it over to a discussion oh that was so interesting sarah i i'm i mean as you know i know i know the the story but hearing you talk about it after having read your book and hearing you talk about the the things that you particularly found interesting and the people that drew you in part the pieces of the project it just brings such a new dimension to it that i am so fascinated in it one of the things that i find so interesting is that i work with women outside of the women who are mostly not pilots for the most part um and one of the things that i think is so interesting is that the women that i look at after world war two and the women's army corps and the even the women in the air force and the navy and the marines um those are women who during world war two would not have had such a specialized background as women who are pilots so a lot of the women who come into like the women's army corps in the early 40s for example they've got lots of skills but being pilots is something that's not in their skill set so you've got such a fascinating group of women i was so surprised to hear um when you're started telling this story in the book about how um maybe not widespread but like the number of women who had to come pilots in the first half of the 20th century um could you talk more about a more about this to us tell us more about the flying that women engaged in before world war two and how was flying perceived uh like women flying planes perceived by the general public thank you so thinking about these early decades of flight like after the Wright brothers there are women who are you know just as excited about aviation as men in the same era a lot of americans didn't hear about the airplane and you know took a long a long time depending on the area in which you lived some people had never seen an airplane but for the women who become pilots in this era they all talk about how they view flights as a space of liberation for women that when you think about american society you know we see a future for women in the skies and what is fascinating about that to me is is these women are flying in you know the 1920s 30s in an era where you have like the modern girl that everyone thinks of with the flapper and these other expanding ideas and a lot of these early women pilots situate themselves like that modern girl they talk about adventure and a sense of liberation from constraints of society um but they also see flying as like a future career for women and like a possibility to me it's very similar to the ways that women in like early us history talk about the bicycle and what that did for them in terms of you know freedom of mobility and movement and possibility and when they're describing flights i just love reading their counts it's kind of like the cornelia four quote that i use because they just are they just love being in the sky and they love that like experience of flight and the way that it makes them feel and the way that it makes them perceive the world and these are the women who either become the wasp or who inspire the wasp to fly and so even though we know of like Amelia Earhart right because she's the one who's always thrown around the woman who became the director of the wasp program Jackie Cochran Nancy Love who also had a leadership position with the fairing division Nancy Love and Jackie Cochran should be just as like well known by americans because they were just as and in Jackie Cochran's case like more accomplished than uh Amelia Earhart as pilot and so yeah it's like this whole culture that's happening and unfolding in the years prior to World War II it's so fascinating and i confess i was never someone growing up who looked at flying or uh in astronauts and went oh i never i never personally saw the allure of i love going on planes don't get me wrong but i've never saw that allure of being a pilot or becoming an astronaut which i know a lot of kids do right and you're growing up the number of times you hear a kid say i want to be an astronaut or a pilot right um so it's really neat i love the passages i think one of my favorite quotes is um one of the items you use as a title for chapter two which i believe you say it's not from a wasp but it was adopted by the wasp we live in the wind and sand and our eyes are on the stars and just that um i really get that glimpse of why this is so captivating to people it's really cool to see and i i think i understand a little bit better as a passion that people would have um i also i mean i think of today i feel like um i always had this perception as a non-pilot that but it's expensive to get flying lessons is it different in the years before World War II i imagine there's still probably access barriers to some people but were there different opportunities or how did that work for people to get access to learning how to fly there were obstacles just like there are today so i actually also am not a pilot and i looked into it because i thought you know i would like to be closer to my subjects and learn learn how to fly it is very expensive now and it was very expensive then a lot of women who learned how to fly they either came from money uh like the corny other four who i mentioned or they negotiated for flying lessons so they would say i'll volunteer at the airport and do whatever it is that you need me to do if i could get like this many flying hours um or will you teach me if i you know do these like chores for you over here and so they would just like exchange basically work uh for flying uh some of the women took jobs in you know once they'd negotiated and were like i want this as a profession but i don't have money for it they would take jobs in like air shows and kind of like air shows we have now where people would perform and so women would get you know paid like men to fly in these air shows to perform stunts for the public so that people could see you know exciting things that airplanes could do and then what you see happen is in the 1930s you know as wars unfolding around the world we have a new government program and the new deal in 1939 that offers women one woman for every 10 men the opportunity to get pilot's license for free and so that's how you get actually the wasp program possible where you have like over a thousand women who become the wasp you that's only really made possible in that scale from this new deal government program that was called the civilian pilot training program so women got the opportunity to get their foot the same thing with men and same thing with batiski airmen specifically um their black men are getting the experience of flight from this new new government program as well and so groups that have been historically marginalized or who don't have access to resources because of their class status now all of a sudden it becomes possible for you again not for everyone because there's only a small number of people who can invest in this and have the time but it becomes more possible for people who aren't wealthy to learn how to fly and since you mentioned it I did want to say that the wasp program in particular is a program that is for white women and women who are perceived as white so when we're talking about pilots during world war two or women's military service some of the branches you know admit women um black women specifically in the jim cram military but for the wasp they do not so they only accept women who can like pass as white which I know is kind of a tangent to what you were saying but I wanted to be sure I said it I was wondering that too I was thinking about that is there um I feel like I'm going to get the name wrong hazel main lee at least one Asian American yeah yeah so she yeah she in particular was chinese american and her like you know she has this extensive backstory but essentially what's interesting about it to me is that women had to have face-to-face interviews and women who were black were filtered out um from the program and were literally told like you know we're sorry um but because of your race we're not accepting you because we're worried about the program being too controversial but she in particular is misidentified on a farm when she is a trainee and she has like an accident in this and has to you know make a forced landing into this farm and the farmer thinks that she's japanese because we've been fighting with the japanese in the pacific and so even though she's chinese american there's this moment where he is like not um you know making this false assumption about her based on her appearance and so it's interesting to me because the program as a whole is saying you know we have this like specific image but yet there is her there's also some women who are native american who identify with different tribes who are in the wasp there's also some women who are um hispanic it's i assume that it's possible that there's women that i didn't even find because in the historical record unless these women were interviewed like decades later or there's some discussion of them like you know this farm incident there's just really not a lot in the sources to say anything about the women's race or ethnicity that's so fascinating in that story of being mistaken as a as a i can imagine the farmer making that mistake based on his own assumptions and prejudices of the time and that's really interesting that they didn't want the program to be controversial and yet still i mean it sounds like whatever they were going to do it was going to be controversial in some ways but yeah as you said similarly in the women's army corps the six triple eight is the only african-american women's unit that goes overseas for the women's army corps and there's only very small numbers of black women in the navy and i don't believe any of the Marines until after the war um or very very small numbers so it's fascinating um so um so if you had to predominantly be white in order to apply um and you talked about some of the how the civilian pilot training program helped get some of the the people who would become wasps how exactly did the wasp program start after that after the as the war began and how how could a woman apply to be part of it the program started when so actually in the years prior to the war which shout out to the national archives for helping me find some specific letters that i was trying to track down about this so jackie cochran had you know written to the army air force and said army air corps at the time and said hey uh i'm a pilot very experienced i know other very experienced female pilots when we get involved more in europe we would love to be a part of this um you know there's no other discussions that like are had except no thanks for your like interest but we're not going to do that nancy love has connections in the military through her husband and so she actually also contacts and says hey you know same thing i i'm experienced pilot i know others you know we would love for you to use us so then the war starts in europe in 1939 and cochran and love have continued conversations but they're just told no after we declare war in you know december 1941 in the spring of 1942 this is when the army air force starts to think seriously about using american women on the home front as pilots and this is when you see discussions between general arnold and love and cochran and eventually love and cochran are given two separate pilot programs one with nancy love that's very experienced pilots there's only 28 of them they literally have thousands of flying hours they are almost all you know women of wealth and means because they were able to acquire that many flying hours and then you have nancy love or excuse me jackie cochran who starts a program for women who are going to have much fewer flying hours the the level or the number changes you know during the course of the war but not thousands of hours so jackie cochran this is when she organizes the program to get military training in texas for the women and plans out this whole thing about new and expanding roles that women can have in assignments whereas nancy love focuses her group just on ferry planes specifically and not new roles and so the army air force decides to merge the programs under cochran's like directorship so they don't have rank because they weren't granted military status so that's why i'm calling them you know these big terms because they didn't have rank but jackie cochran was declared like the director of the program and charge and so she in particular is the one who really organizes all the details of training in texas you know new and expanding assignments working with the air force to try to get when some women get officer training so she's a part of that and this is how women then apply so they have women who apply who don't have flying hours because you need to have your pilot's license and so that those women all get rejected then from there of the women that they accept and that go through training the men and women when you compare their training because the army air force conducted reports at the end of the war about this there's the same washout rate so washing out is when you you know fail training have to go home and don't graduate so the same washout rate applied to both the women and the men which was an interesting like to see those statistics for the air force and the effectiveness of women and how okay they even though we had stereotypes about them and we weren't sure if they were physically capable of it or actually capable of it they can fly and they're doing a great job and so yeah that's so interesting it feels like looking at my research through the 1950s the 60s the 70s there's always work done on looking at women and can they actually do stuff and yes they can but it's so fascinating when you see that data and I don't know of an instance where the data from the wasp was used later on and elsewhere should have been right that's really specialized information and especially as we move further to the 20th century and women become pilots in other parts of the military after World War two that would be really great data to have you know but also I think that's so striking that even with all these assumptions consistently decade after decade when data on women show that either they perform as well as men as you talked about with dropout rates or even better that their dropout rates in other parts of the military or their rates of drug use as we get into the 60s and 70s or other issues is much lower than the men and it's easy that gets easily written off you know yes that's what I find fascinating about both of our works is the ways that these stereotypes just continue to perpetuate even when evidence is showing the opposite or the ways that our research shows that women will like prove themselves and then it's like oh okay well now that it's been now now we believe you right like it we didn't believe you at first but we need we need evidence and for the wasp in particular they don't get to like women don't get to be flying in the military again until 1973 and then the airlines is actually the same year so women are not included in commercial or military aviation in these like larger planes right and these different ways so it's like fascinating wow that is it is really interesting and um so given especially the background many of these women came from um what did their families tend to think they had to say much about their families reactions to their decisions I think this is interesting in terms of the time period and gender roles and ideas that people have wasp had varying like reactions about their families so some of the parents would say like I remember I you know in the book I map out a lot of details but in this one example this wasp was like my mom was very opposed she didn't like the stereotypes you know that existed about women in the military I mean keep in mind like you know women are wearing pants with their military dress uniforms they're quite shocking and this is shocking yeah I tell this to my students all the time because I'm like you know this it's not commonplace for underpants in public and so this that alone is shocking much less women in the military much less what they're doing and so thinking about that this wasp was like my parents were opposed Marty Weil is the one I'm referencing who I showed the picture of earlier so she's like my parent my my mom was opposed but my dad he was actually like you know he he wasn't really excited but he was supportive and she's like that's all I needed and so she had his like support and blessing to join and so she like you know eventually becomes a wasp but other women talk about how some of what was interesting to me was a lot of it was generational women so it'd be like grandmas moms who were concerned about gender roles or their daughters or perceptions of their daughters and I think that's what I found most interesting about that side of the research was that I expected to be more you know male reactions within the family but in fact what I found was it was more the women in the family that were concerned about maintaining gender roles is so interesting I'm also just I'm fascinated by the fact I looked at as an undergrad I looked at women as nurses in World War one who often came from a pretty higher class status as well and the work that they did and then thinking about the women of the wasps I feel like the the history we often hear is that women of a certain social socioeconomic status in the United States absolutely do a lot of service very community-oriented women people who will support war causes but this site especially now I think what's one of things is so interesting is that your work shows us that by the time we hit World War two even though we don't think about it there are absolutely women who have skills and talents that are new in so many ways and they are directing their service into new possibilities which is just so interesting to me during the during the war itself did the wasps have experiences that were similar to the male army air force pilots you talked about the similarity in towing targets for example but other experiences that were similar yes so in in some instances so similar that the wasp would be like one of the only women of base like one of the only women pilots there were there was a one wasp in particular who was testing jet aircraft and she was the only one like she was only wasp assigned that during the entire war so in a lot of cases these women go from I didn't mention it earlier but training it in Texas was at an all-female base in Sweetwater so there were there were male instructors but there weren't other male pilots training there and so they go from this situation where it's like all you know women pilots to being sometimes the only one and they are stationed in roles alongside men throughout the US so they're performing like literally they're flying all of the same aircraft as men they're holding almost all the same roles that male pilots have the only distinction is combat and flying overseas that is you know restricted to them but otherwise they're you know serving alongside male pilots and sometimes they're the only one the only one handful wow and that the field in Sweetwater is that Avenger Field it is yes okay I'm a Marvel fan and I find it I love the fact that the wasps were at Avenger Field and like women were the first Avengers there we go yeah Marvel fans might enjoy that so that's what even said and then one of their newsletters they're like we're avenging men's deaths and so I love that it's like also is connected to that because that's also superhero vibes you know yeah they're the total original superheroes I really love it um so you mentioned that they do pretty much almost all the same things as men's and you mentioned how they're often even so sometimes even the only women on base um so uh they would go through their training they go through graduation um how did men react when they started getting these women on their army or force bases it is a wide range of reactions as I'm sure you might have guessed if you even if you hadn't read the book so they have you know in some instances they talked about how like men would just be blatantly like overtly they they often the wasp for the most part in oral history interviews refrain from using the term sexist but in a way that we by you know use that term now um basically discriminate against them in just some overt way some of the wasps say that you know if I prove myself and showed yes I can handle this aircraft that I could handle you know b-24 training whatever then they would be accepted so they would and it's very similar to what you know you look at in your book it's very similar to what you look at now with pilot training even loss or with women pilots and they're the ways that they're perceived they often feel like they have to prove themselves and so when they're you know proving themselves they're like oh well then I was accepted but also you have instances where there was a wasp who's set to ferry you know an officer across the US and he's like I'm not getting in the plane with you and she's like I'm the literal only one that can take you so either we're going or you're staying here like I don't know what to tell you and so the man did get in the plane and then afterwards he apologized and it was like I'm sorry you clearly are very competent but also they're like people play into gender roles to give them certain assignments so one of the assignments they had was learning to fly the b-29 and then flying demonstrations for men because this like when the b-29 was developed during World War II it had engine fire problems so some of the early test pilots who were men had died because as a result because they were testing out a new technology and so the army air force decides like oh let's have women fly the b-29 and landed at bases you know for a flying demonstration and I bet that'll change morale and sure enough male pilots at these bases are like oh yeah it must be easy to fly when before they had refused to go to b-29 school and in one way and so it's just fascinating all you gotta do is put a woman in the cockpit and she can show you how it's done yep yep yep wow wow literally the case because some of the wasps did train men how to fly the b-29 so yeah and it's amazing to me all these parts of our history that I think just so easily get lost in this larger narrative we often think of that I was thinking about when you were talking earlier that here are women who are doing work that today would prepare you for a career and I love that we're seeing women having these diverse experiences at a time that the general historical narrative tends to be well it was an anomaly women came out of their homes for just a little bit of time and then they went back to their homes and these are women who I'm guessing many of them went on to have family lives and many other careers but they it wasn't just something they did for fun for two or three years this is something that was really a part of who they were you know that yeah and you talked uh there we got a great question here um about the accident rates and thinking about the uh the danger they were all put in that you talked about and one of our viewers asks were the wasps accident rate much lower than male pilots largely because they read the directions and followed them I love that we're tapping into like the the stereotype that I think perpetuates to today about like women early history in like cars and then women as pilots right and so it's like this idea that women you know are paying attention to the detail and like following directions etc so the wasp in particular is in these like uh reports because there's anytime there's an accident anywhere like even overseas like after heavy combat and and chaos of war they still do accident reports for planes and do their best to track what happened but if it's on the home front it's a very detailed accident report where they're like this is literally the reason why the plane crashed you know and there's like all these categories and descriptions thing um in those like accidents when it's discussed what's interesting to me is that they are you know like because there's all these stereotypes about women you know and their abilities and even general Arnold he says at a literal graduation for the wasp like in a graduation ceremony he says I didn't know whether the slip of a young girl could handle the controls of a b-17 you know and so in these accident reports what's interesting about it is it it just becomes very clear to them like oh well they're like able to handle this like as a skill and the argument that I use is that I think that they have better accident reports is because they are wanting to prove themselves and so kind of like the Tuskegee airmen right like they they know that if they mess up at all that people are just gonna you know write them off and say well this is why women can't be pilots and this is why you know they shouldn't fly this type of aircraft and so they really really were driven to succeed but also prove themselves so it's a great question thank you love that and could you take us back to um and I'm always personally very struck by the number of women who died in their service to their country in the wasps and the fact that because they were classified as civilian at the the um inequity of the benefits so um for example you had the the memorial to the one woman who died and then also the notice of her instructor who died so we have there uh two deaths right one woman one man and I'm assuming the man had full military status in that case what would the difference look like you mentioned that families had to ship their daughter pay to ship their daughter's bodies home for example in some cases what would um a male pilot get in such a certain sense that one of the wasps would not get for example so what would happen is you get um access to military benefits for your family so that covers the cost of your funeral service and things like that but it's also supposed to be compensation for like loss to your family they're also during world war two there were stars you could display in your window and the gold star in particular was the one that represented that you had someone that served in the military who died and so the you know blue star represents like service and so the families were not supposed to display gold star for a wasp or as a male pilot you know that is displayed but also for like the funeral itself there were they were told that they were not like their families were told that they were not allowed to have not only can you not be buried in a military cemetery or in Arlington but also you can't have those like honors right the folding of the flag those little um ceremonial aspects that are given in in memory for people you aren't supposed to have access to all of that even what's interesting is like for the wasp who did not die they had to use their civilian medical insurance when they had accidents so they there are some strange like you know insurance filings during world war two because one woman got a like uh infection from someone who had been serving in the china burma india theater and he was in her plane and she was buying a cargo plane so it's like really freak thing that isn't normal and then just use her for civilian insurance for that and so things just got like not very complicated even just for the regular wasp um who did it die oh that's fascinating oh we have another question from one of our audience members asking can you speak about the rumors amongst the wasp about samotage at camp davis yes great question so camp davis in particulars were the one of the places where the wasp toad targets in like the largest number of wasp toad targets there they were um there were actually a couple other incidences that i found outside of camp davis but what um this viewer is like referencing is that there were instances of sugar being placed in um tanks like so they would essentially like what they were trying to do the person that was doing this was trying to um sabotage your plane in a way that it would either cause you to crash or also potentially die and so i found incidences at there's a bunch of camp davis there are others um david stalman actually wrote a book about towing targets at camp davis um he's a journalist that talks about that specifically and goes to a lot of detail if you want like a lot of detail about those but i could never find a like because there weren't investigations of this i could never find a blame for specific mechanic names or you know who this might have been and so all i can do is sit you know speculate about it and say that it's possible that the people were antagonistic against them as women right in the military even though they're mechanics and not pilots that are working on these planes and that are potentially doing this of course it could be someone else but mechanics are the last ones to go over the plane beyond the pilot and so you know you would think that they would catch it and then the other thing is that like there were um pro germans like sympathizers um and so the other thought is that potentially who i found one account where someone thought maybe that's who was doing it so there's also this idea that maybe it was someone who was like a pro germans sympathizer and these instance of sabotage that were representative of the fact that regardless there's antagonism against their like military service and the mechanics in this case would they have been military mechanics so it depended so actually i was going to say that earlier about the the wasp that i showed and her instructor who died so some of the instructors on base were civilian and some were military and so actually same thing with mechanics most of the mechanics were military but no one has done a really extensive history tragically of the support staff for you know including mechanics and so it's unclear like whether or not they would have been like civilian or military but more likely military yeah okay that's so interesting another question that we have is from your research were you able to identify their successful approaches to overturning institutionalized or systemic prejudice yeah great question so thinking about it i was looking at like um different ways that the wasp even like framed or talked about their like service because when they're like fighting for military status during the 1970s they they often don't like i said use the language of like sexism or male chauvinism or things like that um but there were instances where the wasp during the war would talk about the discrimination they faced and they would talk about it in a way where they kind of like what jackie cochran had addressed to them which is that we want this program to be successful so even in these instances of sabotage we're not going to fully investigate this because we want to keep the program going and we're worried about controversy and we're worried about people questioning what we're doing and questioning you in dangerous roles and so during world war two the wasp did not in any strong like organized way combat this um prejudice that they face there were individual wasps who talk about like oh when i was at sweetwater there was this one instructor who was known for really hating women and he was resentful about this like a military assignment that he'd been given and so he would like take the control stick because the instructor in the back of the plane could take the over the control to control i can't control stick and then would like manipulate it so that it would go back and forth and like hit her like in between her thighs and so it bruised her thighs and so she's like i but i didn't feel like i could say anything because i was worried that like i wouldn't get to graduate and so there were all these like examples and even when congress was debating in 1944 Cochran asked the wasp like please don't um join in on the debates don't do interviews with the media we've got this like them you know arnold's in charge of it he's going to talk to congress you don't need to get involved with this fight this is not your fight and so the wasps don't get involved there either so interesting i i see that strategy and yet i'm like these are women who clearly were doing such impressive work and this i think is one of the really so um oh there might be some wasp members in the audience as well um that one might have as well another question can you talk about why the wasp program info was classified and unavailable to historians after the war that's a great question yeah so even among the like wasp when they were training and while they were in their military service and leaving military service a lot of them were told to keep it quiet so even in their like communities people didn't know um when you think about like even like training and trainees returning home who washed out um that kind of thing people the american public largely doesn't know about them even though there is that life magazine article the memory of them like is lost right in the shuffle of just everything else happening during world war two and so a lot of wasps talk about how their their memories are forgotten but similar to what's been done with um women's army core records and other women's military records when women are placed in roles that are considered to be you know non-traditional or that are you know potentially controversial or they think you know this might be disruptive to the public in some way they will like seal those records for a certain period of time or you know sometimes indefinitely potentially you know we don't know but there were examples of this with the women's army core and how they shot anti-aircraft artillery off the coast of the u.s is like practice exercises but they didn't think that the american public would should know about women firing guns right and so i think that it has to do with their controversial nature of the program and and wanting it to be successful and then the ramification of that is that then a lot of people don't hear about them afterwards or they're largely forgotten so thinking even about the legacy then um what before you think about that i think what's so significant in your book is this fight for veteran status this question of who's a veteran i was just so fascinated by this in your book could you talk more about why the women fought for this campaign to get military status it's clearly important to them and i think i think you and i both agree it's very important that this happened as well that they were recognized officially as a veteran um why do you think they're successful at the time um why do they find so important at that time to do it yeah so they at that point in time there were a lot of things happening in the media not just with like other social movements but also um there are in the 1970s early 1970s because i said 1973 is like women's reintroduction into military flight some was say like what they motivated them was they read newspaper accounts that said the first women fly for the u.s. military and are in training she was like um hello you know and so some lost did for like that reason for ragi mission but also a lot of them just talked about how you know they're they're getting not towards the end of their lives but a moment where they're thinking about that and thinking about the future and are like it would be really nice to have this benefit and a lot of them identified this military and saw themselves specifically as veterans and it bothered them that they they couldn't take that like term and use that identity and you know one was in particular was like i was so you know my husband was a pilot like he was buried military honors like i would so love for that to be me right like so this discussion of how you want that um i recognition and identity but also sometimes you just want that recognition identity for your friends like of the 38 who died during the war i'm so glad that they did because i think it's a fight that obviously very important to them but taking larger picture that as you said they're seeing articles about women becoming the first pilots and also it's the decade we get the first women generals in the different branches the military we get the first women admitted to the military academies a couple years later in 76 73 is the end of the draft and the creation of the all volunteer forces and it's like this decade where everything really seems to hit a fever pitch in there and i at my sense for reading your work and hearing you talk about it is that if not for the work these women did to make that statement and just to claim that status that i think that also helped other women who have also served and in veterans and it really solidifies that you know maybe that i think it's very possible that even for women in the women's army corps who might have who did have military status during the war that it's been easy for people to think well they're not really veterans either you know um so i really think this is such an important moment to say yes women are veterans and here's what this means yes exactly thank you for that context too because i think that ties our work together really well i just i i just i think this uh question of who's a veteran is so huge and i really love it but what do you think as we close this out for today of what aspects of the history of the loss do you think are most relevant and what larger legacy should we take away from this one is that i think that we should really think about um what and how we like treat our veterans and like what as a nation we owe veterans because oftentimes there's you know discussion about like i said earlier about even who's remembered as a veteran and even now there are women who have gone to the va and the va assumes that their husband is the veteran so they just seem like some sort of forgotten population that we like need to remember um also because i've been asked by people in the media before oh name a female veteran that all americans would know and i'm like i don't know if all americans would know the you know that sort of thing but also i think it's a larger legacy of like um thinking about women trying to prove themselves and other groups who've had to prove themselves and the fact that there are all these stereotypes that continue to perpetuate that even through today for women's different roles that they're assuming in the military anytime there's any slight change these a wave of stereotypes come back whether that be through the american public or through the media's like questioning of women their roles and and not focusing on them as professionals so i would love to see more of that absolutely we have one last question before we wrap up today could you talk briefly about the 1977 year of the wasp campaign and the 2010 congressional gold medal campaign yeah sure so in the interest of time i'll be really fast about 77 and say like the book will will be more extensive for you um but the this is like the like a the year that it's signed into law and the wasp officially granted this like veteran status in 2010 there the congressional gold medal ceremony um was really fascinating because this is like the highest like civilian you know honor for the u.s government and so in this like ceremony the tiskegi airmen had been given it three years before so it kind of felt like a continuation of this like thank you for your service but also in particular thank you for your service because we forgot you first along and didn't even give you military status so i think it really represents all of those things so well thank you so much professor mires this has been wonderful love chatting with you and thank you for everything thank you so much dr raff i really appreciate your time in this conversation and thanks again to the next archive yes