Wasp Among Eagles by Ann B Carl

Wasp Among Eagles by Ann B Carl

Before World War I most Americans did not believe that the average woman could fly professionally, but during the war more than a thousand women pilots proved them wrong. These were the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), who served as military flyers on the home front. In March 1944 one of them, Ann Baumgartner, was assigned to the Fighter Flight Test Branch at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. There she would make history as the only woman to test-fly experimental planes during the war and the first woman to fly a jet.

A WASP among Eagles is the first-person story of how Baumgartner learned to fly, trained as a WASP, and became one of the earliest jet-age pioneers. Flying such planes as the Curtiss A-25 Helldiver, the Lockheed P-38, and the B-29 Superfortress, she was the first woman to participate in a host of experiments, including in-air refueling and flying the first fighter equipped with a pressurized cockpit. But in evaluating the long-awaited turbojet-powered Bell YP-59A, she set a first record that would remain unchallenged for ten years.

ANN B. CARL was the first American woman to fly a United States Army Air Forces jet aircraft.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781560988700
ISBN 10	1560988703
Title	Wasp Among Eagles
Author	Ann B Carl
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Smithsonian Books
Year published	2010-06-22
Number of pages	152
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.