Museum honoring WWII female pilots

SAGLE — They were known for their incisive wits, experience and excellent piloting skills, but not many people have heard of them.

The experience of the Women Airforce Service Pilots or WASPs are often not included in history books.

The Bird Aviation Museum and Invention Center hopes to change that.

With fewer than 400 female flight veterans of the war years left, the Sagle-based museum plans a July 17 ceremony in their honor that will include the unveiling of a statue, a fly-in, food and first-person accounts by WASP members.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event,” Dr. Pam Bird, who operates the museum with husband, Forrest, said.

Most of the women are between the age of 84 and 95, she said, and they are dying at a rate of seven annually.

The public event, titled “Women of Courage,” will focus on women pilots of World War II, but it serves to recognize all the women serving in a variety of capacities during the war years, Bird said.

“It records their contributions to the war,” she said. “They fulfilled a lot of the men’s jobs.”

From women serving behind desks, in machine shops, factories, as nurses and medical personnel, “all of these women will be honored as they are part of our nation’s great history,” she said. “We will never forget these veterans who stood next to their male counterparts as soldiers protecting our country.”

Her husband, Dr. Forrest Bird, was a training officer in the war who flew alongside many of the WASPS.

A contingent of women numbering around 100, all of them had been civilian pilots, were part of the ferry command. They flew, or ferried, planes from the factories to the front lines, he said. Thirty-eight lost their lives in that endeavor.

“They qualified in everything,” the former commander said. “They flew fighters, bombers, transports.”

Because WASPS were prohibited from combat roles, many replaced male pilots in air transport jobs in the U.S. and some worked as test and training pilots.

For every WASP behind the controls, one male pilot could fly a combat mission.

“Our pilot loss was very high in World War II,” Forrest Bird said. “We never seemed to have enough pilots.”

As men were drawn to combat missions, the women took over the open slots.

 In all, a little more than 1,000 women served as WASPs beginning in 1942 to the end of the war. The WASPs he worked with in the ferry command were outstanding pilots, many vastly more experienced than their male counterparts, he said.

“They should have been commissioned,” he said. “They could have been warrant officers. Instead, they were taken for granted.”

Not until 1977, after extensive lobbying, were the WASPS granted full military status for their service. In 1984, each WASP member was awarded the World War II victory medal and, last summer, the WASPs were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for their service.

Dozens of WASPs have registered to attend the July event, museum director Rachel Riddle Schwam, said.

The event is sponsored in part by the NW Chapter 99s, an international women pilots association, as well as the Experimental Aircraft Association, Volunteers of the Bird Aviation Museum, Friends of Sandpoint Airport and the Spokane Bi-Plane Association.

The WASPS, Schwam said, were the pioneers who opened the portals of flight to new generations of female pilots.

“These women were the first women in military history to fly military aircraft and paved the way for every female military pilot who is serving our country today,” she said.