Home Front: Anything-to-Anywhere

The Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) are relatively well-known in the U.S. today (to hear more about their story, see our previous episode), but they weren't the only women who flew planes in World War II. A small group of Americans joined pilots from 25 other countries in England's Air Transport Auxiliary, where they ferried hundreds of thousands of planes across the British Isles. Among the pilots were women from all countries and men too old or otherwise unfit for active duty (including a WWI Ace with only one eye and arm). They braved poor weather, mechanically iffy planes, regular bombings, and dangerous conditions to keep the Allies in the air. Thanks to our guests in this episode • Becky Aikman, Author of Spitfires: The American Women who Flew in the Face of Danger During WWII • Richard Poad, organizer, Air Transport Auxiliary Museum at the Maidenhead Heritage Centre Oral histories in the episode came from the NASA Oral History Project and the TWU Libraries Women's Collection at Texas Women's University.  The transcript for this episode is at s.si.edu/homefront4 (http://s.si.edu/homefront4) Sign up for our monthly newsletter here s.si.edu/airspacenewsletter (http://s.si.edu/airspacenewsletter) AirSpace is made possible by generous support from Lockheed Martin