Katherine Sharp Landdeck - The Women with Silver Wings: The Inspiring True Story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II

Landdecks profiles of these daring World War II heroines are so brilliantly and vividly drawn that I felt as if I was working alongside themferrying bombers, towing flying shooting targets (a potentially deadly exercise), and piloting difficult aircraft that the men were too terrified to attempt. The Women with Silver Wings is not just an important slice of history, its a thrilling page-turner that explores the patriotism, sexism, and camaraderie of the WASPs world.

Karen Abbott , New York Times bestselling author of The Ghosts of Eden Park

Historian Katherine Sharp Landdecks highflying debut The Women with Silver Wings chronicles a cadre of fearless women whose wartime sacrifices were nearly forgotten.[This is] a powerful story of reinvention, community and ingenuity born out of global upheaval.

Newsday

The Women with Silver Wings starts with a dramatic takeoff, introducing a personal story that author Katherine Sharp Landdeck, also a pilot, uses effectively to historicize a little-known, important part of U.S. military aviation.The book is a prime opportunity to admire women in service.

San Francisco Chronicle

The Women with Silver Wings is the true story of Americas unsung heroines of World War II. Katherine Sharp Landdeck has written a beautifully researched tribute to the courageous women who bravely served their nation in a time of need.

Fannie Flagg, New York Times bestselling author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Caf and The All-Girl Filling Stations Last Reunion

With meticulous research and breathless pacing, The Women with Silver Wings will make you soar with pride at the daring and commitment of Americas first women military pilotsand cheer for the men who backed them to the end.

Elizabeth Cobbs , professor and Melbern G. Glasscock Chair in American History at Texas A&M University, and author of The Hello Girls: Americas First Women Soldiers

Every now and again a truly path-breaking book comes along that completely revises our understanding of the American experience in World War II. This is definitely one of those books! Landdeck has produced a well written, richly researched tour de force about a remarkable group of aviation pioneers. The Women With Silver Wings is bound to become a classic and it will stand the test of time as the best history of the WASPs. I highly recommend it.

John C. McManus , Ph.D., Curators Distinguished Professor of U.S. military history, Missouri University of Science and Technology, and author of Fire and Fortitude: The US Army in the Pacific War, 19411943

A must-read for those interested in womens and World War II history.

Library Journal (starred review)

Entertainingthis colorful history soars.

Publishers Weekly

Drawing on memoirs, archives, and interviews with surviving WASP members, Landdeck creates palpable portraits of many womens experiences and their lives after the program was disbanded. A compelling history that brings forgotten heroes back into the spotlight.

Kirkus Reviews

Nell Mickey Stevenson Bright, class 43-W-7, poses in front of the B-26 she flew at Biggs Field in late 1944. Nell Stevenson Bright Collection.Courtesy Texas Womans University

Copyright 2020 by Katherine Sharp Landdeck

Book club guide copyright 2021 by Penguin Random House LLC

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Crown and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Random House Book Club and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Crown, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, in 2020.

ISBN9781524762827

Ebook ISBN9781524762834

crownpublishing.com

randomhousebookclub.com

Book design by Elizabeth A. D. Eno, adaped for ebook

Cover design: Michael Morris

Cover photograph: PJF Military Collection/Alamy Stock Photo

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Cornelia Fort shares the story of her experiences at Pearl Harbor for a war bond drive on Nashvilles WSM radio, not long after her return from Hawaii in early 1942. Courtesy Nashville Public Library

Prologue

In the quiet early morning of December 7, 1941, Cornelia Fort was teaching takeoffs and landings. Cornelia was a flight instructor at the civilian John Rodgers Field next to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. She and her regular Sunday morning student, a defense worker named Ernest Suomala, liked to fly the little two-seater plane at dawn, when the air was calm and the beauty of Oahu revealed itself below them. Cornelia was twenty-two years old and had been flying for nearly two years. A former debutante from Nashville, Tennessee, she had recently escaped from polite society to follow her dream of flying professionally, moving to Hawaii, where she had been living for the past few months.

That morning, when Cornelia first noticed another aircraft flying in her direction, she wasnt immediately worried. Sundays were a busy day for pilots, as they flew students and sightseers alike, and it was not uncommon to see other airplanes nearby. Then she realized the plane was making straight for them, and fast. Cornelia acted quickly, jerking the controls away from Ernest and jamming the throttle open, willing their own plane upward. As she later remembered, their little blue and yellow Interstate Cadet narrowly missed colliding with the other plane, which passed so close under us that our celluloid windows rattled violently. Cornelia looked down to see whose airplane had come so close to hitting them. She was stunned to see the red circles of the Japanese flag painted on the tops of the wings.

Then she looked back at the harbor. Thick black smoke was billowing below, a sight that sent shivers down Cornelias spine. When she looked up again, she could see dozens of planes in formation ahead, their silver fuselages glinting in the morning sun. The skies over Pearl Harbor were now thick with enemy aircraft. Something detached itself from an airplane and came glistening down, Cornelia later wrote. My eyes followed it down, and even with the knowledge pounding in my mind, my heart turned convulsively when the bomb exploded in the middle of the harbor.

Quickly recognizing they were in danger, Cornelia hurried to land the tiny plane as the shadow of the Japanese Zero went over and bullets splattered off the ground all around them. She and her student leapt out of their cockpit and ran to the hangar as enemy planes dove toward them, strafing the airfield with bullets. They spent the rest of the morning huddled in the hangar, watching helplessly and anxiously counting as other planes from the airfield came in to land. Two never came back, Cornelia remembered. They were washed ashore weeks later on the windward side of the island, bullet-riddled. Not a pretty way for the brave little yellow Cubs and their pilots to go down to death. By midday the American fleet in the Pacific lay in ruins, and more than 2,400 Americans were dead.