Women airforce service pilots: An army air corps experiment: Part I

Reports on the formation, work, and achievements of the Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) training program launched durint WWII. From the moment Adolf Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, American military leaders began to consider the nation's readiness to fight a potential world war. American battle readiness was found to be exceedingly wanting. General Dwight D. Eisenhower described the military establishment of the time as “started from a position as close to zero as a great nation could conceivably have allowed herself to sink.”1 Two decades of peace and the Great Depression had turned the American focus away from military strength. Hitler's advance in Europe produced a burst of action here at home to correct this weakness.