Three letters on the chart: SWW. From 25,000 women who applied, 1,074 earned their wings here — and the Army called them civilians so it would not have to bury them as soldiers.
A Pirep featured story · KSWW Avenger Field, Sweetwater, TX
When you taxi in at Sweetwater, you are on the only all-female military air base in American history. Avenger Field started the war ordinarily enough — a dollar-a-year lease in 1942, a contest-winning name, classes of British and American male cadets. Then in February 1943 the first Women Airforce Service Pilots arrived, and by that April the men were gone and Avenger became something that had never existed and has not existed since.
Jacqueline Cochran ran it. Twenty-five thousand women applied; 1,830 were accepted; 1,074 finished and earned their wings. They flew every type the Army had — trainers, fighters, bombers, the airplanes male pilots called too hot or too heavy — ferrying them factory-to-base, towing gunnery targets while live rounds came at them, freeing men for combat. They flew over sixty million miles. Their mascot was Fifinella, a winged female gremlin from a Roald Dahl story, drawn by Walt Disney. After a first solo, a WASP got thrown in the Wishing Well by the gate; before a check ride, you tossed in a coin.
Here is the part that should sit with you on the ramp. The WASP were classified as civil service, not military. No insurance. No benefits. When thirty-eight of them died in service, the Army would not pay to ship the bodies home, would not allow a flag on the coffin, would not call it a military funeral. Their fellow trainees passed the hat. It took until 1977 for Congress to grant them veteran status, and until 2010 for the Congressional Gold Medal. The Wishing Well still stands, on the technical-college grounds that share the field, and the National WASP WWII Museum opened in the old hangars in 2005. Land here and you are landing where they soloed.