House Honors Legacy of Women Airforce Pilots

On June 16, the House passed, by voice vote, S. 614, a bill to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), the first women to fly American military aircraft. The bill cleared the Senate by unanimous consent on May 20.

Sponsored by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), the measure contains several findings, including:

• through their actions, the WASP eventually were the catalyst for revolutionary reform in the integration of women pilots into the armed services;
• they flew more than 60 million miles for their country in every type of aircraft and on every type of assignment flown by the male Army Air Forces pilots, except combat;
• during the existence of the WASP — 38 women lost their lives while serving their country…because they were not considered military, no American flags were allowed on their coffins;
• the WASP military records were immediately sealed, stamped “classified” or “secret,” and filed away in government archives, unavailable to the historians who wrote the history of WWII or the scholars who compiled the history text books used today, with many of the records not declassified until the 1980s; and
• consequently, the WASP story is a missing chapter in the history of the Air Force, the history of aviation, and the history of the United States of America.

The bill directs the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate to “make appropriate arrangements for the award, on behalf of the Congress, of a single gold medal of appropriate design in honor of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) collectively, in recognition of their pioneering military service and exemplary record, which forged revolutionary reform in the Armed Forces of the United States of America.”