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CAF RISE ABOVE WASP The WASP paved the way for women pilots in the military, acting as “spiritual grandmothers” to f

, October 8, 1920, Gertrude Marcia Wenzel Milner was born in New London, Connecticut.Marcia was 12 when her father took...
10/08/2026

, October 8, 1920, Gertrude Marcia Wenzel Milner was born in New London, Connecticut.

Marcia was 12 when her father took her to an airfield in Bridgeport. By high school, she was taking flying lessons at nearby Norwalk Airport. In 1939, she earned her private pilot’s license and a seaplane rating.

When the Army Air Forces began recruiting women pilots during World War II, Marcia applied. After an interview in New York City, she paid her way to Sweetwater, Texas, to join Class 43-W-8 at Avenger Field. She graduated on December 17, 1943.

Her assignments took her to Chico and Merced Army Air Fields in California, where she served as an engineering test pilot. She also trained to fly the B-26, adding another aircraft to the range of trainers and bombers she flew during her WASP service.

After the program ended in December 1944, Marcia worked as a flight instructor in Albany, New York, and ferried aircraft for the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. She continued flying her own airplanes, including a BT-13 and a Curtiss Fledgling.

Read more about Marcia’s life through CAF RISE ABOVE:
https://cafriseabove.org/gertrude-m-wenzel-milner/

Before Verneda Rodriguez McLean entered the Women Airforce Service Pilots program, she was already working in aviation.B...
10/07/2026

Before Verneda Rodriguez McLean entered the Women Airforce Service Pilots program, she was already working in aviation.

Born in Chicago in 1918, Verneda attended teachers college before going to work as a meteorologist at Chicago Municipal Airport. She began flying in 1943 and entered the WASP training program the following year.

Verneda graduated from Avenger Field with class 44-W-6 on August 4, 1944. She was then assigned to Moore Field near Mission, Texas, where she flew tow-target missions. These flights gave antiaircraft crews the opportunity to practice firing at a moving target pulled behind an aircraft. The work demanded steady flying and placed the women in the air while live am******on was being used below.

Verneda flew the PT-17, BT-13, AT-6, C-45, and UC-78. When the WASP program ended in December 1944, she returned to Chicago and resumed working in the weather service. She later analyzed aircraft accidents at Langley and became an accomplished artist.

Her service to the WASP continued long after she left the cockpit. During the 1970s, Verneda joined other former pilots in the campaign for legal recognition of their wartime work. Congress finally granted the WASP veteran status in 1977, more than three decades after their service ended.

Verneda died in 1982 and was among the first WASP buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Learn more: https://cafriseabove.org/verneda-g-rodriguez-mclean/

During Hispanic Heritage Month, we are remembering Frances Dias Gustavson, one of the few women from a Hispanic or Portu...
10/06/2026

During Hispanic Heritage Month, we are remembering Frances Dias Gustavson, one of the few women from a Hispanic or Portuguese American background to earn her Women Airforce Service Pilots wings during World War II.

Frances was born in Newman, California, in 1916. Her parents, Frank and Lena Dias, were of Portuguese ancestry with family roots on São Jorge Island in the Azores. She began taking flying lessons at airports near Merced and Gustine, soloed in 1936, earned her private pilot certificate in 1938, and received her commercial license in 1941.

She entered the women’s military flying program in 1943 and graduated with class 43-W-2. Assigned to the 5th Ferrying Group at Love Field in Dallas, Frances helped move military aircraft from factories to bases around the country. Her records list the PT-19, BT-13, and UC-78 among the aircraft she flew. She later recalled one particularly unusual assignment involving a Soviet C-47.

Her aviation career did not end when the WASP program was disbanded. Frances flew commercially, performed as an aerobatic pilot with the Tex Rankin Airshow, and helped organize the All Woman Transcontinental Air Race. She and her husband also operated the airport in Fallon, Nevada, for many years.

Frances was one of 1,074 women who earned WASP wings, but her background made her part of an even smaller group within the program.

Read more: https://cafriseabove.org/frances-dias-gustavson

This is one of our favorite stories to share during Hispanic Heritage Month because Marie Teresa “Tere” Ríos Versace liv...
10/03/2026

This is one of our favorite stories to share during Hispanic Heritage Month because Marie Teresa “Tere” Ríos Versace lived a life that connected aviation, military service, journalism, and television history.

Born in Brooklyn in 1917 to a Puerto Rican father and an Irish American mother, Ríos grew up proud of her Puerto Rican heritage. She married Army officer Humbert Joseph Versace and traveled extensively as part of a military family.

During World War II, Ríos drove Army trucks and buses and flew with the Civil Air Patrol. She was not a WASP, but her work belonged to the much larger story of women who stepped into essential wartime roles, including many jobs that had rarely been open to them before the war.

Ríos also built a career with words. She wrote and edited for newspapers in the United States and overseas, including Stars and Stripes, taught creative writing, and was named Wisconsin Writer of the Year in 1958. Writing under the name Tere Ríos, she published An Angel Grows Up, Brother Angel, and The Fifteenth Pelican.

That final book introduced readers to a Puerto Rican convent and a young nun whose unusual ability to fly caused no shortage of trouble. It became the basis for The Flying Nun, the ABC sitcom starring Sally Field that aired from 1967 through 1970.

Her family’s military history carried a much heavier chapter as well. Her eldest son, Army Capt. Humbert “Rocky” Versace, was captured in Vietnam in 1963 and killed by his captors in 1965. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in 2002.

Tere Ríos Versace deserves to be remembered as more than the woman behind a popular television show. She was a pilot, wartime driver, journalist, teacher, author, military spouse, and proud daughter of the Puerto Rican diaspora.

Have you ever read The Fifteenth Pelican or watched The Flying Nun?

📷 Wisconsin Historical Society

It's and it was incredibly difficult to only pick ONE photo of a smiling WASP. There are just so many, despite the in...
10/02/2026

It's and it was incredibly difficult to only pick ONE photo of a smiling WASP. There are just so many, despite the incredible challenges these women faced.

Seen here is Gertrude Meserve. Can anyone tell us what she's doing so happily?

Fifteen WASP were selected on October 1, 1943, from their posts at Camp Davis, North Carolina, to participate in a top-s...
10/01/2026

Fifteen WASP were selected on October 1, 1943, from their posts at Camp Davis, North Carolina, to participate in a top-secret experimental program at Camp Stewart, Georgia. This select group was trained to operate radio-controlled drones as target aircraft for anti-aircraft gunnery practice. As tow-target pilots at Camp Davis, the WASP had the perfect experience for the job.

The need for this program arose from the U.S. Army’s desire to develop safer methods of training anti-aircraft gunners and testing new weapons systems. Remote-controlled aircraft offered a way to simulate enemy aircraft without risking pilots' lives. The program centered on the use of the Culver PQ-8 and PQ-14 radio-controlled target drones, highly innovative aircraft that were developed by the U.S. Army’s radio-control program begun circa 1940.

The PQ-8 and PQ-14 could be operated either remotely or with a pilot onboard; each control surface was linked to its own servo motor, responding to commands from a remote pilot known as a “beeper pilot” either on the ground or in a chase plane up to five miles away. In training, two WASP would fly together in a Cessna AT-17 Bobcat: one piloting the AT-17, while the other controlled the PQ-8 drone, and a third WASP sometimes flew as a safety pilot inside the drone to take command if needed

The assignment at Camp Stewart was groundbreaking. The WASP not only demonstrated women’s ability to handle cutting-edge military technology but also contributed directly to refining drone tactics that would influence future aerial combat strategies. Though the program remained classified for years, its legacy foreshadowed the modern use of unmanned aerial systems. The WASP’s participation in such missions challenged gender norms and underscored their critical role in the war effort, helping pave the way for the eventual integration of women into the U.S. Armed Forces.

, September 30, 1922, Jean Hixson was born in Hoopeston, Illinois.Hixson began taking flying lessons at 16 and earned h...
09/30/2026

, September 30, 1922, Jean Hixson was born in Hoopeston, Illinois.

Hixson began taking flying lessons at 16 and earned her pilot’s license at 18. During World War II, she reported to Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, where she trained with 136 women in WASP class 44-W-6. Seventy-two completed the course and received their wings on August 4, 1944.

Hixson was assigned to Douglas Army Air Field in Arizona as an engineering test pilot. There, she flew the B-25 Mitchell, checking aircraft before other pilots were asked to take them into the air.

Flying remained part of her life after the WASP were disbanded. Hixson became a flight instructor, competed in air races, piloted helicopters and balloons, and even flew the Goodyear blimp. In 1957, she became the second woman to break the sound barrier.

She also taught mathematics and science in Akron, Ohio, while serving in the Air Force Reserve. In 1961, Hixson completed the demanding medical examinations developed for America’s first astronauts. She was one of 13 accomplished pilots later known as the Mercury 13, although the privately organized testing program was never part of NASA’s official astronaut selection process.

Hixson retired from the Air Force Reserve as a colonel in 1982. By then, she had logged more than 6,000 flight hours and spent three decades teaching young people.

Jean Hixson’s life did not follow a single path. She was a wartime test pilot, an educator, a military officer, a supersonic aviator, and a woman prepared to go to space if given the opportunity.

Learn more: https://cafriseabove.org/jean-hixson/

, September 29, 1912, Bernetta Adams Miller explained why she had come to College Park, Maryland. She was there to demo...
09/29/2026

, September 29, 1912, Bernetta Adams Miller explained why she had come to College Park, Maryland. She was there to demonstrate a Blériot monoplane to the U.S. Army, not to perform stunts.

Miller had recently earned Aero Club of America license No. 173, becoming the fifth woman in the United States to receive a pilot’s license. The Moisant aviation company chose her to show Army officers that the monoplane was a practical alternative to the biplanes they favored.

Her demonstration was delayed after two Army aviators were killed at College Park. Miller would not fly until after their funeral. She told a newspaper that doing otherwise would be disrespectful.

When she finally took the Blériot up on October 7, Miller became one of the earliest women to demonstrate an aircraft for the U.S. military. She understood that her presence was part of the sales pitch. If a woman could master the unfamiliar monoplane, skeptical Army pilots might be persuaded that they could fly it as well.

Miller wanted women to see the airplane as a practical machine rather than a novelty reserved for daredevils. That argument would still sound familiar three decades later, when the Women Airforce Service Pilots repeatedly proved that women could operate the military aircraft assigned to them.

Miller’s aviation career was brief, but her service was not. During World War I, she worked near the front as a YMCA canteen worker supporting American troops and was later awarded the French Croix de Guerre.

, September 26, 1916, Dorothy Mae “Dottie” Nichols was born in Island County, Washington.A UCLA graduate and licensed p...
09/26/2026

, September 26, 1916, Dorothy Mae “Dottie” Nichols was born in Island County, Washington.

A UCLA graduate and licensed pilot, Nichols entered Army Air Forces flight training in December 1942. She graduated with WASP Class 43-W-2 at Avenger Field the following May and reported to the 6th Ferrying Group at Long Beach Army Air Base.

Nichols later completed pursuit training and ferried the P-39 Airacobra, P-40 Warhawk, and P-47 Thunderbolt. Her work included moving P-39s along the American portion of the Lend-Lease route that supplied aircraft to the Soviet Union.

On June 11, 1944, Nichols was ferrying a P-39 when its engine failed shortly after takeoff near Bismarck, North Dakota. She was only 27 years old. Seven fellow WASP served as pallbearers at her funeral, which was attended by WASP leaders Jacqueline Cochran and Nancy Harkness Love.

Nichols was one of 38 WASP who died while serving their country during World War II. Like the other women of the program, she served as a civilian pilot because Congress did not grant the WASP military status during the war. That recognition finally came in 1977.

Learn more: https://cafriseabove.org/dorothy-mae-dottie-nichols/

09/25/2026

was a blast! If you couldn't join us there, enjoy our Mustang slicing the sky. 🤩

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Red Wing, MN
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