Status Updates From The Fly Girls Revolt: The S...

“The thought of women pilots made many Air Force men uncomfortable. If a mere woman could be a military pilot, maybe being a pilot wasn’t so special after all. It was an idea that took a while for senior Air Force leadership to embrace.”

1975- Uniforms might sound trivial, but they were a huge problem. Many interested women Air Force recruits didn’t join simply because they hated the uniform. Associated Press reporter Kelly Smith characterized the long jacket with padded shoulders as something that “looks like it walked out of a 1940 movie.” Interesting side note- the uniforms included skirts.

In 1934, Henderson barred women from the National Air Races because he couldn’t stomach the thought of a woman’s death.

“In 1934, Henderson had barred women from the race, saying, ‘Women have no more place in the National Air Races than on the automobile racetrack at Indianapolis.’ He didn’t have anything against women aviators, of course, but a year earlier twenty-three-year old Florence Klingensmith had died when a wing fell off her aircraft during a tight pylon turn at a race in Chicago. “Is it worth the price?”

[on Jacquelyn Cochran being the first woman to fly a bomber across the Atlantic].. “ ‘She’ll belittle the rest of us who have been involved in this dangerous work. It’s for men.’ The opinion was really that if a woman could do the job, it wasn’t all that dangerous.”