At the time of their service on the U.S. Homefront between 1942 – 1944, Thirty-Eight young women pilots, all volunteers in the U.S. Army Air Forces ‘Women’s Flying Training Detachment’ (WFTD) and the ‘Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS)’, were killed in training and on operational duty in support of the war effort during the Second World War.
The objective of WFTD and WAFS programs, which merged into a single unit of women pilots known as WASP in August 1943, was to see if women could serve as military pilots in order to release male pilots for overseas combat duties, and in doing so, ease the AAF’s collective demand on the manpower pool.
The WASP program was initiated under the Civil Service Commission at a time of national emergency, therefore the women accepted into the program were at first classified as a civilian detachment of the USAAF, with the intent to militarize the unit at a later time (which ultimately did happen until 1977). Because they were designated as civilians, and despite their contributions to the war effort flying military aircraft, the 38 American women pilots who gave their lives in service to country received no official military recognition, nor were they granted military services at national cemeteries or an American flag to drape over their coffins.
Since the military did not pay for the transport home of the 38 deceased who gave their lives in service to country, fellow WASP would often take up a collection to send their bodies home on a train with a WASP as escort. Additionally, the families of the 38 received no death benefits, nor were they permitted to place a gold star in the family window to indicate a loved one had died in the service.
In 2013, seven decades after the war’s end, a U.S. Army Chaplain, Capt. J. Clemens, who was intrigued by the history of the WASP, embarked on a mission ‘’to honor the dead’ and ensure they were properly identified and officially memorialized. Though many of the 38 grave markers had an image of WASP wings or the indication that they had died in the service inscribed onto their headstones by their families at private cemeteries, the 38 women who made the ultimate sacrifice were never provided a memorial funeral that acknowledged their wartime service to the U.S. Army Air Forces and Country in its time of need.
Capt. Clemens initiated action to correct this decades-old oversight and at his own expense had 38 individually personalized bronze commemorative medallions and flag holders cast so that memorial services could be scheduled and held for each of the women pilots who lost their lives as WASP trainees or while on operational duty.
Chaplain Clemen’s mission was entitled “Operation Celestial Flight’ and upon its launch he enlisted the help of his personal friend, WASP Florence ‘Shutsy’ Reynolds to design an individual bronze commemorative medallion with their name for each of the 38 pilots. Shutsy who was an artist and master silversmith reproduced and donated six sterling silver WASP wings and medallions to help defray the cost of the 38 bronze medallions.
In addition to Capt. Clemens and Shutsy Reynolds, a committee was formed to help coordinate the effort to locate the surviving relatives of the 38 pilots in
order to present them the bronze Celestial Flight medallion and flag stand to be placed at their place of interment. An outreach was extended to surviving relatives and next of kin by former WASP classmates, Kids and Friends of WASP, local veteran organizations, so that memorial services could be scheduled and held accordingly around the country.
In early to mid 2013, both Shutsy Reynolds and Cheryl Marie Michell (niece of Marie Michell Robinson who lost her life flying as co-pilot on a B-25 on October 2, 1944) contacted me for assistance in locating the relatives (or place of interment) of three of the 38 WASP who were not found by the committee. One of the three was WASP Alice Lovejoy, who died on September 13, 1944 when another plane collided with the AT-6 she was flying during a training mission for pursuit school near Brownsville, Texas.
Having a personal connection to Alice Lovejoy’s story, I connected with her niece and namesake, Alice Lovejoy Morrisey who, along with her daughter Kayla, represented her aunt at the Operation Celestial Flight ceremony held on May 27, 2013 in honor of Alice Lovejoy. The ceremony took place at the American Airpower Museum on Long Island where Alice Lovejoy’s bronze medallion is placed with the WASP exhibit at the museum by request of Shutsy Reynold’s and Alice Morrisey.
On that same Memorial Day in 2013, Cheryl Michell led what was one of final Operation Celestial Flight’s ceremonies in honor of her aunt, WASP Marie Michell Robinson. At Marie’s memorial ceremony the poem ‘Celestial Flight’ was read aloud. This poem was composed in memory of Marie Michell Robinson by her classmate Elizabeth MacKethan Magid in October 1944. It was an appropriate conclusion to Operation Celestial Flight’s mission to honor the 38 WASP …
Its mission complete.
The bios and photographs of each of the Thirty-Eight may be viewed by courtesy of Andy Hailey at his webpage: https://www.wwii-women-pilots.org/the-38.html
Written by: Julia Lauria-Blum
About Julia Lauria-Blum:
Julia Lauria-Blum earned a degree in the Visual Arts at SUNY New Paltz. An early interest in women aviation pioneers led her to research the Women Airforce Service Pilots of WWII. In 2001 she curated the permanent WASP exhibit at the American Airpower Museum (AAM) in Farmingdale, NY, and later curated ‘Women Who Brought the War Home, Women War Correspondents, WWII’ at the AAM. She is the former curatorial assistant & collections registrar at the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island and is currently editor-in-chief for Metropolitan Airport News.