Nancy Love and the Wasp Ferry Pilots of World War II

She flew the swift P-51 and the capricious P-38, but the heavy, four-engine B-17 bomber and C-54 transport were her forte. This is the story of Nancy Harkness Love who, early in World War II, recruited and led the first group of twenty-eight women to fly military aircraft for the U.S. Army. Her pilots ferried planes across the United States during a time when male pilots were in short supply. Love checked out on twenty-three different military aircraft and became the first woman to fly several of them, including the B-17 Flying Fortress. Her World War II career ended on a high note: following a general’s orders, she piloted a giant C-54 Army transport over the fabled China-Burma-India ?Hump,” the crucial airlift route over the Himalayas. Young women serving today as combat pilots owe much to Love for creating the opportunity for women to serve.

Sarah Byrn Rickman left her newspaper editor job in 1989 to write books. A Masters in Creative Writing, coupled with access to the WASP and WAFS through her freelance job with the International Women’s Air and Space Museum, produced first an award-winning WASP novel, Flight from Fear , and then The Originals: The Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron of World War II. While writing The Originals, Rickman came to realize the need for founder Nancy Love’s biography.