Way back in the early 1940s, Geraldine Elder, a 20-year-old girl from a silver mining town in northern Idaho, was a new college graduate looking for a job with a bit of adventure. She certainly did find a life of challenges and white-knuckled thrills when she signed on with Jacqueline Cochran, to become a woman pilot flying military planes in the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP. Geri was in the very first class of woman pilots, trained by the United States military to ferry shiny new "untested" aircraft from the factories to America's military aviation squadrons. Those airships that survived their maiden voyages were destined to be used by America's fighting force against the Germans and the Japanese to preserve the free world. She is now an octogenarian living in the Sunbelt, and lecturing at high schools throughout her community on the World War II generation.
These young American women flew in an elite group of military pilots during World War II. They flew America's fastest fighters and her biggest bombers. These amazing women pilots logged over 60 million miles in just two years. Each woman aviator was usually qualified to fly ten to twelve different aircraft, resulting in them becoming some of the most experienced, versatile and finest aviators in the world. Yet few people even know of their incredible wartime contributions, as I discovered for myself. On a visit to the Woman In Service to America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, I asked for information about them and none of the guides had ever heard of the WASP - Women Airforce Service Pilots. However, I expect that they do now, as I told Geri about it. Geri is Geraldine Elder Lamphere Nyman.
Who were the WASP? They were The Women Pilots of World War II ~ Their Story: AUDIO. I captured the photograph above of former World War II military test pilot and women's aviation pioneer, Geri Nyman, at her granddaughter's wedding in Laughlin, Nevada in 2005.
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GERI WAS A WASP 
In the early 1940s, came 1,074 young American women,
