FlyZolo Team Update - Day 6
As Zara left for #Kulusuk, #Greenland, only a short flight would have taken her over "Bluie East 2", an old WWII military landing strip. There has been much discussion about how to deal with the more than 200.000 rusting fuel barrels, vehicles and ruins still remaining on the ground. It finally led to a long awaited first (financial) agreement in 2017, with clean-up starting mid-2019 and which will take many years to come as it can only be done in summer.
Less known, is that Bluie East 2 also evokes the story of the WASP (Women's Army Service Pilots). WASP was a pioneering organisation of civilian women pilots, attached to the United States Army Air Forces to fly and ferry military aircraft during World II.
Recruits were required to complete the same primary, basic, and advanced training courses as male Army Air Corps pilots and many of them went on to specialised flight training. By graduation, WASP recruits had 560 hours of ground school and 210 hours of flight training. They knew Morse code, meteorology, military law, physics, aircraft mechanics, navigation and other subjects. After their training, the WASP were stationed at 122 air bases across the U.S. where they assumed numerous flight-related missions and relieved male pilots for combat duty. Ferrying planes from factory to airbases made up their first duties: when a ferrying mission came in, the WASP would go to the factory, fly the plane in a test flight and then deliver the plane. As such, during World War II, WASP pilots flew 80 percent of all ferrying missions. They delivered over 12,000 aircraft, of 78 different types and freed around 900 male pilots for combat duty .They also towed targets for live anti-aircraft artillery practice, simulated strafing missions, and transported cargo.
Only in 1977 its members were granted veteran status - they had been asking for since the war - for services rendered and in 2009, under Obama, were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.
