?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 700 - $ 900
Women Army Airforce Training Detachment, 318th, World War II. Yearbook: 318th A.A.F.F.T.D. Class of 43-W4 and 43-W5.
Sweetwater, Texas: Avenger Field, 1943.
Small folio format class- or yearbook for the advanced pilot class of 43-4 and 43 W5 female pilots, consisting of approximately 100 illustrated pages featuring images of instructors and pilots at work and play; bound in textured vinyl imprinted with their mascot Fifinella, the flying gremlin, a character first developed by Walt Disney for a proposed screen adaptation of the Roald Dahl book Gremlins, and subsequently adopted, with Disney's approval, by the WASPs; with one clipping mentioning the death of a pilot inserted; very nicely preserved, 10 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.
The Women Airforce Service Pilots, selected by the director of the WASP program, Jacqueline Cochran, were trained to fly military aircraft during the second World War. The group relocated from Howard Hughes Municipal Airport in Houston to Avenger Field in Sweetwater in 1943. Their rigorous training required them to master the same flying duties as their male counterparts. The pilots at Sweetwater were assigned to fly every military airplane flown by men. 1,800 women participated in the program. Although held in some libraries, examples of these yearbooks are scarce in the trade.
