Military History: Women Pilots who Flew During WW2 DENIED Rest at Arlington Cemetery

This is a damn outrage. Somebody needs to have their ass kicked for this and get it Corrected ASAP! -SF

First Lt. Elaine Danforth Harmon, a Women’s Airforce Service Pilot, or WASP, was one of many women who served their country when it needed them the most. More than 70 years after Harmon flew military aircraft, her family wants to place her ashes at Arlington National Cemetery.

Harmon, a Congressional Gold Medal recipient, died in April 2015 at the age of 95. Her daughter, Terry Harmon, sought to fulfill her mother’s wish to be inurned at Arlington’s Columbarium. However, she received a call from the cemetery telling her that former WASPs were ineligible for inurnment, a fact she argues contradicts an earlier decision.

The result is a new chapter in a long-running fight — wrapped inside a bureaucratic rigmarole — over resting privileges for America’s World War II-era women pilots.

The WASPs emerged during a period of rapid change and progress for the U.S. military. As the shadows of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan loomed, two female aviators, Nancy Harkness Love and Jacqueline Cochrane, proposed two separate plans to train female pilots in the event of American entry into the war.

In Europe, wartime necessities prompted Allied nations to enlist the service of female pilots. In Britain, Air Transport Auxiliary women ferried planes around the nation — with some American women joining the fray. Soviet women in 1942 became the first to fly combat missions.

Yet, back in the United States, Cochrane and Love struggled to get their programs off the ground, finally receiving permission to start recruiting in September 1942.

Read the Remainder at War is Boring