NANCY LOVE: WASP PILOT

Books are softcover and autographed by author Sarah Byrn Rickman.

Nancy Harkness Love founded the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) as World War II was draining the available manpower of the country. Throughout 1944, she led 134 experienced women pilots, by then renamed WASP, who ferried — flew — 4,038 fighter aircraft from factories to the docks for shipment abroad to the shooting war at the Battlefront. This was the single most important job performed by the women pilots during WWII. Each woman freed a man to fight abroad.

How Nancy got there — a woman in what truly was a man’s world — and how she carried off this essential wartime task for the Air Transport Command is the stuff of legends. Smart, savvy, and herself a skilled pilot, she dedicated her efforts to her women pilot’s service and their wellbeing. She negotiated the mine-filled path of male egos, politics and interference with competence and grace and kept her women flying those critically needed aircraft when it counted.

Her story — quiet heroism of a different kind — is ready-made for young women ages 10 and up to read. How a remarkable woman made it in a man’s world back then is well worth the read.