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“The guys were like our brothers,” she told the Tampa Tribune in an interview last December.įor more than 30 years, however, they were denied any military veteran status until Jimmy Carter signed a bill into law extending veterans benefits to WASPs. “I was never maltreated nor did I know of any girls who were,” she said. They also flew aircraft towing targets for men on the ground to learn to shoot at enemy aircraft. Women weren’t allowed to be combat pilots in the war, but they were plenty capable, the military thought, to ferry aircraft to combat locations. Thank you again and with kindest regards, I remain, The article didn’t mention Didi Moorman so I assume that she has passed on. I wasn’t the only pilot that felt this way, and I am sure that they would thank you too if they knew where you were. You made the difference in my flying from then on. I will admit that I was scared, even though I had just returned from flying B-24s in North Africa. I realize that it was a long time ago, but I still want to thank you for your helping me that day at Clovis. I have asked the CAF to send this letter on to you and hope that you will receive it. 1985, that a friend of mine had given me. I recently read about you in the Confederate Air Force “Dispatch” dated July/Aug.
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It has been many years but I have never forgotten that day at Clovis and never will. From that day on we never had a pilot who didn’t want to fly the B-29. You were the pilot that day and demonstrated your excellent flying skills and convinced us the B-29 was the plane that any pilot could be proud to fly. You came to show us that the B-29 plane was not one to be feared. I was the Director of Maintenance & Supply and Base Test Pilot at the time. Tibbets and Didi Moorman when you brought a B-29 to Clovis AFB, Clovis, N.M. In 1995, a retired Air Force pilot sent her this letter:īefore you throw this letter into the trash-basket, let me introduce myself. Tibbets’ superiors found out he was letting women fly the B-29 and shut the program down.īut it was too late, she had already made a difference. “At stake was the ability of that aircraft to deliver the bomb it was built to fly,” she said. She and Didi Moorman flew the B-29 to airbases and when men saw women emerging, they decided they might be able to fly it, too. McKeown and another woman - both members of the Women’s Air Service Pilots (WASP) - to fly the plane, even though she’d never flown a four-engine plane before. Paul Tibbets, who would later pilot the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, recruited Ms. It had unreliable engines, caught fire regularly, and didn’t undergo the kind of testing other airplanes of the day did. The Saint Paul native was the first woman to fly a B-29 Superfortress during World War II because the men were afraid to. Dora Dougherty Strother McKeown has died.