Customer Reviews

Those Wonderful Women in Their Flying Machines: The Unknown Heroines of World War Two

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Facinating! A true and candid account of history's flygirls and the Women Pilots during WWII, this book is almost impossible to put down. So little has been told about these pioneering women of the skies. The amazing, daring accounts of pilot training, WWII travels, and the prejudices battled during service are a revealed in such heart-felt and sometimes shocking detail. No other book about women pilots has delved into the day to day life or recounted the history of women flyers with such vigor. You'll head for the nearest flight school!

(by E.M. Singer, author of "Mother Flies Hurricanes")This well-written, thorough, engaging account is prefaced by short biographies on Amelia Earhart and Jacqueline Cochran. The author focuses mainly on the WASPs, but England's Air Transport Auxiliary gets a chapter (which is only right, because the ATA was the forerunner of the WASPs). Roberta Leveaux, who wrote the foreword to Mother Flies Hurricanes, is featured along with other American women who served in the ATA. (She was known as Bobby Sandoz then.) These 25 women, most of them, went by boat across the North Atlantic in 1942, the worst year of the war for U-boat sinkings on Allied shipping. Once in England, they had to endure the same privations and hardships as the British people-rationing, bombings, poor or non-existent heating in the places they were billetted, among other things. This book paints a vivid picture of ATA training, which was strict, comprehensive, and exacting. It had to be, since the pilots had to ferry dozens of different types of aircraft to hundreds of RAF maintenance units and squadrons scattered all over England. Keil's account also explores the feelings of culture shock and homesickness the women felt at being in a foreign country, which was a war zone on top of everything else. They overcame all the physical, mental, and psychological challenges thrown at them, and became top-notch ferry pilots who are still remembered today with admiration and affection by their British compatriots. For more recommendations on books about women pilots and the role they played in WWII, check out the motherflieshurricanes.com website.

Those Wonderful Women in Their Flying Machines
by Sally V. Keil is a wonderful attempt at giving credit
to true heros of our nation. Today women compete in many
areas and mostly against other women. In the air, women
obey all the laws of physics that men do. And these women
were very special. On such women was the late great Aline Rhonie
Hofheimer who besides being on the first to sign up, she also
served in ther British Red Cross Ambulance Corp and flew also with the ATA. Prior she created a huge fresco/mural in Hanger
F of Roosevelt Field on Long Island. It is important that
todays youth understand that such women existed and if not
poisoned by our culture can rise to the top again. God bless
the WAFS and WASPS and all of those women who put themselves
in harms way and never asked for special consideration. Buy
the book.

I found the book easy and agreable to read, being split in chapters covering various aspects of the story of the WASPs. The book showed well the depth of the prejudice and intolerance, sometimes bordering on the criminal, shown towards brave women who only wanted to serve their country in a time of war. The autor also managed to cover the subject of aviation without using overly technical terms. The only possible critique I would give to this book is that more pictures may have made the book even easier to read, especially to the readers who have little or no knowledge of aviation. I am myself highly knowledgeable about aviation and war and found the information in the book to be both accurate and pertinent to the subject of the book. Overall a good book to have to relax or pass time during a long trip.