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Women Who Fly
Portraits of female pilots
By Rebecca Maksel
airspacemag.com, December 19, 2008
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Patty Wagstaff, Aerobatic Pilot
With the German monoplane Extra 260. Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, 1993.
“When you first start doing [aerobatics], you feel like your head’s going to explode and your eyeballs are going to pop out. All the blood drains out of your head and goes down to your feet so you have to tense your stomach muscles and your chest muscles, and then if it really gets bad, you tense up in your neck. I’m pulling so many Gs in such a short amount of time, it’s automatic with me….
Competition is a mental game in any sport. I start preparing mentally months before. When I get in bed at night, I go through a routine every night for months, sometimes for three months. I’ll go through the routines in my mind and it sort of lulls me to sleep. And I fly it. Sometimes I’m outside the plane. Sometimes I’m inside. And it’s always from a little different angle, and the wind is always different….
As soon as I started flying, I knew this is where I needed to be. I really needed a challenge and a focus and I wanted to achieve something. I wanted to make my mark somewhere. Aviation just symbolized everything that I loved. It was freedom, total freedom. You can get in an airplane, you can leave, you can go somewhere else, and you can be up there all by yourself. You grab hold of the stick in the plane and everything is sort of right. The world’s at peace.”
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Comments
It was a great thing the WASPS did during WWII. I was a teenager when Germany and Japan surrendered and remember the great things they did! Today, not in my Air Force career, women are flying again. This time in combat. Women C-130E crews are flying in Iraq and all the world. When I was flying C-130s I often told my wife "If you want to know where I am just read the headlines in the newspaper." These dedicated ladies are world travelers, just as we were in the 1960s and 1970s, often flying the same C-130 aircraft we flew. Little has been said about their dedication and valor. Their stories should be told in depth for posterity.
Posted by Lt.Col. Robert W. Ruffin Ret. on January 1,2009 | 10:49AM
The women never got the respect for what they done during WW-2. I flew with the RAF when I was 13 years old front gunner in a Wellington Bomber on Atlantic Patrol. I was in the Air Training Corps. We had completed all our training including gunnery and were allowed to fly relatively safe missions when we were out of school in the Summer. Just immagine the thrill at 13 of being behind a pair or .05 twin Browning machine guns in a rotating turret. We never did see a u-boat, but they were out there. Years later when I had come to America in my mid 20's I learned to fly and wound up with a Commercial Multi Engine certificate # 1416814. My greatest pleasure was flying my Luscombe 8A alone at night.
Posted by Robert A. Harbinson on February 19,2009 | 07:25PM