Nigeria gets first female military pilot

From Spyghana: Nigeria gets first female military pilot

Blessing Liman, a 25-year-old lady from Kaduna State, has become Nigeria’s first female military pilot, news publication ThisDay reported December 12, 2011.

Blessing Liman was commissioned by the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) at the weekend, along with 126 others, after completing the Direct Short Service Course 2010/11 Cadets of 325 Ground Training Group at the NAF Base in Kaduna.

An elated Blessing Liman, according to ThisDay, called on her fellow women to see her feat as a challenge for them to explore their capabilities for nation-building.

The publication cited Air Vice Marshal Mohammed Dikko Umar , Nigeria’s Chief of Air Staff, as saying that the successful passing out from cadet training of the first female pilot was “a very laudable achievement” to the nation.

President Goodluck Jonathan is said to have directed the Nigerian Armed Forces to produce female combatants in order to give impetus to gender equality in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.

A Pilot's Charm Bracelet

I've just acquired a charm bracelet that was owned by a woman (name unfortunately unknown) who participated in at least the 1965 and 1966 Powder Puff Derbies. I know this because on her charm bracelet are two of thse little United States route charms, with the route of the race etched into the front and the year of the race on the back.

Breakaway: The History of Women in Aviation November 2011

http://www.amazon.com/Breakaway-History-Aviation-November-ebook/dp/B006KM9UFS/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1323595315&sr=1-1

Breakaway: The History of Women in Aviation is a monthly series of pamphlets on the Kindle. (Don't have a Kindle? No problem. Download the free emulator from Amazon and you can read it on your computer.) And it's available on the Nook, too.

Breakaway provides a monthly synopsis of current events involving women pilots, as well as a monthly calendar of general aviation, and articles on a variety of subjects.

The November installment of Breakaway features:

Calendar
1. Aviation Calendar – January 2012

Articles
1. Vernice Armour: Accelerated Passion
2. Why I Am Not Afraid to Fly, by Katherine Stinson (1919)
3. History of The Powder Puff Derby: The First Race – 1947

News
1. News Articles, November 1-30, 2011: Headlines Only
2. News Headlines and Brief Synopsis of Articles, November 1-30, 2011

Appendices
1. Selected Museums Devoted to Women in Aviation

Katherine Stinson documentary

This is a 26 doc on Katherine Stinson (my kindle readers will need to visit Youtube via compuer).

Cornelia Fort's family, friends donate funds to save open land

Before sharing the article, here's a bio of Cornelia Fort from Wikipedia:

Cornelia Clark Fort (Feb 5, 1919–Mar 21 1943) was an aviator in the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) (later merged with the Women Airforce Service Pilots), who became the first female pilot in American history to die on active duty.

Early life and career
Fort was born to a wealthy and prominent Nashville, Tennessee, family; her father, Rufus Elijah Fort, was a founder of National Life and Accident Insurance Company. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1939. After college, Fort would join the Junior League of Nashville. She showed an early interest in flying, ultimately training for and earning her pilot's license in Hawaii.

Pearl Harbor attack
While working as a civilian pilot instructor at Pearl Harbor, Cornelia Fort inadvertently became one of the first witnesses to the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II. On December 7, 1941, Fort was in the air near Pearl Harbor teaching takeoffs and landings to a student pilot in an Interstate Cadet monoplane. Hers and a few other civilian aircraft were the only U.S. planes in the air near the harbor at that time. Fort saw a military airplane flying directly toward her and swiftly grabbed the controls from her student to pull up over the oncoming craft.

It was then she saw the rising sun insignia on the wings. Within moments, she saw billows of black smoke coming from Pearl Harbor and bombers flying in. She quickly landed the plane at John Rodgers civilian airport near the mouth of Pearl Harbor. The pursuing Zero strafed her plane and the runway as she and her student ran for cover. The airport manager was killed and two other civilian planes did not return that morning.

Military service
With all civilian flights grounded in Hawaii, Fort returned to the mainland in early 1942. She made a short movie promoting war bonds that was successful and led to speaking engagements. Later that year, Nancy Love recruited her to serve in the newly established Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), precursor to the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). She was the second woman accepted into the service. The WAFS ferried military planes to bases within the United States.

Death
Stationed at the 6th Ferrying Group base at Long Beach, California, Cornelia Fort became the first WAFS fatality on March 21, 1943 when another plane being ferried by a male pilot struck the left wing of the BT-13 she was ferrying in a mid-air collision ten miles south of Merkel, Texas. At the time of the accident, Cornelia Fort was one of the most accomplished pilots of the WAFS. The footstone of her grave is inscribed, "Killed in the Service of Her Country."

Legacy
Cornelia Fort was portrayed in the film Tora, Tora, Tora by Jeff Donnell [real name Jean, but the actress preferred her nickname, Jeff, after the character from the Mutt and Jeff comic strip].

The Cornelia Fort Airpark in East Nashville is named after her.

From The Tennessean: Cornelia

Fort's family, friends donate funds to save open land
More than $200,000 has been donated to protect open land in Nashville by family and friends of Cornelia Fort, the first woman pilot to die on war duty in American history.

The gift that will help replenish Metro’s Open Space Fund was announced Thursday morning at the 135-acre Cornelia Fort Airpark in East Nashville.

The airpark property, which cost $1.2 million, was the first acquisition for Nashville’s Open Space Plan and has expanded the Shelby Bottoms park system to more than 1,300 acres. It also provides a northern entrance to the park.

A second purchase — the 181-acre Ravenwood Country Club at $2.8 million — goes before the Metro Council on Dec. 6, for the second of three required approvals.

Mayor Karl Dean thanked the members of the Fort family and friends Thursday for “their generosity and dedication to conserving nature and history.”

“Not only is the airport property a prime example of what our Open Space Plan aims to accomplish, the public-private partnership supporting this acquisition is a model for how we want to engage the private sector in raising funds for public land conservation going forward,” he said.

The donation for the Open Space Fund was organized by The Land Trust for Tennessee, which is the leading private fundraiser for the city’s Open Space Plan.

The plan is part of Dean’s push to make the city greener, encouraging such things as green roofs, tree planting and preservation of land to make waterways and air cleaner and to draw people outdoors.
Endowments grow

Such efforts are a trend nationwide.

The gathering beside the now-closed tarmac and empty hangars came the day after The Land Trust Alliance released a national census showing that endowments to protect lands have more than doubled from 2005 to 2010.

Ten million new acres were conserved, despite a slow economy.

“Communities nationwide value clean water, local food and places to play, and they are investing in those places close to home,” said Rand Wentworth, president of the alliance.

Local land trusts are saving more land while federal funding and purchases for such acquisitions are shrinking, he said.

Dean unveiled the Open Space Plan last April, which calls for 3,000 acres of parkland to be added in the next 10 years. It advocates for conservation of 22,000 acres of public and private land over 25 years. The mayor included $5 million in Metro’s 2010 capital spending plan for acquisitions.

The Metro Parks Department will seek public input on the design and programs for the airpark and Ravenwood properties, according to the mayor’s office.
'A path less traveled'

Cornelia Fort, one of Nashville’s most famous residents, had grown up in a well-to-do family and was a member of the Junior League and a debutante.

She preferred, however, moving down a path less traveled. After her father, Rufus Fort, pressed his three sons never to take to the sky in an airplane, she did, said her niece Julia Fort Lowe of Cookeville.

Lowe attended the event Thursday along with her brother Garth Fort of St. Louis, and Nashvillian Stroud Merritt, a great-nephew of Cornelia Fort.

Tish Fort of Nashville, another niece who was in the tree-rimmed airpark, said she couldn’t be happier at the preservation of the land there.

“My regret is, of course, that Cornelia’s not here and that our daddies aren’t here to see not only the Fort name honored but their sister honored.”

Cornelia Fort grew up on a cattle farm estate that once covered part of Shelby Bottoms. She was delivering a plane cross-country in 1943 when another plane touched hers.

The other pilot bailed out, but Cornelia Fort died. She was 24.

More than $200,000 has been donated to protect open land in Nashville by family and friends of Cornelia Fort, the first woman pilot to die on war duty in American history.

The gift that will help replenish Metro’s Open Space Fund was announced Thursday morning at the 135-acre Cornelia Fort Airpark in East Nashville.

The airpark property, which cost $1.2 million, was the first acquisition for Nashville’s Open Space Plan and has expanded the Shelby Bottoms park system to more than 1,300 acres. It also provides a northern entrance to the park.

A second purchase — the 181-acre Ravenwood Country Club at $2.8 million — goes before the Metro Council on Dec. 6, for the second of three required approvals.

Mayor Karl Dean thanked the members of the Fort family and friends Thursday for “their generosity and dedication to conserving nature and history.”

“Not only is the airport property a prime example of what our Open Space Plan aims to accomplish, the public-private partnership supporting this acquisition is a model for how we want to engage the private sector in raising funds for public land conservation going forward,” he said.

The donation for the Open Space Fund was organized by The Land Trust for Tennessee, which is the leading private fundraiser for the city’s Open Space Plan.

The plan is part of Dean’s push to make the city greener, encouraging such things as green roofs, tree planting and preservation of land to make waterways and air cleaner and to draw people outdoors.
Endowments grow

Such efforts are a trend nationwide.

The gathering beside the now-closed tarmac and empty hangars came the day after The Land Trust Alliance released a national census showing that endowments to protect lands have more than doubled from 2005 to 2010.

Ten million new acres were conserved, despite a slow economy.

“Communities nationwide value clean water, local food and places to play, and they are investing in those places close to home,” said Rand Wentworth, president of the alliance.

Local land trusts are saving more land while federal funding and purchases for such acquisitions are shrinking, he said.

Dean unveiled the Open Space Plan last April, which calls for 3,000 acres of parkland to be added in the next 10 years. It advocates for conservation of 22,000 acres of public and private land over 25 years. The mayor included $5 million in Metro’s 2010 capital spending plan for acquisitions.

The Metro Parks Department will seek public input on the design and programs for the airpark and Ravenwood properties, according to the mayor’s office.
'A path less traveled'

Cornelia Fort, one of Nashville’s most famous residents, had grown up in a well-to-do family and was a member of the Junior League and a debutante.

She preferred, however, moving down a path less traveled. After her father, Rufus Fort, pressed his three sons never to take to the sky in an airplane, she did, said her niece Julia Fort Lowe of Cookeville.

Lowe attended the event Thursday along with her brother Garth Fort of St. Louis, and Nashvillian Stroud Merritt, a great-nephew of Cornelia Fort.

Tish Fort of Nashville, another niece who was in the tree-rimmed airpark, said she couldn’t be happier at the preservation of the land there.

“My regret is, of course, that Cornelia’s not here and that our daddies aren’t here to see not only the Fort name honored but their sister honored.”

Cornelia Fort grew up on a cattle farm estate that once covered part of Shelby Bottoms. She was delivering a plane cross-country in 1943 when another plane touched hers.

The other pilot bailed out, but Cornelia Fort died. She was 24.

Betty Haas Pfister, a Woman With Wings, Dies at 90

Betty Pfister died on November 17, and an obit occurred in the Daily Aspen (CO) at that time, but this obit appeared in the NYT yesterday.

From the New York Times: Betty Haas Pfister, a Woman With Wings, Dies at 90
By DENNIS HEVESI

“No, no, you can’t go up!” Betty Haas’s father insisted that day in 1940 when the family went to an air show in Bennington, Vt. But when her parents left, Ms. Haas, then 19, sneaked back to the airfield, paid a dollar and, as she liked to say, “squished into a seat” for a ride on a tiny plane.

It was the first of hundreds of flights that Betty Haas Pfister would make — dozens as a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, during World War II, and many more as one of the nation’s most successful female competitive pilots. (And not counting those as a Pan Am stewardess in the days when women had a much harder time getting hired as pilots.)

Ms. Haas Pfister, a two-time winner of the All Women’s International Air Race, died on Nov. 17 at her home in Aspen, Colo., her daughter Suzanne said. She was 90.

After that first flight, Suzanne Pfister said, “Mom made a deal with her father that she would stay in school if he paid for flight lessons.”

By the time she graduated from Bennington College in 1942, Ms. Haas Pfister (she went on to marry Arthur Pfister in 1954) had logged enough flight time to be accepted as a member of the WASPs — an Army Air Forces attachment created to fill the void when male pilots were deployed overseas.

As one of 1,074 WASPs, Ms. Haas Pfister ferried planes from factories to domestic airfields or to ports for shipment overseas. WASPs also towed targets for aerial gunnery practice. Thirty-eight died in accidents. But by December 1944, with the war winding down, the women were deemed no longer needed and the unit was disbanded.

Ms. Haas Pfister found work as an aircraft mechanic and, very occasionally, flying cargo planes. In 1948, for Pan American, she became the first stewardess ever hired with more than 1,000 hours of flight time. “She got to travel all over the world,” her daughter said. “But she’d rather have been in the cockpit any day of the week.”

Several years earlier, Ms. Haas Pfister had paid $750 for an Army surplus P-39 fighter that she named Galloping Gertie. She flew in dozens of air shows and races around the country, and in 1950 she won the All Women’s International Air Race from Montreal to West Palm Beach, Fla. Two years later, she recaptured that title in a flight from St. Augustine, Fla., to Welland, Ontario.

Ms. Haas Pfister received the Elder Statesman of Aviation Award from the National Aeronautic Association in 1994. Ten years earlier, she had been inducted into the Colorado Aviation Hall of Fame.

Recognition of Ms. Haas Pfister’s wartime contributions, and those of the more than 1,000 other WASPs, came in 2010 when they received the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the country’s two highest civilian honors.

Born on July 23, 1921, in Great Neck, N.Y., and raised in Scarsdale, N.Y., Elizabeth Haas was one of three children of Robert and Merle Haas. Besides her daughter Suzanne, she is survived by two other daughters, Christina and Nancy Pfister; a sister, Priscilla Blum; and five grandchildren. Her husband died in 2008.

One impetus for Ms. Haas Pfister’s passion for flight was her brother, Robert, a Navy pilot during World War II. She had already started taking flight lessons when he was killed in action off the coast of Africa.

After working for Pan Am for four years and moving to Aspen, Ms. Haas Pfister flew gliders and balloons. In 1976 she helped found the Snowmass Balloon Festival in Colorado. In the 1960s she helped organize the Pitkin County Air Rescue Group; she flew helicopters on many rescue missions.

“I’d hate a 9-to-5 job with weekends off,” she told The New York World-Telegram and Sun in 1950. “I had one once, but couldn’t stand it.”

WASP First Day Cover

A First Day of Issue Cover or First Day Cover is a postage stamp on a cover, postal card or stamped envelope franked on the first day the issue is authorized for use within the country or territory of the stamp-issuing authority. Sometimes the issue is made from a temporary or permanent foreign or overseas office. There will usually be a first day of issue postmark, frequently a pictorial cancellation, indicating the city and date where the item was first issued, and "first day of issue" is often used to refer to this postmark. Depending on the policy of the nation issuing the stamp, official first day postmarks may sometimes be applied to covers weeks or months after the date indicated.

Postal authorities may hold a first day ceremony to generate publicity for the new issue, with postal officials revealing the stamp, and with connected persons in attendance, such as descendants of the person being honored by the stamp. The ceremony may also be held in a location that has a special connection with the stamp's subject, such as the birthplace of a social movement, or at a stamp show.

Various companies and individuals create these First Day Covers - from large companies that do hundreds a year, to small companies that do just a handful a year. (An individual can be just one person with a printer and a gift for design!)

Although the illustration on this FDC is of a WASP, the "first day ceremony" was actually for the Purple Heart stamp - something that a WASP was never awarded, since they were civilians and the Purple Heart is only for military personnel).