Episode
American Experience: Fly Girls
Overview
During WWII, more than a thousand women signed up to fly with the U.S. military. Wives, mothers, actresses and debutantes who joined the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS) test-piloted aircraft, ferried planes and logged 60 million miles in the air. Thirty-eight women died in service. But the opportunity to play a critical role in the war effort was abruptly canceled by politics and resentment, and it would be 30 years before women would again break the sex barrier in the skies.
Details
- Series
- American Experience
- Season
- Season 11
- Episode
- Episode 10
- Air date
- 1999-05-24
- Runtime
- 55 min
Episode context
Fly Girls is Episode 10 in Season 11 of American Experience. It aired on 1999-05-24. The runtime is 55 min.
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More episodes from this season
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At the dawn of the Cold War, the United States initiated a top secret program in New Mexico to build a weapon even more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Japan. A world away, on the frozen steppes of Siberia, the Soviet Union began a similar effort. A web of spies and scientists, intrigue and deception marked the race to develop the hydrogen bomb, a weapon that would change the world.
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