The Growth of Aviation

As the airline industry grew in the 1920s and 1930s, barnstormers and air racers often became commercial pilots. Some of them entered the military. During World War II (1939-1945), many mili­tary pilots learned to fly straight out of college and were often pitched into combat after only a few weeks of train­ing. Fighter pilots in particular earned hero status. Most combat pilots were men, while female pilots delivered air­planes from factories and transported soldiers. After the war, test pilots broke new ground flying the jet – and rocket – powered planes of the supersonic era. Most of the first astronauts selected in the 1960s for the U. S. space program were ex-test pilots.

By the 1970s, with air traffic growing rapidly, the job of the commercial pilot became more demanding. Men still dominated the cockpit, but a few women started flying airliners. Ruth Nichols flew commercial planes as early as 1932. The first regular woman pilot for a U. S. scheduled airline was Emily Warner, who piloted Boeing 737s for Frontier Airlines in 1973. By the end of the twen­tieth century, military forces had women stationed alongside men in combat. The first American woman pilot to drop bombs in combat was Lieutenant Kendra Williams of the U. S. Navy, during Operation Desert Fox in Iraq (1998).