Radiotopia

From PRX

From PRX's Radiotopia, this is Radio Diaries.

I'm Joe Richmond.

Oh, say, let us fly girls.

Today, fly girls.

I believe going up, going up.

Goodbye.

Soon after he entered office, President Biden issued an executive order,

allowing transgender people to serve in the military.

It was the latest in a long series of shifts in who can serve and who can't.

Not long ago, of course, fighting in combat was for men only,

and it wasn't until 1993 that

Congress lifted a ban against women flying in combat.

Jeannie Levitt became America's first female fighter pilot.

She flew a total of 300 combat hours over Iraq and Afghanistan.

But women actually started flying military aircraft much earlier than that, five decades earlier, during World

War II. At the time, thousands of new airplanes were coming off assembly lines and needed to be

delivered to military bases nationwide, but most of America's pilots were overseas fighting

the war. So the Air Force launched an experimental program to train hundreds of female pilots.

They were called the Women Air Force Service pilots, the Wasps.

Passing my seatbelt, the throttle is set.

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