Winning My Wings – A Woman Airforce Service Pilot in World War II
by: Marion Stegeman Hodgson
1996 – Bright Sky Press, Albany, TX
ISBN 1-931721-47-5
One of the first women in the United states to train as a military pilot, the author was part of a little-known World War II experiment called the WASP (Women Airforece Service Pilots) program, which gave young women the then unheard-of opportunity to fly military aircraft. Marion Hodgson tells an exuberatnt story of the time back in 1943 when she and other WASPs earned their hard-won wings. They learned to fly everything fro open-cockpit primary trainers to P-51 Mustangs, B-26 Marauders, and B-29 Superfortresses, and their stateside missions freed their male counterparts for combat duty overseas. An unlikely volunteer, Hodgson was at first terrified of flying, but she and other WASPs succeeded not only in winning their wings but in breaking the barriers against women in military cockpits.
Bataan Death March - A Survivor's Account
by Lt. Col. William E. Dyess
Introduction by Stanley L. Falk
2002 - University of Nebraska Press
ISBN 0-8023-6633-2
William E. Dyess was born in Albany, Texas. As a young army air forces pilot he was shipped to Manila in the spring of 1941. When the Japanese invaded the Phillipines with overwhelming power, U.S. - Filipino forces surrendered and unwittingly placed themselves at the mercy of a foe who considered itself unimpaired by the Geneva Convention. Dyess was among the prisoners of war forced to march in the Bataan "Death March." With a few others, Dyess eventually escaped and was among the first to bring reports of the prisoner-of-war horrors back to a shocked United States. Shortly after his escape and return to America, Colonel Dyess was killed while testing a new airplane. He did not survive long enough to learn that he had been awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor. Colonel Dyess is the namesake of Dyess Air Force Base, Abilene, TX.