Goodbye Glamour Gals: the true story of American women pilots

Goodbye Glamour Gals: the true story of American women pilots in WWII

In 1940s America, Jacqueline Cochran is the rarest kind of woman: sheâ€™s a self-made millionaire pilot who, since the disappearance of her friend Amelia Earhart, has become the nationâ€™s darling of the air. But sheâ€™s no darling. At the outbreak of World War II, Cochran uses her considerable celebrity and wealth to launch a fight of her own against the US Army. The notion might seem absurd, but she aims to command a group of women pilots within the Army Air Corps.

Cochran is beautiful and scrappy, but sheâ€™s not the only woman pilot with ambition. Vassar-educated socialite Nancy Love also wants women flying military planes, but she has a different idea of how they should be used. Goodbye Glamour Gals is a novel of extraordinary women in an extraordinary time.

A cold rivalry develops as Cochran and Love struggle to convince the Army that women are a national resource. Each gains allies and, remarkably, two fragile programs emerge. But in a world hostile to progressive women, it is clear only one organization can succeed.

With the aid of a powerful general, Cochran merges the programs under her command, relegating Love to a vague, subordinate role. The Women Airforce Service Pilotsâ€”the WASPâ€”are born, and by summer 1944 they are flying every kind of airplane in the Army, from the P-51 Mustang to the B-29 Superfortress. The women pilots work under punishing conditions, drink, swear, and even establish the â€œMile High Club.â€ They do this while often wearing impeccable makeup, enduring brutal discrimination, and fending off aggressive sexual advances.

Inevitably, the WASP project ignites a national media controversy that portrays the hardworking women pilots as the Army's glamorous trophy girls, and Cochran and Love are compelled to join forces in oppositionâ€”taking their fight all the way to the floor of Congress.

Although based closely on true events, Goodbye Glamour Gals is written in a fictional narrative style. All 100,000 words are deliberately consistent with the 1940s lexicon, researched down to the idiom.
Country USA
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2009-06-27
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2009-06-27
Format	Kindle eBook

Goodbye Glamour Gals: the true story of American women pilots in WWII

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