National WASP WWII Museum

In 1942 two women pressed the Army Air Forces to use women pilots. Nancy Harkness Love organized experienced fliers into the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, and Jacqueline Cochran, back from ferrying aircraft for the British, won command of a training program, the Women's Flying Training Detachment. Its first class, called the guinea pigs, began at Houston's municipal airport in November 1942 in borrowed coveralls known as zoot suits. In early 1943 the training moved to Avenger Field at Sweetwater, and that August the two groups merged as the Women Airforce Service Pilots, with Cochran as director.

Trainees paid their own way to Sweetwater and their own fare home if they washed out. They lived in barracks, marched everywhere and logged about 210 flying hours and 285 hours of ground school over seven months. Graduates went on to ferry 12,650 aircraft of 77 types, towed targets a thousand feet behind their planes for gunners firing live rounds, and tested repaired aircraft. Cochran turned away the Black women who applied. The program was ended on December 20, 1944, its records were sealed, and the women were recognized as veterans only in 1977. In 2010 they received the Congressional Gold Medal.

The museum opened in Hangar 1 on May 28, 2005, and reopened in 2021 after an expansion. It holds the women's photographs, artifacts and zoot suits, their wings, the Fifinella mascot Disney drew for them, and an archive of their records.