Women in Aviation featured at Chino Air Museum

On Saturday, February 5 The Air Museum “Planes of Fame” at the Chino Airport will feature Women in Aviation as the subject of its special event of the month. For this event, The Air Museum will host a seminar with noted women aviators as speakers that will begin at 10 a.m. and conclude the program with a flight demonstration of the museum’s North American P-51D Mustang fighter plane. Inland Empire resident and former WASP pilot Iris Kritchell will coordinate the seminar portion of the program. Although women had been historically involved with aviation from its very earliest days, it wasn’t until the 1930s that women flyers like Amelia Earhart and Jacqueline Cochran moved to the forefront as pioneering flyers. The role of women in aviation was expanding dramatically during World War II when they were called to service to fill in for male flyers, primarily in non-combatant support operations. Although, some women did actually take part in aerial combat operations in service with the Russian Air Force. In the United States, many women flyers served as WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilots), ferrying combat aircraft from one location to another to relieve male pilots for combat service. Today, women are fully integrated into many air forces, even in combat units. However, this particular seminar will touch on the role of women in all aspects of aviation, not just military flying.The North American P-51D Mustang that will fly during the program is a surviving example of one of the most famous combat aircraft types of all time. Generally recognized as the best long range escort fighter plane of World War II, the Mustang was the first single-engine fighter with enough range to escort heavy bombers all the way to targets deep in German territory and the performance to counter the very best interceptors that the enemy could put into the air. Mustangs literally made the successful strategic bombing campaigns against the Axis forces possible in World War II.