Evelyn Sharp
Nebraska's pioneer female WW2 flying ace Evelyn Sharp of Ord receives a posthumous congressional medal today in Washington DC. Accepting her medal is Lincoln educator and Sharp Biographer Diane Bartels. "She taught men to fly prior to World War II, then she received a telegram from the Army Air Force, asking her and other women with 500 hours of flying time to come east and train for the WAFS", Bartels tells KFOR. She was the nation's first female airmail pilot. With the coming of World War II, Evelyn joined General H. H. "Hap" Arnold's Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, expert pilots who flew aircraft from factory sites to shipping points. Her proficiency enabled her to fly everything from training craft to bombers. On April 3, 1944, at the age of twenty-four, Evelyn Sharp was killed near Middleton, Pennsylvania, in the crash of a P-38 pursuit plane. At the time of her death she was a squadron commander only three flights from her fifth rating, the highest certificate then available to women. She is buried in Ord.
E-Mail
Print
