Daughter of the Air

Air Classics, Sep 1999

Rob Simbeck DAUGHTER OF THE AIR Atlantic Monthly Press

$24

Cornelia Fort's (1919-1943) career as one of America's first female military pilots took her far from home - to Hawaii and later to Delaware and California as a member of the WAFS, the first women's flight squadron. In a remarkable coincidence of fate, she was in the air at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked. Throughout her short, extraordinary life she recorded her experiences in eloquent letters.

When Cornelia Fort fell in love with flying, she was forced to defy her family - one of Nashville's oldest and most prominent - and societal pressure in order to become an aviator. But from the moment she first got in a plane, she found a consuming passion and a mission in life. With a love for flying and a lust for life, Cornelia Fort, like Beryl Markham and Amelia Earhart, came to personify the female pilot.

The author interweaves Fort's letters and diaries with historical documents and interviews of those who knew and flew with her to create a vivid portrait of this courageous woman. AC