I recently read an Article in the "Woff-Papers" about a Female Fighter Squadron in the RAF, the Time it has been founded by melting together the KFC... ahem, RFC and the RNAS.
In addition, I remember that I have read some Text on a DH5, about a "Women's Air Force" or something like that... but I thought at that Time, that it merely had something to do with the Financing... what is called "Crowd Founding" nowadays, and that those Planes were still be flown by men.

If there really was a Female Fighter Unit, that would have been not only pretty progressive in a Gender-egalitarian-Sense... one could call that futuristic. Don't forget, we are talking about a Time, here, where the Role-Models were extremely archaic. Women weren't allowed to vote, studying @ a University was practically impossible and they even had very restrictive "Dress-Codes", violations of these codes were usually fined... and so on...

Russian may have had some..The British had female pilots in WW2 ferrying planes around..may have done it in WW1 aswell..not sure.

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Yes, IIRC the Imperial Russian Air Service had three, and the French may have had one or two though I don't know that that's ever been confirmed with documentation. That was it as far as I know.

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I miss the good o'l times.

In some places, they were allowed to vote already before the Great War.

I've never heard of female aviators participating in WW1. However, there were some drivers. For example, see my signature.

The book, "The RFC/RNAS Handbook 1914-1918" has a chapter on Women serving with the armed forces. They did not fly except for the odd experience flight (the book has a photo of two women dressed up in flying kit ready for one of this in an RE8). There were a number of different women's volunteer groups, but the one most associated with the air forces are the Women's Royal Air Force. It drew members from the Women's Royal Naval Service (The Wrens) and the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps which had supported the respective air branches before the creation of the RAF.

The proposed name for the WRAF was originally the Women's Auxiliary Air Force Corps, which was announced in January 1918, but seems to have become the WRAF before it was officially created on the 29th March 1918.

Members were intended as replacements for men in such non-combat roles as mechanics, drivers, typists and so on.

There were plenty of female pilots ferrying aircraft in the second world war, but the Air Transport Corps was not a female only organisation as my grandfather, who was a pilot who had crashed and damaged his hand before the war, also served as a ferry pilot.

God Bless their brave souls.

I recommend the following documentary "Spitfire Sisters" on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez81N-YFGtM

There they refer to it as the Air Transport Auxillary. They cited the figures: 760 male pilots, 160 female. The girls were all (approx.) 18-19-20 years old. Most couldn't drive a car.
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Hélène Dutrieu (10 July 1877 – 26 June 1961), was a cycling world champion, stunt cyclist, stunt motorcyclist, automobile racer, stunt driver, pioneer aviator, wartime ambulance driver, and director of a military hospital.


What a wonderful woman she must have been!!



Wikipedia Entry

No doubt. But I would like to have met Harriet Quimby.

Harriet Quimby (May 11, 1875 – July 1, 1912) was an early American aviator and a movie screenwriter. In 1911, she was awarded a U.S. pilot's certificate by the Aero Club of America, becoming the first woman to gain a pilot's license in the United States. In 1912, she became the first woman to fly across the English Channel. Although Quimby lived only to the age of thirty-seven, she had a major influence upon the role of women in aviation.
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