Clipped wings : the rise and fall of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) of World War II / Molly Merryman.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 185-226) and index.

1. Introduction -- 2. The Development of the Women Airforce Service Pilots: From Guarded Experiment to Valuable Support Role -- 3. Becoming Soldiers: Tracing WASP Expansion and Plans for Militarization -- 4. From Praise to Rancor: Media Opinion Changes as Men Return from Battle -- 5. No Allies for the WASPs: Congress Responds to Male Public Interest Groups -- 6. They'll Be Home for Christmas: The WASP Program Disbands -- 7. On a Different Battlefield: The WASP Fight for Militarization after the War -- 8. Recognizing the Gendered Warrior: History and Theory Intersect with the Fate of the WASPs -- 9. Coda.

In Clipped Wings, Molly Merryman draws upon military documents, many of which were declassified only in the 1980s, congressional records, and numerous interviews with former WASPs to trace the history of the hundreds of pilots who served their country as the first women to fly military planes.

Importantly, Merryman examines the social pressures that culminated in their disbandment in 1944, even though a wartime need for their services still existed, and documents their struggles and eventual success - in 1977 - to gain military status and receive veterans' benefits.

Clipped Wings recovers the history of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II while shedding light on larger questions of women's participation in the military and the ways in which social upheavals such as war affect the social construction of gender.