The first US pilot to encounter the Japanese at Pearl Harbor was a woman. WAFS (Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron) Cornelia Clark Fort was a flight instructor on Oahu.
She was teaching a student in an Interstate Cadet on that fateful day when she saw a military airplane heading towards them & swiftly grabbed the controls from her student to pull up over the oncoming aircraft. It was then she saw the Japanese rising sun insignia on the wings.
Whilst Cornelia survived the attack, she sadly didn't survive the war. She was ferrying a Vultee BT-13A Valiant from California to Texas on 21 Mar 1943. She was leading a flight of 5 BT-13s when the left wing of her aircraft was struck from behind by another. Cornelia became the first female pilot in American history to die on active duty.
Ukraine drone operator with FPV goggles, from the 4th Brigade of Operational Assignment named after Serhiy Mykhalchuk – of the National Guard of Ukraine.
Mukhru Khodzhayeva, a Dari-speaking interpreter from the Tajik SSR, serving the Soviet Army in Afghanistan, pictured here with a child on a humanitarian mission in 1987. As she put it, "Kind words were my weapon."
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