TIL that during World War II, USAAF Col. Paul Tibbetts was frustrated with his pilots complaining about how hard it was to fly the new B-29 bomber. He arranged for two women WASP pilots to be trained on the big plane and had them fly it around the country just to shame the men. It worked.

This comment was posted to reddit on May 21, 2022 at 6:16 pm and was deleted within 16 minutes.

TIL that during World War II, USAAF Col. Paul Tibbetts was frustrated with his pilots complaining about how hard it was to fly the new B-29 bomber. He arranged for two women WASP pilots to be trained on the big plane and had them fly it around the country just to shame the men. It worked.

Keep in mind that there weren't 'that' many civil flights back then.

The introduction of these transports of the mid and late 1930s can be credited with increasing the number of air passengers from 474,000 in 1932 to 1,102,000 in 1937 and to 1,176,858 passengers in 1938 (U.S. Department of Commerce statistics). Other statistics state that the number of passenger miles traveled in the United States increased 600 percent from 1936 to 1941, a growth that was very largely due to the DC-3. But even as late as 1939, flying travelers made up just 7.6 percent of the long-distance train market. It would take several years more before the number of passengers traveling by air surpassed the train.

/r/todayilearned Thread Parent Link - pbs.org

TIL that during World War II, USAAF Col. Paul Tibbetts was frustrated with his pilots complaining about how hard it was to fly the new B-29 bomber. He arranged for two women WASP pilots to be trained on the big plane and had them fly it around the country just to shame the men. It worked.

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