W.A.S.P. Training Base: Avenger Field
Sweetwater, Nolan County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) trained here in military aircraft during World War II, from February 21, 1943, through final graduation day, December 7, 1944. Avenger Field first served as a training base for British Royal Air Force Cadets in 1942, then for U.S. Army Air Forces Cadets August 1942 - April 1943. The WASP program was started under General H.H. ("Hap") Arnold to train women to fly every kind of mission short of combat, releasing male pilots for overseas duty. Jacqueline Cochran was director of women pilots; Ethel A. Sheehy, WASP staff field executive; Nancy Harness Love, WASP staff executive-ferrying division; and Leoti Clark Deaton, WASP staff executive-training bases. Of 25,000 girls who applied for WASP flight training. 1,830 were accepted; 1,074 won their silver wings. The WASPs flew 60 million miles on operational duty; 37 lost their lives serving their country. WASPs had civil service--not military--status, but were granted eligibility to apply for reserve commissions in the Air Corps after the WASP program ended when the allies were winning the war in Europe and the U.S.A. pilot shortage was past. Avenger Field was closed after a short post-WASP span of service as a missile base. (1972)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
From February 1943 to December 1944, Avenger Field trained the Women's Airforce Service Pilots, the first women to fly American military aircraft, freeing male pilots for combat overseas. Under director Jacqueline Cochran and General 'Hap' Arnold's program, more than a thousand of the 25,000 applicants earned their silver wings and went on to fly some sixty million miles of noncombat missions; thirty-seven died in service. Though they flew as civilians, the WASPs were later made eligible for reserve commissions—and the field itself finished its service as a missile base.
Why it matters
Avenger Field was the singular home of the WASPs, a landmark in both aviation and women's history where American women first proved themselves at the controls of military planes.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By early 1943, the United States was fully at war on multiple continents, and the demand for trained pilots was insatiable. Every man who could fly a military aircraft was needed for combat duty overseas, which left a growing gap at home — the vast, unglamorous, essential work of ferrying new planes from factories, towing targets, testing repaired aircraft, and instructing. Someone had to fly those missions, and the pool of available men was draining fast.
Avenger Field in Sweetwater, out on the flat, wind-scoured plains of West Texas, was already a training field before it became famous. It had trained British Royal Air Force cadets in 1942 and then U.S. Army Air Forces cadets, part of the sprawling network of airfields that the wide-open Texas sky made ideal for teaching people to fly. The clear weather and empty horizons that draw pilots today are the same ones that made the region a natural classroom in wartime.
Into this moment came a radical idea: train American women to fly military aircraft, freeing men for the front. It was a Progressive- and modern-era experiment in the middle of a national emergency, and Avenger Field became its single home — the place where that idea was put to the test at the controls of real military planes.
People & events
The Women's Airforce Service Pilots trained here from February 1943 until the program's final graduation day in December 1944. The idea was championed by General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, commander of the Army Air Forces, whose program set out to train women to fly every kind of mission short of combat. The aviator Jacqueline Cochran served as director of women pilots, with Ethel A. Sheehy as staff field executive, Nancy Harkness Love as staff executive over the ferrying division, and Leoti Clark Deaton as staff executive for the training bases.
The numbers on the marker tell a story of fierce selection and hard work: of some 25,000 women who applied for flight training, 1,830 were accepted and 1,074 earned their silver wings. These were not passengers — they flew on operational duty, and the marker records that the WASPs logged 60 million miles in the air. That kind of mileage is the sum of countless routine, demanding, and dangerous flights.
It came at a cost. Thirty-seven of these women lost their lives serving their country. And there is a hard institutional footnote to their service: the WASPs held civil service status, not military status, even as they flew military aircraft on military missions. When the tide turned in Europe and the pilot shortage eased, the program was ended — though its members were later granted eligibility to apply for reserve commissions in the Air Corps.
Its place in the American story
Avenger Field is where American women first proved, in large numbers and beyond argument, that they could fly the military's aircraft. That makes it a landmark in two American stories at once — the history of flight and the history of women's expanding place in national life. What happened on this field helped reshape assumptions about what women could do at the controls of a machine of war.
The WASPs' civilian status is its own lesson in how a nation reckons with change slowly. These women did military work, took military risks, and some gave their lives, yet the formal recognition lagged far behind the service. The eventual path to reserve commissions, granted only as the program wound down, marks the beginning of a long national reconsideration of that gap.
Set against the enormous machinery of the Second World War, the WASP program was small in headcount but outsized in meaning. It is a concentrated example of how total war pressed the whole society into service and, in doing so, opened doors that did not fully close again. Avenger Field was the singular place where that door first swung open.
If you visit
Come with the flat West Texas horizon in mind — it is part of the story. Stand at Sweetwater and feel the openness of the sky these women trained in; the same wind and wide light that make the plains feel endless are what made this a place to learn to fly. The setting is not scenery here; it is the classroom.
As you visit, hold onto the human scale behind the big numbers. Twenty-five thousand women wanted this; a little over a thousand earned their wings; thirty-seven never came home. Let those figures settle, and the field stops being an old airbase and becomes a place where young women measured themselves against the hardest test of their lives and passed it.
This is a natural anchor for a road trip built around aviation history or women's history across Texas. Give yourself time to imagine the rhythm of the place in 1943 and 1944 — aircraft coming and going, ferry flights departing for factories and bases across the country. And remember the field's own long arc: it trained cadets before the WASPs and, the marker notes, briefly served as a missile base before it closed.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Jacqueline Cochran
- · Henry H. Arnold
- · Nancy Harkness Love
- · Ethel A. Sheehy
- · Leoti Clark Deaton
Related events
- · Women's Airforce Service Pilots program
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Women Airforce Service Pilots
Sweetwater, TX
Pressed for pilots in World War II, the Army Air Forces embraced aviator Jacqueline Cochran's plan to train women fliers, and in 1943 the program settled at Avenger Field in Sweetwater—the first and only all-female military flying school in the world. Of 25,000 applicants, only 1,830 were accepted and 1,074 earned their silver wings, going on to ferry aircraft and fly non-combat missions for more than 60 million miles; thirty-eight died in service. Classed as civilians during the war, the WASP did not win military recognition until special legislation passed in 1977.
W.A.S.P. (Women's Airforce Service Pilots) Training Base: Avenger Field
Sweetwater, TX
At Avenger Field near Sweetwater, the Women's Airforce Service Pilots trained during World War II — the only coeducational military flying field in U.S. history. From 25,000 applicants, 1,830 were accepted and 1,074 earned their wings, flying 60 million miles for the Army Air Forces under director Jacqueline Cochran. Living under military discipline yet holding only civil-service status, WASPs ferried planes, towed gunnery targets, tested aircraft, and flew countless support missions; thirty-seven died in service.
Cornelia Clark Fort
Merkel, TX
Cornelia Fort, born into an affluent Nashville family in 1919, discovered flying at twenty-one and within a week had logged over 2,000 miles; by 1941 she was an instructor. She was aloft with a student over Hawaii when Japanese planes struck Pearl Harbor, landing safely under fire, and soon joined Nancy Harkness Love's Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron. On March 21, 1943, ferrying a BT-13 in formation toward Dallas, her plane was struck and went down in Mulberry Canyon — making her, records indicate, the first American woman pilot to die on active military duty.
Site of U. S. Army Air Corps Plane Crash
Sweetwater, TX
At dawn on April 20, 1945, a C-47 transport carrying 25 Army Air Corps officers and enlisted men left Midland Army Air Field bound for Nashville, Tennessee. Sweetwater cab drivers spotted the plane afire in mid-air, and it disintegrated and crashed 0.6 miles east of this spot, scattering wreckage along a two-mile line and killing all aboard — men aged 20 to 37 from across the nation. Investigators concluded the aircraft, worn from 4,000 hours of glider-towing duty, had broken apart in a thunderstorm's severe turbulence while flying on a single engine.