Author Topic: A missing pilot, a Mustang and an enduring mystery: What happened to this WASP aviator?  (Read 505 times)

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A missing pilot, a Mustang and an enduring mystery: What happened to this WASP aviator?
By KAITLYN KANZLER, North Jersey Record via AP
 Oct 5, 2019
Gertrude Tompkins, one of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, went missing on Oct. 26, 1944 while delivering a P-51D Mustang fighter to Newark during World War II. (Air Force)

WOODLAND PARK, N.J. — It was cloudy in California on Oct. 26, 1944, the day New Jersey resident and Women Airforce Service Pilot Gertrude Tompkins went missing while delivering a P-51D Mustang fighter plane to Newark in the midst of World War II.

Tompkins was one of 1,074 women who completed brutal training to join the WASPs, who were attached to the U.S. Army Air Forces. She and 37 other women died in service to their country, but Tompkins is the only one who remains missing, said Pat Macha, an airplane archaeologist helping with search efforts.

For 75 years, the whereabouts of Tompkins and the P-51D she had been flying that day in October have remained a mystery — one that her grand-niece, Laura Whittall, hopes to solve someday soon.

https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/10/05/a-missing-pilot-a-mustang-and-an-enduring-mystery-what-happened-to-this-wasp-aviator/