This Rosie the Riveter repaired war-torn WWII fighter planes. She's finally getting a thank you

[rangerrebew]

This Rosie the Riveter repaired war-torn WWII fighter planes. She's finally getting a thank you
Story by Nathan Solis •
 
Shirley Virginia Bellemeur holds up an imaginary piece of metal with her delicate fingers. She punches it repeatedly with her other hand, as though she’s holding a rivet gun.

“It would go dun dun dun dun,” Bellemeur, 99, says quietly as she sits in her Pasadena retirement home. She was honored with a leadership award on Wednesday for her job as a Rosie the Riveter from 1944 through 1946, when she repaired war-torn seaplanes during World War II.

“I hope I wasn’t too loud,” she said before a crowd of friends, family and well-wishers at the Pasadena Meadows Nursing Center, where she was surrounded by red, white and blue balloons. Bellemeur herself sported a silky red, white and blue shawl.

"I'm overwhelmed," she said as Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) handed her the congressional leadership award, TV cameras pointed their way. Bellemeur says she's an introvert and couldn't imagine this type of attention focused on her.

 
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/this-rosie-the-riveter-repaired-war-torn-wwii-fighter-planes-shes-finally-getting-a-thank-you/ar-AA1eJU5B

[Kamaji]

[PeteS in CA]

Nearly 80 years ago, Bellemeur held between her hands the wings of seaplanes dented and riddled with bullet holes from their service in the skies over Europe. She cannot recall all the details from the work, but she remembers climbing into the hollow end of a wing and helping rivet it from the inside, her body wedged between the layers of metal.

At 20, she left her family home in Montpelier, Vt., for a naval air station in Pensacola, Fla. Bellemeur joined the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) with the U.S. Navy and worked as a metalsmith, primarily on PBY Catalina seaplanes. After the war, she married Winston Bellemeur, and they drove across the country to Pasadena, where they settled down and had three children. The couple would later divorce in the 1970s.

PBYs were used for scouting and reconnaissance, and sometimes for anti-submarine patrolling. The PBY was made by Consolidated, which also designed/built the B-24.

[Smokin Joe]

PBYs were used for scouting and reconnaissance, and sometimes for anti-submarine patrolling. The PBY was made by Consolidated, which also designed/built the B-24.

They also did tremendous duty rescuing downed aircrew in the Pacific, and while initially spotted by a land based aircraft, a PBY brought the first rescuers on the scene of the Indianapolis survivors, confirming their presence and provenance.