Rita Edna Murphy Wishchmeyer
October 2, 1921 – May 3, 2015
Class: 44-W-3
Training Location: Avenger Field (Sweetwater, Tex.)
Planes flown: PT-17, BT-13, AT-6
Assigned bases: Dodge City Army Air Base (Kan.) and Craig Army Air Field (Selma, Ala.
Rita Edna Murphy Wischmeyer was born and raised in Boston, where she attended prestigious schools. When she was a Junior at Emmanuel College, she read an article in the newspaper about a Government Civilian Pilot Training program at Northeast University to teach students to fly. She applied and was selected as the one girl who was allowed in her class of ten. She had an exceptional instructor who demanded the best of his student pilots. The summer following her graduation from college, she was accepted into an experimental flying training program for women at Avenger Field, Texas, to teach them to fly military aircraft. Rita credited her instructor in the CPT program she took in college with her begin able to successfully complete the flight training at Avenger. When she graduated, she was assigned to Craig Army Air Filed in Selma, Alabama, an advanced flight training base. She flew as an engineering text pilot, slow timed aircraft and was an administrative pilot, flying AT-6s.
Sources:
Findagrave.com
Texas Women’s University, Denton, Texas. WASP collection
