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"December 7, 1941, a day that will live in infamy"
USS Arizona Memorial
USS Arizona Memorial
USS Arizona Memorial
Remembering Pearl Harbor
No moment in the history of the United States casts a longer shadow than Pearl Harbor. “Remembering” it has become a national imperative, a patriotic duty for the American people, and reminding us of that duty has become a ritual of media and political discourse—repeated so often and in so many ways that it’s become part of the routine of our communal life.
Cornelia Fort USAF
USS Arizona Memorial
USS Arizona Memorial
Early in the morning on December 7, 1941, a 22-year-old civilian flight instructor named Cornelia Fort happened to be airborne over Honolulu, giving a lesson to a student who was at the controls of an Interstate Cadet, a tiny single-engine trainer. As they turned and headed back toward the city airfield, the glint of a plane in the distance caught her eye. It seemed to be heading right at them, and fast. She grabbed the stick and climbed furiously, passing so close to the plane that the little Cadet’s windows shook.
Looking down, she saw a Japanese fighter. Off to the west, she “saw something detach itself from a plane and come glistening down,” she later recalled. “My heart turned over convulsively when the bomb exploded in the middle of the Harbor.” Fort and her student landed at the airport and ran to the terminal as a warplane strafed the runway. The disbelieving Fort had just unwittingly witnessed the U.S. entry into World War II.
Fort developed a reputation as a home-front hero after Pearl Harbor. She soon returned to the mainland and joined the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), a civilian group created by the Army Air Forces to fly military aircraft from factories to bases. In March 1943, she was flying formation in a Vultee BT-13 trainer over Texas when another plane clipped hers. She crashed before she could bail out—the first woman pilot to die in active service.
Preserving Oregon's Rich Aviation Heritage
Since 1983 we've been preserving Oregon's rich aviation heritage. See vintage airplanes at this aviation museum in Cottage Grove, Oregon in the southern Willamette Valley. We share the story of Oregon aviation: ordinary people achieving the extraordinary!
Home of Wimpy
As featured in the September 2023 issue of EAA's Sport Aviation! Watch the video of this wonderful little plane.