Viewing page 83 of 124

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

you, and wish you a Christmas and New Year filled with the happiness and inner peace which come of constant service and a job well done."

By the end of December there were 16,250 Wacs in the AAF in the United States, and another thousand either overseas or en route overseas.  There had been 15,000 AAF Wacs at the beginning of October.  Over 1300 Air Wacs were recruited in December, despite the fact that almost no one enlisted during the Christmas holidays, and by January the AAF reached a recruiting figure of between 2000 and 2500 recruits a month.  This figure remained constant throughout the remainder of the intensive AAF WAC recruiting drive.  As a result, the AAF WAC domestic strength, from February on, showed an increase of about 2000 women per month until August of 1944, toward the end of the Air WAC recruiting program. Thus the AAF WAC strength, in the United States was over 22,000 March 31, over 27,000 June 30, and nearly 30,000 August 30.  By that time there were also over 5000 women serving with Air Forces overseas.

Use of Wacs Increases

Much was done during the months of the recruiting campaign for the AAF WAC program as a whole.  On 20 November Air Forces ruled that Wacs were eligible to attend any suitable (non-combat) training course or school to which AAF men were sent, provided the training would render them more efficient on their jobs or would make it possible to utilize them in some higher skill for which aptitude or civilian training had

-80-