WCBS-TV Celebrates Women

World War II Women Honored On Long Island

FARMINGDALE, N.Y. (AP) ― Anne King was 19 and earning $12 a week in a Kresge's dime store when she was recruited in 1942 to learn how to make airplane parts from blueprints. At Republic Aviation on Long Island, she worked both as a mechanic and riveter on P-47 Thunderbolt fighters and other aircraft.

King and five other women who performed wartime factory work -- almost always for less money than men working at the same tasks -- will gather at what is now Republic Airport in Farmingdale on Friday and take rides in a B-17 Flying Fortress and a B-24 Liberator "as a tribute to their war efforts," said Hope Kaplan, a spokeswoman for the American Airpower Museum on the grounds of the airport.

King, who lives in Patchogue and turns 85 on Saturday, said she was "not the least bit nervous" about her first flight in a vintage bomber.

Exhibitions by vintage aircraft are holiday fixtures at the museum, but this is the first time any of the women, the "Rosie the Riveters" who helped to build World War II aircraft, have had a chance to fly in them, Kaplan said.

Also taking a tribute flight will be Josephine Rachiele, 82, of West Babylon.

"I'd like to ride in the B-24," she said. "My friend Bernadette's father was a waist gunner on a B-24 and I would like to tell her what it's like."

Rachiele recalled that when she first went to work as a riveter at Republic in 1943, "I didn't know a rivet from a nail, and it was so noisy that I was really frightened. The rivet guns shooting rivets and the drill press stomping on metal -- it was pandemonium."

At war's end, she said, the women were given the choice of staying or leaving so that returning servicemen could have the jobs. Rachiele quit, but returned in later years to Republic, where she was known both as "Josie the Riveter and "Rosie the Riveter."

Georgette Feller, 86, of Levittown, said she was "already one step ahead" when she joined Republic Aviation as a riveter. "My father was an excellent mechanic, and I already knew how to use a rivet gun, and I could tell aluminum from steel," she said.

"It was a great job, but I had trouble with the man who was my first partner -- he said he wasn't happy working with a dizzy broad."

Feller knows the flight on Friday is a great opportunity. "I'm at the end of my days and I want every good experience I can have," she said. "That sounds like a good one for me."

While the actual number of women employed in defense plants is uncertain, historians say the war brought about six million women into the work force for the first time.

In 1943 a promotional film, using an actual riveter named Rose at Michigan's Willow Run bomber plant as its model, popularized the "Rosie the Riveter" image. A song furthered the cause, as did a Saturday Evening Post cover by illustrator Norman Rockwell, depicting Rosie with her feet resting on a copy of Adolf Hitler's book, "Mein Kampf."

According to the Collings Foundation, a nonprofit "living history" organization based in Stow, Mass., which owns the two bombers, the B-24 Liberator is the only one of 18,000 built during the war that remains in flyable condition today. Its B-17 Flying Fortress, which flew 100 missions over Europe including 18 raids on Berlin and was rescued from a salvage yard, is one of 14 still flying among 12,000 built. About a third were lost in combat.

(© 2007 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)