Behind the Picture: The First Woman to Fly with a U.S. Combat Crew Over Enemy Soil

Photographer Margaret Bourke-White — LIFE Magazine's first female staff photographer — helped women in her profession reach new heights when she became the first female photographer accredited to cover World War II combat zones. This 1943 self-portrait shows her decked out in a fleece flight suit in front of the Flying Fortress bomber from which she had photographed, from four miles in the air, an attack on Tunis, soaring above the cloud-banked Mediterranean coast to become "the first woman ever to fly with a U.S. combat crew over enemy soil," as the magazine declared in its Mar. 1, 1943, issue.
Fighter planes swooped in and attacked, and bombs downed 40 German planes in what was considered a "highly successful raid."
And this was no cushy gig: It was so cold that LIFE noted that she had to pinch her oxygen mask periodically to "dislodge chunks of frozen breath, which threatened to clog the feed line."

Yorumlar

Yorum Gönder

Bu blogdaki popüler yayınlar

Early American Colonists Had a Cash Problem. Here's How They Solved It

Resim
Money, or the lack thereof, was a persistent problem in colonial America. The colonists were under the control of Great Britain, where the legal tender was both gold and silver, known as a bimetallic system. Yet British coins circulated only rarely in the colonies. The colonists had an unfavorable balance of trade with the mother country, meaning that the value of the goods they imported from England greatly exceeded the value of the goods exported back. Most specie that flowed into the colonies through trade quickly flowed back to England in payment for these goods. Nor did the colonists have access to specie through any domestic gold or silver discoveries. In order to have a functioning economy, the colonists were forced to turn to other commodities for use as money. Spanish coins, from trade with the West Indies and Mexico, circulated freely in the colonies as legal tender. While goods were officially valued in British pounds, in their day-to-day transactions colonists more com...
Devamı

Colorized Photos From Early Suffrage Marches Bring Women's History to Life

Resim
Though the dedication of March to the topic of women's history is now observed in the U.S., it  grew out of  a week that grew out a day: International Women's Day, which is observed on March 8. On or around that day, for more than a century, women around the world have marched for what they believe in. In 1909, at the  original  such march, it was for better working conditions. This year, the day will be an occasion for the movement associated with January's post-Inauguration Women's March  protests  to  continue  to make its voice heard. But during the first decades of the 20th century, there was one particular cause that drew  many  American women to take to the streets: the right to vote. Images of  suffrage marches  from the decade before the  19th Amendment  enfranchised women, from the Library of Congress' collection of early news photographs, capture that important moment in time. For this year's Interna...
Devamı