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WW2 Female Paratrooper


manayunkman
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I got this years ago from an 82nd AB. vet.

 

He wanted a date but became friends and got this photo.

 

Marie McMillin champion parachutist.

 

This is one of the coolest photos I own.

 

M

post-51189-1330323164.jpg

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There's a story here!

Leonardo

 

She gets mentioned elsewhere on the forum: she was WAC private and parachute rigger at Fort Benning, Georgia in WWII.

 

And, "she had approximately 400 parachute jumps from a wide variety of altitudes. She was also famous for having made a name for herself by jumping out of one airplane and landing in another while in flight! In 1932, she made a jump of over 20,000 feet!"

 

She appeared in a Camel ad in 1939 and a New Yorker magazine article in 1943 before she joined the WACs.

 

mmny.jpg

 

mmad.jpg

 

mmad2.jpg

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Ironic really. Little did she know it, but here was more risk to her from smoking that Camel than hurling herself out of a plane! :o

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See page 114 in "Airborne Album, 1943-1945, Normandy to Victory" for a photo of her doing a "Women at War" radio broadcast from Ft Benning, July 1944. In the picture she wears no chevrons at all, but does have jump wings (with "R" added on), oval, ABC SSI and parachute cap disc (on a WAC "banana" cap, with green-gold piping). Summer khaki unif.

 

I would post a scan, but have never been successful at that.

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  • 8 years later...

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