Flying Into Yesterday: My Search for the Curtiss-Wright Aeronautical Engineering Cadettes

“Flying Into Yesterday” tells the story of World War II’s great unsung heroines — the Curtiss-Wright Aeronautical Engineering Cadettes. These 918 young women received training at seven topnotch universities and then filled the shoes of the many Curtiss-Wright Airplane Company engineers who had been called to war. Without the Cadettes’ assistance, thousands of planes under government contract would have lagged even further behind in production — and the war would have dragged on. Curtiss-Wright repaid these young women by abruptly dumping them after the Japanese surrender. Adding insult to injury, the company later “lost” all their records on the program.At the heart of the book is the author’s mother, Ricki Cruse, a bright 19-year-old ­beauty who managed, in 1943, to bust out of small-town, East Texas by stepping onto the “Curtiss-Wright Starlight Express” and trav­eling north to one of the most important experi­ences of her life. In 2008, five years after Ricki’s death, her daughter began criss­cross­ing the country to find documentation about the Cadettes, seeking to discover whether the women ­(including her mother) had been “real engineers.” The result is a compelling narra­tive that will keep you turning pages, eagerly anticipating the results of her digging, right up to the dramatic — and inspiring — end.