For God, country, and the thrill of it

American women pilots garnered much attention during the Gulf War, but American women were in fact military pilots as far back as World War II. Anne Noggle, now a photographer and author based in Albuquerque, has captured the spirit of these dynamic aviation pioneers in her photographic book For God, Country, and the Thrill of It. In 1943-44 Noggle was a WASPa member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots group, the country's first women military pilots. She and her colleagues disproved assertions that women would be too emotional or high-strung to fly military aircraft. They flew every type of …