But the shortage is acute and Chinese airlines are now talking of recruiting, reluctantly, pilots from overseas.
Three of their five sons were pilots fighting overseas, and they were afraid to learn which of their boys was dead.
But with many military pilots deployed overseas, or soon to be, there was no way to transport the planes from the factories to the airfields where they were urgently needed.
"We became damned good pilots, went overseas, escorted the bombers, got a good record, shot down some planes, and as a result of our activities, the military was desegregated".
Ms. Dawson's call for e-voting, while intriguing, is premature; various glitches and security concerns are bedeviling an Internet-voting pilot for overseas military voters.
The combat pictures especially satisfied a dual and sometimes contradictory craving: for the truth about what American soldiers, sailors and pilots were facing overseas and for stirring, morale-boosting tales of home-grown heroism.
By the time she graduated from Bennington College in 1942, Ms. Haas Pfister (she went on to marry Arthur Pfister in 1954) had logged enough flight time to be accepted as a member of the WASPs — an Army Air Forces attachment created to fill the void when male pilots were deployed overseas.
Internet voting will be allowed in the Michigan caucuses next month and, for the first time, in the general election in a Pentagon-operated pilot program for overseas voters.
Between 6 and 23 February 1938, Walters piloted the first overseas flight in an aeroplane designed and built in Australia when he flew the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Vice Marshal Richard Williams, to Singapore in a Tugan Gannet.
They were hired to ferry military planes in the United States, freeing male pilots to fly them overseas and in combat.
