Susie Winston Bain Collection

Only a part of this collection has been digitized.

https://uncg.as.atlas-sys.com/repositories/2/resources/538

October 2000 oral history transcript; correspondence; artifacts; textiles; printed material; clippings; and an oral history transcript document Susie Winston Bain's 1943-1944 service as a WASP. Letters from Bain to her family describe daily life on base in Laredo, Texas in 1944. Military and personal papers document Bain's activities as a pilot during WWII and in post-war Greensboro, North Carolina. Photographs illustrate WASPs and their planes; while printed material records WASP contributions and related organizations. Bain's oral history transcript details her early life, her military experiences, and the effects of her service on her life after the war. Prominent subjects include Jacqueline Cochrane, Nancy Love, Hap Arnold, Eleanor Roosevelt, and women in the military. Textiles include Bain's WASP battle jacket and reunion materials.

Susie Winston Bain (1922-2017) of Bay City, Texas, was a WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilot) during World War II. Susie M. Winston Bain was born 21 July 1922 in Markham, Texas, and raised in Bay City, Texas. Her mother was a musician and her father was in the automobile business. She graduated from high school in 1940 and studied home economics at the University of Texas. In early 1942 she found a job in an accountant's office in Houston. Bain took flying lessons in order to qualify for the newly formed WASP in 1943. She interviewed and joined the WASP at Love Field in Dallas, Texas, in November 1943. After six months of basic training at Avenger Field outside of Sweetwater, Texas, Bain graduated in Class 44-W-4, Flight 1, on 23 May 1944. She was sent to Love Field in where she ferried PT-19s across the country. In September 1944, after a short stint at Garden City, Kansas, Bain was transferred to Laredo, Texas, where she flew B-26s and towed targets for men's live ammunition practice. Susie Bain met her future husband, Carson Bain, while they were stationed in Laredo. She requested an early discharge to marry him in November 1944, after it was announced that the WASP would disband the following month. She followed him to several duty stations, and the Bains moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, after Carson's discharge. The couple later divorced and Mrs. Bain relocated to Austin, Texas.

Women's History
Military

Women Air Force Service Pilots (WASP)

World War II era (1940-1946)

World War, 1939-1945

Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries