Iris Cummings Critchell was a extremely aggressive individual, and she or he used that aggressive drive to succeed as a swimmer and, later, as a World Struggle II fighter pilot.
At age 15, Critchell received the American nationwide 200-meter breaststroke championship in 1936 and, in the identical yr, represented the USA on the Summer season Olympics in Berlin, putting fourth within the girls’s 200-meter breaststroke.
In 1939, she entered the College of Southern California’s Civilian Pilot Coaching Program, incomes a pilot’s license the next yr. In 1941, Critchell grew to become a flight teacher for the Navy Cadet Coaching Program.
The next yr, she joined the Ladies’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, which grew to become a part of the Ladies Airforce Service Pilots, higher often known as WASP, in 1943.
When WASP was deactivated on Dec. 20, 1944, Critchell joined the sixth Ferrying Group, Air Transport Command, flying P-38 Lightning and P-61 Black Widow fighter plane and the P-51 Mustang fighter bomber.
After the sixth Ferrying Group was deactivated close to the tip of the conflict, she married fellow navy pilot Howard Critchell and returned to USC to show aviation to veterans. Throughout a luncheon at Los Angeles Air Drive Base in March 2007, Critchell stated her technology of fliers stood on the shoulders of those that got here earlier than them.
“Their dedication and competency made it attainable for us to achieve expertise rapidly and transfer into the ranks of skilled pilots to adapt with a view to serve in World Struggle II, and my place to observe on with a profession in aeronautics for the subsequent 65 years in flight,” she stated.
“Our problem is to encourage youth to query and look with marvel on the bodily world round them; assist them concentrate on flight, aeronautics and area; assist them to welcome a broad bodily and tutorial preparation for all times; and provide the steadiness supplied by our humble respect for these early pioneers of aviation on whose shoulders all of us stand,” Critchell stated.
Her different profession highlights embrace:
- Racing airplanes and successful the 1957 All-Lady Transcontinental Air Race.
- Founding the Bates Basis’s Bates Aeronautics Program, whose college students included future astronauts Stanley G. Love and George Nelson.
- Serving as a Federal Aviation Administration pilot examiner.
Her awards embrace:
- Induction into the Nationwide Flight Instructors Corridor of Fame in 2000.
- Awarded the FAA’s Wright Brothers Grasp Pilot Award in 2006 for her dedication to airplane security.
- Awarded the Nile Gold Medal of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in 2007 for her lifetime of dedication to aviation training.
Critchell was born Dec. 21, 1920, in Los Angeles. She and her husband Howard had two kids and quite a few grand and great-grandchildren.
When she died Jan. 24, 2025, the 104-year-old was the last-known surviving Olympian of the 1936 Berlin Video games.
