During the Second World War the United States trained women to fly military aircraft on domestic duties. They were classified as civilians, and that classification outlived the war.
The shortage created the opening
Combat demand pulled experienced pilots overseas, leaving domestic work undone: moving new aircraft from factories to bases, towing targets for gunnery practice, testing repaired planes and instructing.
Those tasks required qualified pilots and did not require combat assignment, which made them the point where the prohibition on women flying military aircraft could be relaxed without being reversed.
Recruits generally arrived already holding civilian licenses, since the program selected from an existing pool of trained women rather than starting from nothing.
The work was hazardous and routine at once
Ferrying meant flying unfamiliar types across the country in variable weather, frequently without the navigation support and radio access afforded to other flights.
Target towing meant flying straight and level while trainees fired live ammunition at a sleeve trailing behind the aircraft, which is precisely as unforgiving as it sounds.
Fatalities occurred, and because the pilots were civilians, the usual military provisions for burial and for notification of families did not apply to them.
Classification determined everything afterward
Civilian status meant no veterans' benefits, no honors and no place in the record that veterans' organizations and federal programs maintained.
The women had flown military aircraft under military orders and were administratively invisible in the system that recognized everyone else who had done so.
Recognition came much later, after sustained campaigning by the surviving pilots themselves, and it arrived as a legislative correction rather than an administrative one.
The program ended before the war did
As male pilots became available for domestic assignments, the program was closed, and the women were released without transition into the postwar aviation industry.
Commercial airlines were not hiring women as pilots, so experience gained flying bombers across a continent did not transfer into the civilian career it plainly qualified them for.
What the episode demonstrates
Capability was never the question, since it was settled the moment the aircraft were delivered. The barrier was categorical, and the category was written by someone else.
The delayed recognition also shows how durable an administrative decision becomes once made, and how much effort is required afterward to correct something that took one line to establish.