![Producers are scrambling to generate $30,000 to finish a documentary film about the Women Airforce Service Pilots. [Courtesy: The Red Door Films]](https://flyingmag1.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/rdf-poster.png?width=1240&height=694)
Next Tuesday Veterans Day will be here, and there is one group of World War II participants who may quite possibly go unremembered—the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP).
Oscar-nominated director Matia Karrell and producer Hilary Prentice are trying to bring the WASPs’ story out of the shadows with The Red Door Films’ Coming Home: Fight for a Legacy, a documentary that was set for completion this year. The movie tells the story of the WASPs, who are often not mentioned when WWII is taught in schools.
Although they flew military aircraft in service to the country, trained the military way, flew the military way, and wore uniforms, they were never militarized during the war and not recognized as veterans until 1977—some 33 years after the program was disbanded.
Over 25,000 women applied to be a WASP, 1,830 were accepted, and 1,074 completed the training. Thirty-eight were killed while flying for their country. Yet because they were not militarized, there were no burial benefits, so the other WASPs took up a collection to ship the bodies home.
- READ MORE: Art Exhibit Celebrating WASPs Open at Nashville International Airport
- READ MORE: Veterans History Project Collecting WASPs’ Heroic Stories
Karrell and Prentice spent several years traveling all over the country to interview the surviving WASPs, asking them to recall those few years they spent in Sweetwater, Texas, at Avenger Field. Some of the interviews were done at their homes or hotel rooms. Others came at aviation gatherings such as Sun ‘n Fun in Lakeland, Florida.
In 2017 they made the journey to Avenger Field to be part of the WASP homecoming celebration.
“I think we got at least 15 WASP interviews,” said Prentice, adding that the interviews are now in the postproduction phase, which requires editing and the application of music and historical footage.
Sometimes the WASPs didn’t want to be on camera, but they allowed the filmmakers access to their letters and diaries, which were read and recorded for production.
In 2024 the project received a $480,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to help finish it. But in April the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) rescinded the grant, and the film had to be put on hold.
Now the group has launched a Seed&Spark crowdfunding campaign to raise the $30,000 needed to finish the postproduction work and bring the movie to theaters.
“We are determined to get their story out to the next generation,” Karrell said.
They’re also calling attention to the crowdfunding campaign on Facebook at #SoaringAboveSetbacks.
