PORT ANGELES — Her lifelong dream was to become a nurse, and eventually that materialized.
But Maxilyn Miller took an interesting side trip along the way, becoming one of several young women recruited during World War II to assemble and maintain military aircraft while their male counterparts were pulled away in droves to execute global battles.
Miller, a Dungeness resident who will only admit to being in her late ’70s, took another side trip Monday; a visit to William Fairchild International Airport in Port Angeles, where a Boeing B-17G — known in her time as the Flying Fortress — was on display as part of the Wings of Freedom Tour.
A B-17 and a B-24, both restored, were scheduded to begin a three-day visit Monday.
“I was so happy to see the plane today. It brought back a lot of memories for me,” Miller said.
The memories are fresh in her mind despite a 60-year gap in time from when she was recruited out of college in her freshman year by Pentagon officials desperate to replace enlisted males who’d been thrust into a critical world war.
Miller was intrigued, and eagerly accepted their offer to relocate her in 1943 to Patterson Field in Dayton, Ohio, where she would train as a nautical engineer, specializing in maintaining the 74-foot-long, 36,000-pound B-17.
