Best known as the first female test pilot to fly a jet fighter during World War II, Ann was born at a U.S. Army Hospital in Augusta, Georgia, to Edgar F. Baumgartner, an engineer and patent attorney and Margaret L. Gilpin-Brown Baumgartner. While her father’s family had lived in the U.S. for some time, they originally immigrated from Switzerland. When her father returned from France during World War I, the family settled in New Jersey. He supported his daughter’s interest in flying and took her to Newark Airport to watch the airplanes take off and land. She graduated from Walnut Hill High School in Massachusetts and from Smith College in 1939 where she studied pre-med, was a member of the swimming team and played soccer. She got a job writing public relations releases for Eastern Air Lines and later wrote for The New York Times. She took flying lessons on the side and as soon as she qualified, she flew rescue missions for the Civil Air Patrol and with her father also served in the Civil Air Defense watching for enemy aircraft from their perch in New Jersey. She joined the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) in March 1943. Her first assignment was to tow targets for anti-aircraft artillery training. From there she was sent to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, where she became the first female test pilot to fly America’s first jet aircraft, the Bell YP-59A. Here she met both Orville Wright and William Carl who would become her husband. The WASPs were disbanded in December of 1944 and Baumgartner returned to writing and work as an instrument flight instructor for United Air Lines. She and Major Carl, an aeronautical engineer, were married in May 1945, and together they had two children. Flight instruction and writing continued to fill her days. She wrote over 2,000 newspaper and magazine articles on science and the environment. She and her husband were also long-distance sailors, and they sailed the Atlantic twice. In retirement she wrote her own story, A WASP Among Eagles: A Woman Military Test Pilot in World War II. She and her husband died within a month of each other and were buried at sea.
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