D-Day anniversary spotlights 'Rosies' who built WWII weapons

PEGASUS BRIDGE, France — When the 5,000th B-17 bomber built after Pearl Harbor rolled out of its Boeing factory, teenage riveter Anna Mae Krier made sure it would carry a message from the women of World War II: She signed his name on it.

Now 98 years old, and in Normandy, France, for the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, Krier continues to proudly promote the vital role women played during the invasion of June 6, 1944 and throughout of war, in particular by manufacturing weapons that allowed men to fight.

Krier was among millions of women who rolled up their sleeves in defense industry factories, replacing men who volunteered and were called to combat in the Pacific, Africa and Europe.

Women had their own icon in “Rosie the Riveter,” a woman in a polka dot bandana flexing a muscular arm in a recruiting poster that declared, “We can do it!”

After Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into war on Dec. 7, 1941, “every man, woman and child went to work,” Krier recalled Wednesday as she visited the site of an emblematic D-Day battle. Pegasus Bridge.

The North Dakota native was 17 when she went to work in 1943 as a riveter on B-17 and B-29 bombers. She helped build more than 6,000 planes, according to her biography provided by the Best Defense Foundation, which brought her to Normandy for the anniversary.

“We women built all this equipment, the planes, the tanks, the munitions” and the ships used in the Allied invasion of Normandy that helped liberate Europe from the tyranny of Adolf Hitler, Krier said.

She added: “We weren't doing it for the honors and awards. We were doing it to save our country. And we ended up helping to save the world.

Women also flew the planes they built.

The Air Force's pioneering female pilots, known as WASPs, completed a series of non-combat aerial missions, including flying planes from factories en route to the front, which released male pilots for combat.

Thirty-eight of these women were killed in war. Long considered civilians and not soldiers, they were not entitled to the salaries and social benefits enjoyed by men. It was only in 1977, after a long struggle, that they were granted veteran status, followed in 2010 by the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor bestowed by Congress.

Female defense workers also received little attention or appreciation at first. Krier was one of the former “Rosies” who managed to have their contributions recognized with a Congressional Gold Medal.

“It made me so proud,” she said. “And I’m so proud of our young women. We opened the doors to young women today. But watch what you women do. We are so happy to see what you are doing with your life. I think it's great.

Connie Palacioz, another “Rosie” who put rivets on the noses of B-29 bombers in Kansas, did not tell her future family about the details of her wartime work because “I never thought it was important to (say) that I was a riveter.

Palacioz, 99, is also in Normandy for the anniversary of the landing, part of a group of veterans flown over by American Airlines.

“All the men were at war. So we women had to do the work,” she said. “So there were a lot of Rosie the Riveters.”

Leicester reported from Port-en-Bessin-Huppain, France. AP reporters Theodora Tongas in Omaha Beach, France, and Alex Turnbull in Pegasus Bridge, France, contributed.