Manila Davis Talley

Talley was born Manila Carolyn Davis in Flatwoods, Braxton County, West Virginia.[3] She attended West Virginia University and later transferred to the New England Conservatory to study piano and drama.[4]

After becoming interested in aviation, Talley enrolled in a Curtiss-Wright mechanics course and attended the M.I.T. Guggenheim School of Aeronautics.[4]

Talley became saleswoman at the Curtiss-Wright Corporation in late 1929 or early 1930.[2] She earned a commercial pilot’s license while working for the company making her the first woman from West Virginia to do so.[4]

Talley was an airplane demonstrator and an aircraft racing pilot.[5] She joined the 99s (International Association of Women Pilots) in 1930.[1][2] In the same year, Talley became the first woman to complete the Army Air Corps officer reserve course.[5]

Talley was a founding member of the Betsy Ross Air Corps, a private female auxiliary for the Army Air Corps that launched in 1931.[1][2]

Manila married Benjamin B. Talley, an officer in the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, in 1933.[4] In 1941, she became the person to join the Anchorage, Alaska Civil Air Patrol eventually earning the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

In 1967, Talley became the third woman to complete to obtain a certificate from the Air Force War College.[1][2][5]

Manila Davis Talley died at Altus Air Force Base in Altus, Oklahoma on December 17, 1973.[3] She is interred at Flatwoods Cemetery in West Virginia.[1]

Talley's scrapbook, mostly consisting of materials from 1929-1942, is held in the National Air and Space Museum Archives.[2] A collection of her papers dating from 1919 to 1990 was gifted to the University of Alaska Anchorage/Alaska Pacific University Consortium Library Archives in 1986.[4]