Newsletter #1 – April 17, 2026
At Stories 250, we are committed to keeping history alive, providing support for literacy, and practicing old-fashioned, yet never out-of-date journalism by attending events, interviewing people, writing articles and producing multimedia to tell the story. Our motto – Nothing Artificial, Always Intelligent – says it all.
Many of you attended screenings of our 2025 documentary, Crosswinds: The Courageous Life of Cornelia Fort. Crosswinds is the result of research that I began in early 2022 into the life of Cornelia Fort, the first woman pilot to be killed while on active duty.
As I continue my research, we are still trying to solve two mysteries that I uncovered early in my research. Below is an update on those two efforts:
- Interstate Cadet N37345: When Cornelia was working as a civilian pilot instructor at the Andrew Flying Service in Honolulu in fall 1941, she entered Interstate Cadet N37345 in her logbook 55 times. Yet in checking FAA (the CAA in 1941) records, that plane was never in Hawaii. Leslie Sargent, retired FAA inspector and Crosswinds aviation consultant, and I are still hoping to find documents to explain the discrepancy. We are looking for 1941 factory production records from the Interstate Aircraft and Engineering Corporation, the company that designed and manufactured the Interstate Cadet airplane. Only a few hundred Cadet airplanes were made at their factory in El Segundo, California. The Harlow Aircraft Company bought the manufacturing rights to the Interstate in 1945.
- Minute Man for Victory war bond film: In April 1942, MGM Studios came to Nashville to film Cornelia telling her story about coming nose-to-nose with a Japanese Zero airplane as the Pearl Harbor attack began on Dec. 7, 1941. I have been looking for a copy of that short war bond film for more than three years to no avail. The U.S Treasury Department hired MGM to film these war bond promotions because of the interview style of the films. In the 1940s, many government films used voice over audio instead of embedded audio. For live interviews, they outsourced Minute Man filming to Hollywood because of their technical capabilities. I have two sources that confirmed Cornelia was filmed – contemporaneous newspaper articles in Nashville and a National Archives list of Minute Man films on which Cornelia is noted as “Mrs. Cornelia Fort.” Cornelia’s film was merged with other Minute Man films of women from across the country who were also interviewed. That reel was produced for Mrs. Morgenthau, wife of the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr., but I have been unable to find a copy of that reel. Cornelia’s film may exist as a single 16 mm film or on a reel with other Minute Man films. I’ve searched extensively for it from many angles but have not found it. If anyone has access to a WWII war bond film collection, please contact me at jstanfordmiller@gmail.com. Thank you!
For more information on Crosswinds, visit www.crosswindscornelia.com.
Please feel free to share this Stories 250 newsletter with family and friends!
All the best,
Judy Miller