FOIAWEAR — BETTY ANN LUSSIER / The Intrepid Woman Tee

FOIAWEAR / ARCHIVE SERIES 024

At 16 she could fly a Piper Cub. At 20 she sailed alone to England to fight the Nazis. Betty Ann Lussier became one of the first women of the British Air Transport Auxiliary, ferrying planes from factory to squadron — paid the same as the men, flying the same workload. When D-Day closed the combat skies to women, she resigned in fury: she would have died for a chance to fly a Spitfire.

A month later, with her godfather — Sir William Stephenson, head of British Security Coordination — smoothing the way, she joined the OSS. In May 1943 she trained in cryptography with the British and, in the X-2 counterintelligence branch, made herself one of only 28 American Special Liaison Units in the European theater — couriering disguised ULTRA intelligence, decrypted Enigma traffic the Germans believed unbreakable, to the Seventh Army for sabotage planning.

Left behind when her unit shipped to southern France because women were barred from the front, she talked an Army Air Corps pilot into flying her there anyway as a "radio technician." On the Riviera she hunted Nazi spies — 27 uncovered in a single month — and helped run double agents against the enemy.

The artwork is a stylised tribute — the small plane and the patchwork of farmland she grew up flying over. It is not a portrait.

This shirt is offered in both dark and light garment colours — the plane in silver on Black, Graphite and Espresso, and in a matching dark-ink print on Butter, Chambray and White.

The QR code on the front opens the CIA's article on Betty Ann Lussier, the source for everything above: https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-intrepid-woman-betty-ann-lussier/

Garment: Comfort Colors 1717 garment-dyed t-shirt. Heavyweight 6.1 oz/yd² (206.8 g/m²), 100% ring-spun US cotton, pre-shrunk, relaxed fit, double-needle stitched with no side seams and a sewn-in label. Sizes S–4XL. Printed on the front at 300 DPI; plain back. The main artwork prints at 10 × 10 in and the QR at 1.8 × 1.8 in.

Care: machine wash cold, inside out, with like colours. Tumble dry low. Do not iron directly on the printed area.

FOIAWEAR is an independent brand and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Central Intelligence Agency or the United States government.