[2][3] Her first airplane ride, when she was a child, was in a Curtiss Jenny owned by a neighbor who was part of the Inman Brothers Barnstorming Flying Circus.

[2][1] Tuttle graduated from Field Kindley High School in 1936, then enrolled in Coffeyville Community College and studied math and chemistry until 1938 when she transferred to Kansas State University.

[5] Her brother, Ralph "Tut" Tuttle, was a World War II fighter pilot who flew an estimated 250 missions that earned him two Distinguished Flying Crosses and a Silver Star.

[1] Axton left the WASP program in April 1944 because her mother had taken ill.[1] She applied for a job at the Boeing aircraft plant in Wichita, Kansas, and was hired to work as a flight test engineer.

[4] In May 1944 Axton made an historic flight when she was the first woman to fly a Boeing B-29 Superfortress, a broad-shouldered, four-engine propeller-powered heavy bomber.