Iris Cummings Critchell, 104, Dies; Olympic Swimmer Turned Aviator

Iris Cummings, right, in 1943. During World War II, she belonged to an elite unit known as the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots, or WASPs.Iris Cummings Critchell, a swimmer who was the last survivor of the American team that competed in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin and an influential aviator who flew bombers as a pilot with the Women’s Air Force in World War II, died on Friday in Claremont, Calif. She was 104.

Her death was announced by Harvey Mudd College, in Claremont, where she was an instructor of aeronautics emerita.

Ms. Critchell was 15 years old and known as Iris Cummings when she competed in Berlin, in Games in which Adolf Hitler hoped to showcase the supposed superiority of…