A 15-year-old Black girl from L.A. became the youngest African-American female pilot to make a solo flight across the United States. When Kimberly Anyadike landed her single-engine Cessna at Compton Woodley Airport Saturday, she was greeted by dozens of cheering admirers. She had taken off from Compton 13 days earlier with an adult safety pilot and an 87-year-old former Tuskegee Airman who served in World War II. Together, they flew to Newport News, Va., and made about a dozen stops along the way. “I wanted to inspire other kids to really believe in themselves,” said Anyadike, who learned to fly a plane and helicopter at 12 years old with the Compton-based Tomorrow’s Aeronautical Museum. She said she didn’t make the trip to set any records, only to honor the Tuskegee Airmen, the U.S. Army Air Corps’ all-Black WWII combat unit. “They left such a great legacy. I had big shoes to fill,” she said. “All they wanted to do was to be patriots for this country. They were told no, that they were stupid, that they didn’t have cognitive development to fly planes. They didn’t listen. They just did what they wanted to do.”