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When people talk about the history of airpower and women, most think about Jacqueline Cochran’s Women’s Airforce Service Pilots or WASPs. Training women pilots, flying aircraft ferry missions and towing gunnery targets, the WASPs definitely played a vital and underappreciated role in World War II.
However, they were not the only women in the air war.
The Army Air Corps started accepting women in September 1942 to work in their Aircraft and Warning Service to operate early warning posts in the states. These 6,000 women were officially assigned to the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. In 1943, the “auxiliary” portion was dropped and they became part of the Women’s Army Corps within the Army. As the U.S. Army Air Force started recruiting its own personnel; its WACs became known as Air WACs. By the end of the war, the USAAF had 32,000 Air WACs working in over 200 specialties – to include roughly 1,100 black women serving in segregated units. After the war, as with most of the men in uniform, most of the Air WACs were discharged.
The Air Force became a separate service in 1947, but there were no provisions made in the legislation to bring their Air WAC members into the new service. About 2,000 female enlisted and 177 female officers continued working for the new Air Force, but as Army members. They did not get their opportunity to join the new Air Force until the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act of June 16, 1948, established a 4,000 enlisted 300 officer WAF (Women in the Air Force).
This small WAF organization grew dramatically during the Korean War to about 16,000, but declined to about 9,500 by 1960. One cause of the decline in WAF numbers was the career restrictions placed by the Air Force. WAF members were primarily limited to clerical, administrative, personnel, information and medical fields. This policy was quite illogical considering that World War II USAAF women had also been working in intelligence, weather, equipment maintenance and control tower operations. WAF members eventually gained more access to opportunities in supply, aircraft maintenance, public affairs, intelligence, photo-interpretation, meteorology by volunteering to fill positions in the southeast Asia theater.
As the Vietnam War drew to an end, so too did the Selective Service, also known as the Draft (1973). With that, the Air Force suddenly faced a potential personnel crisis because as an all-volunteer service they were going to have to attract people to join who did not have to and at a time when military service was not a popular option. This directly resulted in opening of more career fields to Air Force women – particularly in hard-to-fill specialties. As women became more integrated into the force, it became clear that the WAF organization was no longer meaningful. It was abolished in June 1976, the same month the Air Force Academy admitted its first female cadets.
Since then, women’s opportunities in the Air Force have been steadily expanding. The first women graduated from the academy in 1980.
By 1985, women could be on missile launch crews and serve on C-130 and C-141 airdrop missions. In 1993, Defense Secretary Les Aspin removed Department of Defense restrictions on women’s participation in aerial combat.
Two years later, 2nd Lt. Kelly Flinn became the first woman bomber pilot; the same year Lt. Col. Eileen Collins became the first woman to pilot a space shuttle. Given increased opportunities, the percentage of women in the Air Force has risen from 5.4 percent in 1975, to approximately 19.1 percent.
In this century our Air Force is simply looking for good “people” to Cross into the Blue. But we should remember those who served before us who made us the “one team, one fight” Air Force we are today.
