How six pioneering Navy women pioneers broke barriers 50 years ago

July 19, 2024

On March 11, Navy Lt. Amanda “Stalin” Lee makes her debut as the first female demonstration pilot for the Blue Angels. The event coincides with the 50th anniversary of women in naval aviation, a milestone celebrated at this year’s Super Bowl with an all-women military flyover consisting of two F/A-18F Super Hornets, an F-35C Lightning II and an EA-18G Growler.

During the halftime show, Capt. Joellen Drag Oslund spoke. She was one of six pioneering Navy women who, a half-century ago, became America’s first official female military pilots. She noted that when she started flight training in 1973, women — unlike the aviators who performed the flyover at the end of the national anthem — weren’t allowed to fly jets.

The Navy was the first branch to open flight training to women, by order of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Elmo Zumwalt. It was one piece of a broader plan to integrate women into the Navy, in part for fairness and in part in response to a dire personnel crisis. But an order from the top didn’t necessarily inspire the culture change needed to enable progress. That, the women had to forge themselves, through courage, perseverance and leadership, by acting in solidarity and by supporting one another — even across generations.

During World War II, the Army recruited more than 1,000 female fliers to replace male pilots sent overseas. The Women Airforce Service Pilots, the WASP, confronted questions about upper-body strength, emotional stability and physical stamina — and faced them down. Though technically civilians, they flew more than 60 million miles in 77 types of aircraft — every warplane the United States could produce. They ferried planes from factories to military bases, acted as test pilots, taught men to fly and towed targets for gunnery trainees to shoot at with live ammunition. Thirty-eight died in the line of duty.

But the WASP were summarily dismissed as the war wound down, with their service records sealed and their achievements largely forgotten.

Restrictions codified in federal law in 1948 severely limited the percentage of women who could serve in the military and the duties they could perform. Navy women were specifically barred from serving at sea, or even from setting foot on any vessel that had a combat “mission,” whether actual combat was taking place or not.

But in 1967, rules limiting how many women could become captains, and forbidding any woman from becoming a commanding officer over men, were lifted. And starting in 1972, an officer or enlisted woman who became pregnant could no longer be automatically dismissed — though she was still expected to resign.

Still, restrictions that prevented women from serving, gaining promotions and attaining command at the same level with men remained in force when Zumwalt decided in 1972 that Navy women could be the solution to multiple problems.

The impending end of the military draft meant the Navy would soon have to attract volunteers — an issue, considering low morale. With the Vietnam War winding down, the Navy would no longer be able to count on men choosing to go to sea rather than fight in the jungle. And with the expected passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, it seemed the traditional restrictions on Navy women would be deemed unconstitutional.

Zumwalt had been pushing to change Navy culture through messages known as Z-grams — Z as in Zumwalt — which addressed areas as wide-ranging as men’s facial hair, civilian clothing, the role of Navy wives and deep-seated racial discrimination.

Z-116, “Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women in the Navy,” was issued in August 1972, and several months later, recruiters were instructed to find eight female flight training candidates. Four officers or officer trainees signed up, as did four civilians, and one member from each group dropped out early.

Just like the WASP, the six pioneering women who persisted in Zumwalt’s experimental program were confronted with constant questions about upper-body strength, emotional stability and physical stamina. And despite his best intentions, they had to overcome tremendous resistance born of hundreds of years of naval tradition.

When Ens. Joellen Drag discovered she was forbidden (unlike men) to hover her helicopter over a ship — not even to deliver the mail — and that her letters asking permission to deploy with the rest of her squadron vanished up the chain of command, she became a plaintiff in a federal class-action lawsuit challenging the combat exclusion in 1976. After some restrictions on women’s sea duty were lifted in 1979, she became the first female Navy pilot to serve shipboard and the first woman combat search-and-rescue helicopter aircraft commander.

Originally forbidden to fly jets, the future Capt. Rosemary Mariner was put in for jet training — along with the other junior officers in her squadron — by an African-American commanding officer who mentored her in the methods of the Black servicemen who had integrated the military. Cmdr. Raymond Lambert counseled that the women band together, network to protect their careers and each other and document everything that happened, for the record. When her training orders somehow got lost, he made sure they were located and approved. She became the first woman to fly solo in a Navy tactical jet and to qualify in a front-line light attack aircraft. Later, she became the first woman to command an aviation squadron, training men in airborne combat tactics she herself was not allowed to engage in in real life.

Lt. Jane Skiles O’Dea became America’s first military pilot mom by simply refusing to resign. She was the first woman to fly the C-130 Hercules, and one of the first to land on a carrier — the signature achievement for naval aviators and another opportunity the women had long been denied.

By modeling what women pilots could do, the original female naval aviators changed perceptions and minds, and with Zumwalt’s experiment deemed a success, the other branches of the military soon followed suit in putting women in the air.

These female fliers drew on the examples of the past, looking to the WASP. And the WASP, seeing doors open for a new generation of military women, started looking toward the future. As the military touted its new cadre of women pilots, the WASP started wondering — Wait, what about us? — and demanded their due, including veteran status, military pensions and the right to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. They made common cause with active-duty women military aviators, who quickly realized the older generation had faced the same challenges and shared the same goals of promoting opportunity for female pilots.

During the Persian Gulf War, women flying in support roles found themselves in combat conditions; “allowing” women in combat was now a distinction without a difference. But changing the regulations to meet reality took an act of Congress. WASP, wearing their Santiago Blue uniforms, came to Capitol Hill along with active-duty women from all branches and their supporters. Some, like Mariner, had aged out of combat eligibility and were fighting for changes they could not benefit from themselves. Other younger, women were ready, just waiting to answer the call.

In that raging debate, old questions were dredged up yet again. Upper-body strength, emotional stability, physical stamina, endurance, ability to withstand G forces — all had been heard before. But 50 years after the WASP and 20 years after the original six female naval aviators proved what women military pilots could do, those objections rang hollow. And when Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Merrill McPeak told a Senate subcommittee he would rather have a less qualified male pilot than a more qualified woman — he knew it made no sense, he said, but that’s just how he felt — it was clear such sentiments would not be an acceptable basis for U.S. military policy for much longer.

The beneficiaries of the 1993 change in federal law included eight female F-18 pilots, combat veterans and Top Gun graduates among them, who, in 2019, flew the Navy’s first all-female Missing Man Formation flyover at Mariner’s funeral. Among them was Lt. Amanda “Stalin” Lee, the first female demonstration pilot for the Blue Angels, who on March 11 will make history for the second time in four years.

Four of the original six are now gone. Lt. Barbara Allen Rainey was killed in a flight training accident in 1982. Capt. Jane O’Dea and Capt. Judith Neuffer Bruner, the first female Hurricane Hunter and later a director of mission and quality assurance at NASA, passed away last year. But the legacy of the six pilots in that 1973 experiment — who took their inspiration from the previous generation of female military fliers and changed the culture in profound ways — lives on into the future.

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