Exhibits & Collections

For many years there was a distinct irony in Pensacola, Florida, world-renowned as the “Cradle of Naval Aviation.” In 1906, in one of the small panhandle towns that existed amid the pine forests surrounding the city, a little girl named Bessie Pittman entered the world, destined to become known as Jackie Cochran, an aviatrix who rivaled Amelia Earhart in her fame. Winner of the Harmon Trophy for her record-setting accomplishments, she was also a founder of the Women Air Service Pilots (WASPs) that ferried aircraft during World War II. Yet, while a native daughter achieved such widespread acclaim in the field of aviation, the skies over Pensacola remained an exclusive domain, the naval aviators trained in them beginning in 1914 and every year thereafter all male.

This is not to say that women had no connection to naval aviation. During World War I, a number of females joined the sea service in the rate of Yeoman (F), some of them serving at air stations in administrative support roles. Among them was twenty-year old Joy Bright, whose life would eventually include three marriages, all to naval aviators (her first two husbands died in tragic airship accidents). Following the war, she served as a civilian in the Bureau of Aeronautics and, during World War II, was a leading force in the creation and service of the Navy’s WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service). Expanding upon the duties of their Great War predecessors, WAVES performed a wider array of jobs, their role in aviation including service as aviation machinist’s mates and ordancemen. WAVES also operated most of the synthetic training devices in naval aviation, notably the LINK trainers, in which aviators and aircrewmen learned their trade.

In the postwar era, while women remained in the ranks, their opportunities were relatively confined to the medical branches of the Navy and administrative posts. The elevation of Admiral Elmo Zumwalt to the post of Chief of Naval Operations in 1970 signaled a sea of change for the Navy, particularly in matters of personnel, including policies relating to opportunities for women. In one of the admiral’s Z-grams in which he issued directives, Zumwalt took measures to promote equal rights and opportunities for women in the Navy. The date was 7 August 1972, and among the ensigns on active duty at the time was Barbara Ann Allen, the daughter of a career naval officer and sister of a Marine aviator. Just seven months later, she found herself joining seven other women officers in a classroom of the Naval Aviation Schools Command on board Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola, Florida, commencing flight training. For Allen, the process concluded on board NAS Corpus Christi on 22 February 1974, when the pinning of wings of gold on her dress blue uniform symbolized her becoming the Navy’s first female naval aviator.

Those that followed her have reached heights previously though unattainable, including flying combat missions from the decks of aircraft carriers, commanding squadrons, and flying into outer space as Shuttle astronauts. Tragically, the woman upon whose shoulders they stand did not live to see the dreams of her gender increasingly fulfilled. On 13 July 1982, while flying as an instructor in a T-34C Mentor from NAS Whiting Field, Florida, the now married Barbara Allan Rainey crashed while avoiding another aircraft during touch and go landings at an outlying field. Both she and her student, Ensign Donald Bruce Knowlton, were killed.

Thirteen years later, on 22 June 1995, President William Clinton spoke at Arlington National Cemetery on the occasion of the groundbreaking ceremony for the Women in Military Service for America Memorial. In highlighting the service of various women in military history he appropriately made reference to “[Lieutenant Commander] Barbara Allen Rainey, the mother of two daughters, the Navy's first female aviator, tragically the victim of a training crash. Her story reminds us that even in peacetime, those who wear the uniform face danger every day. Now she rests just behind me in the quiet of these sacred grounds.”

Pictured above, a group of female yeomen gathered on board NAS Pensacola, Florida, and a portrait of Ensign Barbara Ann Allen.