Women's Air Force
[2] Jacqueline Cochran, who had volunteered in the RAF and had demonstrated solid leadership in greatly expanding the WASP program, was similarly directed to join the Reserves in 1948 within which she rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1969.
Shelly was among the first women officers in the Navy and had been instrumental in setting up WAVES training in 1942; after the war she had returned to civilian life as assistant to the president of Bennington College.
Against the ingrained male-dominated military habits, Shelly achieved only limited success; her outgoing report in 1954 stated that the WAF was fated to remain small and exclusive as long as Selective Service applied only to men.
Riley linked forces with Army Colonel Mary Louise Milligan (WAC) to work with the Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) in a successful attempt to retroactively grant active military service status (and its benefits) to former WAACs (Women's Army Auxiliary Corps) who had served in World War II and had also been in WAC, WAF or one of the other women's services.
Riley pointed out to a Congressional subcommittee that SPARS, WAVES and female Marines had been given active duty status but Army and Air Force women had not.
Recruits were expected to appear attractive and were schooled in posture and cosmetics along with their physical training and military indoctrination.
African-American recruits joined the WAFs in greater numbers in 1949 when basic training for women was desegregated in the USAF.
She retired at the rank of Major, and earned a master's degree in an Air Force Program at Southern Illinois University.
Circa 1992 Harris held a command at HQ USAF, Washington, D.C., where she was responsible for 125,000 airmen and an annual budget of $20 billion.
The effect was considered "smart and contemporary",[8] The two-piece summer uniform, however, made of cotton-cord seersucker, fit poorly and required frequent ironing.
In December 1951, MaryBelle Johns Nissly was recruited by Howard to return to military life at the rank of captain to be given the tasks of conductor and commander of the WAF Band.
They also had to be white; the Air Force knew the WAF Band would be touring the segregated Deep South and they did not want to cross the race barrier.
In 1957, while flying aboard a C-124 Globemaster II, the WAF Band was invited by General James L. Jackson, Deputy Commander of the San Bernardino Air Materiel Area, Air Materiel Command,[12] to move to his headquarters at Norton AFB in San Bernardino, California.
That same year Howard issued a directive forbidding the WAF Band to appear at any civilian functions such as county fairs and schools where they had become popular.
Nissly continued to accept these civilian invitations in contravention of the directive, allowing anti-women elements in the USAF an excuse to charge the WAF Band with insubordination.
Major General Wendy M. Masiello, a 1980 graduate of Texas Tech University, is an example of high-ranking woman officer who was commissioned via Air Force ROTC.
In 1967, President Johnson signed Public Law 90-130, lifting grade restrictions and strength limitations on women in the military.
[15] 1973 saw the end of Selective Service (the "draft"), meaning military recruiting practices were beginning to experience radical changes.
