NAS JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Aviation mechanics, pilots, control tower operators, intelligence personnel, engineers, weather forecasters. In the early 1940s, many of these jobs were almost exclusively open to men.
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But as more and more men in the U.S. Navy deployed overseas during World War II, someone needed to fill these positions on the bases back home, including at Naval Air Station Jacksonville.
Enter the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). The U.S. Naval Reserve unit was established on July 30, 1942, seven months after the U.S. entered the war following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The first commander of the WAVES was Mildred McAfee, who as a civilian was the president of Wellesley College.
While other military branches also had units for women during the war, the WAVES held status comparable to their male counterparts in the reserve. They also received equal benefits (such as pensions and disability protection) as the men in the Navy.
According to an article by Bill Delaney in The Jaxson, as one of the largest Naval Air Stations in the world, NAS Jacksonville was a significant destination for WAVES during the war, and their service helped establish Jacksonville’s position as a major Navy city.
Women at work
Throughout the war, women in uniform performed more than 200 different jobs.
Some 100,000 WAVES served in a variety of capacities from nurses, storekeepers, clerks and administrators to photographers, mechanics, air traffic control operators and instructors.
At least one-third of the WAVES were assigned to naval aviation duties, they served as pilots and repaired planes as metalsmiths and aviation machinist’s mates.
In Jacksonville, the WAVES supported the early days of the Blue Angels, which was then named the United States Navy’s Flight Demonstration Team.
Other women served as drivers, postal workers and translators. Some worked in coding and intelligence, requiring top-secret government clearance.
The Navy also brought in college-educated women with backgrounds in mathematics, the physical sciences, and engineering to carry out complex and precise operations -- like calculating bomb trajectories.
By the end of the war, over 84,000 women served as WAVES with 8,000 female officers, making up 2.5% of the U.S. Navy’s personnel strength.
The Navy came under fire for excluding African-American women from the ranks, but in late 1944, about a year before the end of the war, the WAVES program began accepting African American women. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had ordered racial integration.
The WAVES accepted one Black woman for every 36 white women enlisted in the program.
The first commissioned African-American WAVES officers – Lt. (Junior Grade) Harriet Ida Pickens (left) and Ensign Frances Wills -- graduated in the final class of the Naval Reserve Midshipmen’s School (WR) in December 1944.
Blazing the trail
Many women in uniform risked their lives and safety. Four hundred and thirty-two servicewomen died. Eighty-eight were taken prisoner.
Initially women were not stationed overseas, but their contributions at home proved not only that they were vital in winning the war but also that men and women could serve together successfully.
This paved the way for change.
When the war ended, many women in service were discharged, and the WAVES demobilized.
But the success of the women military units created by the “emergency” demands of the war created a lasting future for American women in military service.
On June 12, 1948, Congress passed the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, which granted women the right to serve as regular, permanent members of the military for the first time.
While the new law made the WAVES program obsolete, people still referred to female members of the Navy as WAVES well into the 1970s.
