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=WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services)=

Profile Information
Name: WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services) Country/Headquarters: America Active Dates/Created/Commissioned: July 30, 1942 Branch of military: All Commander/battles: Lieutenant Mildred McAfee

Friends
Theodore Roosevelt Eleanor Roosevelt Fashion designer-label Mainbocher Lieutenant Mildred McAfee WAACS

About Me
The WAVES, or Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services, was established on July 30, 1942 by President Theodore Roosevelt. His wife, also known as the first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, was one of the main reasons that our organization was created. It was because of her opinion that influenced people that the WAVES was a good idea.

At first, large numbers of women were assigned to maintain the Navy communications system. As the WAVES strength increased, entire staffs of men at land-based stations disappeared because the women had taken over airfield control towers, served important roles in health and hospital work, and had also manned vital naval communication networks. Women were also being trained in gunnery and blind flying instruction, aerology, aviation ground crew work, navigation, and multiple other fields. The navy estimated that the women had freed up enough men to outfit an entire attack force consisting of one battleship, two large aircraft carriers, two heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, and fifteen destroyers.

In the year 1943, WAVES replaced billets that were once exclusively reserved for men. In the November of 1943, Congress provided legislation that removed the former limitations that was once upon female officer ranks. During September 1944, further Congressional legislations led to permittance of WAVES’s capability to volunteer for duty outside the mainland of the United States. Within a month, WAVES were deployed overseas. On January 6, 1945, the first major contingent of WAVES arrived at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii through a troop transport ship. Through the year of 1944, the responsibilities that the WAVES had once had were increased. Now, female personnel were posted to district headquarters, navy yards and docks, supply depots, naval air stations, and all naval hospitals. Nearly eighty percent of all administrative work was done by WAVES, to include supervising and running the entire naval mail service. Furthermore, the Washington-based naval communications nerve center was made up of seventy-five percent WAVES. Thousands of WAVES were assigned to the Supply Corps, where they had expedited wartime supplies to ships and to advanced oversea bases. These women served as officers, storekeepers, yeomen, and seamen who had kept critical naval logistics flowing to the front.

Women were also enlisted in mundane and dangerous activities, such as operating all the laboratories and many of the firing bays at the crucial Indian Head rocket powder plant, which had conducted most of the testing was done on American rocket propellants. There, they had composed nearly half the personnel assigned to this factory. As many as a third of WAVES was assigned to aviation. In this field, women had fixed aircrafts, packed parachutes, provided weather information, served as link trainer instructors, served as gunnery instructors, coordinated air traffic from control towers, and had performed other hosts of other aviation-related jobs.

By mid-1943, approximately 27,000 American women served in the Waves. The majority of WAVES positions were made of secretaries and clerical jobs, but thousands of other personnel programs included aviation mechanics, photographers, radio tower operators, and intelligence personnel. In late 1944, the WAVES program began accepting African American women, the ratio having one black woman for thirty-six white women enlisted in the WAVES program. This was because the Women’s Advisory Council and African American women leaders kept pressure on the Navy department and had demanded that black women were to be permitted to serve on a fully integrated basis. After two years with no result, Eleanor Roosevelt had joined into the effort. Her direct interest caused the Navy to open its WAVES program to African American women. In October 1944, the Navy announced the plan to commission black women who possessed super-qualified credentials and to put the first enlisted women into training by January 1, 1945. Harriet Ida Pickens and Frances Wills became the first black women to be the Navy’s first WAVES officers in December 1944. Seventy-two black women enlisted and started their training at Hunter College, their ability setting the precedent for black men’s later successful integration.

After World War II ended, the US Congress passed the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act on June 12, 1948. This enabled women to gain permanent status in all military branches of the United States, which put the WAVES program into obsolescence. After the passage of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, on June 7, 1948, six women were sworn into the regular Navy. By the end of World War II, over 84,000 women were enlisted in WAVES with 8,000 female officers, which constituted 2.5% of the US Navy’s personnel strength.

Wall Posts

 * On July 30, 1942, the Women's Reserve of the United States Naval Reserve was created by an act of Congress.
 * On June 12, 1948, the Congress passed the Women's Armed Services Integration Act, allowing women to gain permanent status in all military branches of the United States.
 * On July 7, 1948, six women were sworn into the regular navy. These women were Kay Langdon, Wilma Marchal, Edna Young, Frances Devaney, Doris Robertson, and Ruth Flora.
 * On October 15, 1948, eight women were commissioned as the first female officers of the regular navy. These women were Joy Bright Hancock, Winifred Quick Collins, Ann King, Frances Willoughby, Ellen Ford, Doris Cranmore, Dorist Defenderfer, and Betty Rae Tennant.
 * By the end of World War II, there were over 80,000 enlisted women, along with 8,000 women officers.

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