Julie Hammer joined the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in 1977, after completing a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Sydney. She was originally an education officer but transferred to the Engineer Branch in 1981. Hammer was the first woman to command an operational unit in the RAAF, the Electronic Warfare Squadron.
Australian nurse Margaret Lang was matron of various Victorian country hospitals, served in the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) during the First World War and was founder and Matron-in-Chief of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Nursing Service during the Second World War.
Dorothy M. Hoover was a pioneer in the field of aeronautical mathematics and physics. The granddaughter of enslaved people, she overcame the significant obstacles facing African American women in the Jim Crow era of the twentieth century to earn advanced degrees in mathematics and physics.
Helen Gwynne-Vaughan was an acclaimed mycologist, King’s College graduate, and Head of the Botany Department (as well as first female professor) at Birkbeck College long before she joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps during World War I, and was made chief controller of the women deployed to France.
American pilot and member of the Mercury 13 would-be astronauts
In 1998 Heather Wilson became the first woman veteran of the U.S. armed services and the second woman from New Mexico elected to the U.S. Congress.
The first woman to receive a British pilot’s license after WWI
Captain Mary Therese Klinker was a U.S. Air Force flight nurse who died during Operation Babylift, a humanitarian mission to evacuate orphans from Vietnam.
U.S. Air Force veteran
Turkish aviator Sabiha Gökçen became the world’s first known combat pilot at age 23, and went on to fly around 8,000 and participate in more than 30 military operations. Sabiha Gökçen International Airport in Istanbul is named for her.