Aviation Archives - Infinite Women

Lt. Commander Brenda Robinson

Lt. Cmdr. Brenda Robinson became the first Black woman to become a U.S. Navy naval aviator when she earned her Wings of Gold in 1980.

Annie MacDonald Langstaff

Annie MacDonald Langstaff earned her Bachelor of Civil Law in 1914, but the Bar of Montreal refused to allow her to take the bar exam to become a practising lawyer.

Reba Whittle

During World War II, Lieutenant Reba Whittle was a flight nurse with the 813th Medical Air Evacuation Squadron who logged more than 500 flight hours and spent months as a POW.

In September 1941, Ott joined the Army Nurse Corps. Later, she commissioned as a second lieutenant and had assignments in Louisiana, Virginia and India. During her assignment to Karachi, Ott participated in the first air evacuation, where crews evacuated patients to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Julie Hammer

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.

Margaret Lang

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 McFadden Hoover

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

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.