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DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY -- NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER
805 KIDDER BREESE SE -- WASHINGTON NAVY YARD
WASHINGTON DC 20374-5060

Online Library of Selected Images -- Picture Data

Photo #: NH 97521

Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Jane M. Falls, USNR(W)


Gets ready to "shoot the stars" with a bubble sextant (or octant) on a night operational flight over the ocean. This is part of her job as an air navigation instructor at the U.S. Naval Auxiliary Air Station, Camp Kearney, California.
LtJG Falls is one of eighty WAVES officers designated as Air Navigators, "the first women in any U.S. military organization entitled to perform duties as part of a military crew." They served as instructors, and as trans-ocean navigators in areas where WAVES were assigned to duty. They had received navigation training with Navy men at Hollywood, Florida, and Shawnee, Oklahoma, flew on the same cross-country check flights and graduated in the same classes.
Information is taken from the original caption released with this photograph effective 13 July 1945.

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center.

Online Image: 73KB; 585 x 765 pixels

 

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5 March 2001