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 |
 |