A Blog About Women Who Were Homefront Heroines: the WAVES of World War II
The Navy took a series of aerial photographs of Navy places during the war years. This shot is of the Federal Office Building in San Francisco, California, where Margaret Anderson Thorngate worked as a WAVE Yeoman.
It comes from the National Archives.
WAVE Lt. Tova Peterson Wiley, in this undated photo from the National Archives. Wiley was a part of the first group of WAVE officers in late 1942.
The Navy’s description of this photo from the Naval Air Gunners School in Hollywood, Florida:
‘Telephone girls’ at a deadly switchboard wear head-phones hooking them to their pupils as the tell the latter the ‘wrong numbers’ they get in firing at targets on the high-speed range. The turrets are identical to the ones the future gunners will occupy on warplanes.
The photo comes from the National Archives.
WAVES Lt. Commander Mildred McAfee inspects personnel at NAS Brooklyn in July 1943. She’s joined by Captain Newton White.
The photo comes from the National Archives.
Navy WAVES do maintenance on Navy aircraft c. 1944. Happy Labor Day!
The photograph comes from the National Archives.
Check out the left-hand side of this photograph. Those are animated figures, included in training films to, in the words of the Navy, “add interest.” Here, Jane Orbison inserts the figures into the films at the Photo Science Lab in Anacostia, Washington, DC.
The photo comes from the National Archives.
More than 10,000 WAVES attended this rally at the Washington Monument to celebrate their 2nd anniversary on July 30, 1944. After they assembled, they marched over the hill to the Sylvan Theater.
The photo comes from the National Archives.
More than 70,000 women were on duty by the time the Navy celebrated the WAVES 2nd anniversary on July 30, 1944.
That included Evelyn Agrelius, Helen Tullose and Lucille Davis, who are checking and segregating horological instruments for the fleet at the Naval Observatory in Washington, DC.
The photo comes from the National Archives and was published to coincide with the WAVES 2nd anniversary.
EXTRA!!! EXTRA!!!! Here are the headlines from July 14, 1944 in the Iowave, the base newsletter of the WAVES Yeoman facility in Cedar Falls, Iowa.
The newspaper comes from the archives and special collections of the University of Northern Iowa.
This photograph from July 12, 1943 is of the last Captain’s inspection of the first graduating class of WAVES at the Naval Air Technical Training Center, Norman, Oklahoma.
Ensign Fitting is doing the inspection, while platoon leader Stroud follows close behind (no first names given).
The photo comes from the National Archives.
Hinges of History 