Group photograph of the first twenty Navy nurses, appointed in 1908
The United States Navy Nurse Corps was officially established by Congress in 1908; however, unofficially, women had been working as nurses aboard Navy ships and in Navy hospitals for nearly 100 years. The Corps was all-female until 1965.[2]
In 1811, William P.C. Barton became the first to officially recommend that female nurses be added to naval hospital staff.[3] However, it wasn't until 19 June 1861 that a Navy Department circular order finally established the designation of Nurse, to be filled by junior enlisted men. Fifteen years later, the duties were transferred to the designation Bayman (US Navy Regulations, 1876). Although enlisted personnel were referred to as nurses, their duties and responsibilities were more related to those of a hospital corpsman.
During the American Civil War, several African American women served as paid crew aboard the hospital shipRed Rover in the Mississippi River area in the position of nurse. The known names of four nurses are: Alice Kennedy, Sarah Kinno, Ellen Campbell and Betsy Young (Fowler). In addition volunteer nuns from the Catholic Sisters of the Holy Cross served aboard as nurses.[4]
During the 1898 Spanish–American War, the Navy employed a modest number of female contract nurses in its hospitals ashore and sent trained male nurses to sea on the hospital ship Solace.
After the establishment of the Nurse Corps in 1908 by an Act of Congress, twenty women were selected as the first members and assigned to the Naval Medical School Hospital in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, the navy did not provide room or board for them, and so the nurses—being a determined lot—rented their own house and provided their own meals.[5]
In time, the nurses would come to be known as "The Sacred Twenty" because they were the first women to serve formally as members of the Navy. The "Sacred Twenty", as shown in the photo at the top of this page, were Mary H. Du Bose; Adah M. Pendleton; Elizabeth M. Hewitt; Della V. Knight; Josephine Beatrice Bowman, the third Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps, 1922–1935; Lenah H. Sutcliffe Higbee, the second Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps, 1911–1922; Esther Voorhees Hasson, the first Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps, 1908–1911; Martha E. Pringle; Elizabeth J. Wells; Clare L. De Ceu.; Elizabeth Leonhardt; Estelle Hine; Ethel R. Parsons; Florence T. Milburn; Boniface T. Small; Victoria White; Isabelle Rose Roy; Margaret D. Murray; Sara B. Myer; and Sara M. Cox. They would include three Nurse Corps Superintendents and twelve chief nurses.
The Nurse Corps gradually expanded to 160 on the eve of World War I. In addition to normal hospital and clinic duties, the nurses were active in training natives in U.S. overseas possessions as well as the Navy's male enlisted medical personnel. For a few months in 1913, Navy nurses saw their first shipboard service, aboard Mayflower and Dolphin. The first permanent shipboard positions came in late 1920, when Relief went into commission with a medical staff that included Navy nurses.
World War I
Nurse Hazel Herringshaw and two Marine Corps patients, 1918
The entry of the United States into the First World War brought a great expansion of the Nurse Corps, both regular and reserve.
In 1917–18, the Navy deployed five base hospital units to operational areas in France, Scotland and Ireland, with the first in place by late 1917. Also serving overseas were Navy operating teams, including nurses, established for detached duty near the combat frontlines. Some of these teams were loaned to the United States Army during the intense ground offensives of 1918 and worked in difficult field conditions far removed from regular hospitals.[6]
During the war, 19 Navy nurses died on active duty, over half of them from influenza. Three of the four Navy Crosses awarded to wartime Navy nurses were given posthumously to women who sacrificed their lives during the 1918 flu pandemic. Among those awarded the Navy Cross posthumously was Lillian Marie “Lillie” Murphy RN USNR (1887 -1918). Her citation reads, “For distinguished service and devotion to duty while serving at the Naval Base Hospital, Hampton Roads Virginia. During the epidemic of influenza, nurse Murphy worked day and night among the patients until stricken with the disease, as a result of which she lost her life. Nurse Murphy an immigrant from Toronto Canada, had moved to New York to study nursing at St. Mary Hospital, where she volunteered for the duty with the Naval Reserve.[7]
Lillian M. Murphy RN USNR was awarded the Navy Cross posthumously for her heroic work in the 1918 influenza pandemic.
The surviving fourth nurse was Lenah H. Sutcliffe Higbee, the second superintendent of the corps, and the first living woman to receive the medal. In 1945, the USS Higbee became the first fighting ship to be named after a woman in the service.[8]
By the time of the armistice on 11 November 1918, over 1550 nurses had served in Naval hospitals and other facilities at home and abroad. Shortly after the fighting's end, several Navy nurses were assigned to duty aboard transports bringing troops home from Europe. Some Navy nurses even ventured on ground patrols and aided Army soldiers during this time.
Interwar period
With the close of World War I, many turned away from all things war-related and by 1935 the Nurse Corps' numbers had been reduced to 332. However, this reduction did not stop the corps from making advances; new courses of study in the areas of diet therapy, neuropsychiatry, physiotherapy, and anesthesia were introduced and it was these educational advances which were key to the steady rise in the corps' professional status within the service. Though generally treated as officers socially and professionally, and wearing uniform stripes similar to those for the officer ranks of Ensign through Lieutenant Commander, formal recognition as Commissioned officers did not come until World War II.[8]
It was also during this interwar period that paid retirement for longevity and disability was authorized as well as the extension of regular service to include Navy hospital ships. In addition to caring for Naval personnel at home and abroad, the corps responded to a number of civil disasters and assisted in the evacuation of dependents from war-torn China in 1937.
World War II
First African American Navy Nurse Corps Officer ENS Phyllis Mae Dailey in 1945Nurse and released POW aboard USS Benevolence, World War II
Preparation for the conflict again saw the Nurse Corps grow, with nearly eight hundred members serving on active duty by November 1941, plus over nine hundred inactive reserves. By war's end there would be 1,799 active component nurses and 9,222 reserves (with the overwhelming number of reserves on active duty) scattered across six continents.
Though black nurses applied, until 1945, African-American nurses were rejected by the Navy. Phyllis Mae Dailey became the first black nurse accepted in the Navy Nurse Corps on March 8, 1945. Edith DeVoe, the only black navy nurse to be transferred at the end of the war to the regular service, took her oath on April 18, 1945,[9] and Eula L. Stimley entered service on May 8, 1945.[10] Along with Helen Fredericka Turner, these four nurses were the first African-American women to serve in the Navy during World War II.[11]
Navy nurses were on duty during the initial Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Kāneʻohe Bay, the Philippines, Guam, and aboard the Solace; they were vital in preventing further loss of life and limb. In fact, the nursing profession's vital role was quickly recognized and it became the only women's profession that was deemed so essential as to be placed under the War Manpower Commission. Despite shortages of qualified nurses during the war, the navy was able to hold to its standards and enroll nurses of outstanding qualifications and experience. These outstanding nurses received advanced training in surgery, orthopedics, anesthesia, contagion, dietetics, physiotherapy, and psychiatry, the latter helping men understand and manage Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (then known as shell-shock) and battlefield fatigue. But the navy nurses' duties not only included the tending to the injured and sick but also to the equally serious task of training Hospital Corpsmen. Many of these young men had never seen the inside of a hospital unless they themselves had been admitted, and as such it was training from the ground up. Once trained, the men were sent to work aboard fighting ships and on invasion beaches, where nurses were not yet officially assigned. Additionally, nurses trained WAVES for the Hospital Corps.[12]
In the contiguous United States, navy nurses were stationed at 263 locations, consisting of both large naval hospital complexes such as USN Hospital San Diego, California and Bethesda, Maryland as well as at a multitude of smaller naval convalescent hospitals and training station facilities. One of the more colorful convalescent hospitals was the USN Convalescent Hospital located at the Sun Valley Lodge in Idaho. After the lodge – built by the Union Pacific Railroad and its chairman W. Averell Harriman – opened in 1936, it quickly became a hotspot for the rich and famous. Notables included Ernest Hemingway who worked on For Whom the Bell Tolls in room No. 206, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Claudette Colbert, Bing Crosby and Gary Cooper.[14] However, as supporting the war became a top priority and recreation secondary, the lodge was converted into a hospital, opening its doors in July 1943. In 1946 it reverted to its intended use. The story of the USN Convalescent Hospital is not unlike a host of other facilities which were converted, including the Averell Harriman estate in the Bear Mountains of the Catskills and the Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite National Park.
Aboard hospital ships, navy nurses followed the fleet in their assaults, and were eventually permitted to go to the beaches with the fighting men to pick up the wounded. Early in the war only the USS Solace and USS Relief brought comfort to the wounded fighting men via all-navy medical personnel. Later the Bountiful, Samaritan, Refuge, Haven, Benevolence, Tranquility, Consolation, Repose, Sanctuary, and Rescue were added.[13]
Purple Heart Award, Sun Valley Lodge 1943
Navy Nurse Corps, Sun Valley Lodge 1944
Navy Nurses Aboard USS Solace 1945
Prisoners of war
Two groups of Navy nurses were held prisoner by the Japanese in World War II. Chief Nurse Marion Olds and nurses Leona Jackson, Lorraine Christiansen, Virginia Fogerty and Doris Yetter were taken prisoner on Guam shortly after Pearl Harbor and transported to Japan. They were repatriated in August 1942, although the newspaper did not identify them as Navy nurses.
Chief Nurse Laura Cobb and her nurses, Mary Chapman, Bertha Evans, Helen Gorzelanski, Mary Harrington, Margaret Nash, Goldia O'Haver, Eldene Paige, Susie Pitcher, Dorothy Still and C. Edwina Todd (some of the "Angels of Bataan") were captured in 1942 and imprisoned in the Los Baños internment camp, where they continued to function as a nursing unit, until they were rescued by American forces in 1945. Other Los Baños prisoners later said: "We are absolutely certain that had it not been for these nurses many of us who are alive and well would have died."[15] The nurses were awarded the Bronze Star Medal by the Army, a second award by the Navy and the Army's Distinguished Unit Badge.
Navy Flight Nurse School, 1940sNavy flight nurse Jane Kendeigh and wounded Marine in Iwo Jima, 1945
The first group of 24 Naval flight nurses graduated from the Navy Flight Nurse School at the Naval Air Station Alameda, California on 22 January 1945.[16] In addition to flight nurse procedures, they were trained to swim one mile, tow or push a victim for 220 yards, and swim 440 yards in 10 minutes.[17] The newly minted flight nurses soon began active flying service on 24 flying teams, consisting of a nurse and a pharmacist's mate. Each 12-plane squadron operated with the following medical personnel: 24 flight nurses, 24 pharmacists' mates, one flight surgeon, and one Hospital Corps officer. After a certain number of transcontinental trips with wounded servicemen, the teams were sent to the Pacific to serve in the Naval Air Evacuation Service, the first arriving in Guam in early February 1945.[18] There were three main flights of air evacuation planes to which flight nurses were assigned. First, from target areas to forward hospitals, such as Guam: second, from those forward hospitals to Pearl Harbor; and third, from Pearl Harbor to the contiguous United States. Nurses were rotated so that flight hours did not exceed 100 per month and they were also rotated between combat and noncombat flights.[18]
An efficient procedure for aerial evacuation from target areas was quickly developed. The squadron flight surgeon and several pharmacists' mates were on the first hospital plane to land on the captured airfield. The surgeon established an evacuation clearing station adjacent to the airstrip, where with the help of his corpsmen, he collected patients from the first-aid and holding stations and screened them for air transport, giving necessary treatment prior to flight. As soon as the second hospital plane landed, the flight nurse aboard received her orders. The plane was loaded and usually departed in approximately 45 minutes, the flight nurse being responsible for all patients aboard. With the corpsman's aid, she dressed wounds, administered whole blood or plasma, gave medications, and fed the patients. Using this procedure, within 30 days, approximately 4,500 injured men were flown out of Okinawa alone.[18]
Navy flight nurses walk from their Douglas R5D (C-54)
In 1945 Jane Kendeigh became the first Navy flight nurse in an active combat zone, serving at Iwo Jima.[19] Later that year she was also the first flight nurse to arrive in Okinawa.[20]
Korea
Nurse assists in surgery aboard USS Haven off of Korea, 1952
The need for naval medical facilities in Asia grew when the Korean War began. A small naval dispensary at Yokosuka, staffed by only six nurses, evolved into a full-fledged hospital staffed by 200 nurses. The Navy Nurse Corps expanded its ranks by recalling Reserve nurses with World War II experience. It temporarily reduced staffs at continental hospitals to staff the forward area. The Navy also commissioned civilian nurses. These nurses served in hospitals as well as aboard the USS Haven and two other Haven-class ships, where almost 35 percent of battle casualties were admitted through September 1952. These hospital ships were a new type of mobile hospital, moving from place to place, sometimes supporting the Inchon invasion or aiding the Hungnam evacuation, or simply shifting about the Korean coast as needed. Two senior Navy nurses, Commander Estelle Kalnoske Lange and Lieutenant Ruth Cohen, received the Bronze Star for their work on the Navy hospital ships.[21]
Lt. Sarah Griffin Chapman, who had lost her lower left leg in an accident and retired prior to Korea, fought to be recalled to active duty so that she could teach other young amputees how to walk again.[22] Though outside the Korean theater, one aviation accident claimed the lives of 11 Navy nurses. The mishap occurred on the South Pacific island of Kwajalein on 19 September 1950. These women were en route to hospitals in Japan to care for war casualties when their plane crashed into the Pacific shortly after take off.[21]
Vietnam
LT Alva Harrison after 18 hours of surgery. Saigon, 1966
In 1963, LT Bobbi Hovis volunteered to go to Vietnam, where she and four other nurses were tasked with converting a run-down Saigon apartment into the first US Navy Station Hospital—in four days.[23]
In 1965 George M. Silver became the first man to be commissioned in the Navy Nurse Corps.[2]
The first four Navy Nurse Corps officers to be injured in combat support were injured in Vietnam [Saigon] when LT Ruth Mason, LT Frances Crumpton, LT Barbara Wooster and LTJG Ann Darby Reynolds were wounded and later received the Purple Heart. Navy nurses went on to serve: in the Provincial Health Assistance Program at Rach Gia from 1965 to 1968; on the USS Repose from January 1966 to May 1970 (reaching a full complement of 29 nurses by March 1966 and serving as many as 200 helicopter admissions during a 24-hour period of intense fighting); on the USS Sanctuary from April 1967 to summer 1971 (also with a complement of 29 nurses); and at the station hospital at DaNang from August 1967 to May 1970 (which became the largest combat casualty treatment facility in the world, with 600 beds and admissions of 63,000 patients).,[24] In and Out of Harm's Way, by CAPT Doris Sterner, USN p.358.
Currently
Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) 2006 in Al-Taqaddum Air Base (also known as Tammuz Airbase), Iraq, Active Duty Commander Lenora C. Langlais was the first African American female and first African American Nurse in the history of the U.S.Navy to receive the Purple Heart after being injured by a mortar bomb while serving as the Fleet Marine Force (FMF) Senior Combat Nurse with the 1st Marine Logistic Group (1st MLG) Surgical Shock Trauma Platoon (SSTP) combat hospital from Camp Pendleton United States Marine Corps. Navy Nurses (2900) are deployed all over the world; participating in humanitarian and combat support missions with Expeditionary Resuscitative Surgical Service (ERSS) teams aboard amphibious assault and amphibious warfare ships; Fleet Surgical Teams aboard amphibious assault and amphibious warfare ships in addition to boots on ground; as flight nurses; as organic crew aboard hospital ships and aircraft carriers; boots on ground with the Marine Corps; individually augmented with the Army; and select sub-specialties in support of special operations including (but not limited to) Surgical Response Teams (SRTs).
Navy Nurse Corps, Individually Augmented Navy Nurses serve with ground forces.
The Nurse Corps continues as a prominent part of the Navy Medicine establishment. It consists of officers of the rank of Ensign and to Rear Admiral (upper half). Navy Nurse Corps officers are commissioned through ROTC, STA-21, Medical Enlisted Commissioning Program (MECP), Nurse Candidate Program, and by direct commission.
The Nurse Corps has a distinctive insignia of a single Oak Leaf, on one collar point, or in place of a line officer's star on shoulder boards.
Navy Nurse Corps officers (2900s) are eligible to earn and wear the Fleet Marine Force, Surface, Basic Parachutist Badge, Navy and Marine Corps Parachutist insignia, Air Crew and Flight Nurse warfare badges. Select Navy Nurse Corps officers are eligible to wear special-warfare insignia. Officers selected to formally serve as executive assistants to flag officers or congressional leaders may be eligible to wear an aiguillette and/or unique insignia. Navy Nurse Corps officers can also earn the Army Combat Badge but are not currently authorized to wear it. Executive-grade Navy Nurse Corps officers who have, or had, command of an installation or commissioned unit ashore are eligible to wear the Navy Command Ashore insignia. Navy Nurse Corps officers who have had command of a hospital ship are authorized to wear the Navy Command at Sea insignia.
From its founding in 1908 until after World War II in 1947, the Navy Nurse Corps was led by a superintendent. Its nurses had no permanent commissioned rank during that time. The Army-Navy Nurses Act took effect on 16 April 1947, establishing the Navy Nurse Corps as a staff corps, with officers holding permanent commissioned rank from Ensign to Commander. The corps was to be led by a director holding the rank of Captain while in that position. This position later evolved into a flag-rank appointment and there can be up to four Navy Nurse Corps flag-rank officers serving concurrently, as of 2012[update].
Second Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps, first living female recipient of the Navy Cross.
1941
Chief Nurse Marion Olds, Leona Jackson, Lorraine Christiansen, Virginia Fogerty, and Doris Yetter
First Navy Nurse Corps officers taken as POWs, captured in Guam, kept prisoner in Japan. – World War II.
1942
Chief Nurse Laura Cobb, Mary Chapman, Bertha Evans, Helen Gorzelanski, Mary Harrington, Margaret Nash, Goldie O'Haver, Eldene Paige, Susie Pitcher, Dorothy Still Danner, and C. Edwina Todd
Navy Nurse Corps officers taken as POWs, Captured and kept prisoner by the Japanese in the Philippines.
First Navy flight nurse in an active combat zone, serving at Iwo Jima.[19] Later that year first flight nurse to arrive in Okinawa.[20] With Air Evacuation Transport Squadron One (VRE-1).
First warship named after a Navy Nurse Corps officer, USSHigbee(DD-806). Awarded 8 battle stars during World War II and Korea. Nicknamed "Leaping Lenah".
First formally appointed African American Navy Nurse.
1950
ENS Constance Esposito, LTJG Alice J. Giroux, ENS Marie M. Boatman, LTJG Constance A. Heege, LTJG Jeanmne E. Clarke, LTJG Margaret G. Kennedy, LTJG Calla V. Goodwin, ENS Edna J. Rundell, ENS Eleanor C. Beste, LTJG Mary E. Liljegreen and ENS Jane L. Eldridge
Eleven Navy Nurse Corps officers en route to Japan to care for war casualties killed near the South Pacific island of Kwajalein when their plane crashed into the Pacific after take off.
1951
LT Sarah Griffin Chapman
Navy Nurse Corps officer who had lost her lower left leg in an accident and retired prior to the Korean War, successfully fought to be recalled to active duty so that she could care for troops returning from combat.
1952
CDR Estelle K. Lange and LT Ruth Cohen
Awarded the Bronze Star caring for casualties during shipboard combat support service.
1964
LT Ruth Mason, LT Frances Crumpton, LT Barbara Wooster and LTJG Ann Darby Reynolds
First Navy Nurse Corps officer to serve as a Congressional Fellow in the office of a United States Senator.
1996
LT Joseph Cosentino Jr.
First Navy Nurse Corps officer to become jump qualified and earn insignia.
1997
RADM Karen A. Harmeyer
First female Naval officer, Reserve Component promoted to the rank of rear admiral (upper half).
1999
RADM Kathleen L. Martin
First Navy Nurse Corps officer to serve as a commanding officer at a "Big 3" Naval Medical Center National Naval Medical Center, today known as Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
2000
RADM Karen A. Harmeyer
First Reserve Component Navy Nurse Corps officer to serve as acting director of the Navy Nurse Corps.
2002
CAPT Albert Shimkus
First Navy Nurse Corps officer to be a Joint Task Force surgeon, at Guantanamo Bay.
2002
RADM Karthleen L. Martin
First Navy Nurse Corps officer assigned as Deputy Surgeon General of the Navy.
2002
LT Patricia C. Hasen
First Navy Nurse Corps officer to be formally appointed as a flag lieutenant (e.g., aide) to a flag rank unrestricted line officer.
2003
CDR Joseph Cosentino Jr.
First Navy Nurse Corps officer to serve as officer in charge, (OIC) and dean at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School.
2004
CAPT Albert Shimkus
First Navy Nurse Corps officer to be the deputy commandant, Naval District Washington.
2005
CDR Joseph Cosentino Jr.
First Navy Nurse Corps officer to serve as an Amphibious Task Force Surgeon. Aboard USSIwo Jima for multi-national communication exercise involving 25 ships and 5,000 embarked Marines.
First Navy Nurse Corps officer to serve as a Fleet Surgeon for a Marine Expeditionary Force, Force Surgeon, II Marine Expeditionary Force.
2012
CAPT Cynthia Feller
First Navy Nurse Corps officer to serve as a fleet surgeon for a Naval Force, Europe, 6th Fleet.
2013
CAPT Jacqueline D. Rychnovsky
First Navy Nurse Corps officer to command a Naval Research and Development Center, NHRC, San Diego, CA. She went on to command the Navy Medicine Research and Development enterprise as Commanding Officer of NMRC, Silver Spring, MD.
Ships named after Navy Nurse Corps officers
The Navy has so far named two warships in honor of Navy Nurse Corps officers, both for Supt. Lenah Higbee;
USS Higbee (DD/DDR-806) was a Gearing-class destroyer in the United States Navy during World War II. She was the first U.S. warship named for a female member of the U.S. Navy, being named for Chief Nurse Lenah S. Higbee (1874–1941), a pioneering Navy nurse who served as Superintendent of the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps during World War I.
Lenah H. Sutcliffe Higbee was a pioneering Canadian-born United States Navy military nurse, who served as Superintendent of the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps during World War I. She was the first woman to be awarded the Navy Cross.
Frank Wilbur "Spig" Wead was a U.S. Navy aviator who helped promote United States Naval aviation from its inception through World War II. Commander Wead was a recognized authority on early aviation. Following a crippling spinal injury in 1926, Wead was placed on the retired list. In the 1930s, he became a screenwriter, becoming involved in more than 30 movies. He also published several books, short stories and magazine articles. During World War II, he returned to active duty. He initially worked in a planning role, but later undertook sea duty in the Pacific, where he saw action against the Japanese in 1943–44 before being placed on the retired list in mid-1945.
In Harm's Way is a 1965 American epic historical romantic war film produced and directed by Otto Preminger and starring John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, and Patricia Neal, with a supporting cast featuring Henry Fonda in a lengthy cameo, Tom Tryon, Paula Prentiss, Stanley Holloway, Burgess Meredith, Brandon deWilde, Jill Haworth, Dana Andrews, and Franchot Tone. Produced with Panavision motion picture equipment, it was one of the last black-and-white World War II epics, and Wayne's last black-and-white film. The screenplay was written by Wendell Mayes, based on the 1962 novel Harm's Way, by James Bassett.
A United States Aviator Badge refers to three types of aviation badges issued by the United States Armed Forces, those being for Air Force, Army, and Naval aviation.
The Flight Surgeon Badge is a military badge of the United States Armed Forces which has existed to designate Flight Surgeons since the Second World War.
The Medical Corps of the United States Navy is a staff corps consisting of military physicians in a variety of specialties. It is the senior corps among all staff corps, second in precedence only to line officers. The corps of commissioned officers was founded on March 3, 1871.
The Dental Corps of the United States Navy consists of naval officers with a doctorate in either dental surgery (DDS) or dental medicine (DMD) and who practice dentistry for Sailors and Marines to ensure optimal oral health.
Insignias and badges of the United States Navy are military badges issued by the United States Department of the Navy to naval service members who achieve certain qualifications and accomplishments while serving on both active and reserve duty in the United States Navy. Most naval aviation insignia are also permitted for wear on uniforms of the United States Marine Corps.
A hospital corpsman (HM) or corpsman is an enlisted medical specialist of the United States Navy, who may also serve in a U.S. Marine Corps unit. The corresponding rating within the United States Coast Guard is health services technician (HS). The U.S. Navy Hospital Corps was created in 1898, with hospital corpsman used as a generic name for the applicable personnel while various other official names were used for the rating; after World War II, hospital corpsman became the official name for the rating.
Ann Agnes Bernatitus was a United States Navy nurse who served under combat during World War II. She was the first American recipient of the Legion of Merit.
Hispanics in the United States Naval Academy account for the largest minority group in the institution. According to the academy, the Class of 2009 includes 271 (22.2%) minority midshipmen. Out of these 271 midshipmen, 115 are of Hispanic heritage. In 2004, of the total of 736 female midshipmen, 74 (10%) of them were of Hispanic descent.
Many women have served in the United States Navy for over a century. As of 2020, there were 69,629 total women on active duty in the US Navy, with 11,076 serving as officers, and 58,553 enlisted. Of all the branches in the US military, the Navy has the second highest percentage of female active duty service members with women making up 20% of the US Navy in 2020.
Sue S. Dauser was the fifth Superintendent of the United States Navy Nurse Corps, guiding the Nurse Corps through World War II.
The Naval Medical Center Portsmouth (NMCP), formerly Naval Hospital Portsmouth, and originally Norfolk Naval Hospital, is a United States Navy medical center in Portsmouth, Virginia, United States. It is the oldest continuously running hospital in the Navy medical system.
Hispanics in the United States Navy can trace their tradition of naval military service to men such as Lieutenant Jordi Farragut Mesquida, who served in the American Revolution. Hispanics, such as Seaman Philip Bazaar and Seaman John Ortega, have distinguished themselves in combat and have been awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration of the United States. Hispanics have also reached the top ranks of the navy, serving their country in sensitive leadership positions on domestic and foreign shores. Among those who have reached the highest ranks in the navy are Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy, of Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jewish descent, who participated in the War of 1812 as an assistant Sailing master; Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, for whom the rank of admiral in the U.S. Navy was created during the American Civil War; and Admiral Horacio Rivero, who led the navy during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
An engineering duty officer (EDO) is a restricted line officer in the United States Navy, involved with the design, acquisition, construction, repair, maintenance, conversion, overhaul and disposal of ships, submarines, aircraft carriers, and the systems installed aboard. As of August 1, 2016, there are approximately 835 engineering duty officers on active duty in the U.S. Navy, representing approximately 2 percent of its active-duty commissioned officers.
This is a timeline of women in warfare in the United States from 1900 until 1949.
References
↑ "Archived copy"(PDF). www.med.navy.mil. Archived from the original(PDF) on 12 February 2019. Retrieved 13 January 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
1 2 Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, United States Navy. "White Task Force: the story of the Nurse Corps, United States Navy." (NAVMED 939 1945), pg. 8.
↑ Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, United States Navy. "White Task Force: the story of the Nurse Corps, United States Navy." (NAVMED 939 1945), pg. 10.
1 2 Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, United States Navy. "White Task Force: the story of the Nurse Corps, United States Navy." (NAVMED 939 1945), pg. 15.
1 2 3 Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, United States Navy. "White Task Force: the story of the Nurse Corps, United States Navy." (NAVMED 939 1945), pg. 17.
↑ J. Herman, Frozen in Memory: US Navy Medicine in the Korean War (2006) ISBN978-1-60145-082-1
↑ Hovis, Bobbi. Station Hospital Saigon: A Navy Nurse in Vietnam, 1963–1964. Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991; see also "Coup in Saigon: A Nurse Remembers." Navy Medicine 88, no. 6 (Nov.-Dec. 1977): 16–21 (Recollections of Lieutenant Commander Bobbi Hovis, Nurse Corps (Ret.), concerning the coup d'etat on 1 November 1963 that overthrew President Ngo Dinh Diem of the Republic of [South] Vietnam)
↑ Memories of Navy Nursing: The Vietnam Era, Compiled by RADM Maryanne Gallagher Ibach, USNR.
Ebbert, Jean and Marie-Beth Hall (1999). Crossed Currents: Navy Women from WWI to Tailhook [Revised]. Washington, D.C.: Brassey's. ISBN978-1-57488-193-6.
Godson, Susan H. (2001). Serving Proudly: A history of Women in the U.S. Navy. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press. ISBN1-55750-317-6. Fact filled, extensively researched account of the evolution of the roles of women in the United States Navy, treating the parallel and entertwined paths of the Navy Nurse Corps and the WAVES. About one-third of the pages are devoted to notes and bibliography.
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