ABSTRACT
Captain. She was the first female officer in the US Naval Reserve, officially labelled Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (‘WAVES’). She was sworn in as a Lieutenant Commander and ‘an officer and a gentleman’ on 3 August 1942, becoming the Navy’s first female line officer. She served as the first Director of the WAVES from 1942-46, and during that period the Navy’s female reserve force grew to 80,000 officers and enlisted women in a wide variety of military specialties. Her exceptional organizational and leadership qualities were widely recognized by the most senior civilian and uniformed male leadership of the Navy, and she was promoted to Captain in November 1943. Although the women reservists were not assigned to combat zones, seven officers and sixty enlisted women died during their WW2 service. Before the end of WW2, McAfee began advocating the retention of women in the Naval Reserve in peacetime. Her achievements and those of the WAVES she led were part of the Navy’s transition to fuller participation of women in that service.
