JENNINGS-WINNIFRED

NAVY  FLIGHT  NURSE  OF  WWII

During the early stages of World War II transportation of injured service personnel was often performed utilizing aircraft.  However, it was not until March 5, 1945 that Navy evacuation missions carrying female flight nurses were flown to active battlefields.  On this date a plane of Air Transportation Evacuation Squadron One flew from its base at Guam to Iwo Jima.  When it arrived, the island was under bombardment from offshore Navy ships which forced the plane to circle for ninety minutes as the crew watched bursting shells beneath them.  Upon landing, history was made as the first female Navy flight nurse arrived to care for casualties at an active battlefield.  The flight was so successful that soon regular air evacuation flights carrying female nurses were being made to Iwo Jima as well as Okinawa to transport wounded personnel to hospitals in Guam.  Okinawa became particularly significant in the program as it marked the first time the Navy evacuated more casualties by air than sea.

LTJG Winnifred Jennings was one of the nurses who participated in this urgent endeavor.  During April 1945, the Navy photographed six Navy female flight nurses as they walked away from an air evacuation R5D which had landed at a Mariana Island airfield.  Flights normally departed with their patients within 45-minutes after landing.  Nurses were responsible for all patients aboard and cared for all their needs, thus dressed wounds, administered whole blood or plasma, gave medications, and fed the patients.

The training of Navy female flight nurses was vigorous as it required they undergo eight weeks of training learning such things as air evacuation techniques, physiology of flight, first aid with emphasis on shock, and water landing/crash scenario.  Additionally, they were required to swim under water, swim one-mile, and be able to tow victims 440-yards in 10 minutes.  Navy flight nurses remain a footnote in most histories of military nursing as they seldom received medals for their service let alone much notoriety.  Most nurses would say they were just happy doing their jobs and as one flight nurse is known to have remarked, “Our rewards are vane smiles, a slow nod of appreciation, a gesture, a word.  Accolades greater and more heart warming than any medal.”

Review of available historical records fail to reveal additional information concerning LTJG Jennings in addition to the photograph in which she appears on the extreme right.

                

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)