This week's photos feature Airmen around the globe involved in activities supporting expeditionary operations and defending America. This weekly feature showcases the men and women of the Air Force.

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As a young child, Eileen Collins loved to sit with her dad in the family car and watch airplanes take off and land. The roar of the powerful engines and the grace of the aircraft as they seemed to float in the air always held excitement and enchantment for the young daughter of Irish immigrants.

That love of flying would lead the Air Force colonel to be honored as the first woman to command a space shuttle mission, STS-93, in July of 1999, and place the NASA astronaut into the history books.
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Before World War II, the U.S. military showed little interest in using aircraft and flight nurses to evacuate wounded soldiers to rear areas. The global war, however, forced the U.S. Army Air Forces to revolutionize military medical care through the development of air evacuation (later known as aeromedical evacuation) and flight nurses.

The rapid expansion of USAAF air transportation routes around the world made it possible to fly wounded and sick servicemen quickly to fully-equipped hospitals far from the front lines. This revolution saved the lives of many wounded men, and the introduction of flight nurses helped make it possible.
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After Mildred McDowell left the Air Force in 1949, she had one regret - that she no longer had her Women's Army Corps uniform. Fortunately, the year before she died, someone read a story about her life and sent her a replacement. When McDowell died at the age of 104 on Nov. 15, 2012, she was buried in her uniform in Ramsey, Ill., about 75 miles north of Scott Air Force Base.

"She was very proud and pleased that she would be able to be buried in her uniform," said her grand-nephew, Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Stan Giles of the 134th Air Refueling Wing at McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base, Tenn. "When she got her uniform, she breathed a sigh of relief because that was how she wanted to be buried."
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In the wake of sequestration, the Air Force officially suspended military tuition assistance March 11.

Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley announced the Air Force has officially suspended military TA for the remainder of fiscal 2013. 

The program will continue to be evaluated to determine the way ahead in fiscal 2014.

The Defense Department's comptroller issued guidance to all of the services to "consider significant reductions in funding new tuition assistance applicants, effective immediately and for the duration of the current fiscal situation," said Navy Cmdr. Leslie Hull-Ryde, a Pentagon spokeswoman. The Army and Marine Corps canceled their TA programs March 8.
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No matter how far women were kept away from combat roles, they were never far from harm and the opportunity to rise above and beyond the call of duty.

An explosion blew out a pressure door of a C-5A Galaxy as it took off from Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Vietnam, April 4, 1975, forcing it to make an emergency landing with 313 passengers and crew, including 250 orphans.

The plane was the first to depart in support of Operation Babylift, where American caregivers were paired with South Vietnamese orphans, most fathered by Americans, to evacuate them to the Philippines then to San Diego, Calif., where President Gerald Ford was ready to welcome them to the United Sates.
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Young Janet Libby was definitely someone going places at Beavercreek High School near Dayton, Ohio. She was in the National Honor Society, on both the German and Ski clubs and a soccer athlete as well.

But even those friends and well-wishers who would have signed her senior yearbook with words like "you'll go far," and "you'll be a success in life," could never have imagined that the young daughter of an Air Force pilot would go on to become the first female in the Air Force to attain the rank of four-star general, and only the second in military history.
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Last year, a young female pilot recently showed her 91-year-old guest the F-16 Fighting Falcon she flies at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz. She thanked Betty "Tack" Blake several times as she talked about her job, so Blake finally asked the young captain why she was thanking her.

"Because you started it," the captain said. "If you hadn't been successful, we wouldn't be doing what we're doing today."

Blake is believed to be the only living graduate of the first Women's Airforce Service Pilot training class during World War II. The class began with 38 women pilots on Nov. 16, 1942, but only 23 graduated on April 24, 1943. They weren't known as WASPs until the merging of the Women's Flying Training Detachment and Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron on Aug. 5, 1943.
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Within the time span it took for women in television to transform from the female stereotypes portrayed on "I Love Lucy" to the more modern, late-century version found on "Murphy Brown," women in the U.S. Air Force were making strides that far outpaced their Hollywood counterparts.

By the end of World War II, women were fully incorporated into the military, although still primarily limited to mostly clerical roles such as typists, clerks and mail sorters, and represented only about two percent of the force. Less than a year after the Air Force became its own service, President Harry Truman signed the Women's Armed Services Integration Act, accepting women as a permanent part of the military. It was the beginning of the Women's Air Force, and for the next 30 years would represent a separate, but equal part of the military.
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Air Force senior leaders issued updated guidance to leaders of Air Force major commands and addressed the service's Airmen last week on how the service will operate under sequestration and a continuing resolution for the remainder of the fiscal year.

Acting Under Secretary of the Air Force Dr. Jamie Morin and Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Larry Spencer detailed in a memorandum what the service will do to navigate through an uncertain fiscal environment.

"On 1 March 2013, we expect to absorb over $12 billion in sequestration reductions while we simultaneously work to mitigate an (overseas contingency operations) shortfall of $1.8 billion and operate under a highly restrictive continuing resolution," they say in the memorandum.
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A seasoned loadmaster assigned to special operations and a young security forces Airman, barely 21-years-of-age, have the distinction as the first female Airmen to die during the Global War on Terror in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom respectively.

Staff Sgt. Anissa Shero was deployed during the earliest stages of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. She was serving as an MC-130H Combat Talon II loadmaster when her plane crashed shortly after take-off, on June 12, 2002. She was assigned to the 16th Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, Fla.
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This week's photos feature Airmen around the globe involved in activities supporting expeditionary operations and defending America. This weekly feature showcases the men and women of the Air Force.

View the slideshow.

more...

(This feature is part of the "Through Airmen's Eyes" series on AF.mil. These stories focus on a single Airman, highlighting their Air Force story.)

The day he found out about his sister's condition, he knew he would go to any lengths necessary to help her.

In December 2012, Tech. Sgt. Simon Garcia, 1st Communications Maintenance Squadron project manager, entered the operating room for an elective procedure - kidney transplant.
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Jeanne M. Holm was the first woman in the armed forces to be promoted to the rank of major general in 1973, and is credited as single driving force in achieving parity for military women and making them a viable part of the mainstream military.

Holm was born in 1921, in Portland, Ore., and enlisted in the Army in July 1942, soon after the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps was established by Congress. She attended Officer Candidate School at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, and in January 1943 received a commission as a "third officer," the WAAC equivalent to second lieutenant.
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The Asian and Pacific island influence for the Air Force began during the early days of World War II when Chinese-American women were recruited to serve in the "Air WACs," a special unit within the Army Air Corps where Asian-American women served in jobs that ranged from aerial photo interpretation, to air traffic control and weather forecasting.

The Women in Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) worked directly with the Army Air Forces during World War II, ferrying planes from factories to air bases, testing planes, and towing targets for aerial gunnery students to practice shooting. They also conducted qualifying flights for military pilots to renew their instrument ratings and copiloted B-17 Flying Fortress bombers through mock dogfights staged to train bomber gunners.
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Air Force Television News released a new edition of Today's Air Force on March 1.

This week on Today's Air Force we'll take a look at counter-narcotics operations in Afghanistan. We'll also meet the new Personnel Recovery Team for Combined Task Force - Horn of Africa and we'll learn about Holloman Air Force Base's balloon operations. This 30-minute, bi-weekly news show can be seen every day on TPC and American Forces Television Service stations around the world. The show also airs on more than 140 public cable-access stations within the United States.
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In 1960, Chief Master Sgt. Grace Peterson became the first female chief master sergeant. She was not only the first female chief master sergeant; she was part of the original group of senior NCOs to be selected for the rank of E-9.

At the time of promotion, Peterson was the first sergeant of a 400-person Women in the Air Force, or WAF, squadron at McGuire Air Force Base, N.J.

Chief Peterson entered military service in New York City soon after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack that thrust America into the World War II and joined what was then called the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps in 1942.
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F-35 Lightning IIs were cleared for flight Feb. 28 following a temporary suspension after a cracked engine blade was found in a test aircraft earlier in the month.

A .06-inch crack was discovered in a third-stage turbine blade in a test aircraft at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., Feb. 19. Third-stage blades are located deep inside the engine.

A thorough series of tests on the blade concluded prolonged exposure to high-heat levels and other operational stressors on the engine were contributing factors. Edwards AFB is home of the service's major flight test wing, where aircraft undergo rigorous testing.
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Staff Sgt. Esther McGowin Blake has the distinction of being the "first woman in the Air Force." She enlisted in the first minute of the first hour of the first day regular Air Force duty was authorized for women on July 8, 1948.

Blake originally enlisted in March 1944, in Miami in the Army Air Forces, served one year in the Alaskan division and was discharged in November 1945. She reenlisted in April 1947 and was assigned to the ground force but seized the first opportunity to return to the Army Air Forces. Service in the nation's armed forces was nothing new for Mrs. Blake.
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Two women, from opposite economic, social and cultural backgrounds, earned common ground during the early days of World War II and set a path in aviation that would steamroll into women's boundless roles today.

Jacqueline Cochran was born in 1906 in a cotton-fields-and-sawmill small town in western Florida. It is said that she grew up in such poverty, that she never owned a pair of shoes until she was nine. As she grew, she loved the sight of an airplane, and she firmly believed that one day she would fly. In 1932 she earned her pilots license, and she not only flew, she soared. At the time of her death in 1980 she held more international speed, distance and altitude records than any other pilot, male or female.
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