1950s 1950-1953: (Korean War): Women who were in the Reserves were recalled to active duty. More than 500 Army nurses served in various areas and theaters of the war. Captain Lillian Kinkella Keil, USAF, who had already made 250 evacuation flights (23 of which were transatlantic) during World War II, made 175 evacuation flights during the Korean War. As a result, she became one of the most decorated women in American military history.Capt. Lillian Kinkella Keil , United States Air Force website.

1950

Ruby Bradley served in the Korean War as Chief Nurse for the 171st Evacuation Hospital. In November 1950, during the Chinese counter-offensive, she refused to leave until she had loaded the sick and wounded onto a plane in Pyongyang while surrounded by 100,000 advancing Chinese soldiers. She was able to jump aboard the plane just as her ambulance exploded from an enemy shell. In 1951, she was named Chief Nurse for the Eighth Army, where she supervised over 500 Army nurses throughout Korea. When she left Korea in June 1953, she was given a full-dress honor guard ceremony, the first woman ever to receive a national or international guard salute. Christena Ogle became the first Women's Air Force Airman assigned to the ranks of the United States Air Force Security Service. Edith DeVoe became the first African-American Navy nurse to serve outside the continental U.S., at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii.

1951

Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) is established to aid in recruitment of women serving in the military for the Korean War. President Truman authorized the Services to involuntarily discharge women due to pregnancy or adoption of minor children. Rule also permitted a voluntary discharge to uniformed women for marriage. Rule did not authorize uniformed women any entitlements due to family ("dependents") status, such as non-military spouses. Arie Taylor became the first black person to be a U.S. Women's Air Force classroom instructor. Helen E. Myers of Lancaster, Pa., a 1941 graduate of Temple University, is commissioned as the U.S. Army Dental Corps’ first woman dental officer in 1951.

1952

U.S. Navy women were accepted for commission in the U.S. Medical Service Corps.

1953

7 August: Barbara O. Barnwell became the first female Marine awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, which she was awarded on August 7, 1953, for saving a fellow Marine from drowning. Stories of women Marines by women Marines. Mercedes O. Cubria, a WAC, was promoted to major and deployed to Japan, where she continued to work in military intelligence. When the Korean War ended in 1953 Cubria was given a medical discharge, and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for "meritorious achievement in ground operations against the enemy". Raya Rachlin became the first woman commissioned as an Air Force dentist.

1955

3 January - Irene O. Galloway was sworn in as the fourth director of the Women's Army Corps.Jordan, Bettie M. The Women's Army Corps 1945-1978(Washington, D.C: Center of Military History, United States Army Washington, D.C): 110 Clotilde Dent Bowen became the U.S. Army's first black female physician to attain the rank of colonel.

1956 1957

MAJ Emma Baird became Assistant Chief, Personnel Branch and was reputed to be the first woman staff officer at the U.S. Military Academy. Mary Louise Rasmuson became the director of the Women's Army Corps.William Yardley, "Mary Louise Rasmuson, Who Led Women’s Army Corps, Dies at 101" (Obituary), New York Times, Aug. 5, 2012.

1958

Elizabeth Splaine became the first U.S. Coast Guard SPAR to be promoted to warrant officer.

1959

16 December: Anna Der-Vartanian became the U.S. Navy's first female master chief petty officer; this made her the first female master chief in the Navy, as well as the first female E-9 in the entire U.S. Armed Services. She received a personal letter from then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower congratulating her on her accomplishment.

1960s

Wilma L. Vaught became the first woman to deploy with a Strategic Air Command operational unit.

1960

According to scholars, since at least as early as 1960, Executive Order 10450 was applied to ban transgender individuals from serving in the United States military. Master Gunnery Sergeant Geraldine M. Moran became the first female Marine to be promoted to E-9. Grace Peterson became the first female chief master sergeant in the U.S. Air Force.

1961

The first female U.S. Marine is promoted to Sergeant Major (Bertha Peters Billeb). Lieutenant Charlene I. Suneson became the first line WAVES officer to be ordered to shipboard duty.

1962

Pearl Faurie became the first SPAR in the U.S. Coast Guard advanced to E-9. Captain Ruth Alice Erickson, USN, a witness to the attack on attack on Pearl Harbor, became Director of the United States Navy Nurse Corps. Mercedes O. Cubria was recalled to service by the U.S. Army as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis. She worked primarily in the role of de-briefing Cuban refugees, as well as defectors who were fleeing the Cuban communist regime. She also helped the refugees find jobs and places to live. Cubria's work with the refugees proved to be a significant asset to the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency. Cubria was awarded the Legion of Merit and continued to serve for the next eleven years. Catherine G. Murray became the first female enlisted Marine to retire from active duty. Eleanor Ardel Vietti became America’s first woman prisoner of war in Vietnam. She is currently the only American woman unaccounted for from the Vietnam War.

1963 1964

Alice K. Kurashige became the first Japanese-American woman to be commissioned in the United States Marine Corps.

1965

1965-1975: Vietnam War: Around 7,000 American military women serve in Southeast Asia. Nurses serve aboard the hospital ship USS Sanctuary. Nine non-nurse U.S. Navy women serve in country; however no enlisted Navy women are authorized. LT Elizabeth G. Wylie became the first woman to serve in Vietnam on the staff of Commander, Naval Forces, Saigon. Barbara Annette Robbins is the first American woman to die in the Vietnam War; she is a secretary for the CIA, and is the first woman at the CIA killed in the line of duty, as well as the youngest CIA employee ever killed. She dies in a car bombing at the U.S. Embassy in Vietnam in 1965, at the age of 21. Pat Foote became the first female public relations officer in Vietnam in 1967. First LT Sharon Ann Lane is the only US military woman to die from enemy fire in Vietnam. Captain Mary Therese Klinker dies during a rescue operation. Six other American military women die in the line of duty - Eleanor Grace Alexander, Pamela Dorothy Donovan, Carol Ann Drazba, Annie Ruth Graham, Elizabeth Ann Jones, and Hedwig Diane Orlowski. Two Army nurses are awarded the Soldier's Medal for heroism in Vietnam; one is African-American 1LT Diane Lindsay. CDR Elizabeth Barrett was the highest-ranking female naval line officer to serve in Vietnam and the first woman to hold command in a combat zone. CWO3 Rose Franco was the first Hispanic woman to become a Chief Warrant Officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. The U.S. Marine Corps assigns its first woman to attaché duty. Later, she is the first female Marine to serve under hostile fire.

1966

Army nurse Second Lieutenant Carol Ann Drazba became the first American nurse to die in the Vietnam War; Drazba, 22, and six others died on February 18, 1966, in a helicopter crash in southern Vietnam. There is a statue in her honor in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

1967

Pat Foote became the first female public relations officer in Vietnam in 1967. Barbara Dulinsky became the first female United States Marine to serve in a combat zone. * President Johnson signs Public Law 90-130; it removed legal ceilings on women's promotions that had kept them out of the general and flag ranks, and dropped the two percent ceiling on officer and enlisted strengths for women in the armed forces.

1968

Dr. Betsy Lewis, the Academy fine arts librarian, became the first female faculty member at West Point when she begins teaching art classes in the English Department to First Class cadets. Ruth A. Lucas became the first African-American woman to attain the rank of colonel in the U.S. Air Force. Women are sworn into the Air National Guard (ANG). Lieutenant Colonel Jenny Wren is the first female U.S Marine to attend Command and Staff College.

1969

3 January - Barbara J. Bishop became the 5th director of the women Marines.We are Marines!: World War I to the Present By Linda Cates Lacy, p.335 May - Marcelite J. Harris became the first woman maintenance officer in the USAF. Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps (AFROTC) opens to women. Temple University admits and trains the first 8 women in Army ROTC due to "an error in the academic advising office."

Jeanette I. Sustad became the director of the Women Marines, and remains such until was succeeded by Margaret A. Brewer in 1973.

1970s Late 1970s: Women first served in "topside" roles at the American missile alert facilities, such as maintenance and security, beginning in the late 1970s.

1970

Anna Mae Hays, Chief of the Army Nurse Corps, became the first U.S. female brigadier general on June 11, 1970. Minutes later, Elizabeth Hoisington, Director of the Women's Army Corps, became the second. 1st Lt Patricia Murphy was named the first female U.S. Marine certified military judge.

1971

Mildred Inez Caroon Bailey became the director of the Women's Army Corps.Oral history with M.I. Bailey, Women Veterans Historical Collection, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, The Air Force promoted the director of Air Force women, Jeanne Holm, as its first female brigadier general. Jane Leslie Holly, an Auburn University alumni, became the first woman to graduate from the AFROTC commissioning source.

1972

January: Commander Elizabeth Barrett arrived in Vietnam, and was the highest ranking female naval line officer in Vietnam. By November 1972, she had become the first female commander in a combat zone, leading the 450 enlisted men in the [U.S.] Naval Advisory Group, a position she held until she left Vietnam in March 1973. 28 March: The House introduces a bill to allow the appointment of women to "any military service academy" though the bill fails. July: Terry Jo Schorsch and three other female sailors became the first women to become coxswains in the regular US Navy. Their first duty station was serving the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. August: Wilma L. Vaught became the first female Air Force officer to attend the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. Hospitalman Elena J. Peckenpaugh was assigned to the first U.S. Navy ship with a mixed male-female crew. The first women's Reserve Enlisted Basic Indoctrination classes in the U.S. Coast Guard were established in 1972. The U.S. Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) allows Army and Navy women to join their ranks. Publication Z-116 about equal rights and opportunities for women in the Navy is written and published by the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt. Concurrent with All Volunteer Force establishment, the U.S. Department of Defense authorized provisions to permit Services to retain uniformed mothers on a case-by-case basis. The Hospital Ship USS Sanctuary was the first U.S. Naval vessel to sail with a male/female crew. Alene Duerk became the first female admiral in the U.S. Navy. Mildred C. Kelly became the first African-American woman E9 (Sergeant Major) in the U.S. Armed Forces. Katherine Ravithis became the first woman to join the Colorado Army National Guard.

1973

February: The first women since 1945 were admitted to Officer Candidate School in the Coast Guard. November 1: Enlistment of women in the Coast Guard was authorized for four-year tours of active duty under limited ratings.