15 minute read
CAPT Joellen Drag Oslund: Paving the Way for Female Aviators
By LT Elisha Clark, USN
Sometimes it only takes one voice to force a shift in perspective. At Cal State East Bay in 1972, a voice spoke out in the face of a 23-year-old woman’s trepidation, self-doubt, and the undercurrent of hundreds of years of status-quo:
This is how I imagine the friend of CAPT Joellen Drag Oslund removed any shred of doubt she might have had about her career in Naval Aviation.
In my interview with this trailblazing aviator, I had the privilege of discussing her life, career, and her pivotal role in making aviation a place for women to excel.
“By my senior year in 1972, I had already been accepted into the Air Force’s Officer Program and was set to do that,” she recounts. On August 7th, 1972, ADM Elmo R. Zumwalt would post a naval message that would send shockwaves through Naval Aviation.
In the post Vietnam era, the Navy was dealing with a personnel shortage. After 25 years of conscription, the draft was set to end in January of 1973. Men aged 18-25 were no longer seeking Naval service to avoid tours in the jungles of Vietnam.(1) ADM Zumwalt, the Chief of Naval Operations from 1970-1974, was willing to get creative to fix the problem. He recognized a source of untapped potential both among the ranks of Naval Officers and among those who had not yet considered Naval service. He was going to allow women to serve in “the full spectrum of challenging billets.” He was going to allow women to be aviators.
He began the message with his own thoughts on the matter: “My position with respect to women in the Navy is that they have historically played a significant role in the accomplishment of our Naval mission. However, I believe we can do far more than we have in the past.” The reigning CNO was famous for his “Z-Grams,”(2) which were directives on a wide variety of topics ranging from racism among naval ranks to liberty afloat policy. Z-gram #116, titled “Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women,” was the groundbreaking message that was handed to CAPT Oslund in the fall of 1972.
“In November of ’72, I heard about the Naval Message that opened flight training to women.” She recounts the moment destiny clicked for her. “A friend of mine handed it to me, he was in the Naval reserve, and I thought ‘oh that’s nice,’ and I handed it back to him. He quickly pushed it back to me and said ‘no, no, you’re going to apply for this,’ and it was like the lightbulb went on.”
Equipped with this new information, she marched down to the recruitment center, message in hand. “They questioned its authenticity…. when I came back the next day they had checked it out and welcomed me with open arms, and to my surprise I was accepted,” she recalls. “By the middle of January, I was in Officer Candidate School.”
A Different Kind of Girl
Even in this early stage in life, as a Senior at Cal State, Oslund was no stranger to overcoming unique challenges. Her father, a career Navy man himself, took his family to every duty station including an assignment in the Philippines.
“I got to sail on a navy transport ship and that’s how we got from San Francisco to the Philippines. It was a two-week voyage and the first time I was allowed around a Navy ship, until I was actually in the Navy,” she recalls fondly. While other girls back in the states were learning about makeup and heels, Oslund’s time was spent watching Lone Ranger reruns and working in the stables with her siblings.
“I hadn’t really been exposed to American popular culture in the Philippines so I was kind of geeky when I moved to California… I discovered that all the girls were wearing heels and I was wearing flip-flops.” Her time overseas helped her realize she wanted to do something different with her life. “In many ways, I think that helped me [realize my path] because I hadn’t gotten the real message of what girls are supposed to be.”
“I always kind of knew I wanted to do something different. I couldn’t see myself in the traditional jobs that were mostly available to women then such as teacher, librarian, secretary, or nurse- that was not where I wanted to go. It wasn’t until that message was in my hand and someone said ‘you’re going to go for it’ that I said well yes I am.”
Challenging the Law
So off she went. And the challenges didn’t stop there. While ADM Zumwalt’s Z-Gram provided the pathway to a variety of unrestricted line officer career paths, there was scarce guidance given on how to execute the order. “When we started, no one quite knew what to do with us,” Oslund recalled. There were no studies or research teams or even congressional actions accompanying the order. Overlooked items disguised as minutiae on the surface turned out to have much deeper implications for these first six female aviators. CAPT Oslund was painfully aware of these: “So when we arrived, questions like "Is our flight equipment going to fit" and "Do we have shoes that are going to work for us" since our uniforms were still skirts and heels… they didn’t know if they were going to keep the same physical requirements.
One overlooked item that had more severe consequences was the restriction of women in combat. Congress had taken no action to align with the Navy’s policy at the time, so after completing flight training in 1974, Oslund described how surprised she was to find that she would be severely restricted in her ability to perform among her peers, as she had been trained to do: “They were just utterly confused about how they were going to handle things. No thought had really been given to a career path for us. I didn’t know there was a law against us serving on ships or flying jet aircraft, so that all came as a shock after I finished flight training. Nobody really knew what to do with us.”
The 1973 Cruisebook of the USS Sanctuary (AH 17)
Stymied by the restrictions at the time, the Commanding and Executive Officers of HC-3 supported their newest pilot any way they could. They got creative in the mission sets she could be part of, allowing her to finally make aircraft commander despite the difficulty in accumulating the flight time. During the time Oslund was attached to HC-3, their main mission was Vertical Replenishment deploying aboard USN logistics ships. While working through these hurdles, Oslund wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Navy and never heard back. It was clear to her that something bigger needed to be done, and that’s when she contacted the American Civil Liberties Union.
Unbeknownst to Oslund, Petty Officer Yona Owens was another female Sailor who took issue with the policy. On November 10th, 1976, Owens contacted the Women’s Rights Project, co-founded by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who agreed to take on the case. When Oslund found out about it, she quickly added her name as a plaintiff. Four other female Sailors would join them. On July 27th, 1978, the D.C. District Court found that the law restricting assignments for female Sailors violated the 5th Amendment Right to equal protection.(3) Rather than fight the ruling by pushing it up to the Supreme Court, the Navy quietly changed their policy, allowing women to serve on ships.
While it was progress, Oslund explains that it still wasn’t perfect: “They made it so that women could deploy for 180 days and opened up some jet aircraft. But they kept the combat restriction, which was a problem. At that point, everyone involved was exhausted. The ACLU didn’t want to file another suit against the federal government, so that’s how it stayed until 1991 until they completely repealed it. In 1993, all the combat restrictions were finally lifted.”
“The lawsuit was decided just before I left HC-3. I was set to do search and rescue up at Point Mugu. A few months before I left, I finally went out and got a ship qual, which helped at Point Mugu because they had a target recovery detachment for an exercise that was going on off the coast. I immediately volunteered to get a chance to board the ship.”
When asked to go into detail about her first and only deployment, she chuckled. “Well, we spent 6 days aboard USS Vancouver and it ended up being quite exciting because we lost an aircraft.”
On these short detachments, the squadron would fly two aircraft at a time to recover a series of targets that were being used for an exercise off the coast. The crew was required to fly in a very low hover to recover the target while the crewmen lowered a 12 foot cable with a hook attached to retrieve it. Hovering for this extended period at such a low altitude ran the risk of stalling out an engine due to salt ingestion.
CAPT Oslund preflighting an H-46 at HC-3
Oslund and her crew had completed their target recovery and were flying at a high altitude overhead to look for the other overdue aircraft when she witnessed them plunge into the ocean.
“I said to my copilot, I think they just went into the water, and his immediate reaction was ‘No they didn’t,’ but they definitely had. That was my first five rescues.”
After the crew landed and dropped off their squadron mates, a Sailor approached Oslund in the passageway: “One of the members of the crew jumps out in front of me and comes to a salute saying, "Ma’am I owe you an apology," and I say, "Apology for what?" and he replies, ‘Well I was up on the signal bridge when your helo went down, and we all thought you did it.’ The entire crew, including the Captain, were pretty sure that somehow, I’d been able to touch the controls and promptly flew the helicopter in the water. It turned out there was a fairly large betting pool regarding [the mishap] and I gather the odds really didn’t favor me in any way.”
That was my first and only six days at sea, it was really quite something.”
Women and Leadership: How the Navy Adapted, and is Still Adapting
“I think there’s this pervasive feeling that women can’t do the job.”
When asked about the challenges women still face that were prevalent 50 years ago, this was one of the issues Oslund brought to light. While we have come a long way from blatant sexism in assuming the female pilot caused the mishap, we still have a ways to go.
“One thing I would like the 50-year celebration to bring out is that not only are women doing these things but they have been doing them for 50 years. So why do people still harbor these doubts? It’s just a mystery to me.”
A lack of confidence from the male peers of these early female aviators appeared more severely with each milestone and higher-ranking leadership position. “Every time a woman had gotten a job, it was somehow that she had taken it away from a guy,” Oslund explained as she recounted hearing CAPT Colleen Nevius was accepted into test pilot school, and the reactions from her male counterparts. “When Colleen was selected for test pilot school, you couldn’t believe the number of men who had claimed that she had taken their spot. It was ridiculous - she’s one person! She didn’t take 20 spots.”
While the above narrative might generate different reactions from today’s aviators, perhaps ranging from an eyeroll to a shrug, it’s easy to forget the progress we have made. Possibly the most illuminating part of our interview was the discussion on how women are treated in reference to the undeniable difference in the genders - anatomy. “At the time that I came in, they had lifted the requirement that women resign if they become pregnant, but you were still expected to resign and it stayed true up until the late 70s,” Oslund recounted. This is somewhat appalling to modern aviators, who of course would never even consider such a thing. “Pam Krueger fought that tooth and claw to stay in the flight program. Jane Skiles [O’dea] flew pregnant in her first tour.(4) The first six of us, we didn’t waste any time tackling the big issues right off the bat. This is real life, you can’t get around it.”
LT Oslund in her element at Ram Tap c. 1975
Not only was the aviation community riddled with doubts about the abilities of women - physical or otherwise- female aviators themselves carried these challenges on a daily basis in the back and front of their minds.
“Getting men to accept the leadership position of a woman was very difficult. You had to be low-key. I was not nearly as assertive as I would like to be, afraid it might backfire. On occasion it did backfire. No role-models, no one I could really go to for advice, we were out on our own. It’s amazing we did as well as we did sometimes.”
When asked if she could think of any powerful male role models she’d witnessed, CAPT Ray Lambert, the mentor of another trailblazing female aviator, CAPT Rosemary Mariner, came to mind. CAPT Lambert was the Commanding Officer of CAPT Mariner’s first squadron and helped her transition to jet aircraft.(5) He was one of the very few black aviators at the time.
“He taught Rosemary about networking. Showed her he knew every black aviator in the Navy and the military at large and how they kept in touch with each other and navigated similar problems. They were able to consult with and enable one another. Networking wasn’t really a word used for [women] back then.” Women were not encouraged to selfadvocate, or encouraged to even believe the idea that they belonged in Naval Aviation. With racial minorities facing these same prejudices, it’s easy to see how an alliance was formed. “Women are getting good at it now,” she added.
Advice For the Next Generation
The question I came up with immediately upon learning I’d be interviewing CAPT Oslund was something all aviators strive to perfect: the perfect preflight ritual.
“I was always able to completely shut everything else out. As soon as I would go into the locker room and change into my flight suit, that’s when I would focus in and be ready for the flight and not think of anything else.” For her, compartmentalization was easy, as it related to her passion for riding horses. She speaks fondly of the experience and how it shaped her: “I had always loved horses ever since those days of the Lone Ranger. I think that was one of the things that helped get me in the Navy. When we were kids, we loaded our own hay and shoveled our own stalls. My sisters and I were pretty tough. That’s what saved me. That’s where I went when I needed to go somewhere.”
After 25 years of Naval Service, Oslund has two main pieces of advice for the upcoming generation of Naval Aviators. First, “it’s a big commitment. You’d better love the job, because if you don’t, you won’t make it. You’ve really got to commit to it because it’s worth it.” The second piece of advice comes back to networking and community. “Don’t take everything on alone. You have to have help. You can’t get along without support, so never turn down another opportunity to connect with other people in the same job.”
Throughout CAPT Oslund’s impressive record of accomplishments, one thing remains consistent. She has always stood tall and firm for what she believes. She is actively involved in her community, writing articles and making appearances to support women in Naval Aviation and the military at large. She is currently scheduled to speak at the Naval Helicopter Association Symposium in May 2023.
In Naval Aviation and in our lives as a whole, I think we discount the influence a single person can have on one or many lives. Whether it be our Sailors, peers, or superiors, we make impacts that we can’t fathom. CAPT Oslund is a shining example of this condition: “It’s amazing how only one person has to give you that little nudge to make the difference and make you put yourself in the picture.”
Notes
1. Zipkin, Amy. “The Military Draft Ended 50 Years Ago, Dividing a Generation.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 28 Jan. 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/01/27/draft-end-conscription-1973/.
2. Payne Taira Payne was the Project Manager, Taira. “Admiral Zumwalt's Z-Grams.” U.S. Naval Institute, 15 Feb. 2022, https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2022/february/admiral-zumwalts-z-grams.
3. Krepp, Denise. “Owens v. Brown: How the Navy's Women Won the Right to Serve at Sea.” The Maritime Executive, 10 May 2021, https://maritime-executive.com/editorials/owens-v-brown-how-the-navy-s-women-won-the-right-to-serveat-sea.
4. Lt. Krueger had become pregnant during flight training, and Capt. O’dea had several children while on flying orders.
5. Goldstein, Richard. “Rosemary Mariner, Pathbreaking Navy Pilot and Commander, Is Dead at 65.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 1 Feb. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/01/obituaries/rosemary-mariner-dead.html.
