Photo By Lori Stewart | Sally Murphy at the controls of a UH-1 Huey.... read more read more
Subscribe
by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian
FIRST WOMAN GRADUATES ARMY FLIGHT SCHOOL
On 4 June 1974, 2d Lt. Sally D. Murphy became the first woman to graduate from the Army’s helicopter pilot training. Rising to the rank of colonel during her MI career, Murphy served twenty-seven years in the Army, retiring 1 July 1999 as the congressional liaison officer in the office of the deputy chief of staff for intelligence.
Sally Murphy was born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1949. After graduating with both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in history from Kansas State College of Pittsburg, she chose to join the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). Having grown up in the shadow of the Vietnam War, she thought, “here’s an adventure, …here’s something unusual, …here’s where you can be bigger than yourself.” She received a direct appointment as a WAC officer, attended WAC training at Fort McClellan, Alabama, and then headed to the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and School at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, for her officer basic course.
Lieutenant Murphy was one of nearly fifty students—including fifteen women—in the inaugural MI officer basic course, which started on 29 March 1973. At the completion of the course, she remained at Fort Huachuca for the Tactical Intelligence Course. As the end of the course approached, she read a short article in "Stars and Stripes" about the Army opening its aviation field to women. At that time, the Army’s primary aerial platform was the helicopter. Having seen television coverage of helicopters in Vietnam and talked with fellow students about their experiences flying helicopters in the war, Sally was intrigued by the idea of flying. She decided to apply, along with two other women in her class, for that first flight class. Sally recalled, “The Army’s intention was that in the first class, there would be three women, and we were all three going to come from Fort Huachuca, from an intelligence background.” She knew, if she was chosen for the program, she was destined to become an airplane pilot, “because that’s all the Military Intelligence branch flew at that time.”
Three months later, after passing the aptitude test and her flight physical, Lieutenant Murphy was accepted into the flight program. By the time she transferred to Fort Rucker, Alabama, to begin training, one of the other women who had applied had dropped out and the other’s acceptance was delayed. Sally was, therefore, the only woman to attend the first class open to female officers.
Army Helicopter Pilot Training Class 74-14 began in September 1973, with about twenty-five officer and warrant officer students. Nine months later, on 4 June 1974, Lieutenant Murphy graduated, making her the Army’s first female officer to achieve pilot status. Sally credited her warrant officer instructors for her success: “…[they] knew their business inside and out, shared everything they knew, were very patient with repetitive questions, repetitive errors that they were trying to train out of you…. It was the best training I ever got.”
Two weeks after graduation from rotary-wing training, she started the three-month fixed-wing course with five other students. They were all trained to fly the RU-21 GUARDRAIL, a special electronic mission aircraft that had been monitoring Warsaw Pact activities along the East German and Czechoslovakian border since 1971. When Lieutenant Murphy finished her second flight training course, she transferred to the 330th Army Security Agency Company in Germany.
Almost all Murphy’s flight time came from her first assignment in Germany. Later in her intelligence career, she served as S-2, 1st Aviation Battalion, 1st Infantry Division; commander of the 78th Aviation Battalion (Provisional) at Camp Zama, Japan; and multiple tours on the Army and Joint staffs. Thinking back on her flight training, she remembered often being singled out to represent women at symposiums and other events. After flight training, however, “the Army just let me be me. The Army just let me be a soldier. …And in hindsight, I think that was perfect for me.”
New issues of This Week in MI History are published each week. To report story errors, ask questions, or be added to our distribution list, please contact: TR-ICoE-Command-Historian@army.mil.
| Date Taken: | 05.31.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 05.31.2024 17:09 |
| Story ID: | 472785 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 1,756 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, First Woman Graduates Army Flight School (4 JUN 1974), by Lori Stewart, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
