Women's Army Corps (WAAC)

Women also played a significant role in the military. According to government records, more than 265,000 women enlisted in the armed services of the United States over the course of the war, all as volunteers. There was vocal opposition to female participation in the war effort at the beginning, but it gradually changed as the war raged on and the need for qualified personnel, regardless of gender, increased.
Most women served in traditional jobs such as clerical and secretarial ones, or as nurses. But women also worked as truck drivers, mechanics, technicians, and even pilots. All branches of U.S. service had a female auxiliary. The Women's Army Corps (WAC) began as the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC), which was not an official part of the U.S. Army. But that changed in 1943, as did the name. In all, more than 100,000 women served in the WAC in positions ranging from telephone operator to truck mechanic. The women's reserve of the navy — known as WAVES — enlisted 100,000 women, and the Marine Corps Women's Reserve, which was formed in February 1943, enlisted 23,000.
All the women who assisted the war effort were important, but perhaps most unique were the Women's Air Force Service pilots.
By August 1943, the war was pushing the personnel limits of the U.S. Army Air Corps, which was the noncombat division of the Army Air Forces, and the government finally decided that additional help would be necessary if enough planes were to reach those who needed them. Officials turned to Jacqueline Cochran, a world-famous racing pilot and the head of the Women's Flying Training Command, a group of almost 2,000 female pilots trained to fly military aircraft across the country. Cochran was asked to merge her organization with the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron to create the Women Air Force Service Pilots
(WASPs).
Their jobs were many: ferry military aircraft to pilots of the army air corps, test newly repaired planes, and help train antiaircraft gunners by pulling airborne targets during practice. However, the women were not allowed to serve overseas.
The WASPs flew from August 1943 to December 1944, living and working under military standards and discipline despite the fact that they were managed by Civil Service. The women were highly praised for their efforts, but their group was disbanded in 1944 without having been accepted into the Army Air Corps. It wasn't until 1977 that Congress acknowledged that the WASPs who served in World War II actually were military pilots and deserved the same benefits. Surviving members of the group were given honorary discharges and listed as veterans.
Women also served in a variety of jobs in Great Britain, where every able-bodied person was put to work. Over the course of the war, thousands of British women served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, and the Women's Royal Navy Service as air raid wardens, military clerks, and secretaries.
Most Allied nations did not permit women to serve in combat or hold hazardous jobs during the war. The one exception was the Soviet Union.
In October 1941, the Soviet air force formed a women's flying corps that resulted in three regiments of women pilots: fighter, light bomber, and night bomber. Male pilots were later assigned to two of the regiments, but the Forty-sixth Night Bomber Air Regiment remained exclusively female, right down to the mechanics servicing the planes. The unit entered combat in 1942 and later received the honorary title Guards for its tremendous success in combat. Soviet women also took up arms in defense of Moscow, Stalingrad, Leningrad, and other cities.