Criteria The Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal may be awarded to service members who, while serving in any capacity with the Navy or Marine Corps, distinguish themselves by heroism, outstanding achievem... The Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal may be awarded to service members who, while serving in any capacity with the Navy or Marine Corps, distinguish themselves by heroism, outstanding achievement or meritorious service (but not of sufficient nature to warrant a higher decoration). MoreHide
Criteria The Legion of Merit is awarded to members of the Armed Forces of the United States without degree for exceptionally outstanding conduct in the performance of meritorious service to the United States. ... The Legion of Merit is awarded to members of the Armed Forces of the United States without degree for exceptionally outstanding conduct in the performance of meritorious service to the United States. The performance must merit recognition by individuals in a key position which was performed in a clearly exceptional manner. MoreHide
Chain of Command
in June 1942 the bureau pushed a reluctant Congress into authorizing the Women?s Reserve of the U.S. Naval Reserve, soon nicknamed the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). As in World War I, women would take over shore jobs, freeing men to fight. The naval establishment gave a collective shudder as the uncertain, and often unwelcome, experiment began. ?Many admirals would prefer to enroll monkeys, dogs, or ducks,? joked one woman.
Hancock joined the U.S. Navy as a lieutenant. The highest-ranking woman at the Bureau of Aeronautics, she was the WAVES representative to the bureau and to the deputy chief of naval operations (air). She also was liaison between the bureau and Lieutenant Commander Mildred McAfee, the Women?s Reserve director. McAfee and her advisers at the Bureau of Personnel had come from the educational and professional worlds and knew nothing about the navy. They found Joy Hancock?s expertise invaluable. With her background as a yeoman (F), a navy wife, and a civilian in the Bureau of Aeronautics, she was the only WAVE leader with a clear idea of how the navy operated.
In her new position, Hancock worked for expanded and different roles for women. Her own administrative, aviation, and mechanical abilities convinced her that properly trained women could undertake almost anything. She persuaded McAfee, and then the Bureau of Aeronautics, to allow women to take specialist training at all-male aviation schools. ?If men and women are to work together,? she argued, ?they must train together, compete against each other in the classroom, and know that they are receiving identical training.? In a practical vein, she added that this approach would save "the Navy the expense of building separate facilities." Hancock opened the way for coeducational training in the Bureau of Aeronautics, and the U.S. Navy's other bureaus slowly and reluctantly adopted the idea.
One of her most important contributions was an effort to open ratings, such as aviation machinist's mate, to women. From her own experience she knew that women could take apart and put together plane engines, but again the navy was not enthusiastic about the idea. Many pilots especially were against women servicing aircraft. But Hancock and other advocates for women had a telling argument in their favor: The war had brought thousands of American women into the nation's civilian factories where they built the very planes the navy did not want them to service. The navy's opposition was untenable and Hancock won her point. Eventually, about 3,000 women aviation machinist's mates donned overalls and helped maintain the navy?s aircraft. The decision was a major breakthrough for women in the armed services.
In pressing the case for an increased role for women in the U.S. Navy, however, Hancock consistently chose to work within the established system and naval chain of command. Her methods were not confrontational; she sometimes used indirect ways to influence her male superiors. Occasionally she would simply plant an idea, watch it grow, and let the men take credit for it. Other times she would listen as an officer described the technical training requirements of ratings for men. She would then inquire if women could possibly be capable of similar training. Even a reluctant ?I guess so? gave Hancock the opening she wanted. Her goal was not personal acclaim, but progress for women and thus, she believed, the welfare of the service.
The Bureau of Aeronautics sent Hancock on frequent trips to naval air stations around the country to check on adequate utilization of WAVES and on their adjustment to military life. Some of the young aviators she had known in the 1920s were now the ranking officers at many air stations, and they smoothed the way on Hancock?s inspection tours. She always made a special effort to talk with enlisted women in the barracks. These informal meetings gave Hancock firsthand knowledge of living and working conditions. She wanted no preferential treatment for WAVES. In fact, she told commanding officers to treat and discipline them as though they were men. Women needed to feel themselves as a part of the service, she believed, and receipt of equal treatment would foster mutual respect between naval personnel of both sexes.
One of her wartime trips, while official in nature, was also deeply personal. Hancock returned to New Jersey in August 1943 to christen the U.S.S. Lewis Hancock at the Federal Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Kearny. She was understandably proud that the U.S. Navy had honored her husband who had died in the airship Shenandoah. The event, however, was also an honor for her: Lieutenant Hancock was the first naval officer on active duty to christen a naval ship.
Criteria The American Campaign Medal was awarded for For thirty days service outside the Continental United States but within the American Theater of Operations between December 7, 1941, and March 2, 1946; or,... The American Campaign Medal was awarded for For thirty days service outside the Continental United States but within the American Theater of Operations between December 7, 1941, and March 2, 1946; or, an aggregate service of one year within the Continental United States during the same period under the following circumstances: On permanent assignment outside the continental limits of the United States; or, On permanent assignment as a member of a crew of a vessel sailing ocean waters for a period of 30 consecutive days or 60 non-consecutive days; or, For service outside the continental limits of the United States in a passenger status or on temporary duty for 30 consecutive days or 60 non consecutive days; or, For service in active combat against the enemy and awarded a combat decoration or furnished a certificate by the commanding general of a corps, higher unit, or independent force that the individual actually participated in combat; or, For service within the continental limits of the United States for an aggregate period of one year. MoreHide
Other Memories
After the war ended, Bright continued as a civilian employee at the air station and helped to decommission it. During this period, she met and married a naval aviator, Lieutenant Charles G. Little. The marriage, however, was brief and ended tragically. Several months after the wedding, during a test of Little's rigid airship in England, a fierce hydrogen explosion hurled the airship into a river, killing Little and forty-five others. Stunned by the tragedy, Little's young widow began working at the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics in Washington.
Organized in 1921, the bureau attracted some of the navy's more innovative and unorthodox officers as pilots. Naval aviation was in its infancy, and these officers broke new ground for the navy as they experimented with fixed-wing and lighter-than-air aircraft, planned naval air power tactics, and sought to establish the importance of the air arm in a service dominated by "battleship" doctrines.
Joy Little thrived in this progressive atmosphere. She edited the bureau's newsletter and set up naval aviators' personnel files. She quickly me most of the young pilots, and their friendship would be important in later years as those pilots rose in seniority in the service. In 1923, lured by the opportunity to return both to airships and to New Jersey, she took an assignment at the Naval Air Station, Lakehurst, the headquarters for an important part of the navy's lighter-than-air flight program. Based on the apparent success of the German zeppelins, including their military use in World War I, the navy planned a fleet of American dirigibles; and as she worked, Joy Little watched the U.S. Navy complete one of its rigid airships, Shenandoah. Lieutenant Commander Lewis Hancock arrived as part of it?s highly specialized crew, and he and Joy Little began a friendship that blossomed into romance. They were married in June 1924. Fifteen months later, however, Shenandoah broke apart and crashed during a violent storm, taking the entire crew to its death. The loss of Shenandoah was one of a series of such disasters that finally brought a halt to the U.S. Navy's rigid-airship program in the 1930s. It was a pioneering age of flight, fraught with the dangers of all such new ventures, and once again Joy Hancock became a widow.
Physically and emotionally drained, the twenty-seven-year-old was ill for a year. Fortunately, her family was there to help, recovering her strength she traveled around the world with her sister. The experience almost led to a career change. Visiting Hawaii, the Far East, India, Egypt, and Europe sparked an interest in the U.S. Foreign Service, an organization with career ties newly opened to women. She tried to join the diplomatic service by studying at the Crawford Foreign Service School in Washington, but the attempt ended in disappointment. She passed the written but failed the oral part of the examinations.
If the door to the Foreign Service closed, however, the lure of aviation remained. While still at the Crawford School, Hancock learned to fly. Only a few American women had won their wings by late 1920s, and Hancock's particular circumstances made the achievement even more remarkable. Having lost two husbands and many friends in accidents, she was justifiably afraid of aircraft; so she took flying lessons and got a student pilot's license to help conquer her fear. But, in a reflection of her earlier mechanical interests, Hancock discovered that she was more intrigued with engines than with actually flying. She learned to assemble and disassemble plane engines and realized that women could readily maintain aircraft. It was a lesson with major implications for her later career and for the careers of many other women.
Her health and self-confidence restored, Joy Hancock returned to a position in aviation. She rejoined the U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics in 1930 and became a civilian head of the General Information Section. Her long familiarity with naval aviation and her more recent firsthand piloting experience added depth and knowledge to her daily contacts with the media. Again she edited the News Letter and emerged as an articulate proponent of naval air power. Hancock wrote or edited aviation articles for other magazines; she wrote her first book, Airplanes in Action, in 1938. Except for a year traveling in the Far East in the mid 1930?s, Hancock kept her job at the bureau until 1942. By this time, she was a respected figure in her field.
World War II
When World War II began, American military leaders considered what steps they might take to augment manpower. Despite the successful use of women in World War I, new calls to use women in noncombatant roles, to free men for field service, met considerable opposition. But, faced with pressing needs, the U.S. Army acted to enlist women for non-combat duty. In late 1941, Congress authorized the Women?s Auxiliary Army Corps (the WACs); but the more conservative U.S. Navy still doubted the value of women?s service. Always more progressive than the navy as a whole, however, the Bureau of Aeronautics foresaw a massive need for women if naval aviation was to function effectively. To document the case for recruiting women, the bureau determined to study how Canadians used women in their air force. At war since 1939, the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), like the Royal Air Force of Great Britain, had made effective use of female personnel. Hancock, with her knowledge of naval aviation needs and her writing skills, willingly undertook the assignment. Touring Canadian air facilities, she returned to write a report lauding the accomplishments of women in the RCAF and showing how the bureau could provide jobs, housing, discipline, and administration for 20,000 American women.
Hancock?s enthusiasm was contagious, and in June 1942 the bureau pushed a reluctant Congress into authorizing the Women?s Reserve of the U.S. Naval Reserve, soon nicknamed the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). As in World War I, women would take over shore jobs, freeing men to fight. The naval establishment gave a collective shudder as the uncertain, and often unwelcome, experiment began. ?Many admirals would prefer to enroll monkeys, dogs, or ducks,? joked one woman.
Criteria The World War I Victory Medal was awarded for military service during the First World War. It was awarded for active service between April 6, 1917, and November 11, 1918; for service with the American... The World War I Victory Medal was awarded for military service during the First World War. It was awarded for active service between April 6, 1917, and November 11, 1918; for service with the American Expeditionary Forces in European Russia between November 12, 1918, and August 5, 1919; or for service with the American Expeditionary Forces in Siberia between November 23, 1918, and April 1, 1920. MoreHide
In July 1946, Hancock became director of the Women?s Reserve and was promoted to Captain.