Out of the nearly 6000 U.S. military officers who were trained to be weather forecasters during World War II, there were approximately 100 women. They were recruited into the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) by the U.S. Navy and underwent training with the military men in the so-called cadet program. Letters of reminiscence from six WAVES forecasters are combined with official navy correspondence, archival information from universities, and newspaper articles of the period to reconstruct the recruitment, training, duty assignments, and postwar careers of these women.
With limited information, an effort has also been made to document the training of civilian women in the cadet program, and to estimate the number of women who served as forecasters in foreign countries during the war. The status of women in meteorology prior to the United States' entry into the war is examined as a backdrop to the study. Principal results of the study are as follows:
*Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service.
