Barbara Allen Rainey

Barbara Allen Rainey (1948 to 1982) was an American naval officer and one of the first six women pilots in the United States armed forces. She was commissioned in the Navy Reserve in 1970, applied to the Navy's 1973 trial program for women naval aviators, and on 22 February 1974 was designated the first female naval aviator in history, at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi. She flew C-1 transport aircraft in Alameda, California, and became the first Navy woman to qualify as a jet pilot in the T-39. After moving to the Naval Reserve in 1977 she qualified on the R6D, then returned to active duty in 1981 as a flight instructor with Training Squadron Three, flying the T-34C Mentor. She was killed on 13 July 1982 in a training crash near Evergreen, Alabama, at the rank of Lieutenant Commander, and the litigation that followed reached the United States Supreme Court as Beech Aircraft Corp. v. Rainey.