ENS Jane Kendeigh - Skyborne Lifesaver

Born: March 30, 1922, Henrietta, Ohio, U.S.A.
Died: July 19, 1987, San Diego, California, U.S.A.

Jane Kendeigh was the first U.S. Navy flight nurse to appear on an active battlefield in the Pacific.

Providing care to injured soldiers is always demanding, but doing it on a moving plane, thousands of feet in the air, is even harder. During World War II, new advances in aviation made it possible to evacuate soldiers from the front lines to hospitals instead of treating them near the battlefield. On these flights were U.S. Navy flight nurses like Ensign Jane “Candy” Kendeigh, trained to adapt to changing conditions and give lifesaving care when it mattered most.

In 1944, the Navy created an eight-week School of Air Evacuation Casualties at the Naval Air Station in Alameda, California. Mary Ellen O’Connor, a former airline stewardess and registered nurse, oversaw the program. Applicants needed strong character and excellent swimming skills. The course included survival training, how flying affects the body, and how to treat shock and wounds in non-pressurized cabins. Students trained in the water, swimming a mile on their own and towing another person 440 yards in ten minutes. Evacuation flights did not carry doctors, so flight nurses were the highest-ranking medical staff on board, acting as both medics and members of the crew.

Jane Kendeigh, a 22-year-old from Ohio, graduated from St. Luke’s School of Nursing in Cleveland. She trained at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station before moving to California for flight nurse school. In January 1945, she graduated with the first group of 12 Navy flight nurses and was sent to Guam to prepare for combat missions.

On March 6, 1945, a Navy R4D plane landed on Iwo Jima, breaking through volcanic dust and smoke. It carried blood, medical supplies, and Ensign Jane Kendeigh. This was the first time in history that a Navy flight nurse landed in an active Pacific combat zone. Photographer Lt. Gill DeWitt captured her arrival, and her photo appeared in newspapers across the United States. From March 6 to March 21, Kendeigh and other nurses evacuated 2,393 Marines and sailors from Iwo Jima, about 13.5% of the total wounded there. For these men, flight nurses were a lifeline, providing medical help and comfort on the journey from battlefield to hospital.

After Iwo Jima, Kendeigh briefly returned to the U.S. for a War Bond drive but soon asked to go back. On April 7, just days after the invasion, she landed on Okinawa. The Battle of Okinawa became the largest combat casualty air evacuation in U.S. military history and the first time the Navy evacuated more wounded by air than by sea. Larger R5D aircraft could carry up to 60 patient litters, cutting travel time to Guam down to about eight hours instead of up to ten days by ship.

The bond between nurses and patients could be deeply personal. Flight nurse Mary Hudnall remembered a Marine giving her a small medicine bottle of Iwo Jima sand so she would “never forget what we did here.” Decades later, she still had it.

Air evacuation was not a new idea, the British had tested it in the 1920s, and the U.S. Army started using nurses for air evacuations in 1942. But Navy flight nurses in the Pacific often flew into active combat zones without fighter escort, making their missions extremely dangerous. After Okinawa, many helped return freed prisoners of war from the Philippines to Guam. Some who stayed in the service later joined the Berlin Airlift.

By the end of the war, more than 1,176,000 military patients had been evacuated on U.S. flights, with only 46 dying en route thanks to the skill and dedication of flight nurses. Still, they received little public recognition, no medals, and many had to leave service because women in uniform were not allowed to marry during wartime.

Ensign Jane Kendeigh served until 1946 and died in 1987 at age 65. Reflecting on her service, she said, “Our rewards are wan smiles, a slow nod of appreciation, a gesture, a word, accolades greater, more heart-warming than any medal.”

References:
“Angels of the Airfields: Navy Air Evacuation Nurses of World War II.” Naval Historical Foundation, 9 May 2013, navyhistory.org/2013/05/angels-of-the-airfields-navy-air-evacuation-nurses-ww2.
DeSimone, Danielle. “These 5 Heroic Women of World War II Should Be Household Names.” United Service Organizations, 30 Mar. 2021, uso.org/stories/2459-heroic-women-of-world-war-ii.
McDougal, Chris. “Navy Flight Nurse Jane Kendeigh, Documenting a First.” National Museum of the Pacific War, 1 May 2020, pacificwarmuseum.org/about/news/blog-post-navy-flight-nurse-jane-kendeigh.
“World War II at 75: The Women at Iwo Jima.” Submarine Force Library & Museum Association, 3 Apr. 2020, ussnautilus.org/world-war-ii-at-75-the-women-at-iwo-jima.
Zingheim, Karl. “Navy Flight Nurses in World War II.” Karl’s Korner, U.S.S. Midway Museum, 23 June 2023, midway.org/blog/navy-flight-nurses-in-world-war-ii.

Keywords:
Innovation, Wartime, Courage, Perseverance, Responsibility, Selflessness, Make a Difference, Take Risks for Others, STEAM

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