Captain Amy Bauernschmidt will be the first woman in history to be selected to command a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
The US Naval Air Forces selected Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt, a career helicopter pilot, to become the commanding officer of a carrier in fiscal year 2022, reported Task & Purpose. Naval Air Forces confirmed the historic selection on December 7, 2020. It is still unclear which of the Navy’s 11 carriers stationed around the world she will command.
In 2016, Bauernschmidt became the first female executive officer of a nuclear aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln. She was commanding a crew of about 5,000 people.
The former law did not allow women on the combatant ships and planes as women were barred from situations in which there might be risk of hostile fire, capture, or direct combat. On November 30, 1993 the law was repealed and women were allowed to serve on combat ships and planes in 1994. The same year Bauernschmidt graduated from the Naval Academy.
“That law absolutely changed my life,” Bauernschmidt told CBS News in 2018. “We were the first class that graduated knowing and feeling honored with the privilege to be able to go serve along the rest of our comrades in combat.”
According to her official Navy biography, since being designated a Naval Aviator in 1996, Bauernschmidt has accumulated over 3,000 flight hours in naval aircraft.
