Linda McDonald DuMoulin (far left) and Sally Murphy (far right) look on as Susan Dunwoody Schoeck receives her wings in 1975. The three women were the US Army’s first female rotary-wing aviators. (Sally Murphy Photo) Retired US Army Aviator Linda McDonald DuMoulin Pioneer cracked glass ceiling for women as a US Army pilot. By Jen Boyer When Linda McDonald DuMoulin sets her sights on a goal, she doesn’t let obstacles that might stop most people stand in her way. The 80-year-old veteran from Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1975 was the US Army’s first female helicopter maintenance test pilot after earning her wings the year before. Over 23 years, DuMoulin blazed trails and pushed against barriers, never taking no for an answer. With assignments including Korea and Germany, she left her mark. POWER UP recently sat down with DuMoulin to learn how it all began and what she witnessed along the way. POWER UP: When did you join the army? DuMoulin: After earning my master’s degree in 1969, I became a recreational director in Korea for three years. Then, in 1972, I decided to join the US Army as a civilian member of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). We hadn’t merged serving with the men yet, and they didn’t even have trousers for us. We had to run around in skirts, and we were always ironing them, which was a pain. But then I heard rumblings of the aviation fields opening up to women. So, I thought, well, that would be cool. You know, rather than just sitting behind a desk. I was a farm kid. I grew up on a ranch, picking pears and apples and shoveling out the barn. I checked all the services. I didn’t want to join the navy, because I get seasick. The Marines weren’t doing anything with women yet. The air force saw I had a master’s degree in art and told me they wanted someone with engineering training. They didn’t realize I had a really high mechanical ability that had been untapped because I was a woman. The army said the same thing, but I asked if there was anything that said I couldn’t take the aptitude test. Well, I did take the test, and I did OK on it. So, I decided to join the army. It was a very simple transition for me. It was the same uniform [as in the WAC], but this time I wore a rank and saluted. There was a lot I didn’t know because my dad didn’t let me turn a screwdriver, and all of a sudden, I was thrust into this world of repairing helicopters. Well, I learned, and I found out I had an aptitude for mechanics. So, your first official job as a female officer was helicopter maintenance officer and helicopter maintenance test pilot? Yes. When I started flight school, I chose the [US Army] Transportation Corps. They were very good to me, and they ran the maintenance test pilot school. They said, “Guess what? You’re taking the test pilot course.” I said, “Wait a minute. Let me learn how to fly this thing first.” They said it was their career path, so if I didn’t like it, they didn’t have a use for me. So, I went. It was a natural fit for me. I loved it. I was learning helicopter maintenance and how to fly at the same time. I wasn’t good with math, but I was sure good at diagnosing stuff. That’s how I became the army’s first female helicopter maintenance test pilot. I also became the first female Cobra pilot and OH-58 pilot because I had to fix those aircraft a lot too. Oh, that Cobra was a piece of work. It was wonderful to fly. You could bank and roll it and do all kinds of stuff. The guys used to call me “chicken neck” because I’d be looking over the top of it as hard as I could, so they’d see my big old helmet and my skinny little neck. Did you spend your entire army career as a maintenance test pilot? No. When I finished up in aviation, I was an aviation company commander. I was the first woman since World War II to have an aviation command in any of the services—army, navy, air force, or Marines. Then I went on to do public affairs for the rest of my military career, because I felt that sometimes aviation issues or vocabulary got misconstrued in the civilian world because they don’t “speak” aviation. Wait, another first!? Yeah! I was the aviation headquarters company commander in air traffic control in Bavaria. I was responsible for maintaining all the helicopters in the battalion. When I completed my command, I took a public affairs course and was sent to NATO in Belgium, where I was a public affairs officer covering the United States and the United Kingdom. Then, in 1989, I was assigned as a public affairs officer at the Pentagon for the secretary of defense, who was Dick Cheney at the time. After four years there, I ended up retiring as a lieutenant colonel. What did you do after leaving the service? Did you continue to fly? No. I didn’t fly again. I would have stayed in the army longer, but my health started to bother me. I didn’t know what was wrong; I just knew I was tired all the time. When I retired, I think I slept for two years. I was in my early 50s. It wasn’t until much later, after I moved to New Mexico, that they properly diagnosed that I had a serious thyroid problem. It had been misdiagnosed all those years. I know how to take care of it now. I’m actually starting to feel a lot better. Is there anything special that stands out from your flying career? I feel like I had angel wings attached to me somewhere, because I had some serious things happen that could have ended my life but didn’t. One of them was an engine failure in Germany. I had a full load of 13 people. We sank like a rock, but I put it into an oat field as pretty as you please. A perfect landing. Another time, I had a transmission failure, and usually you don’t live to tell about those. I had just finished a test flight, and I was throttling down when suddenly the blades stopped turning. I told the crew chief to tie them down. He looped the strap over the blade and was tugging at it. I was getting on him to hurry up when he says, “Ma’am, I’m trying. The blades won’t move.” I thought, “Oh crap, it’s a transmission failure.” So, as I said, the angels waited until I was on the ground before they seized it up. Another incident was when I was helping the [US Army] Pathfinders do some night maneuvers in an OH-58. We were flying with the main lights off, and we were only using what’s called “cat eyes,” which were very small lights. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something squirt out of the battery port mounted on the helicopter nose area. I checked it again when we went around the traffic pattern. I made sure to keep an eye on the battery gauge. It was OK. The next time I checked, it was pegged out. It turned out I had a runaway battery fire. We landed and I started yelling, “Get out! Get out! Get out!” I throttled that aircraft down as fast as I could and we got the heck out of there. Turns out, what I saw out of the corner of my eye was the battery fluid spurting out of the top port up near the windshield. I knew I saw something, but those cat eyes didn’t leave enough light to really see it. It could have exploded very easily and blown the nose off. Luckily, we shut it down fast enough that it didn’t go and take any of us with it. It was melted about a third of the way down. Jen Boyer is a journalist and marketing communicator specializing in aviation. She holds commercial, instrument, flight instructor, and instrument instructor ratings in helicopters and a private rating in airplanes.
