The NATO officials would say they couldn’t accommodate women because remote locations sometimes had male-only lodging and bathrooms and the equipment wasn’t built for us.”Īs Douglas progressed in her career, she helped drive modernization of the Air Force. “When I was working with NATO they needed to send Airmen to various locations and I would be the logical choice. “Things weren’t built for females at that time,” Douglas said. She later progressed to a project manager before becoming a training superintendent while stationed at various locations in the U.S., Germany and the United Kingdom.Īlthough she evolved quickly into different linguist roles, she hit obstacles because of her gender. She kept the goal in mind as she developed from an entry-level Russian linguist to a team leader. “To be the superintendent you had to be a chief, and my burning motivation was to be an operations superintendent.” “As a two-striped Airman, I realized the most important person in the cryptologic operations floor was the ops superintendent,” Douglas said.
Though she didn’t speak a word of Russian, she immersed herself in the 37-week course and was then assigned to the operations floor at 6912 Electronic Security Squadron, Berlin, where she began to develop her ambition. “There weren’t many opportunities where I was from, and joining the Air Force was huge.” “As a young kid from rural Texas I wanted to see the world and was able to travel frequently for the command in various positions,” she said. She enlisted in April 1977 at the age of 19, and headed to basic training after her family bid her farewell from her hometown of Huntsville, Texas.
#Cryptologic linguist how to#
She qualified for the Russian cryptologic linguist school where she would learn how to decipher foreign communications and provide intelligence to commanders.
“I grew up watching World War II cryptographer type shows and thought the work would be fascinating,” Douglas said. Susan Douglas’ story began 45 years ago when her Air force recruiter invited her to take a cryptologic linguist test after she excelled at her military entrance exams.
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