The women’s USAF Enlisted Flight Cap is immediately distinguishable from the version worn by male Air Force personnel because of its fore-to-aft curved design. For more than a decade, women in the Air Force have had the option of wearing this version, which is obviously designed to provide a better fit for personnel with healthy amounts of hair, or the men’s Flight Cap. The Flight Cap is authorized for wear with the Service, Service Dress, Flight Duty, and Food Services uniforms.
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Whether it was referred to as a side cap, garrison cap, field cap, wedge cap, forage cap, overseas cap, or by a title that should not be repeated in polite copnay, the Air Force’s Flight Cap has been a part of the U.S. military wardrobe since it was introduced to members of the American Expeditionary Force by French troops during World War I. According to military historian and former Green Beret Gordon Rottman, the foldable headgear was first unofficially dubbed a “flight cap” by members of the Army Air Corps in 1933, while the Encyclopedia of United States Army Insignia and Uniforms says that Air Corps officers had first begun to wear to them with branch piping and the Air Corps insignia in 1925.
One component of the Army that took an immediate liking to the Flight Cap/Garrison Cap was the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), which until 1944 had been issued a rather severe-looking piece of visored headgear called the “Hobby Hat” in honor of the first WAC director, Oveta Culp Hobby (a 1991 article in Air Force Magazine described it as a “hat that looked like a gun turret”). The replacement Flight Caps came in khaki (tropical worsted and cotton), olive drab wool, beige shantung (a type of silk fabric), and wool crepe.