Rosemary Mariner, who shattered barriers when she became one of the Navy’s first female pilots and the first woman to command a naval aviation squadron — and who later successfully fought for a congressional measure that lifted a ban on women serving in combat — died on Jan. 24 in Knoxville, Tenn. She was 65.

Her husband, Tommy Mariner, a retired commander in the Navy, said the cause was ovarian cancer.

When Captain Mariner joined the Navy in 1973, she was a licensed pilot and a graduate of Purdue University, where she had been the first woman to enroll in a newly created aeronautics program. She had been enthralled by flight since she was young, when she watched Navy pilots taking off from Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego.

Most women in the Navy of the early 1970s were assigned to hospital posts or clerical jobs. But times were about to change.

After graduating from officer candidate school in 1973, Captain Mariner was chosen for the Navy’s first flight-training class for women; she was among six of its graduates to earn wings in 1974. The next year she became the first female aviator in the Navy to fly a jet attack craft, a single-seat Skyhawk.