{"id":23774,"date":"2019-05-01T13:26:54","date_gmt":"2019-05-01T20:26:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=23774"},"modified":"2023-01-31T17:29:14","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T00:29:14","slug":"air-minded-fitting-in-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=23774","title":{"rendered":"Air-Minded: Fitting In, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Women flew for the military during World War Two as members of the WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilots<\/a>), primarily to ferry new aircraft to combat theaters overseas. The program was shut down when the war ended and women didn’t fly military aircraft again until 1974, when a few were accepted into pilot training with the Navy and Army (the Air Force followed suit in 1976). Existing law prohibited women from flying in combat, so the first post-war generation of women pilots and navigators were restricted to utility helicopters and fixed-wing trainers, tankers, and cargo aircraft. Congress lifted the combat restriction in 1994, and women began flying attack helicopters, fighters, and bombers. Today women are integrated into all aspects of military aviation.<\/p>\n

I’ve written two Air-Minded posts on women in military aviation: Women & Military Aviation<\/a> (August 2014), and Fitting In<\/a> (June 2018). I took pains in the first post to point out the limits of my knowledge, as a pilot who flew at the end of the boys-club era and never had the opportunity to fly with women. The second post highlighted the experiences of some of the first women to come into the military fighter and bomber community. In writing it, I called on a friend, Michelle Vestal, an Air Force A\/OA-10 Warthog pilot, to share her perspective and experiences with me, and also to let me know if I got anything wrong in the older post from 2014. Xena, as she is known to her fellow Warthog pilots, came through on both counts.<\/p>\n

I saved the bulk of Xena’s comments for future posts, and now it’s time to start sharing them. I checked in with her last night to make sure she was okay with that, and she said “go for it.” Here she is, by the way, at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in 2003. Xena had just landed, at dawn, after a six-hour night scramble to support troops in contact. Her log book comments on the mission: “Emptied the gun. ‘Danger Close.’\u201d<\/p>\n

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Here’s part of what I said in my 2014 post, the one I asked Xena to look over:<\/p>\n

There was a lot of resistance to women pilots inside the military, first in the 1970s when they began to fly non-combat military aircraft, then again in the 1990s when they started flying fighters and bombers. Senior military leaders and old-school pilots from the men-only days pulled out all the stops: they\u2019ll have to have separate locker rooms and restrooms; we won\u2019t be able to tell jokes and sing dirty songs at the bar; women aren\u2019t physically capable of pulling Gs; they\u2019ll get knocked up and grounded if there\u2019s ever a threat of actually going to war; if they do go to war with us and one of them gets shot down the American public will revolt \u2026 and on and on (and on, and on).<\/p>\n

An interesting subset of resistance came from military wives, who worried about what might happen when their husbands were on alert or away on temporary overseas duty with woman pilots. Never mind that woman military aviators are generally married themselves, with spouses at home.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s what Xena had to say about that, point by point:<\/p>\n

Separate facilities required if we allow women to fly fighters<\/em>.<\/p>\n