-Caveat Lector-
>From Washington (DC) Times:
Female bombers achieve milestone in 'Desert Fox'
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By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
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<Picture: F>emale aviators made history in Operation Desert Fox, but the
Pentagon public affairs apparatus isn't trumpeting the event in order to
keep things gender-neutral.
"All of the female pilots have been declining interviews," said a Navy
officer at the Pentagon. "They don't want to be highlighted as female
pilots. They want to be known as naval aviators."
Of the 12 female combat aviators on the carrier USS Enterprise, three
piloted the F/A-18, a fighter bomber. Their missions marked the first time
female pilots put bombs on target in war, Navy officials say.
One woman piloted an F-14 Tomcat air-to-air fighter,
-- Continued from Front Page --
while others served as naval flight officers aboard airborne jammers and
early warning radar planes.
No military briefer announced the achievements during six straight
days of Desert Fox press conferences at the Pentagon. No Navy official
would talk on the record about female fliers.
Asked by a reporter about the historical significance of women flying
bombers in war, Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, Desert Fox commander,
said, "Well, my answer would be, so what? We don't even count -- I mean,
somebody asked me today, 'How many female pilots or navigators?' -- I have
no idea. I can't find anybody that counts. So if you want a sign of the
times, there it is."
Navy Lt. Kendra Williams, 26, was the first of the three female F/A-18
pilots to fly a strike mission, the Associated Press reported from the
carrier Enterprise.
Lt. Williams, a native of Anchorage, Alaska, graduated from jet
training in 1997 at the Naval Air Station in Kingsville, Texas.
"Women have only been in combat aviation a few years," she said last
year. "It's going to take time for people to adjust."
Aboard the Enterprise, she issued a terse "I was just doing my job"
before rejoining fellow fliers in a squadron nicknamed "Gunslingers."
Two other female pilots on the Enterprise, Lyndsi Bates and Carol
Watts, also flew the F/A-18 over Iraq.
The Air Force put fighters and strategic bombers into action, but none
was piloted by a woman, according to Lt. John Hutcheson, a spokesman at Air
Force Air Combat Command.
"There were no Air Force female pilots that participated in combat,"
he said. "We did have one electronic warfare officer who flew aboard a
B-52."
The Vietnam-era heavy bomber was used to fire 2,000-pound warhead
cruise missiles at targets that make up Saddam Hussein's military
industrial complex.
The Navy's blase approach is in sharp contrast to a public relations
extravaganza in 1994 when the first female combat pilots sailed aboard the
carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Congress repealed a ban on women flying combat aircraft that year,
based in large part on the many support roles that women carried out in the
1991 Persian Gulf war.
The Navy ferried journalists, politicians and their wives to the
Eisenhower as part of a campaign to improve the Navy's public image after
the Tailhook sexual-abuse scandal.
But a Navy inspector general's report in 1997 may have dampened
publicity. The IG's report on the integration of female aviators on the
carrier USS Abraham Lincoln criticized the Navy for bumping women ahead of
men who were waiting for a shot at qualifying as carrier pilots.
The IG report also warned the Navy to "exercise an increased
sensitivity for the potentially disruptive influence the media has when it
is covering a story."
Women have served on support ships since the 1970s but were banned
from combat ships like the Enterprise until three years ago.
"It's what the Navy said all along," a retired Navy officer said
yesterday. "It works, and they're just another pilot. The Navy has finally
realized among the ranks this is a positive event, and it's commonplace.
They're treating it not blase, but they're treating it as they do all other
events."
While Desert Fox was a milestone, it was not the first time female
fliers saw combat. Navy women have flown combat jets over
Bosnia-Herzegovina to enforce a cease-fire and over southern Iraq to
enforce a no-fly zone.
In December 1989, Army police women exchanged gunfire with Panamanian
soldiers during the U.S. intervention to capture strongman Manuel Noriega.
Military police are classified as support personnel, not combatants.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
A<>E<>R
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but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
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