generation. Even though the end of the war restored a modicum of peacetime decorum to life aboard ship (alcohol under way became a major no-no!), it left a lasting mark on the souls of naval aviators. They now saw themselves as the keepers of a special tribal knowledge-the deep and esoteric knowledge only they possessed, that told them how wartime carrier operations had to be run. As tribal elders, they saw it as an imperative of their calling to pass their tribal knowledge on to the next generation of naval aviation leaders. Thus, when the junior officers who came of age during Vietnam became squadron commanders and carrier captains, they passed on to the new aviators they commanded the hard-drinking, hard-living, womanizing, daredevil culture that they grew up with. It would become a ticking time bomb.
The remaining years of the Cold War saw naval aviation and its personnel safely insulated from the great social changes that were taking place in American society. While the air crews went out on their regular rotations and cruises, thanks to the protection of their senior leaders, they lived in a virtual stasis, immune to outside forces, totally disconnected from the civilian culture. A disaster was waiting to happen. The storm hit in 1991 at the Las Vegas Hilton.
Dry Rot: The End of the Cold War
During the two decades following Vietnam, the civil rights and women's movements transformed American society. During those same two decades, those revolutions barely touched the military in general, the sea services in particular, and naval aviation least of all. In spite of reformers like Admiral Elmo Zumwalt (Chief of Naval Operations in the early 1970's), the culture of naval aviation remained unchanged.[20] As ever, it was a professional haven for middle-class white males, with strong second- and third-generation family associations. But a funny thing happened on the way to Desert Storm: Naval aviation found itself-slowly, reluctantly-setting off on the same road the rest of America was traveling.
The desegregation of the military began as far back as the late 1940s, when President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order to that effect. However the order had very little immediate effect on Naval aviation, for few Americans of color chose to make that a profession. Still, a tiny cadre of brave young men took the plunge; and the first of these, Jesse Brown, gave his life in combat while flying during the Korean War. Sacrifices like Brown's and others' went a long way toward validating minority naval aviators. The admission of women into naval aviation took much longer. Un-fortunately,their acceptance there, with anything like real equality, remains to be achieved. All the same, the feminist revolution changed the U.S. military-even naval aviation-forever.
Broader questions still remain: Does humankind need women to be warriors? Does human nature demand it? Do equal rights before the law demand it? I'm not going to hazard an answer to these questions. But there's a much easier one I can safely field: Will women serve in combat in United States military services? The answer to that one, of course, is 'yes.' They already have and do. In principle, at least, there is no combat action that qualified women cannot handle. Meanwhile, fueled by the new all-volunteer military of the 1970s, the military began to recruit large numbers of women into the ranks. Initially they were limited to non-combatant and support jobs. But before long, the understanding of 'non-combatant' and 'support' began to change, and with those changes came an expansion of women's roles. By the early 1980s, they were flying transport aircraft and helicopters, as well as training and support aircraft.
But female naval aviators still remained landlocked, due to restrictions on women serving aboard ships. These restrictions, I should point out, were legal, not naval. That is to say, the legislation that restricted the role of women aboard ships-and still restricts the roles of women in combat-is contained in Title 10 of the U.S. Federal Code, which must be amended and approved by Congress. Professional military officers may have opinions about the rights and wrongs of these restrictions (which they are obligated to keep to themselves), but the ultimate responsibility for them goes higher up the ladder of government than the rungs they occupy.
In any case, the lot of women in naval aviation during the late stages of the Cold War was anything but pleasant. Since they were effectively barred from front-line fighter, support, and attack units, they would never have the command and promotion opportunities of their male counterparts, which went to 'combat' air crews, thus making women second-class citizens in the military. The end of the Cold War in 1989 changed all that. Twice during the Bush years, American forces were committed to combat, in Operations Just Cause (Panama) and Desert Shield/Storm (Persian Gulf). During both operations (notwithstanding Title 10 and other limitations), women were prominently involved in combat operations. Several women commanded units in actual combat, though in 'support' roles (military police, Patriot SAM batteries, transport helicopters, etc.). Some became prisoners of war (POWs), and a few died. After women performed in both conflicts with professionalism and bravery, Americans back home could not help but question the restrictions that kept them out of combat units.
Soon after the Gulf War, Congress rapidly amended Title 10, and opened up to women a variety of combat positions that had previously been reserved for male personnel. Women could now fill combat air crew slots and serve aboard warships. By the fall of 1997, only ground combat units (infantry, artillery, armor, etc.), special operations, and submarines remain barred to women. In fact, less than two years after the end of Desert Storm, the services were racing each other to put the first women into the cockpits of combat aircraft. Unfortunately, the change did not come smoothly.
The Air Force's first female bomber pilot, for example, was forced to resign over an adultery charge, all played before a noisy media circus. The Navy's first female fighter pilot died trying to eject from an F-14 Tomcat during a failed approach to the USS
But then, on the Labor Day weekend of 1991, some very ugly events happened at the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel, which blew up into the scandal called the 'Tailhook Incident.' Tailhook soon turned into an international indictment of the sea services' treatment of women in uniform. A yearly convention of naval aviators and their supporters in Las Vegas, Nevada, Tailhook had long had a reputation for drinking and wild behavior.[21] But Tailhook 1991 went over the top, when several female naval officers and other women were allegedly molested by drunk and out-of-control naval aviators. After one woman officer reported what had happened to her commanding officer and he refused to take action (other officers then and later lied about and tried to cover up the Tailhook events), she went to the Navy's criminal investigators. An official investigation was started, and the scandal hit the media.
Meanwhile, the Navy so badly botched the investigation that no convictions were obtained against the officers accused of assaulting women. And then Navy leaders lost control of the situation, resulting in the forced resignations of several high-ranking civilian and military leaders. In the process, thousands of naval officers, most of whom were not even there, had their careers harmed by the political fallout. Yet the botched investigation and the Navy's political folly were hardly the problem. Much less was it that naval officers had gotten drunk, molested women, and then lied about it (though this was bad enough). The problem was the hard-drinking, hard-living, womanizing, daredevil, isolated tribal culture of naval aviation. Naval aviators, a bastion of male exclusivity, had made it painfully clear that they did not want women in their combat flying units, and they had made their displeasure widely known. There would be further problems. But-slowly-progress was coming.
