Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier

Naval Aviators in the Post-Tailhook Era

Though it has come at a high price, and with many fits and starts, much has changed in the culture of Navy flying since 'Tailhook.' Women in ever-greater numbers are serving aboard combat vessels. Every carrier group that deploys today has female air crews, along with a growing population of women aboard the ships that they fly from. From helicopter pilots flying off the back of escort vessels to fighter pilots flying patrols in no-fly zones, women have arrived and are in to stay. In the process, many longtime Navy traditions have gone by the wayside. Some of the changes have been as simple as the new rule that every person aboard ship sleep with (at least) a T-shirt and underwear on, to avoid 'exposures' in a passageway at night; and sailors have learned to knock and wait for permission to enter female quarters. More substantially, ships have been rebuilt with separate berthing areas and heads (sleeping and shower areas). The result has been the greatest single change in Navy culture since the arrival of the all-volunteer force in the mid-1970's. Along the way, the Navy has learned important lessons about the effective integration of women into units and cultures that they previously have not been part of. These include:

• Critical Mass-Human beings are not built to handle difficult jobs alone. Without like- minded companions to share problems and solutions, emotions and trials, an individual can too easily give up, or bend under pressure. Thus women on board ships need other women to share their experiences with (just as men have other men). Armed with that realization, the Navy no longer drops women on their own into a squadron or wing, but puts a few women together-a concept the Navy calls 'critical mass.' Now that women have other women for support, the stresses of being 'new' and 'different' in the male-dominated world of naval aviation can be better managed. So now you'll find three or four women in each flying squadron where there are women, or none at all. This 'critical mass' allows a young female 'nugget' to survive the emotional rigors of her first fleet assignment.

• Recruiting-While 'critical mass' helps integrate women into particular units, finding enough women to do the job is another matter. Recruiting qualified women is not easy. Because corporate America is already working hard to hire those few women (and minority) college graduates who master 'hard' subjects like math, sciences, engineering, and computers, the pool available to join the military is quite limited. Many of the women attracted to the military choose to join the Army and Air Force, where the culture is less difficult for them to adapt to. Quite simply, the sea services have done a poor job of selling themselves to women (and minority) candidates, and will need to do a better job in the future.

• Standards-Since flying is unforgiving, strict standards of performance and proficiency among all aviators must be observed, a lesson the Navy has learned painfully. Cutting corners only produces failure, the loss of $50 million aircraft, and grieving families. The female naval aviators that are making it in today's squadrons are not cutting corners, nor have corners been cut in order to put them in a cockpit. They are doing it right! This means that they are doing everything that their male counterparts are expected to do in the cockpit, to the same standards; and this, more than anything else, has brought the acceptance of female naval aviators at the unit level.

• Training-Our society does little to prepare men and women for living and working in the kinds of conditions that a modern Navy imposes upon personnel. After the failures exemplified by 'Tailhook' and the tribal culture of naval aviation, the Navy has started a series of mandatory leadership seminars for officers spaced at various points in their careers. At the same time, all Navy personnel have been given sensitivity training to improve their understanding of how professional relationships between officers and sailors of the opposite sex are supposed to work in the modern military. The Navy's justification for these educational efforts is not 'political correctness.' Rather, since families and schools train ever fewer young people today in civics, manners, and social skills, the sea services feel that it is up to them to make sure their people know these skills and can act accordingly. Manners do count!

All of these initiatives have started to 'level' the naval aviation playing field for women, and allowed them to gain a foothold in fleet aviation units. Still, some things cannot be mandated or trained into professional warriors. You can't teach a young 'nugget' how to become 'one of the boys' in his or her first squadron, for instance. Doing that is especially tough, even if you are equipped with a 'Y' chromosome. All naval aviators, no matter what their sex, must be 'bonded' into their squadron if they are to survive the emotional and character-building strains that they will face on their first real 'cruise.' First-tour naval aviators are traditionally 'pushed' by the members of their squadrons, and for good reason. The pressure dished out in the ready rooms is designed to separate the winners from the 'also-rans.'

Lots of male naval aviators fail to survive their first squadron assignments due to the pressure, and so have many of the women who have tried. Frankly, some of these women have shown every bit as much personal courage as civil rights pioneers like James Meredith and Rosa Parks. They have gone where no other women have been before, and the survivors are frequently among the best in their class groups upon graduation. They have to be.

Meanwhile, future squadron and air wing commanders will have to show greater sensitivity and leadership to the conditions of all 'nugget' aviators, women included. This may help the entire naval aviation community, since keeping more junior officers after their first tours means fewer personnel will have to be trained. At over a million dollars per trainee, that quickly adds up to real money.

Raw Material: Recruiting

How exactly does one go about becoming a naval aviator? Let's take a quick tour of a hypothetical naval aviation career. Though this may seem like a bit of ego puffery, it's not: Young people choose to try out for naval aviation because they want to be among the 'best of the best.' If you can launch and land a modern aircraft from the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, cruiser, destroyer, frigate, or amphibious ship, you will never have to justify your flying skills to anyone. Nobody else-not the Israelis, British, not even our own U.S. Air Force-makes pilots better than the USN. Much like Marine Corps basic training, which produces the world's finest combat riflemen, the Navy trains fliers with basic flying and combat skills that are unsurpassed. Of course the USAF and others train excellent combat aviators. That goes without saying. However, when you want superb combat skills, and the ability to fly off of a rolling and pitching deck at night in rough weather, you'd better plan on calling the Navy for the air crews.

What kind of person does the Navy want to fly its airplanes? For starters, he or she has to be a college graduate from an accredited four-year university.[22] Prior to World War II, the Naval Academy supplied the majority of naval aviation cadets. But when the war demanded a vastly expanded pool of air crews, the requirements for naval aviation cadets were lowered to completion of just two years of college. Today, the sea services feel that the responsibility for flying a fifty-million-dollar aircraft (with more computing and sensor power than a whole fleet just a generation ago) should go to someone with a university education. For a modern pilot will have to be a systems operator, tactician, and athlete, as well as a naval officer with duties to lead and manage.

Once you have the college degree, and assuming that you want to fly over the water for your country, that your eyesight and physical condition are good, and that you can pass the required batteries of mental and coordination tests, what else do you need? First, you need to be an officer in the U.S. Navy or U.S. Marine Corps.[23] If you are a graduate of the Naval Academy (or, for that matter, West Point or Colorado Springs), then you have automatically earned a reserve officer's commission as an ensign or 2nd lieutenant.[24] The same is true if you have completed an accredited Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program at a university. However, if you are a simple college graduate with an ambition to fly for the sea services, then there are several Officer Candidate Schools (OCSs) that can give you the basic skills as a Navy or Marine Corps officer, as well as the commission. Though there were once a number of these schools around the country, today there are just two, one at Quantico, Virginia, for the Marines, and the Navy school at Pensacola, Florida. However you get the commission to ensign/2nd lieutenant (O-1), the path to the cockpit of an aircraft in the sea services starts at Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola.