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Thread: Women wanted to fly jets in combat. Breaking that barrier…

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    Exclamation Women wanted to fly jets in combat. Breaking that barrier…

    Women wanted to fly jets in combat. Breaking that barrier would be the fight of their lives.

    In the early 1990s, few corners of the military were as misogynistic as the world of fighter pilots. This is the story of the women Navy officers who overcame that culture to fly the formidable F-14.


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    The F-14 Tomcat was a Rorschach test of a fighter jet. Some considered it an unwieldy monster. Others said it commanded grudging respect. Still others compared the 25-ton jet to an elephant — huge, powerful, and stubborn. Whatever you called it, the F-14 was as storied as it was formidable. It reigned for years as the workhorse among US Navy air combat machines.

    For Lt. Kara Hultgreen, the F-14 started out as a consolation prize. The 29-year-old hotshot had wanted to fly an F/A-18 Hornet, the sharpest and newest member of the Navy’s fleet. But after a few months of training, the F-14 won Hultgreen’s heart. She came to consider it a remarkable plane, complicated and humbling.

    Hultgreen lived in Solana Beach, California, a half-hour north of Miramar Naval air base, where she was headed the morning of October 25, 1994. She got up early that day. She debated what to wear out the door — khakis or her flight suit. Wearing flight suits through the gate was frowned upon. But since she’d have to change clothes right away, she decided to blow off the rule and go with the suit.

    She was excited about the detachment. The night before, she’d taken her gear to her stateroom aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, including a beloved down comforter grown scruffy and clumped over the years. She liked to wind herself in it when she slept. “I’m going to the boat next week until 9 Nov. Should be fun,” she wrote in a letter to her father. “I’m also in November issue of McCall’s magazine.”

    Hultgreen wasn’t the first woman to fly a Tomcat, but she was the first to fly one operationally, tactically, and to land it on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. And she was the first woman in the US Navy to qualify as a combat-rated jet pilot.

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    https://www.vox.com/features/2317944...n-tailhook-f14
    Any time you give a man something he doesn't earn, you cheapen him. Our kids earn what they get, and that includes respect. -- Woody Hayes​

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    When the issue of women in combat has come up, one of the things I have said for years is that fighter pilot is an ideal role for them. Physically, they are much better suited to fly high performance aircraft than they are to say, Infantry related tasks. Physiologically, women are capable of taking higher Gs than men are. They generally have quicker reflexes. They are not designed to hump 90 pounds of combat equipment extended distances over rough terrain, then close with and destroy the enemy in close quarters combat.
    “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.” - Barry Goldwater

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    Okay wow, that's pretty long but I'm hooked. Bookmarked!

    Kara adored her older sisters, Kirsten and Dagny. She wanted nothing more than to be around them and, textbook older siblings, they wanted nothing to do with her. She began life affectionate and eager to please, but in the face of constant rejection, she began to change. One day, when she was 9, Kara followed her sisters to the family room. They told her to scram, then locked the glass door behind them.

    “I’m coming through that door if you don’t let me in,” the furious child warned.

    The older girls laughed and taunted her from behind the heavy plate glass. Kara raised her arm in front of her like an offensive lineman throwing a block and ran straight at the door. When Dagny and Kirsten realized she wasn’t going to stop, they jumped back. Kara sailed through the glass and landed on her feet on the other side of the door. Shards of glass were everywhere, some of it hanging from the door frame. But Kara hardly had a scratch on her.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cletus View Post
    When the issue of women in combat has come up, one of the things I have said for years is that fighter pilot is an ideal role for them. Physically, they are much better suited to fly high performance aircraft than they are to say, Infantry related tasks. Physiologically, women are capable of taking higher Gs than men are. They generally have quicker reflexes. They are not designed to hump 90 pounds of combat equipment extended distances over rough terrain, then close with and destroy the enemy in close quarters combat.
    Ergonomics also kicks in here, in favor of woman. Woman have traditionally been used in manufacturing jobs where they were positioned in tight locations with limited movement. You would be surprised how often you would find them in pits under assembly lines working on the undercarriages of cars. Men have a much harder time not moving. Physically they can also work over-head much longer and have much better dexterity.
    Let's go Brandon !!!

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    Let em Fly.
    Look at the fuel they would save.

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    Found they had no choice and took it right into the danger zone. HELL...YEAH!!!!

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