(F-14 Tomcat in Zone Five head into the sunset. Photo USN.)

I woke in the darkness this morning, almost prepared to deal with 2011. The frantic activity of the last two weeks is over. A pal described the challenge as being part of the “Sandwich Generation,” since requirements coming at us from the older generation and the younger one, with us being the salami and cheese in the middle.

The Bluesmobile is headed south to support Ensign Socotra’s report to his first duty station, TAD, while waiting for the start-date at the training command. I will be back to driving the fancy Hubrismobile with the wide high-performance tires that don’t work in the snow, which is coming tomorrow.

I cannot stop pondering the violence in Arizona. I went several minutes worrying about second unidentified conspirators before I read a note from a pal out west, who as part of his work with State and Local Law Enforcement had been asked to contribute to the investigation.

Logger reported that the picture of the second suspect captured on the closed-circuit security camera at the Safeway Market had been examined by his experts, which revealed a man walking behind the shooter exiting the store. Using Facial Recognition process, the image was run against several photo databases and his guys got a hit on an Arizona drivers license photo. The suspect was identified, contacted and it was determined that he was the taxi-driver who had no role in the shootings.

That is cold comfort, but maybe technology will get us out of this endless cycle of terrorists and loons. I am getting pretty tired of deranged lone gunmen. Aren’t you?

I am an absolutist on matters pertaining to the Constitution, and I know that the Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting and everything about providing a check against the tyranny of the State. You only have to go to the Third Amendment, the one that holds that “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

The Framers were adamant about the People’s right not to be oppressed by the Army of a tyrant, and there has been no controversy about the Third Amendment’s intent as there is about the Second, or the First, for that matter.

I wish I had something constructive to offer, and it depresses me that I don’t.

I told you I was going to talk about the social issues that confronted us during the period when Kara Hultgreen went in the water after ejecting from her F-14 Tomcat.

I am not out to rehash ancient history, but to compare what was happening then with what is happening now, in the wake of the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

The F-14 was a very unforgiving airframe. We all knew guys who had come close to dying in the big jet, and some who did. One of my pals worked for a guy who made four stars after surviving a flat spin induced after misjudging a high-speed rendezvous. It goes to show you that sometimes stuff just happens very quickly.

My pal was actually on USS Abraham Lincoln the day Kara went in the water. He told me that his first awareness of the incident was the 1MC call:  “Aircraft in the water, port side.”

The recriminations began almost as soon as the recovery operations began, and that is where Elaine Donnelly comes into the picture.

For its part, the Navy did what it always does in the case of a aircraft incident, particularly a Class Alpha one. That is defined as “a mishap in which total cost of damage is $1,000,000 or more and/or death or permanent total disability” results.

Kara’s death brought new attention to female combat pilots. Among those interested was Elaine Donnelly, who had formed an organization called the Center for Military Readiness in 1993 to be what she proclaimed was  “an independent, non-partisan, educational organization” formed to promote “sound military personnel policies in the armed forces.”

Although Elaine’s organization has tax-exempt status as a non-partisan 501(c)(3) educational organization, Elaine has been on the front lines of the culture wars since the beginning. The Navy was the sandwich between the social conservative movement and the forces of progressive feminists.

What was happening in he larger society was clearly going to happen, sooner or later, to the hidebound naval service, of which we ironically observed at the time consisted of “200 years of tradition and no progress.”

That was not true, of course. Having committed itself to implementing the mandate to integrate women into the Fleet, the Navy moved out. Through Elaine’s organization a desperate rear-guard action was fought. Confidential personnel records were strategically leaked.  

In early 1995, Elaine sent a letter to Senator Strom Thurmond, then Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, claiming that the Navy was promoting unqualified women in “the demanding and dangerous field of carrier aviation in the F-14 community.”

n her letter, Donnelly quoted at length a disgruntled Lieutenant who had briefly been the flight instructor of both female Tomcat pilots. The implication was that women couldn’t handle the mission, unit cohesion was being damaged and combat readiness harmed.
As time demonstrated, that was simply not true. The Navy was stuck in the sandwich prepared by the larger society, but stayed the course. There were issues, of course, though not as many as there were out here in the larger society with the loons.

There is a whole new generation of young women and men for whom the whole gender stereotype model that was so contentious is then is simply irrelevant.

By the time I was back to sea on a Numbered Fleet Staff, a equally new generation of strike fighters was in the Fleet, and the best bomber in one West Coast Airwing was an awesomely competent young Lieutenant who preferred pink nail polish for a mission I observed against the Chocolate Mountain range in Nevada.

I asked my son whether his OCS class had talked about the latest sandwich in which the Navy has been placed by Ms. Donnelly and social progressives.

He just shrugged, and said it really hadn’t come up. Class 04-11 was too busy trying to do the mission.

( LCDR Loree Draude Hirschman in the cockpit of an F/A-18 Hornet. She flew her S-3B Viking aboard USS Lincoln the same day Lt. Kara Hultgreen was killed. It was not an easy deployment, but she was not intimidated. Photo Hirschman.)

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
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