A New Flight Path : Women Fliers See Training as Combat Pilots as Widening Their Military Career Choices

At Navy flight school, Susan Decker mastered sophisticated airplane control panels, flew loops and barrel rolls and practiced emergency aircraft landings--just as the male students did.

“We were all in classes together, we were all flying together,” said Decker, 28, a former schoolteacher who is now a Navy lieutenant. “However, we all knew we were aiming for different things toward the end.”

Knowing that women were barred from flying aircraft used in combat, Decker and the three or four other females in her class of about 100 had half as many possible assignments to choose from after graduation.

Decker chose the most exciting position open to her: piloting a cargo plane for the VXE-6 Antarctica Research Squadron based at Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station.

But, she said, “I knew I got my job based solely on gender.”

Now the walls that limited Decker’s career options are coming down.

She and two other female aviators from the Antarctica squadron at Point Mugu are among the first women assigned for combat training since the Navy on April 29 lifted its ban on women flying planes that carry weapons.

The three Ventura County women--Decker, Lt. Linda Overby and Lt. j.g. Mary Rimmel--expect to begin training by August in Jacksonville, Fla., where they will learn to fly planes that track and attack submarines.

The three aviators know they are making history.

But there is a more straightforward reason they want to train for combat: It is a good career move.

With the Navy proposing to reduce its forces by about 15%, to 480,000 over the next 16 months, the number of possible career paths is shrinking.

And, because the cutbacks have been concentrated in the noncombat areas where women have typically served, female members of the service stood to suffer most from the reductions--until the combat restriction was lifted, Navy officers said.

“Two weeks ago I was worried how I was going to stay in the Navy,” Decker said. “Now they’ve opened up a whole new career path. Now I’ve got another 20 years.”

Decker is a full-fledged pilot. Rimmel and Overby are aircraft navigators who use everything from the stars to radar to guide pilots.

“We’re in the back seat telling the pilot how to get from Point A to Point B,” said Rimmel, 28, a Port Hueneme resident.

But the combat restriction was as limiting for Rimmel and Overby as for Decker because female navigators were not allowed on planes loaded with missiles, torpedoes or other weapons.

“It was a little frustrating because you knew you were so limited in what you could do,” said Overby, 28, who lives in Camarillo.

Likewise, Rimmel said she did not have to think twice when their executive officer called her and the handful of other women in her squadron into his office two weeks ago to offer them the chance to enroll for combat training.

Rimmel says she told her executive officer: “I’m ready to go. I’ll take it.”

The Antarctica research squadron has seven women among its 40 pilots and navigators. The other four are expected to be offered combat training next year.

When Rimmel, Overby and Decker finish their six months’ training next spring, they will be assigned to squadrons flying P-3 Orions armed with radar and torpedoes to find and destroy submarines.

As for the possibility that their duties may lead them to kill the occupants of enemy submarines in future U.S. military missions, all three women said they are prepared.

“We’re trained the exact same way guys are,” Rimmel said.

In addition to their training, Overby said there may be another reason the three aviators are not troubled by the thought of taking the lives of enemies.

“This is kind of bad to say,” Overby said. “But we’re a little more detached because we’re in the air. We don’t see the result.”

Just as they will be a threat to their opponents in combat, the three aviators will become targets when they are flying P-3 Orions.

But danger is nothing new to these women.

As members of the Antarctica squadron, they have spent seven months a year on the icy continent ferrying National Science Foundation researchers and their equipment to various outposts.

The flying conditions on Antarctica are among the most treacherous faced by aviators, said Lt. Mike Brennan, a helicopter pilot in the crew.

“The weather there will creep up in a heartbeat,” changing from perfectly clear to a blizzard without warning, he said.

Besides, Brennan said, the women aviators had to be good to get where they are.

Of the Navy’s 17,450 pilots and navigators, including those now in flight school, only 400 are women.

Rimmel, Overby and Decker said they have received nothing but congratulations and support from their male colleagues, boyfriends and families.

Rimmel’s father, a retired Navy man, said that when he served with the Seabees in the Vietnam War, he did not believe women could handle combat.

“But they’ve proved they can do it,” said Samuel Rimmel, 57, who lives in Mississippi. “They proved it in Desert Storm.”

He still believes women should be barred from ground warfare.

“It’s too strenuous,” he said.

But Rimmel said he sees no reason his daughter should be treated differently than male aviators in times of war.

“As long as she can fly the planes and do what she’s supposed to, there’s no reason why she can’t serve in combat,” he said. “She’s not better than the other sailors. If she wants to serve her country, she has to take what comes.”