Lt. Vicki Peterson sat at a table in a below-decks wardroom on this gigantic aircraft carrier one sunny morning last week surrounded by about 15 fellow officers, all of them men.
Even this far from the action on the flight deck, the thunder and deep, throaty roar of F-14 Tomcats being catapulted into the cobalt-blue Caribbean sky could be heard as well as felt.
More than 100 pilots and their support crews-again, all men-were conducting training operations on the 4 1/2-acre deck, launching and tailhook- trapping warplanes on a wind-blown day about 100 miles off the coast of Puerto Rico.
Peterson, a pilot in her mid-20s who has been in the Navy eight years, was one of only about 10 women on this carrier, which is home to more than 5,000 men.
And only a couple of the women aboard were Navy; the rest were with a visiting presidential commission that is studying whether to recommend dramatic changes in the role of women in the military.
Reforms the commission might recommend to Congress by its November deadline could include letting women into combat, and in the process removing the glass ceiling that lack of battlefield experience has on any military career. President Bush has pledged to go along with whatever the commission recommends.
From on-board testimony before the commission and in interviews, it`s clear that most of the men on the JFK believe-like it or not-that women soon would be serving alongside them aboard ship and in the air.
After decades of debate on the issue, some still don`t like it.
”If women came aboard this ship, say tomorrow, I would have a problem with my men focusing on what they need to do,” said Samuel Long, a chief in the air division. ”They aren`t used to women on a flight deck. Lives will be in jeopardy.”
And although Peterson eagerly seeks the same opportunities available to her male counterparts, she nodded in agreement time after time when they complained about the difficulties that have arisen since the Navy blazed ahead of the other armed services in more fully integrating women into non-combat operations.
Among these are sexual affairs and sexual harrassment, women reassigned because of pregnancy and leaving units understaffed, single mothers having no one to handle emergencies at home, wives who are opposed to women at sea stopping their husbands from re-enlisting.
Peterson was the first to say that ”women in the military should not be looked at as an equal-opportunity issue, but on the basis of combat readiness.”
She asked for a level playing field-no favors for women, just a chance for women to serve on combatant aircraft or vessels permanently in order to prove their abilities and their bravery.
”I`ve got women in my unit fully capable of flying A-6s,” Peterson said, referring to the attack bomber that during the Persian Gulf war delivered weapons deep into hostile territory.
At the commission`s earlier hearings in Washington and Chicago, most of the servicewomen who appeared expressed strong doubts that the military would significantly open up opportunities for them anytime soon.
At issue is a web of concerns that range from the effects of mixed-gender units on combat readiness to the reaction of spouses back home.
Servicewomen are currently assigned only temporarily on aircraft or ships that, like the JFK, are considered combatants, and only when the planes or vessels are conducting training operations.
This bars them from the all-important six-month maneuvers at sea and, of course, going off to fight a war.
One after another male officers voiced concern to commission members that women wouldn`t be able to perform as well as male professional soldiers on board and that the men would have to pick up the slack.
Some also predicted that women would be given special bunk and bathroom privileges-a situation they said would cause near-mutiny among sailors packed into bare-bones quarters with only eight showers for each 120 bunks.
And they pointed out that it would be nearly impossible to create any privacy for women on a floating city like the Kennedy. In some staterooms, bunk areas are cut in half by public corridors through which people-even cooks carrying tubs of food-must pass regularly.
In addition to a berth, which comes with a rock-hard mattress and a blue curtain that affords limited seclusion, each sailor is assigned a small locker to keep all his worldly goods. And that`s all.
The men grew especially agitated when the subject turned to past situations, either on shore or other vessels, in which a woman became pregnant and then went on medical disability, leaving the work detail short-staffed.
At a separate session with senior officers, Cmdr. Rob Nelson of the JFK`s F/A-18 Gunslingers squadron told the presidential commission:
”The Israelis and Russians tried it (women fighter pilots) and concluded it was a terrible idea . . . This job isn`t just driving the airplane, but putting missiles on target and killing the bad guys. Women`s attitudes aren`t suited to that.”
A few senior officers, veterans of 20 years or more, said they would resign their commissions if women joined the ranks of fighter pilots.
”If I were in trouble over enemy territory, I couldn`t count on a woman to save my butt,” said one, who insisted on anonymity.
Women aviators are equally frustrated and angry. Why, they ask, are women allowed to risk their lives flying transport planes full of male soldiers to the front line, as they did in the gulf, but cannot be assigned to combat aircraft? They said it amounts to a situation where women can be shot at but can`t shoot back.
Maturity is another factor that troubles midlevel officers on the Kennedy who oppose a mixed-gender force. The median age on the ship is only 19, and whether the Navy succeeds in transforming every sailor into a total professional, 19 is an age that comes with a certain amount of recklessness.
”Putting men and women together is a natural situation somewhere else, Virginia Beach or Florida. But not on a warship. It`s going to create a big morale problem,” Ariel Morales, a sailor from Puerto Rico, told the commission.
”The leadership cannot control carnal behavior. There`s so many places a boy and a girl can go on ship to be alone.”
Navy officials at Atlantic Fleet headquarters say that if the military can improve race relations and virtually eradicate drug use in the all-volunteer force, as it has, then it can also deal with opposition to women on combatant vessels.
”This is nothing more than a common-sense, middle-ground approach that is supported by the Navy command,” said one official. ”You will find that peer pressure will take over and attitudes will change.”
Robert Spiller, who has a wife in Sacramento, is unpersuaded. He said mixing the sexes aboard Navy vessels would be ”like leaving your wife at home, then throw in 10 to 15 members of the opposite sex, lock all the doors, give them food and don`t let them out for six months. It wouldn`t work.”
But Mike Allen of Rockingham, N.C., said, ”I feel that it has to work. It`s coming down the line and will take a lot of training on both sides. We`re professionals and we will have to act like professionals.”
