Female fighter wing commander breaking ground for her gender

Gestart door jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter), 02/06/2012 | 14:50 uur

KapiteinRob

Ik heb het "vergelijkend warenonderzoek" m.b.t. de geplaatste USAF-pilotes verwijderd. Die topic gaat over het commando van kolonel Leavitt, niet over "USAF-babes". En voor de bijdehandjes: daar hoef je ook geen topic over te openen.....  ;)

Rob
Forumbeheerder

Tanker

Stoere dame, is effe wat anders als die burger bij de KMAR die in 1 klap gemilitariseerd word en generaal gemaakt word.
Het gaat daar er iets anders aan toe als bij onze mickey mouse krijgsmacht....

jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)

Citaat van: www.fayobserver.com Vandaag om 02:50
Female fighter wing commander breaking ground for her gender

The 4th Fighter Wing flies the multirole, all-weather F-15E and has two training squadrons and two operational squadrons. The commander has responsibility for $5.1 billion in assets and an annual operations and maintenance budget of $240 million.

;D Col. Jeannie M. Leavitt, deze dame heeft in haar eentje meer power ter beschikking dan de gehele KLu  :'(

jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)

Female fighter wing commander breaking ground for her gender

Published: 08:26 PM, Fri Jun 01, 2012

By Henry Cuningham

GOLDSBORO - Col. Jeannie M. Leavitt on Friday became the first woman in Air Force history to take her first salute as commander of a fighter wing.

She returned the salute from the airmen in light-blue short-sleeved shirts standing in formation on a hot, humid morning after taking command of the 4th Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.

Leavitt, 45, is an F-15E Strike Eagle command pilot from St. Louis. She replaced Col. Patrick J. Doherty as commander of the 5,000-airman wing during the outdoor ceremony on Wright Brothers Avenue. In the official remarks, no one mentioned that she is shattering another glass ceiling in the Air Force.

"It is true I'm the first female to command a fighter wing," she said when asked after the ceremony. "More important is the wing itself. It's got incredible history. I am proud to serve in an Air Force where men and women have the same opportunity based on how you perform and your capabilities."

The 4th Fighter Wing flies the multirole, all-weather F-15E and has two training squadrons and two operational squadrons. The commander has responsibility for $5.1 billion in assets and an annual operations and maintenance budget of $240 million.

By virtue of timing, Leavitt has been "first female" all of her career. Leavitt was the first American woman to enter combat training as a fighter pilot and became the Air Force's first mission-qualified female fighter pilot, base officials said. She was the first female fighter pilot to graduate from the U.S. Air Force Weapons School and went on to become a USAF Weapons School instructor.

Milestone week

This is a week of milestones for women in the Air Force.

On Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Janet Wolfenbarger will become the Air Force's first female four-star general as commander of Air Force Materiel Command in Ohio.

In November 2008, Army Gen. Ann Dunwoody became the first female four-star general in the U.S. military, and perhaps the world, at Army Materiel Command, then at Fort Belvoir, Va.

Wolfenberger graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1980 in the first class to include women. One of her classmates was Debra Dubbe Gray, 53, a retired Air Force colonel, who has returned to her hometown of Stedman.

"I'm extremely proud of her," Gray said. "I know her personally. She's been an outstanding officer her whole career and couldn't be nicer."

Gray recently saw Wolfenberger at their 30-year class reunion.

"She has the right blend of capability and temperament," Gray said. "To meet her, you would never know she was wearing that kind of rank. She's very unassuming."

Gray, a 1976 graduate of Cape Fear High School, is the daughter of Robert and Winona Dubbe of Stedman.

Gray and Wolfenberger were in the first wave of women who took advantage of the 1975 law that mandated the admission of women into West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy in the fall of 1976.

"It started really with the service academies," Gray said. "That was the first piece of the puzzle. We started, and we didn't know we could go to flight training. We just kind of came on a wing and a prayer."

The first 10 women graduated from Air Force undergraduate pilot training on Sept. 2, 1977, at Williams Air Force Base, Ariz.

"It's been one thing after the next, slowly," said Gray, who was a navigator.

Things were just starting to open up in the combat cockpit when Leavitt received a bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering degree at the University of Texas in 1990 and a master's at Stanford a year later.

At Pope Air Force Base in the early 1990s, women were getting jobs on C-130E cargo airplanes that had been closed to them until 1989. Women from Pope Air Force Base flew the A-10 attack jet in combat.

Nowadays, two of three group commanders in the 440th Airlift Wing at Pope Field are women. The 440th Maintenance Group commander is Col. Sharon Johnson, and the 440th Mission Support Group commander is Col. Kerri Grimes.

Female squadron commanders are Lt. Col. Laura Radley, 53rd Aerial Port Squadron; Lt. Col. Lisa Maloney, 440th Security Forces Squadron; Maj. Meredith Curran, 440th Logistics Readiness Squadron; Lt. Col. Christine Locke, 43rd Operation Support Squadron; Lt. Col. Michelle Hall, 43rd Logistics Readiness Squadron; and Lt. Col. Jeanette Ketchum, 3rd Aerial Port Squadron.

At Pope, "battlefield airmen" positions such as combat controller have been among the last all-male bastions in the Air Force. Those airmen work in small groups, often with Army forces in hostile areas.

Elsewhere in the Air Force, Col. Dawn M. Dunlop is commander of the 412th Test Wing at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. Her wing tests and evaluates fighter, bomber, cargo, tanker and remotely piloted aircraft.

Gray said the changes and opportunities bode well for the future of her 8-year-old daughter.

"We've gotten beyond who's a man and who's a woman, and to who can do the best job?" Gray said. "That's a healthy example for my daughter and all the girls in the country to see you don't have to be limited by anything."

http://www.fayobserver.com/articles/2012/06/02/1181480?sac=fo.local