1st woman pilot selected for Thunderbirds

First Woman Gets Silver Star Since WWII
Jun 16, 11:16 PM EDT
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN - Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A 23-year-old sergeant with the Kentucky National Guard on Thursday became the first female soldier to receive the Silver Star - the nation's third-highest medal for valor - since World War II.

Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester, who is from Nashville, Tenn., but serves in a Kentucky unit, received the award for gallantry during a March 20 insurgent ambush on a convoy in Iraq. Two men from her unit, the 617th Military Police Company of Richmond, Ky., also received the Silver Star for their roles in the same action.

According to military accounts of the firefight, insurgents attacked the convoy as it traveled south of Baghdad, launching their assault from trenches alongside the road using rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Hester and her unit moved through enemy fire to the trenches, attacking them with grenades before entering and clearing them.

She killed at least three insurgents with her M4 rifle, according to her award citation. In the entire battle, 26 or 27 insurgents were killed and several more were captured, according to various accounts. Several Americans were also wounded in the firefight.

"Her actions saved the lives of numerous convoy members. Sgt. Hester's bravery is in keeping with the finest traditions of military heroism," her award citation reads.
 
:yes: :yes: :yes:

You go, people!

(Now where is a saluting smiley?)

Terry
 
A lot of women are heroes that's why we gave them a whole day (MOTHER'S DAY). These women just get public recognition for what they do.
 
Sorry, I'm just not big on women in the military, especially combat. I know I'll get ridiculed, but I think it can degrade the performance of their male counterparts.
 
Anthony said:
Sorry, I'm just not big on women in the military, especially combat. I know I'll get ridiculed, but I think it can degrade the performance of their male counterparts.
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Having actually served beside them, in war and peace, for more than a decade, I've got enough real life experience to say that your theory is wrong. Nearly everybody I've heard repeat it is either an old man who served decades ago when the military was drastically different than it is now, or never served. They just don't have the first hand experience to know what they are talking about. I served in the military machine that destroyed one of the largest military machines on the planet in a matter of days, did so with ease, and did so with only a few hundred casualties on our side vs hundreds of thousands on the enemy side. Our military was the most dangrous killing force this planet has ever seen. Women were a major part of that, peacetime and war time. I suspect some folks just have a hard time dealing with the fact that women can be such successful killers. Today, with our military having been reduced in size and stretched so thin, women are an even more vital part of our nation's security.
 
Anthony said:
Sorry, I'm just not big on women in the military, especially combat. I know I'll get ridiculed, but I think it can degrade the performance of their male counterparts.
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No ridicule from me - I agree. However, see my response to Joe below for further clarification.
 
Joe Williams said:
Nearly everybody I've heard repeat it is either an old man who served decades ago when the military was drastically different than it is now...
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Thanks a lot... ya young whippersnapper! (From one who suspects he's not all that much older...) :rofl:
 
gkainz said:
No ridicule from me - I agree. However, see my response to Joe below for further clarification.
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Well, maybe I am old and traditional. :) I'm not saying women can't perform well. I just know how I and friends acted around women at 18, 19, 20.....
Can you say, ahh, distracted?
 
Anthony said:
Well, maybe I am old and traditional. :) I'm not saying women can't perform well. I just know how I and friends acted around women at 18, 19, 20.....
Can you say, ahh, distracted?
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Bet they don't distract you when ---- hits the fan and you are wondering if you are going to get out of the situation alive. Also if our nation would not allow women to serve today then we would have to go back to the mandatory draft. Much to high of a percent of the military is women to loose this number.

Also the old saying if the military wanted you to have a wife they would issue you one. Well they did for me and I got a good one. ;)
 
Women have now been flying fighters long enough to have the qualifications and experience for these elite teams, so I guess it's due. Fact is that if you reject women, you have to lower the standards to get the number of people needed for the job, and that digs into quality. Back when I got recruited, they took people in for flight training that they wouldn't even look at today (some of whom were REALLY scary to fly with), and I think it's good that we have a wider base from which to draw, since it lets us be more selective. The only question in my mind is whether she can hack the grind of being on a flight demo team, but that's a question that applies to everyone on such a team, and in the past men have had to call "knock it off" and leave the team for reasons ranging from physical to flight skills. So I wish her well as much as I would anyone else picked for this very demanding job -- one I sure wouldn't want myself.
 
sere said:
Bet they don't distract you when ---- hits the fan and you are wondering if you are going to get out of the situation alive.
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Since women didn't serve in combat units when I was in, I can only speculate...however, my speculation is that I would be more distracted, but not in the way originally intended...I would be distracted trying to watch out for and protect them...just my own speculation here, however.
 
DeeG said:
Kinda cool, has a list of active F16 pilots and their hours. Seems it takes a while to build time in those things, only one has over 5000.
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My former supervisor at another company was a retired F-16 squadron commander. He finished up his career with just over 3,000 hours in 21 years. While it didn't really equate to much "flying" time relative to some high time GA and most ATP's, they have a LOT more groundwork and sim time.

Maybe someone can confirm: sim time isn't in the hours count for military, correct? And the military counts flying hours by wheels off the runway to wheels on the runway? That would shorten the time up, too.
 
Brian Austin said:
My former supervisor at another company was a retired F-16 squadron commander. He finished up his career with just over 3,000 hours in 21 years.
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I learned to fly in ~'86 at an FBO where the owner's son was an active Navy F-14 pilot. He and I were talking one day when he discovered how quickly I was accumulating time (I was flying 300-350 hours/year). He was amazed, and I remember more than anything his shocked reply, "Military pilots don't fly that much!". This was back in the day when the Navy flying budget was virtually unlimited and he would regularly "borrow the keys" for a weekend jaunt across the country. I suspect military pilots fly much less today, but I've lost my data point. He exited the Navy during the major military budget cuts of the late 80's & early 90's--he wasn't getting enough flight time anymore.
 
gkainz said:
Since women didn't serve in combat units when I was in, I can only speculate...however, my speculation is that I would be more distracted, but not in the way originally intended...I would be distracted trying to watch out for and protect them...just my own speculation here, however.
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Judging by your statement women did not serve in a combat role then I date your service during a time we had a DOD Regulation 1300.7 that banned them from combat role. That has changed. Having taught 10's of thousands going through the USAF Survival School to include a lot of time teaching POW (stuff) I can tell you that they do very well as a whole. If you compare they by percentage they do better then men as a whole. As for protecting them our military training is to take care of each (all) other to the best of our ability. I understand where you are coming from but times are changing. I never expected to see the American people willing to see women come home in body bags but that has changed in the last 15 years. The way I look at it is if you are going to be in the military then "ALL" should share equal pay, for equal responsibility and have equal risk. That is what we are seeing today in our military. God bless each and every one of them who put there life at risk for us. And lets not forget the unselfish and faithful service there families provide also.
 
Brian Austin said:
My former supervisor at another company was a retired F-16 squadron commander. He finished up his career with just over 3,000 hours in 21 years. While it didn't really equate to much "flying" time relative to some high time GA and most ATP's, they have a LOT more groundwork and sim time.

Maybe someone can confirm: sim time isn't in the hours count for military, correct? And the military counts flying hours by wheels off the runway to wheels on the runway? That would shorten the time up, too.
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I logged a little over 1000 hours in the E-2 in 4 years of flight crew status with the Navy. Sim hours didn't count toward flight hours, and hours were logged from "airborne" to "on deck".
 
sere said:
Having taught 10's of thousands going through the USAF Survival School to include a lot of time teaching POW (stuff) I can tell you that they do very well as a whole. If you compare they by percentage they do better then men as a whole.
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Is that similar to the Navy's SERE school? I think if I were being questioned while kneeling beside a woman who was strapped to the water board, I'm afraid I would have a whole different set of responses than I did while kneeling next to a male classmate.
 
Typically, fighter types get 200-250 flight hours per year -- more in the types that fly longer missions (A-6/F-111, for example, and I'd guess the F-15E now, flew 2.0-2.3), and less in the types that fly the short missions (F-4's and F-16's, for example, flew 0.7 to 1.5). Remember that a 1.5-hour fighter mission is a lot more intense than a 3-hour flight in your C-172 or an 8-hour transatlantic drone in a 777. Transport and bomber crews ran more like 500-600 hours per year.

I remember when Brad Insley was the first person to go over 4000 hours of F-111 time in 1987 -- took him almost 20 years, all of it in the cockpit, and only a couple of others had even 3000. Took him 3-1/2 more years to make 5000 in late 1990, and he remains the only person with either of those landmarks. In the F-16 community, after 25 years, there's only one with 5000 and six with 4000. But if you run the numbers, you'll see that if you fly 4 times a week (a lot in a fighter), it will take that long to get those sorts of hours, especially when you factor in the nearly-inevitable periodic non-flying duty assignments thrown into your career.
 
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gkainz said:
Is that similar to the Navy's SERE school? I think if I were being questioned while kneeling beside a woman who was strapped to the water board, I'm afraid I would have a whole different set of responses than I did while kneeling next to a male classmate.
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Yes it is as I used to work with them from time to time. And your response is a normal one that we would work with all students on.
 
Brian Austin said:
My former supervisor at another company was a retired F-16 squadron commander. He finished up his career with just over 3,000 hours in 21 years. While it didn't really equate to much "flying" time relative to some high time GA and most ATP's, they have a LOT more groundwork and sim time.
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One of the pilots that flew Lear's for the 135 op that i worked for used to fly the SR-71. We were talking about all the different planes we had flow, and he showed me his resume, and it listed all his flight time in various types of aircraft. It was pretty impressive. It was humbling to list all the Cessna, Piper and Beech products that i had time in when all his GA time was 'lumped' into one catagory. I cannot remember the exact number of hours in the SR71 that he had (maybe 100 or so?) in the years he flew it, and I asked how come he had such low time for so many years flying. And he stated that it was difficult to build time in a plane that went coast to coast in an hour. DUH!
 
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