![]() ![]() Americans also became more accepting of the idea that women could serve in hostile areas. military could no longer go to war without them. In the wake of Desert Storm, it was clear that women were part of the team. Their performance also shot down attacks on women that they were too weak, they would hurt unit cohesion, or they would get pregnant or claim family issues to avoid deploying. The war dispelled any remaining doubts about the capabilities of women under the pressure of combat. The combat exclusion law did not keep women from harm’s way: women logged combat time, thirteen died, twenty-one were wounded, and two became prisoners of war. Thirty thousand women deployed during Desert Shield and Desert Storm. (National Archives and Records Administration) Marie Rossi died the day after the cease-fire when her helicopter collided with an unlit radio tower during an early morning flight.Īn airman helps to move ordnance containers during Operation Desert Storm. She came within ninety miles of Baghdad during one mission. She never saw anyone shooting at her, but the missions inside Iraq allowed her to log twenty-two hours of combat time, just like her male counterparts. On the second day of the ground war, Calhoun and her Chinook lifted elements of the 101st Airborne Division to Forward Operating Base Cobra, ninety-three miles inside Iraq. That day, Major Marie Rossi, the company commander of one of Victoria Calhoun’s sister units, appeared on CNN, saying, “This is the moment that everybody trains for-that I’ve trained for-so I feel ready to meet the challenge.” In an intricate dance in the Syrian sky, thirsty aircraft gulped down fuel for their triumphant return to Incirlik.Īfter air forces demolished much of the Iraqi defenses, the ground war began on February 24. The fighters shed their cloaks of darkness one at a time as they neared the tanker. Halli maneuvered her tanker to a rendezvous point in the sky. ![]() The end of the light show signaled that it was time for her to prepare for the fighters’ return. First, Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery lit up the sky as the fighters neared their destination explosions from the ground followed as bombs and missiles pummeled the targets. While they waited, Halli observed the light show in the distance. But the enemy still shot at the larger aircraft, including once when a surface-to-air missile exploded above a tanker. The orbits kept the defenseless support aircraft far from Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missile sites. She and the other tankers then flew racetracks in the sky, waiting for the strikers to return in an hour or two. There were no legendary tanker pilots.Īt Iraq’s northern border, Halli started a U-turn as she watched the fighters enter Iraq and split up for their individual targets. Her four years at the Air Force Academy had been studded with tales of combat bravery, especially stories about legendary fighter pilots like the maverick and mustachioed Robin Olds, whose “Wolf Pack” of F-4s shot down seven North Vietnamese MiG-21s in a single engagement. One at a time, Halli’s fighters slid in, maneuvering below and behind the larger aircraft, inching closer and closer until the operator plugged the boom into the fighter and fuel flowed. As Halli neared the Iraqi border, the boom operator extended the refueling boom. Her tanker and the other aircraft in the strike package had departed from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey thirty minutes earlier. Halli led the flight of four fighter aircraft assigned to her for refueling. The aircrews talked to no one, not even to each other. ![]() So did the other two dozen aircraft trailing nearby. Although it was night, she had the lights out on her aircraft. A couple of weeks later, she piloted a KC-135 tanker headed toward Iraq. The day after Desert Storm started, Captain Christina Halli, a KC-135 tanker pilot at Minot Air Force Base, raised her hand to deploy. The next morning, Wells wrote, “THEY DID IT!” She wrote in her diary, “Tough! Tears my heart out. It was one of the hardest things she ever had to do. She and a chaplain from the local Air National Guard unit donned their service uniforms and arrived at the house at midnight. Wells was selected to notify the aircraft commander’s family of his death, since the family lived north of Houston. On August 28, while Wells was back home in Houston, one of her unit’s C-5s crashed on takeoff from Ramstein, Germany. Sigonella was a zoo-aircrews swapped stories about thirty-hour days with only ten hours of crew rest and being crammed into rooms with three people all trying to get some sleep. The next day, she flew to Rota, Spain, and then on to Sigonella, Italy. and flying it to the east coast of the U.S. On August 13, Wells flew her first Desert Shield mission, loading cargo in the U.S. The chief pilot called Wells back at ten thirty the next evening. She couldn’t understand why women weren’t eligible.
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