RAF Sends First Female Helicopter Crew Against Taliban

From left: Stephanie Cole, Michelle Goodman, Joanna Watkinson and Wendy Donald at their US training baseLike the Brits, American women soldiers are deployed as medevac helicopter pilots in Afghanistan. Reading this DefenseLink commentary on female soldiers in Army Aviation, I have no sense of how many women in Afghanistan are helicopter pilots.

My heart swelled, though, seeing this photo and headline out of the London Times: First female helicopter crew takes on Taliban

This is the first RAF all-woman combat helicopter flying together, four women taking troops and supplies to the frontline against the Taliban in Helmand. They will also airlift casualties to the hospital at Camp Bastion.

The Merlin crew includes Flight-Lieutenant Michelle Goodman, 32, from Bristol, the first woman to win the Distinguished Flying Cross. She and her co-pilot, Flight-Lieutenant Joanna Watkinson, 28, from Reading, have been preparing in California for the difficulties of flying in Afghanistan. The hot air, dust and high altitude pose particular problems for helicopters.

Loadmasters Sergeant Stephanie Cole, 24, from Wiltshire, and Sergeant Wendy Donald, 31, from Liverpool, have also been training at the US airbase at El Centro.

The RAF says that it’s coincidence that the women are flying together.

As an American woman who detests war but knows also that the Taliban are anything but good guys, I say: “Ladies, I am so proud of you.” 

Watkinson comes from a long line of RAF members. Her husband is an RAF navigator, grandfather an RAF pilot and her grandmother was one of the first women to be commissioned into the army.

“When I was younger, I always just thought that it was one of those make-believe dreams that you could one day be a pilot,” she said.

“There will be people that will always turn round and say, ‘Oh, you can’t do that, you’re a girl’. I’ve had a few people tell me that in the past and I’d like to see them one day and go, ‘hah, told you’.”

Update on 2009-11-22 15:31 by Anne

July 8, 2009 President Obama signed an order in July giving gold medals to about 300 or the 1,000 women who were members of the World War II-era Women Air Force Service Pilots — WASPs for short. Created during World War II, the all-women unit’s primary mission was flying non-combat military missions in the United States to free up their male counterparts for combat. They flew firtually every type of US military aircraft that existed at the time. via Sailors, Mariners & Warriors League.