She'll have the captains quarters in no time.
Posted on 08/01/2011 9:59:09 PM PDT by smokingfrog
HARTFORD, Conn. ---- For Ensign Peggy LeGrand, the biggest concern about serving on a submarine is not spending weeks at a time in tight quarters with an entirely male crew. What worries her is the scrutiny that comes with breaking one of the last gender barriers in the U.S. military.
"I have a feeling more people will be focused on us. Our mistakes and successes will be magnified more than they deserve," said LeGrand, 25, a Naval Academy graduate from Amarillo, Texas.
LeGrand is among a small group of female officers who are training at sites including Groton, Conn., to join the elite submarine force beginning later this year. While the Navy says it is not treating them any differently from their male counterparts, officials have been working to prepare the submarine crews ---- and the sailors' wives ---- for one of the most dramatic changes in the 111-year history of the Navy's "silent service."
The initial class of 24 women will be divided among four submarines, where they will be outnumbered by men by a ratio of roughly 25 to 1. The enlisted ranks, which make up about 90 percent of a sub's 160-sailor crew, are not open to women ---- although the Navy is exploring modifications to create separate bunks for men and women.
The female officers, many of them engineering graduates from Annapolis, are accustomed to being in the minority, and so far they say they hardly feel like outsiders. The nuclear power school that is part of their training, for example, has been open to women for years because the Navy in 1994 reversed a ban on females serving on its surface ships, including nuclear-powered vessels.
(Excerpt) Read more at nctimes.com ...
Are these women ready for all the seamen?
As long as the Navy doesn’t give the billet to a “Horrible Holly” type.
She'll have the captains quarters in no time.
Someday, traveling to Obama’s grave site will be a great pilgrimage for real Americans.
We have much to show him by our emptying our bladders on his eternal resting place.
I'm old school... u cant put a women in a foxhole with a guy and expect them not to notice a difference in their down time....
Maybe some day..but we haven't evolved enough yet...
A nub ensign?
This is gonna work out well. /s
On a sub you have 90 some non comms and maybe 14 officers.
The CO and XO, Nav officer and the OOD get respect.
All the others better talk to the COB
0bama would sell the whole US Navy to the Chicoms if he could get away with it.
A male Lt is going to get a lesson, let alone a female ensign.
If junior officers get special treatment, it will ruin the way order is run on a submarine.
Expect lots of unplanned pregnancies sooner than later.
On a boat, senior enlisted men are respected.
This gal better not come in with something to prove.
That is the least of my concerns, but if there is any of that it will create major problems.
My main concern is that this very junior officer wont get the same temperament that others must have to effectively run a boat.
We’ll see what happens, but I don’t like it already.
Does she get her own shower?
90+ guys sharing 2 showers and some gal gets her own?
That’s gonna be an issue with folks enduring hardships.
This is such a load of $&%#!!!
I feel lucky that I never had to deal with the crap that comes along with women serving on combat ships. I got off my ship 2 months before they got their first women officers. Everyone on board was against it and I still have friends in the Navy who tell me it has never been the same. Women do not belong on combat ships and they absolutely positively do not belong on submarines.
The more this kind of stuff happens the more im convinced that this country has seen it’s best days.
Me brudder, on an LST and a destroyer tender in the 80s, saw his ship/shore rotation go from 3 years/3 years to 5 years/1 year after his rate was femalified because the Navy’s machine shop women at sea usually got as pregnant as possible as often as possible to get mandated shore berthing for birthing.
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