I knew from the outset that flight training at Pensacola was going to be great. I was on cloud nine. It was almost like being a fresh-caught midshipman again.
A Naval Academy classmate, Suzanne Grubbs, and I attended initial flight indoctrination classes with 36 guys. A lot of them were Naval Academy types, but many others had received their commissions through the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) or Aviation Officer Candidate School (AOCS) programs. Some of the academy guys were a little bit deferential toward us. The NROTC and AOCS guys had all gone to college with women, and treated Suzanne and me as equals. She and I felt, “Ah! We’re finally accepted.” We could relax and study and be like everybody else. The equality finally rubbed off on the academy guys. I think they also matured a little bit after they saw the outside world and realized everything was not just Boat School and the unique prejudices you find there.
I can never remember a day when Suzanne and I were not having the best time, even though we were studying very hard. If I had studied at the academy the way I studied at flight school, I would have been valedictorian. I guess it’s always that way when you find something you like.
Still, I’m not saying it wasn’t hard. It was very challenging. We worked our butts off, sweated bullets. We had our individual minor crises, of course: run-ins with instructors and stuff like that. But we could lean on each other emotionally, and it was so nice to be out of the academy and into an environment where women were already accepted. Women had been in the fleet for years. In the real Navy, too, women had been through flight school five years before us, so it was no big deal. I still don’t understand why gals didn’t jump at the chance to get into the aviation community where you can work with some of the most liberal men in the military. The Navy is very conservative, but the most easygoing guys, outgoing, open-minded people, in my opinion, biased as it is, are naval aviation.
Looking back, there was only one thing I was ever afraid of in the training—the helo-dunker. That's the can you get strapped into blindfolded, which is then submerged and turned upside down. You’re expected to get out of it after it’s filled up with water. And, somehow, everybody does. Still to this day, I haven't completely accepted that yet.
I've done it four different times now, because every time you get change-of-station orders, you have to do it. Still, it doesn’t get easier.
Qualifying to land on carriers wasn't as scary; it was thrilling. Of the physical things I've done, my carrier qual was the most exciting. Coming on board a carrier, you have to concentrate your whole mind on just two different instruments. You're looking at the optical landing system, and at your angle of attack, which tells you the air speed and attitude of your plane. You glance back and forth and line up. You touch down, and you hope the hook grabs. Your air speed is 130 knots, and you come to a stop in 100 feet or less. It's like hitting a telephone pole in a car. I've got bruises on my collar and hip bones from the jolt. But what a thrill!
You're concentrating so hard that you don’t have time to be scared. What’s so rewarding about it is, first, it’s operational, and, second, you do it yourself.
I made my first carrier flight off the USS Lexington (AVT-16). They put you on a catapult, hook you up, take up tension, and tell you to run up the power. After you’ve run it up, the only thing holding you back, keeping you from going anywhere, is this little hold-back fitting. When you’re ready to go, you wipe out your controls and make sure they’re not jammed, and scan your instruments to confirm that everything’s okay. If everything is all set, you salute the officer standing here, which tells him, “I’m ready to go. Catapult me.” So you put your head back against the chair so you don’t go kqkqkqkqkk, and lock your hand forward. You’ve got the throttle, and you hold on to this lever which keeps your hands from being thrown back and pulling your power to idle, so it kind of locks your hand. The officer looks down, clears you, back and fore, makes sure nobody is in the way, and then he touches the deck—you’ve seen that in movies, right? Then another guy reaches down and presses the catapult button, and off you go.
It’s at this point that I do my Tarzan yell—“Ahhhh!”—screaming the whole way down the flight deck. During the cat stroke is probably the only time that as a pilot you’re really not in control of your destiny. You’re just along for the ride. It’s amazing.
When Suzanne and I got our wings, women could not go directly into the jets like men could. Women had to negotiate primary flight training and then go through props, get great grades, and get winged before being allowed to submit requests for jets. Then, only two women a year were admitted into the jet community. If you finished at the right time, when a slot was ready as one was when Suzanne and I became eligible—and you had the grades, maybe you’d get the slot. Suzanne’s primary grades were excellent. I think she may have ranked as high as two in her class of 60 guys. She had some private flying time and was a really good stick. She and I were assigned to maritime props. Her grades were good in maritime, but maybe declining a little bit, while mine were improving. Though she had had better grades out of primary and we both had the jet cut-off grade, I ended up getting the slot because of my improvement, according to the detailer.
When my selection was announced, she was happy for me but personally disappointed. She was three years older than I was, a real go-getter. She thought it was asinine that she had had super grades and now had to prove herself again flying props. So she and I went down to Corpus Christi, together, and her attitude wasn’t really good.
Her boyfriend, who was, I think, a few classes ahead of her, was already in jets. He’d come over and leave his jet manual lying around the house, and that just made her green. I had never seen anybody get practically physically ill for months over something like this. After all, she had gone through all this baloney at the academy with flying colors, and then seemed to have lost out on her one big opportunity. But over the years, I’ve realized more and more how much it meant to her. We were good friends, and I can’t say it came between us, but it took her a long time to accept the fact.
Suzanne was assigned to C-1 carrier on-board delivery (COD), multiengine, rotary piston aircraft. She was stationed at Sigonella, Sicily. I was headed for the Philippines.
But first I went through a bunch of schools. Among them, the survival, escape, resistance, evasion (SERE) school was the most memorable.
Because the Navy’s school isn’t coed I went through the Air Force one, which is coed, in Spokane, Washington. Three weeks. Wow, what a course.
The first week of classes taught us, “Don’t eat this, you can’t eat that," how to build tents out of parachutes, how to use your survival equipment, Morse Code, how to use a signal mirror, flares, basic principles of survival, first aid, how to avoid hypothermia, and all that kind of stuff. Then we went into the mountains and spent a couple of days camping and learning how to do these things. The only thing we had was our flight suit and a parachute. There is no other gear or food. We all lost a lot of weight that week.
The rest of the week is spent doing orienteering, which is a sport that a lot of people do for fun, and they do it the right way with the proper shoes and beer cans in the pack. But we were doing it for real, hiking 10-15 miles a day in the mountains, using a compass, and learning to read terrain maps. It was interesting, and a lot of fun. You had to be in good shape.
There were more than 250 people there, and, I think, about six women. As a lieutenant (junior grade), I was one of the senior ones, and a jet pilot, which the Air Force folks found fascinating since their women only teach. I led a squad, and we hiked all over the Cascades.
The last few days focused more on evasion tactics. We camouflaged ourselves and attempted to avoid detection for two days. You're starving to death by this time, just starving, chewing on pine needles for the vitamin C, drinking a lot of water to keep from getting dehydrated.
Finally, they caught us and put us in a POW camp. They'd usually work it in two phases over about two, two-and-a-half days. Initially, you're in solitary the whole time for the first day and a half. After we went through all that, they put us in a work camp to simulate working with people and setting up communications links. It all was very interesting.
The training was not modified in any way for the women participating. I was so impressed with the fact that, compared to Navy, these guys were finally addressing the issue of women in combat. I mean, the Air Force is talking like it's happening now, which it is. There are a lot of gals in the Middle East and the Orient who could possibly run into trouble on the ground. For instance, the POW scenario was that your C-141 crew has gone down in hostile North Vietnam territory and the enemy captured one woman and eight men. They want you to tell them about your radar. You won't give, and they won't give, but something's got to give. We all discussed this afterward in discussion groups and seminars. "Bob" was asked, if they were threatening him with death would he tell the characteristics of this top secret radar. No. What if they applied force, would he tell? "No, of course not," Bob said.
What if they say, "If you don't tell, we're going to abuse her." Then what are you going to do? Bob said, "I'll tell."
I found myself yelling, "Bob, don't tell! I can take it. Don't do that."
Then they asked Bob, "What if they say they're going to rape her? What if one of them rapes her right in front of you, Bob? What are you going to do?" "I'll kill the bastard," Bob responded." "No, Bob. If you do that, they'll shoot everybody else," I said.
I said what had to be said: "Bob, it's okay. Let the guy rape me. He's not raping my mind; he's raping my body. I'll heal. Don't give away top secrets, because if you do, it will happen again and again and again."
These points are finally coming out, and we are able to discuss them. This situation is going to happen someday. The Navy is not addressing the male-female relationship in a POW situation. The Air Force is.
After I finished SERE school, I completed a couple more flight prep courses in San Diego and went to the Philippines for two years. I flew single-seat A-4Es, which is the same air frame the Blue Angels fly, with a little bit smaller engine, but it’s still a bigger one than the one we use in training.
I experienced some interesting situations as a woman with the foreign air forces and navies. The Japanese and the Koreans, especially, are a little leery about dealing with a woman— especially me when I got more senior in the last year, I was officer in charge of a detachment and would often fly up and represent the squadron at conferences and meetings. They just weren’t real hot about telling a woman what their requirements were going to be for the next exercise next month. Brusquely, they’d say, we’ll need eight sorties here, we’ll need some target services on this date, “blah, blah, blah.” Obviously, they were uncomfortable dealing with women.
It was funny, but I found out that my being tall helped. I was always very polite and professional. As long as you give those guys a medium to work with, they’re okay. If you sort of act like a man, keeping your voice neutral, don’t smile a lot, be very serious, and don’t try to flirt at all, the Japanese and the Koreans would relax a little bit. They remained stiff and formal by American standards, but they’d at least listen. I’d get interrupted many times. I’d be in the middle of the brief, “Sir, I’m from VC-5. These are our assets available. On this day we’re deploying here and will be going there ...” when some Japanese Navy captain would stand up and interrupt me and talk to my male assistant. He’d say, “Lieutenant (junior grade) Smith, do you have any D-704 buddy stores?” I didn’t get upset. I’d let Smith answer the question if he could. But, often, he looked at me because he didn’t know. “Yes, we do,” I’d say.
It was their culture. I wasn’t going to try to change that. I was there to participate in the exercise, not to make a statement.
I also had the thrill of shooting down a couple of our guys during exercises. That’s fun. And I’ve had an opportunity to be there when a fellow aviator needed me. One time I jumped in a tanker in the winter, in bad weather, to fly out over the Sea of Japan to give a guy the gas he really needed. Months later, he’d see me in the club and buy me a beer and say thank you. It was neat.
Then one day out there in the Philippines, I was reading in the Sunday paper an article that said, “Two C-1s, midair in Sigonella, Sicily.” I thought, “Oh, my God.” They didn’t have any names. How many C-1 pilots in Sig can there be? For the first time in my life, I was able to get through on the Autovon line, halfway around the world. In about two minutes, I talked to the C-1 squadron duty officer. I said, “Listen. I don’t know if you can release this on the telephone to a stranger, but Lieutenant Grubbs is a good buddy of mine. I just want to know if she’s okay.”
The guy paused and said, “Ma’am, she’s not okay.” He didn’t have to say anything else. I tried to get some details, but they didn’t know anything. There were two of them, they both went down. They figured it must have been a midair. They never did find any debris, nothing.
When I called Suzanne’s mom from WestPac to offer my condolences, I was really impressed. Her mom was a real strong gal. She told me, “After a year of heartache over the jet thing, Suzanne was finally happy. She was engaged.” Unfortunately, her fiance was in the other COD that went down. Her mother continued, “We got a couple of letters from her recently. She was in love, and she was to transition to jets. She had orders to Meridian, and was to leave the next year.”
Good for you, Suzanne. You died happy.
I’m most proud to be a naval aviator tail-hooker. I feel like I’m on top of the world. The happiest I’ve ever been was during my WestPac tour flying with the fleet at night doing dangerous stuff. Being in the front lines is where the action really is. And I want to go back.
This edited and abridged excerpt is from an interview that is part of an ongoing oral history project to collect the reminiscences of the first female graduates of the Naval Academy. Lieutenant Lewis, Naval Academy class of 1980, was interviewed by Susan Sweeney while serving as a flight instructor with VT-4 at Pensacola in November 1985. For a catalog containing summaries of over 160 oral histories currently available, send $3.00 to Director of Oral History, U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland 21402.