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On the 30th Anniversary of American Women in Combat, Retired Air Force Colonel Eileen Bjorkman joins host Johnny Punish to share the untold story of womenโs fight to fly. Thirty years ago this April, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin ordered the military to train women for combat aircraft.
The same month, General Merrill McPeak, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force (USAF), introduced the first three women fighter pilots to the public: Lt. Jeannie Flynn, Lt. Martha Mc Sally, and Capt. Sharon Preszler. Retired Colonel Eileen A. Bjorkman talks about her new book “The Fly Girls Revolt: The Story of the Women Who Kicked Open the Door to Fly in Combat” It’s the untold story of the women military aviators of the 1970s and 1980s who kicked open the door to fly in combat in 1993โalong with the story of the women who paved the way before them.
In 1993, U.S. women earned the right to fly in combat, but the full story of how it happened is largely unknown. From the first women in the military in World War II to the final push in the 1990s, The Fly Girls Revolt chronicles the actions of a band of women who overcame decades of discrimination and prevailed against bureaucrats, chauvinists, anti-feminists, and even other military women.
Drawing on extensive research, interviews with women who served in the 1970s and 1980s, and her personal experiences in the Air Force, Eileen Bjorkman weaves together a riveting tale of the women who fought for the right to enter combat and be treated as equal partners in the U.S. military.
![](https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/eileen-bjorman-air-force.jpg)
Although the military had begun training women as aviators in 1973, by a law of Congress they could not fly in harmโs way. Time and again when a woman graduated at the top of her pilot training class, a less-qualified male pilot was sent to fly a combat aircraft in her place.
Most of the women who fought for change between World War II and today would never fly in combat themselves, but they earned their places in history by strengthening the U.S. military and ensuring future women would not be denied opportunities solely because of their sex. The Fly Girls Revolt is their story.
BUY COL. BJORKMAN’S BOOK on AMAZON.COM
![](https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/col-eileen-bjorkman-air-force-engineer-scaled.jpg)
TRANSCRIPTS
Johnny Punish:
We’re on VT radio I’m here with retired colonel Eileen Bjorkman Eileen are you there
Eileen Bjorkman:
I’m here!
![](https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/eileen-bjorkman.jpeg)
Johnny Punish:
Fabulous so great to have you on VT radio you know tonight we’re gonna talk about your new book the fly girls revolt the story of women who kicked open the door to fly in combat I’m so happy to have you it’s an awesome subject but before we go into it I just want to talk and we want to share your story about this. 30 years ago, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin ordered the military to train women for combat aircraft. The same month, General Merrill McPeak, Chief of Staff of the US Air Force, introduced the first three women fighter pilots to the public, and they were Lieutenant Jeannie Flynn, Lieutenant Martha McSally, and Captain Sharon Pressler. And that’s kind of how we’re gonna start today. of women in combat and the history of fighter pilots in combat because let’s start with that and we’ll go forward. So tell me more about the history of women in combat because it’s a really big subject. The debate’s been going on for many, many years and I want to know where we’re at. So let’s go start with the history. Go ahead and tell me about it.
Eileen Bjorkman:
Okay, so women first served officially in the military as other than nurses starting in World War II, but they didn’t go into combat. And then after the war, the military leaders wanted to keep women around because they saw how valuable they were. So Congress passed a law that allowed women to continue serving in the military, but they also passed a law saying that women couldn’t be in combat. They couldn’t fly combat aircraft. They couldn’t serve on combat ships. And the army agreed to not allow women So fast forward into the 70s, more women started coming into the military. And so the services started training women to fly airplanes and to do other jobs that were closer to combat. But they still didn’t let them be in combat. And then in a nutshell, when the Persian Gulf War kicked off 1990-1991 time frame, it became very obvious that women were in combat, that they were
Johnny Punish:
Oh really?
Eileen Bjorkman:
being shot at, they were doing things, you know, they were being put in harm’s way. And so after that, some legislation was passed to first lift the laws and then it took a couple more years, but then finally two years later, they agreed to allow women to fly combat aircraft and serve on combat ships. So that was kind of the beginning if you will.
Johnny Punish:
So were the attitudes after World War II, was that just society’s attitudes towards women in general? Because obviously, they used to have what I think is called the WACS, right? The women,
Eileen Bjorkman:
Yes.
Johnny Punish:
yeah right. So was that just a general societal attitude toward women? Because we have a lot of younger viewers now that are listening that maybe not know the history of that. Tell me more about society changing attitudes towards women in combat.
Eileen Bjorkman:
Yeah, so it was primarily a societal thing, a cultural thing at that time. And there were women in other countries who did serve in combat roles during World War II, in particular, the Soviet Union had quite a few women pilots and there were other countries, the UK, in particular, had women who served in air defense units. So there were women who served in combat roles, but in the United States, they just didn’t even want to consider that. It was like, back to the house, you know, because there weren’t just women serving in the military, as you know, there were women that, you know, riveting airplanes and doing all kinds of things to support the war effort. And but when the war was over, it was time for everybody to go home and get back into their traditional roles. And so
Johnny Punish:
you know, put your apron on and be a good dutiful housewife type of thing.
Eileen Bjorkman:
Exactly. So, but, you know, and it’s hard to say, you know, I haven’t really studied the history of the women’s movement in the United States completely, but there are a lot of people who think that, you know, because women got to do things in World War II they hadn’t been able to do before, then they didn’t want to go back to those roles, right? You know, there were a lot of women who did, but, you know, there were a lot of women who were like, hey, you know, I want to do more now. And so that kind of, I think, helped to, you know, more, if you will. And then the whole women’s movement started in the early 60s, you know, kind of along with the civil rights movement. There’s really kind of a lot of parallels, you know, between women, women’s history and the history of African Americans, you know, in the early 60s and kind of both of those movements going along at the same time.
Johnny Punish:
Speaking of that, let’s talk about the pushback because there’s a lot of, I mean, I don’t know what generation I’m in. I’m 59 years old. I don’t know what generation that is, but the generation before me was pretty negative on this issue, I would say, you know, in terms of women in combat, right? And as my generation came along, now, of course, the young people today don’t have any of those axioms, those things that are the way they see the world, so to speak, you know? The future is bright. I mean, I love the young people’s attitudes towards everything, you know, I really do. I know a lot of older people are complaining about them. They’re this, they’re that, they’re this. No, I’m not one of those guys. I think the future is bright for young people. And I definitely have a different attitude, a more enlightened attitude towards the way things are. So tell me more about the pushback. I mean, how was that overcome by women being fighter pilots or combat veterans or things like that?
Eileen Bjorkman:
So a lot of it happened very gradually. And a lot of it was just from women continuing to perform and do their jobs and do them well. And commanders saw this. Military commanders, may have had some of their own cultural biases in terms of women should be in the kitchen and that kind of thing. But they saw that women could do the job and they wanted them. And in a lot of cases, women brought fewer problems along with them than men did. They had fewer disciplinary issues. were better educated, they had to meet higher standards to be able to get into the military in the first place because there were so few of them. And so commanders really liked them and they wanted to give them more responsibility. And so again, it was just sort of a gradual, gradual creaking, open the door, if you will. It wasn’t like this big kick, you know, it was really just this gradually things just got better and better and better. And women became more demanding too. You know, they started to file lawsuits, they were writing their congressmen, you know, I should be able to do more in the military. And then the real big push though came after the ERA passed out of Congress. It was never enacted, but the services, you know, they reacted as though it would be, you know, ratified, you know, and put into the Constitution. Yeah, they, they almost immediately started to bring more women in because they, they thought that, oh my gosh, you know, this is it, you know, we’re gonna have to, we’re gonna have to do this anyway. So, and then, and then the draft ended. The draft ended in 1973. And so all of a sudden, you know, people didn’t need to join the military anymore. And so they went to the all-volunteer force. And part of that shortfall, part of that was made up by more women coming in.
So again, it was just kind of this gradual push. And then again, as women started coming in, more women came in. Well, we should probably open up opportunities to them. Mostly they had served in admin roles, you know, and support roles. And they started to operational jobs, maintenance officers, then training for pilots, navigators. And so, like I said, it was just sort of this really gradual crescendo, if you will, over 30, 40 years until the final push, so yeah.
Johnny Punish:
question for you, why do you think the US was late to the game? Now you mentioned the fact that in other countries, women were participating in combat and flying planes and things like that, the UK, Russia, etc. Why was the US late to the game?
Eileen Bjorkman:
I think the US was like to gain primaries just because we didn’t, there was no urgency for us. We had enough men. We were not actually being bombed. We were over here in the United States kind of cut off from the rest of the war. The UK was getting bombed on a daily basis, and the Soviet Union, they were in the middle of everything. And they started, they recognized early on that they were going to have to bring the whole country to bear. that solution. And we did that to some extent in the United States, but we mostly kept the women in the U.S., the women who did go deploy overseas were kept from the front lines, kept out of direct combat.
Johnny Punish:
Right. So basically, for me, it’s the right person for the right job, so to speak. That’s kind of how I see things. I mean, not all size fits one thing, right? I mean, there are women who are right for the job and there are men who are not right for the job. So putting everybody in one category is the weirdest thing to me. But it wasn’t weird back then, right? I mean, people just wanted to separate. No, no women allowed. I don’t want any women. I don’t want them in the trenches. I don’t want to see them. I don’t want to talk to them.
Eileen Bjorkman:
Here are the women’s jobs, here are the men’s jobs. So yeah, that was kind of the attitude.
Johnny Punish:
Let’s talk specifically about fighter pilots because that’s what we’re here to talk about. It’s a more specific area. The first women fighter pilot who and when did that come about?
Eileen Bjorkman:
So that was Lieutenant Jeannie Flynn. And so she went through pilot training in 1992. So the policy had changed to, no, I’m sorry, the law had changed, but the policy had not yet. So she knew that when she got to pilot training and she was hoping that the policy would change. And so when it was getting time for the class that she was in, they get to list the planes to fly. Now the Air Force is going to assign them to, you know, based on needs and what’s available, you know, that kind of thing. So, but she was the number one graduate in her class. And so she got the first pick for an airplane. And there was an F-15E, that’s the fighter airplane that’s on the cover of the book at the top. And she wanted to fly that. And if she had been a man, she would asked for it. And of course, they said, sorry, you know, women can’t fly and fighter airplanes. And, but this was in January of 93. And everybody knew that the policy was probably going to change because the Clinton administration had come into play and they expected the Clinton administration to, you know, to, to allow women to, to start flying aircraft, you know, fighter and combat aircraft. And, and so anyway, they, they turned her down, they assigned a KC-10 tanker to March Air Force Base. She actually started heading that way. And then they said, you know, this policy may change and we don’t want her to start that training. So they brought her back to be an instructor pilot in T-38 training airplanes. Like they kind of put her in a little bit of a holding pattern because they were kind of waiting to see what happened. And sure enough, in April, the policy changed. And so they actually went through the records. records of women who had already been through pilot training who would have been offered a fighter because they were high in their class. And so they found seven women who wanted to become fighter pilots from that group and she was one of them. And so she was the first one that actually went off to training.
Johnny Punish:
She’s the trailblazer. Okay, and where do you fit in? What’s your experience with flying planes and fighter pilots?
Eileen Bjorkman:
So I was not a pilot and my eyes weren’t good enough to go to pilot training. So I became a flight test engineer instead, which the flight test engineer flies in the back seat or the back end of airplanes, helping to run tests, collecting data, you know, helping the pilots, you know, do whatever, you know, whatever needs to be done to help out with a particular test. And so because of that, the airplanes that I flew were not considered combat aircraft, even though they were fighters. F-4s and F-16s, but they were considered test airplanes. So they weren’t combat ready, you know, they couldn’t go to war because they were being tested. And so I was very lucky that I got to fly in fighter aircraft, even though they weren’t technically combating aircraft.
Johnny Punish:
Well, I mean, not every role on the plane is the pilot, right? There’s the, where’s the navigators, the weapon systems officers, the gunners, the air refueling boom operators,
load masters, linguists. I mean, on and on and on.You can be not one thing. You can be a few things, right? Is that how it works?
Eileen Bjorkman:
Yes, yes, there are many, many, many roles. And yes, that’s one of the things I try to point out in the book is, you know, it’s not just about pilots. Your pilots are kind of what the public thinks of when they think Top Gun,ย Maverick comes out. Speaking of Top Gun women, so is there a system where they separate the women from the men in terms of rating them or is it just the rankings are just across the board?
Eileen Bjorkman:
It’s just across the board. So yeah, there was a time when women were raided separately from men in the other services. The Air Force never did that. The Air Force always had women competing directly with men, which actually kind of hurt them, you know, back in back in the day. But the Air Force believed that even though women might get ranked lower, they thought it was they were worried that they would put limitations on the number of numbers of women who could be promoted. if they were ranked separately. So they felt it was better to go toe to toe with the men, even though they were probably discriminated against. But the other way they would have been explicitly discriminated against, because they would have been told, oh, you can only promote half as many as the men, excuse me.
Johnny Punish:
Okay, so I also wanna talk about the tailhook scandal. A lot of people may or may not remember that. I don’t know if they do or not, but wanna talk about it real quick because there’s the issue of sexual harassment for women in the company of men, right? It’s a thing, right? So can you talk to me about the tailhook scandal, explain it better, and explain how women are dealing with sexual harassment in those positions, and of course how the policy, how the commanders are dealing with it as well?
Eileen Bjorkman:
So a lot of the sexual harassment, the command climate starts at the top. If the commander makes it clear that sexual harassment is not going to be tolerated, that helps to set an environment where men will not harass women. Now, you’re always going to have your bad actors, right?
But in general, if a commander comes in and says, hey, we’ve got a woman coming into the squadron, you need to get all the pornography off the wall Act. In fact, I was the first woman to serve in a unit at the Pentagon back in the early 1990s. And one of the guys told me before I showed up, he said, he said one of the, he said the commander, the colonel came in and said, Hey, you need to clean up your, you know, you need to clean up your language. You know, if there’s any porn laying around, you need to get rid of it. You know, not gonna, because it was a bunch of fighter pilots who were in desk jobs. And, and he was set that command climate that says, look, you know, she’s like everybody else and we’re not going to harass her. It makes a big difference. And that command climate did not exist in the Navy in the 1980s and early 1990s. There was a lot of misogynist behavior, a lot of pornography. I mean, there were men at Tailhook who were wearing t-shirts that said women are property on them.
Johnny Punish:
What about the tailhook scandal? Do you remember the year?
Eileen Bjorkman:
Yeah, it was 1991. So yeah, yeah, 1991. So it was right after the Gulf War. And so, and there were some women there, because there were women pilots in the Navy, even though they weren’t, you know, allowed to fly combat. And so there were some women there. And they were, you know, the men at that time weren’t very accepting of the women in the Navy, in naval aviation. It’s interesting that the Navy started training women first. fully accepted into aviation early on. But anyway, things have been getting worse and worse over the years. It had been degenerating, you know, there was a lot of partying, a lot of alcohol, and they had started this, what do you call it, the line where you have to run through the line, and now my brain can’t remember the name of that. So yeah.
Johnny Punish:
I don’t know what’s that.
Eileen Bjorkman:
Gauntlet, yeah, the gauntlet. I’m sorry. Yeah. Yeah Anyway, so they had this gauntlet. And so women would like come into the hall and they would literally like grab them and paw them and, you know, do just all kinds of horrible, horrible things to them. So, and everybody was really drunk, you know, and it was just one of these things like I said, it just kept getting worse and worse and worse. And the leadership had to have known this was going on. There were admirals who did nothing to stop it. You know, they I wouldn’t say they explicitly condoned it, you know, but they certainly by inaction let these younger folks think that this was, you know, OK behavior. And anyway, this particular tailhook, somebody finally complained. And it had gotten so bad that several women complained, and several women came forward. And there was this huge investigation. A lot of admirals and some civilians got fired. The investigation actually went on for a couple of years and the results were, and the results came out just prior to them opening combat aircraft to women.
Johnny Punish:
Right. So, that’s kind of where that stands in terms of today. Is it no longer the boy’s locker room and it’s now a workplace? Is that what’s changed?
Eileen Bjorkman:
Yes, it’s gotten a lot better. So yeah, I don’t work with the Navy a lot, but as far as I can tell, it’s become, it’s really moved away from that kind of behavior. So yeah.
Johnny Punish:
Gotcha. Okay, I want to switch gears a little bit. I know there was a thing called the Mercury 13, a group of female pilots who were trained as astronauts. I think that’s very interesting because a lot of astronauts do come from the Air Force or the flying corps, right? But they were not selected because they were women. Is that true?
Eileen Bjorkman:
Right, right. NASA,
Johnny Punish:
What’s that about?
Eileen Bjorkman:
yeah, NASA at the time was only taking, well technically they were, it’s not that they were not taking women, but they were only at that time taking, you had to be like a test pilot, you had to have an engineering degree, you know, all of these qualifications that essentially made it impossible for a woman to apply or just about impossible for a woman to qualify.
Johnny Punish:
Right, so that’s kind of what happened with NASA and the astronauts. Now today we do have, there’s a new Artemis going up and I believe there’s a lady who’s gonna be playing a significant role on the flight, is that right?ย Yeah, so things have definitely changed, right? Yeah.
Eileen Bjorkman:
Oh, definitely. So yeah. Yeah.
Johnny Punish:
Okay, let’s talk about Ukraine. I know there are women in combat right now in Ukraine. What is the US position on that and what do you know about that?
Eileen Bjorkman:
So I really don’t know much. I mean, from what I’ve read in the papers, it sounds like about 20% of the Ukrainian force is made up of women. And they apparently have all kinds of frontline roles and they seem to be doing very well. I mean, obviously, the Ukrainians have the upper hand in that conflict right now. So, beyond that, I don’t really know, I don’t really know much about the details of anything that’s going on. So
Johnny Punish:
it just seems like internationally when, if a country has issues with women in the military, they change them real quick when things get tight. Is that about right? The Soviet Union had to fight, there were 80 million people, was it 40 million Soviets killed in World War II? That’s a lot of people, and they were fighting for the life of their country. So necessity kind of pushed everybody into that position, even if some people had negative attitudes towards it. That’s what it seems like to me. Anyway, okay, now I wanna fast forward. With women’s rights currently being challenged in the USA today, is everybody just freaking out on right? Are there any political groups aiming to remove women from the military service or even limit their roles? Do you know of any right now going on?
Eileen Bjorkman:
So, I don’t know of any groups that are actively working to remove women from the military completely. There are some groups that are very against women in ground combat and are trying to prevent women from making further gains in that area. Yeah, that’s been very slow to introduce women to ground combat. than your ships and airplanes. And so it has been very slow. But at the same time, you know, if a woman can do the job, if she’s the best person to do the job, she ought to be able to do it.
Eileen Bjorkman:
I was going to say it’s all about making sure that commanders have the best people. And if the best person for the job is a woman, then they ought to have that person. So, yeah.
Johnny Punish:
Right, exactly. Okay, so let’s talk about today’s fighter pilots. How many women are in today’s fighter pilot’s core for the Air Force right now? Do you know?
Eileen Bjorkman:
I don’t know the exact number, I know it’s still a very small percentage, it’s somewhere around 2 or 3%.
Johnny Punish:
2 or 3 percent, okay. And is that kind of where it’s gonna stay? Is that kind of where you think it’s gonna go for the future or you think that number’s gonna get higher with women coming on board more?
Eileen Bjorkman:
hope it would get higher. We have in the Air Force, the Air Force, and DOD in general, and the Air Force, in particular, about 20% women. So you’d expect that if we have 20% women, 20% of our fighter pilots would be women. Well, not even 20% of our pilots are women,
Eileen Bjorkman:
so let alone our fighter pilots. So I would say that in general in this country, in the United States, women are much less active in aviation than men are. Airlines, for example, only about 5% of airline pilots in the US are women. So it’s kind of a cultural thing, yeah.
Johnny Punish:
So how do you exactly explain that? Because what is that? Go ahead and give me an explanation for that.
Eileen Bjorkman:
I think a lot of it’s cultural. I think women are not introduced to aviation like men are at an early age. There are programs now that are trying to correct that, that are trying to do more outreach to women at an early age and get them interested in aviation and flying and let them know that those opportunities are there. But I think a lot of it has just been cultural. Aviation still is very male-based. It’s very male-centric. Equipment is designed for men. designed for men. The whole culture is very, the language is very gendered or gendered towards men.
Okay, all right, Eileen, next question for you. Okay, in terms of your book right now, tell our listeners and people around the world right now, what’s the best way to get your book?
Eileen Bjorkman:
The best way to get the book is to preorder it right now. It’ll start shipping in May. And you can get it at Amazon, and Barnes, and Noble. You know, there are links. A lot of the independent bookstores are carrying it as well. So, if you go to simonshoester.com, actually if you type my name in Simon and Schuster, it will pop up and there will be links to various places where you can go buy the books.
Johnny Punish:
Okay, and it’s coming out in May what?
Eileen Bjorkman:
It said that the release date is technically May 23rd. So.
Johnny Punish:
May 23rd, okay perfect. And are you gonna be also doing some speaking tours? Are you gonna be speaking to others around the country about this issue?
Eileen Bjorkman:
Yes, I’m planning to do that, so yes.
Johnny Punish:
Fabulous. Okay. Well, great. Listen, I want to thank you for definitely being on VT radio and explaining this to all of our listeners. I think women in combat is a big issue when it comes to, you know, we cover foreign policy on VT, right? So there’s, you know, military issues around the world, wars around the world and, and women definitely in combat. So I want to thank you for bringing, bringing this to the attention of our people. And I want you to have a fabulous day.
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