In the 70s we had some WAVES on base who were cute, attractive, AND FORMIDABLE. We had one who was a crew chief on an SH3 who looked like a shrinking violet, but was hard core. Every chopper flight carried a reluctant, not-trained-for-rescue-work corpsman because most flights turned into Cuban refugee rescues. These corpsmen were not aircrew trained, not eligible for flight pay, and ordered to fly outside of their regular duties at the whim of the base CO. So in a fifty foot hover over a leaky boatload of sick, starved, parasite infested refugees, all eyes turned to the corpsman, who would make a long slow routine of getting ready to go over the side. This would drive DeeDee mad, and she'd stick her flight helmet on the corpsman's head, shuck her quick donning Velcro flight boots, grab a pair of fins from the rack, and be out the door in a flash in her poopie suit from 50 feet up!! She wore a first aid kit and water bottles on her flight suit as well as a rescue radio, and sometimes had to stay in the boat with the refugees practicing her Spanish while the chopper delivered the first load ashore. This went on for awhile until some reporter interviewing a refugee wrote a story about the "angel from the sky" and a young WAVE ensign went on a crusade to get DeeDee recognition for what she was doing. The CO went ballistic, declared the SH3 a "combat aircraft" (because some were used for ASW sonar dipping), tried to court martial the Lieutenant Commander in charge of Operations, and wrote up DeeDee for NJP, but since he wrote the chit, she had to go to Admiral's Mast at the Naval Station downtown. She was stripped of her AMH3 rating, busted back to E-2, banished from the airedale Navy and sent to the black shoe Navy as a designated striker Personnelman.
The old boys club strikes again!
Cheers,
Wes