WOMEN IN THE MILITARY . . . ANCHORS AWEIGH

The carrier U.S.S. Eisenhower set out from Norfolk, Virginia, today on the first extended coed mission of an American warship, a Navy crew that included 400 women. Though women are outnumbered by men more than 10 to 1, the size of the female crew met the Navy's critical mass for shipwide alterations -- to everything from bunks to "heads," says TIME Pentagon correspondent Mark Thompson. He notes the mission, this time to the Persian Gulf, took two years to get under way after Congress lifted the ban on women's serving aboard warships.