The night was moonless, the kind of darkness that pilots liken to flying into a black hole. On the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lieut. John ("Tuba") Gadzinski inched the F-14 Tomcat forward so a deck crewman could hook it to the catapult that would hurl the fighter skyward at 260 km/h. In the Tomcat's backseat, radar-intercept officer Lieut. (j.g.) Kristin ("Rosie") Dryfuse glanced out the cockpit to another deckhand holding a lighted box that flashed "66,000 lbs.," (30 metric tons) the plane's weight. Dryfuse circled her flashlight to signal that the weight was correct.
Gadzinski, 31, got his nickname because he plays the instrument with symphony orchestras and aboard ship. Dryfuse, 24, got hers after a port call when her male squadron mates discovered she took kidding well, snapping out comebacks that would make comedian Roseanne blush.
Tuba powered up the engines and made one last scan of his panel. Tonight they would practice intercept maneuvers over the Adriatic Sea with the carrier's F/A-18 Hornets. Rosie grabbed a bar over her instrument panel and tensed every muscle in her body. Launch!
The Tomcat jumped like a bucking bronco. One second. Two seconds. That's all the time Tuba and Rosie have to decide if the jet has enough power to lift off. If not, they would have to eject in a half- second, plunge into the ocean and hope the Eisenhower wouldn't run over them.
The Tomcat dipped slightly as it flew off the bow, then rose. "Two-one-one airborne," Dryfuse radioed the ship, indicating the tail number of their plane. Tuba and Rosie flew off to work.
At the end of this week the Eisenhower arrives at its home port in Norfolk, Virginia, completing a historic six-month cruise with the first group of women to serve on a combat ship. The results of the experiment have been eagerly awaited. Before the ship even began sea trials last summer, the Navy's macho diehards spread dark warnings that women, ordered on board by the U.S. Congress, wouldn't perform as well as men on the nuclear-powered carrier. Mixing the sexes in cramped quarters for so long, some critics argued, would turn the Ike into a Love Boat. The camaraderie of its male jet jockeys, others declared, would be shattered by having females in cockpits.
In fact, there were some initial rough patches. Before the ship set sail, a female crew member claimed she had been sexually assaulted. After the carrier got under way, 15 women left early because they had become pregnant -- 12 before the cruise began; three during port calls, two of those with their husbands. Two women also complained that they had been sexually harassed. The Navy considered those incidents within the bounds of a successful mission, acknowledging that the integration of the sexes in such close quarters was bound to create new disciplinary dilemmas and awkward situations.