Originally Posted by
TheOneWhoNeverWas
My dad said that so I told him about Julie Ann Gibson, Jo Salter, Kirsty Moore, Jules Fleming, Helen Seymour, Victoria Turner, and all of the (at least) 121 women who have been RAF pilots. Do not forget Michelle Goodman (DFC!).
Personally I don't think people should need "role models" and I would happily have been number one if it happened to matter, not that it does. I also agree that nobody should let themselves be put off by one statement, as one prominent youtube fast jet person puts it, make them tell you no.
But in the end, that idiotic statement comes from person who is wrong 121 times and 32 years out of date given Julie Gibson qualified in 1991.
The sad thing is, even the RAF forgot that Julie was
not the first woman to get the RAF Pilot Flying Badge - that honour lay with Fg Off Jean Lennox Bird RAFVR and FOUR others after her from 1952 to 1954. Julie wasn’t even the first Regular Aircrew either - that was Patricia Howard, who went on to become Flt Lt Pat Magill and was an Air Loadmaster from 1968.
https://solentaviatrix.wordpress.com...en-first-five/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patric...ying)%20Branch.
So really, by 1991, this should have been seen as fairly normal as we’d been at it for nearly 40 years by then!