Angry Lizard....
Quote: "I'm not saying that women lack the flying skills or officer/SNCO qualities, but deficiencies in upper-body strength, stamina and susceptability to gang rape by (heterosexual) enemy troops is enough argument for me to believe that the policy of exclusion which was legal in Britain until the late '80s, is STILL relevant today!"
I was not implying that 'only women are susceptable to gang rape'. If this is what you inferred from my post, read it again.
I believe I was stating that while it is possible for women to be raped by straight men, I was not excluding the possibility of men to suffer the same from gay troops, (or even straight troops who will do anything to extract intel.)
I'm not qualified (as you might be) to argue which sex is better prepared to handle such an assault. Am I? Well thats something I will hopefully never find out.
This was not my main argument though, this is:
Fact 1. Aircrew (male or female) might be called upon to carry out the same tasks in war that infantry/RAF regt have to carry out,(hand-to-hand combat, digging trenches, carrying casualties/corpses).
Fact 2. Our political masters have decided that women are to be excluded from these posts for reasons of: combat effectiveness, lack of upper-body strength, stamina, and other reasons;
Now is it unreasonable to conclude that appointing female aircrew absolutely flies in the face of the logic posed by fact number 2? I am not supposing for one minute that I am a superman or indeed, many other men are. But there are physiological differences between men and women that make fact number 2 relevant.
Just because the day-to-day work of aircrew is nothing like that of soldiering, doesn't mean that fact number 1, won't happen or hasn't happened before. When it does, I'd like to know that everyone I might have to command in the future can carry out a reasonable task without struggling, therefore placing others lives in danger.
And with regards to the Russian front of WW2, that was an emergency situation requiring 'all hands to the pump'. The operation of modern, effective armed forces cannot be compared with guerrillas fighting a losing battle which was doubtless helped by the fierce Russian winter halting the largely mechanised advance of the Hun.
The Israeli Defence Force tried it a while ago and reversed the decision.