Surely the political correctness is partially due to the highly public (and one would presume desire for visible political correctness) nature of the particular squadron?
✓ Very Good GCB.
Not only is the display squadron highly public, but there have been a slew of high profile cases across the DOD over the last few years including rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment and other "hazing". The DOD has made it clear that those behaviors are unacceptable and illegal, particularly at the Military Service Academies. As these behaviors are insidious and deeply ingrained, the charge has been to educate all military commanders of the scale and nature of the problem and fix it from the top. If you have been in any type of leadership position for the last 5 years and were not aware of this high profile and very public DOD campaign to fix the problem, you were either asleep, hiding in a cave, or a committed misogynist.
This particular individual appears to have been the victim of his own ignorance of understanding the difference between popularity and leadership, now he's probably reflecting on it in some depth.
To hurl the counter-accusation of "political correctness" back in the face of unacceptable behavior is very popular these days, but given the military serve at the direction of the politicians, everything they do by its very definition will be politically correct to some degree, or you can expect to face the consequences.