Female pilots in DCS World

This wouldn't be accurate. Women have never fought in aerial combat before. Historical accuracy comes before political correctness in a simulator like this.

Women have never fought in aerial combat before.

"Before"

Before what ?

Before Today ?

You mean apart from in the Turkish airforce which had it's first female fighter pilot in 1936 & who fought through WWII?,

or apart from the USSR, which had female combat pilots throughout WWII (Lilya Litvyak 12 kills, Katya Budanova 11 kills),

or in the USAF where women flew warthogs in the Gulf War from 1991.

This pilot is a woman with 300 hours combat in Afghanistan and Iraq:

The year women were allowed to become fighter pilots by country:

Turkey – In 1936

Algeria – In 1982

Canada – In 1989

Norway – In 1992

Netherlands – 1993

USA – In 1993

UK – In 1994

Sweden – mid

France – In

Belgium – In 1997

South Africa – 2000 Israel

Finland – In 2002

Uruguay – In 2002

Singapore – In 2003

Denmark – In 2005

Germany – In 2007

South Korea – In 2008

Poland – In 2012

China – In 2013

Pakistan – In

United Arab Emirates – in 2014

India – In June 2016

Historical accuracy comes before political correctness in a simulator like this.

:) Oh I'm sure if we have the correctness part (correct in that the women were really there, just historians wrote them out of the story for political reasons), we'll have historical accuracy - in that people who feel uncomfortable when women invade their 'safe space' will be condescending to them.

If it really troubles you, set the date in the ME to today, then there's nothing for you to worry about.

Just as an aside, I found a FOI request that showed in 2014 there were 80 active female pilots in the UK armed services.

There were 32 Ka-50 built.

There are more than twice as many women pilots in service in the British armed service alone as there are Ka-50 in the world, but people want to exclude women from the SIM 'for historical accuracy" ?

In other news, women also invade man's privilege of writing about their combat flying.

In "Apache", Ed Macy mentioned the first female British Apache pilot, who fought in Afghanistan around the same time he did, and that's her, Charlotte Madison: Dressed to Kill. Personally, I enjoyed reading "Apache" a bit more, but "Dressed to Kill" is definitely worth a read as well! Unless the idea of women in combat aviation is offensive to the reader, that is. :music_whistling:

In other news, women also invade man's privilege of writing about their combat flying.

 

In "Apache", Ed Macy mentioned the first female British Apache pilot, who fought in Afghanistan around the same time he did, and that's her, Charlotte Madison: Dressed to Kill. Personally, I enjoyed reading "Apache" a bit more, but "Dressed to Kill" is definitely worth a read as well! Unless the idea of women in combat aviation is offensive to the reader, that is. :music_whistling:

Otherwise known as 'The Angel of Death'. I know her, had support from her. and no.............that's not her on the front cover.

or is it? ;-)

Otherwise known as 'The Angel of Death'.

"Before"

Before what ?

Before Today ?

 

You mean apart from in the Turkish airforce which had it's first female fighter pilot in 1936 & who fought through WWII?,

 

or apart from the USSR, which had female combat pilots throughout WWII (Lilya Litvyak 12 kills, Katya Budanova 11 kills),

 

or in the USAF where women flew warthogs in the Gulf War from 1991.

 

This pilot is a woman with 300 hours combat in Afghanistan and Iraq:

 

 

The year women were allowed to become fighter pilots by country:

Turkey – In 1936

Algeria – In 1982

Canada – In 1989

Norway – In 1992

Netherlands – 1993

USA – In 1993

UK – In 1994

Sweden – mid

France – In

Belgium – In 1997

South Africa – 2000 Israel

Finland – In 2002

Uruguay – In 2002

Singapore – In 2003

Denmark – In 2005

Germany – In 2007

South Korea – In 2008

Poland – In 2012

China – In 2013

Pakistan – In

United Arab Emirates – in 2014

India – In June 2016

 

 

 

:) Oh I'm sure if we have the correctness part (correct in that the women were really there, just historians wrote them out of the story for political reasons), we'll have historical accuracy - in that people who feel uncomfortable when women invade their 'safe space' will be condescending to them.

 

If it really troubles you, set the date in the ME to today, then there's nothing for you to worry about.

I don't think he means that women haven't flown combat missions. I think he means they haven't actually engaged enemy fighter aircraft in a fight to the death. Maybe WWII Russian women may have. Ops!!! Google is a wonderful thing..."Yekaterina Vasylievna Budanova (Cyrillic: Екатерина Васильевна Буданова), also known as Katya Budanova (Катя Буданова), (6 December 1916 – 19 July 1943), was a fighter pilot in the Soviet Air Force during World War II. With 11 air victories, along with Lydia Litvyak (10x Bf109 and others), she was one of the world's two female fighter aces." Both of the two female Aces were shot down and killed during WWII...

And for what it is worth in this wish list topic, I would welcome a female voice for wingman or ATC

It would be OK, if it stays within historical accuracy. Modern campaigns would make more sense than WWII or Korea. Whatever was going on then should be reflected faithfully.

Leave it up to a bunch of guys to argue about things that doesn't affect them in the slightest. Honestly? Nothing wrong with being inclusive here. The more DCS players the better for everyone.

Don't bring up the historical accuracy now and tomorrow you dogfight a Flanker in an Eagle, that has never happened before either.

This is why we can't have nice things.

I'm married and have a male supervisor in my civilian job and in the Guard. No thanks! This is what would happen if my "wingman" is a man...I take off, he takes off...communications menu...Flight...RTB! I continue on alone...:) I have enough male voices in my life without having them in my games as well.

If you look at it from the other side (which is much more likely in terms of "supervisors") you might realize, why there are much less female pilots in "your" game.

Luckily, females apparently have more character (percent wise) than man, so we at least have some of them in the game and in RL. But only because more of them don't follow this strange line of argument or can get over it more easily.

After 450+ combat hours, and 850 hours flying the Strike Eagle, I have heard regularly female A-10 pilots, Female F/A-18 pilots, Female F-15E Pilots/WSO's, Female F-16 pilots, all Female tanker crews (at least on the radio). The best AWACS (best at providing SA and doing things in a way that helps instead of draining SA and time) voice I heard while flying out there was an extremely sexy female voice that we were applauding in the cockpit after she made the best damn picture call of the entire six month rotation.

Women and their voices absolutely have a place in military airpower and fighter aviation, they have done everything that men have done and have had to fight uphill the whole way.

Something I just learned from the wikipedia article on WASP's concerning their sacrifice:

"Thirty-eight WASP fliers lost their lives while serving during the war, all in accidents. Eleven died in training and twenty-seven on active duty. Because they were not considered military under the existing guidelines, a fallen WASP was sent home at family expense without traditional military honors or note of heroism. The army would not allow the U.S. flag to be placed on the coffin of the fallen WASP."

Just do a modicum of research as has already been shown and you will see that they were there.

Lydia Litvyak and Yekaterina Budonova are a great place to start.

Side note:

One of the most memorable experiences to me in a flight sim was as a 10 year old playing X wing Vs Tie Fighter and realizing that the screams of agony and whoops of joy from my fellow Rebel pilots as we bravely fought the empire included both male and female voices, it definitely impressed upon me that girls can fight and die for freedom and what is right just as much as the boys can. Was it real? Historically accurate? No! Was it a simple act of inclusion that helped me (at least) immerse myself in a situation and realize that diversity meant strength. And when my little sisters asked me what game I was playing I could say look! Girls fly for the rebels too!

End Side Note:

If the inclusion of female voices in DCS makes one woman (or man) feel more comfortable and gives them the little extra "something" that makes them love the sim that we all love, then it will have been worth the time. And more realistic to boot!

Absolutely nothing to lose so +1 from me!

Also, in terms of historical accuracy, I'll just share this (Hugo Award-winning) essay by Kameron Hurley, about how depictions in movies and books and television tend to reinforce these inaccurate ideas that women rarely participate in combat:

http://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-article/2013/05/we-have-always-fought-challenging-the-women-cattle-and-slaves-narrative-by-kameron-hurley/

When I sat down with one of my senior professors in Durban, South Africa to talk about my Master’s thesis, he asked me why I wanted to write about women resistance fighters.

 

“Because women made up twenty percent of the ANC’s militant wing!” I gushed. “Twenty percent! When I found that out I couldn’t believe it. And you know – women have never been part of fighting forces –”

 

He interrupted me. “Women have always fought,” he said.

 

“What?” I said.

 

“Women have always fought,” he said. “Shaka Zulu had an all-female force of fighters. Women have been part of every resistance movement. Women dressed as men and went to war, went to sea, and participated actively in combat for as long as there have been people.”

 

....

 

I spent two years in South Africa and another decade once I returned to the states finding out about all the women who fought. Women fought in every revolutionary army, I found, and those armies were often composed of fighting forces that were 20-30% women. But when we say “revolutionary army” what do we think of? What image does it conjure? Does the force in your mind include three women and seven men? Six women and fourteen men?

 

Women not only made bombs and guns in WWII – they picked up guns and drove tanks and flew airplanes. The civil war, the revolutionary war – point me to a war and I can point to an instance where a women picked up a hat and a gun and went off to join it. And yes, Shaka Zulu employed female fighters as well. But when we say “Shaka Zulu’s fighters” what image do we conjure in our minds? Do we think of these women? Or are they the ones we don’t see? The ones who, if we included them in our stories, people would say weren’t “realistic”?

 

Of course, we do talk about women who ran with Shaka Zulu. When I Google “women who fought for Shaka Zulu” I learn all about his “harem of 1200 women.” And his mother, of course. And this line was very popular: “Women, cattle and slaves.” One breath.

(Emphasis mine)

Now, obviously this is about war in general, and not combat aviation specifically, but it goes to the general problems with how our imagination of what would be "historically accurate" is shaped by revisionist (or sometimes just lazy) depictions that simply leave out certain details, and we assume that those details just didn't exist, because we don't see them.

A bit OT, but obviously it's not just 'fighting' that women get written out of.

Years ago (many years ago) I did a fitting, turning and machining apprenticeship.

There was one woman a year ahead of me in the programme, and she took sh*t every day for being in a 'man's job' that she 'obviously couldn't do be cause she was a woman' - but she was better at the job than half the men I trained with, and stayed at it longer than I did.

After a few years as a tradesman I ended up at university, where I discovered (well it was news to me ) that women had taken over all sorts of Trades during WWII - Fitting, Welding, Truck driving, Fork-truck driving, delivering aircraft :), etc., then when the men came home all those jobs suddenly became 'men's work' again & so 'totally unsuitable' for women, and the women were packed off to the kitchen and the sewing machine for 25 years...

"Before"

Before what ?

Before Today ?

 

You mean apart from in the Turkish airforce which had it's first female fighter pilot in 1936 & who fought through WWII?,

 

or apart from the USSR, which had female combat pilots throughout WWII (Lilya Litvyak 12 kills, Katya Budanova 11 kills),

 

or in the USAF where women flew warthogs in the Gulf War from 1991.

 

This pilot is a woman with 300 hours combat in Afghanistan and Iraq:

 

 

The year women were allowed to become fighter pilots by country:

Turkey – In 1936

Algeria – In 1982

Canada – In 1989

Norway – In 1992

Netherlands – 1993

USA – In 1993

UK – In 1994

Sweden – mid

France – In

Belgium – In 1997

South Africa – 2000 Israel

Finland – In 2002

Uruguay – In 2002

Singapore – In 2003

Denmark – In 2005

Germany – In 2007

South Korea – In 2008

Poland – In 2012

China – In 2013

Pakistan – In

United Arab Emirates – in 2014

India – In June 2016

 

 

 

:) Oh I'm sure if we have the correctness part (correct in that the women were really there, just historians wrote them out of the story for political reasons), we'll have historical accuracy - in that people who feel uncomfortable when women invade their 'safe space' will be condescending to them.

 

If it really troubles you, set the date in the ME to today, then there's nothing for you to worry about.

I'm not trying to offend anyone in the least bit, but as somebody previously mentioned, women haven't taken real combat roles (i.e. dogfights to the death on a regular basis), with the exception being Russia in WWI and WWII, just because they were amazingly desperate for soldiers (no offense obviously). Notice I never said "women never flew combat planes," instead "women never flew in combat." As mainly a Mustang and Spitfire pilot, it would sound quite ridiculous if a women called out "Jerry on my tail!"

Again, I'm not trying to offend anyone, and I'm very aware that there are women who fly combat missions, but women simply don't have the stamina or strength to pull 10 G's on multiple occasions after a 3 hour flight behind enemy lines. These fighter pilots had to be in top shape or they were no match for the enemy. Some more modern planes (such as the A-10 or F-15) could have women playing the role of a ground assault pilot, but like I said above, in a dogfight it would be somewhat unrealistic.

If ED were to implement female voices and maintain realism, they would have to change G tolerance, vitality, and stamina as well.

I'm not trying to offend anyone in the least bit, but as somebody previously mentioned, women haven't taken real combat roles (i.e. dogfights to the death on a regular basis), with the exception being Russia in WWI and WWII, just because they were amazingly desperate for soldiers (no offense obviously). Notice I never said "women never flew combat planes," instead "women never flew in combat." As mainly a Mustang and Spitfire pilot, it would sound quite ridiculous if a women called out "Jerry on my tail!"

 

Again, I'm not trying to offend anyone, and I'm very aware that there are women who fly combat missions, but women simply don't have the stamina or strength to pull 10 G's on multiple occasions after a 3 hour flight behind enemy lines. These fighter pilots had to be in top shape or they were no match for the enemy. Some more modern planes (such as the A-10 or F-15) could have women playing the role of a ground assault pilot, but like I said above, in a dogfight it would be somewhat unrealistic.

 

If ED were to implement female voices and maintain realism, they would have to change G tolerance, vitality, and stamina as well.

[Loads of biased opinion]

Not saying there's a 50/50 rate of women and men in the IDF's frontline forces, but when a country that has been repeatedly threatened with extinction by its neighbors and enemies drafts women into service, I guess there has to be some value to women serving.

I've read this biased stuff all over the place. "Women can't do this, women can't do that, they're not strong enough, they lack stamina, they're not aggressive enough, it's scientifically proven and everybody knows it anyway", yada yada yada. Yet when women actually do all these things they're supposedly incapable of, it still doesn't seem to shatter the naysayer's worldviews. Fascinating.

Military wise.. Some women can.. Most women cant. Men and women are different, but everyone should be afforded the opportunity to try and treated with dignity and respect.

That being said, if someone doesnt play a game because there isnt enough representation, they probably arnt that interested in the game.

women simply don't have the stamina or strength to pull 10 G's on multiple occasions after a 3 hour flight behind enemy lines.

That's odd—I've heard several times that female pilots are better able to withstand G-forces then male pilots, on average.

No idea if that's true, but observing cockpit videos of female aerobatic pilots leads me to suspect that it is; they don't seem to look like they're dying, the way we guys look when we're pulling Gs.

^^^^

Not terribly relevant, the aerobatics world is different. Good observation though.

The only point here (IMHO) is that the USAF has the same training and cut-off standards for everyone AFAIK, so any women they have in the service will do just as well as the men.

+1 for the OP.

I would just like to point out that, while I think that "rating" threads is silly and I normally do not do it, I noticed that this thread has a "two star rating" and frowned. My assumption is that certain people wish the thread to be overlooked. So, of course, I rated it 5-stars, to reflect my opinion that it the O.P. brings up a perfectly reasonable and valid concern, and was surprised to note that this insignificant act of mine brought the rating from 2 stars to 3. This indicates to me that a very small number of people have rated the thread (most of the few giving 1 star).

My point is that, for those of us who recognize that—for ****'s sake, people—it's 2017, and sexism in the cockpit is so 1917, it may be a good idea to give the thread a high rating, to counter the low ratings given by the "vocal minority" of those anxious that their "male space is being invaded."

[...] it may be a good idea to give the thread a high rating, to counter the low ratings given by the "vocal minority" of those anxious that their "male space is being invaded."

The tooltip just said "5 Votes, average 3.40". My rating catapulted it to 4 stars. ;)

Honestly, though, I never even look at a thread's rating and this is probably the first time I ever rated a thread on this forum. Seems like a waste of time to me, seeing as most threads have good posts and a couple not so good posts, or I'm simply not interested in the topic discussed, even it the majority of members think it's worth 4 or 5 stars. Well, anyway, +1 on high ratings for this thread. ;)

for those of us who recognize that—for ****'s sake, people—it's 2017, and sexism in the cockpit is so 1917, it may be a good idea to give the thread a high rating, to counter the low ratings given by the "vocal minority" of those anxious that their "male space is being invaded."

Jumping to conclusions are we.. The two votes who disagreed with the OP must be sexist right?

It couldn't be that they want ED to focus their attention on the actual simulation and content, instead of the gender of the low poly avatar who's hands and knees are the only thing visible.

Virtue signal elsewhere

Military wise.. Some women can.. Most women cant. Men and women are different, but everyone should be afforded the opportunity to try and treated with dignity and respect.

 

That being said, if someone doesnt play a game because there isnt enough representation, they probably arnt that interested in the game.

:thumbup:

The notion that women can or can't do something is meaningless, because not everyone can do everything. A lot of men apply to become fighter pilots; most of them fail to make it. Somehow, translating this unconsciously-accepted fact to women is considered bigoted.

I, for one, have no problem with women being given the opportunity to try. What I have a big problem with is the idea they should be allowed to pass to assuage the critics or that they have the legitimacy to complain about the standards being unfair if they fail to make the cut. Nobody would take a man seriously if did the same thing in the face of failure; why should women, who are equal to men, be any different?