VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- On the day that Lt. Shannon Workman learned that two of her fellow pilots were missing in the Atlantic, her commander gave her and other officers the chance to stay on the ground.
"This is a time for introspection," said Commander Randy Rice. "Is anyone not comfortable flying?" He was met with silence.
Lieutenant Workman, a 1988 Naval Academy graduate from Cumberland, calmly pulled together her gear and headed toward her "Prowler" jet. Soon, she was off in a deafening roar, fast on the wing of Commander Rice's plane as they arced into the afternoon sky last month.
There is little bravado in this slight woman with the reddish brown hair, the first to break into the elite, swaggering world of combat pilots. It is more a quiet confidence, an eagerness to do the job.
"I've always wanted to do as well as I could," she said.
Lieutenant Workman is to set sail next month aboard the USS Eisenhower for a six-month deployment to the Mediterranean and Adriatic. It also will be a floating experiment, for "the Ike" is the first "combat vessel" with women aboard -- about 400 among the 5,000 officers and crew. She is one of five female pilots on the nuclear-powered carrier. Two fly anti-submarine helicopters, the others have followed Lieutenant Workman into the ranks of combat jet pilots. Before long she will be patrolling the skies from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Iraq.
Should action come, the radar-jamming Prowlers and their four-person crews will lead the way, streaming into hostile territory at 600 mph to take out enemy radar installations with their jamming capabilities -- an electromagnetic burst -- or a HARM missile. As the pilot, Lieutenant Workman will pull the trigger.
She doesn't see herself as pioneer, role model or feminist -- simply as a Navy pilot.
"I don't single myself out as the female," she said. "I don't want someone to say this person is just in this position because she's a female.
Lieutenant Workman became the Navy's first combat-qualified woman pilot in May 1993, one month after Congress lifted the ban on women flying combat missions. That summer she joined an EA-6B Prowler squadron at Whidbey Island, Wash., settling in small town with her husband, John Kittelson, a former Marine combat pilot.
Last fall, the final barrier fell when Congress lifted the restriction on women serving aboard combat ships. She reported to the Eisenhower in December and has been shuttling among bases in Virginia, California and Washington ever since, awaiting the deployment.
The phone got busy
When word reached Prowler squadron VAQ-130 that it would receive the first woman combat pilots and flight officers, the phone began ringing in Commander Rice's office.
"I got a lot of calls from friends who told me it was justice. I'm not exactly a feminist," the burly combat veteran said, leaning back with a chuckle.
In addition to Lieutenant Workman, Lt. Terry Lynn Bradford, a 1990 Naval Academy graduate, and Lt. Sally Fountain joined the two dozen Zappers, the nickname of this tight-knit squadron, as flight officers.
"Everybody was a bit nervous about it," admitted Lt. Cmdr. Steve Kirby, a 40-year-old flight officer. "It was something new."
Lieutenant Bradford, 26, said she, too, was apprehensive. But that feeling soon vanished once the squad went to work. "I have to prove myself as a naval flight officer, Shannon has to prove herself as a pilot," she said. "What it comes to is can you do the job?"
The male officers soon found it was "much ado about nothing," said Commander Kirby.
"If a person's got the wings," added Lt. Cmdr. Fred Drummond, with a shrug, "then it doesn't matter what sex they are."
And Commander Rice said he soon learned that Lieutenant Workman was the finest of his four new pilots.
"She's the best," the commander said. Her assignments as an instructor honed her skills. She holds her position better in formation and is a solid instrument pilot when darkness or bad weather force her to use the cockpit dials instead of her eyes, he said.
She has made the gut-wrenching night carrier landings that had long separated the men from the women, who never had a need to land on carriers because they were banned from combat.
Flying at 130 mph, the pilot approaches something the size of a refrigerator magnet, with blinking lights, rolling with the seas. Snagging a cable, the jet stops short in a rib-shaking jolt. One officer said it brings back memories of his car hitting a tree at 30 mph.
"Night landings are definitely the hardest by far," said Lieutenant Workman.
Throughout her career, from her first summer cruise as a midshipman until she became a pilot in the fleet, Lieutenant Workman has been shadowed by the same nagging sentiment: Women don't belong here.
Many have told her they are against women in the military. "A lot of them, I'm sure, are still against it," she said.
But it doesn't bother her, she said. "Everyone's going to have their own opinion. The only way someone's opinion is going to change is through example."
Each time she's proved herself, she said, shipmates have told her they weren't looking forward to working with her, but they really enjoyed it.
"I hear it over and over," the lieutenant said with a slight smile.
Now there is only support from her fellow "Zappers," whose squadron patch pictures a green dragon bathed in smoke and lightning bolts. Still, she wonders if one day, before she leaves the squadron, a male officer will take her aside and say, "I wasn't looking forward to working with you but . . ."
Lieutenant Workman didn't arrive at the Naval Academy with hopes of becoming a pilot. She was drawn to the education, with its focus and discipline.
When a senior at Fort Hill High School in Cumberland, she called the service academies "the education of a lifetime" in a senior paper.
As a midshipman, she was "regarded as being one of the smartest folks in the class, a standout," recalled Lt. Matice Wright, 29, a classmate now serving as a company officer at the academy.
Lieutenant Workman was not part of the jock crowd at Annapolis, a training ground for pilots. Instead, she carried a flag in the drum and bugle corps.
But classmates and friends said she has the traits of a combat pilot: confidence and tenacity. Each time she flies a new plane, said Julie Evans, a high school friend, "she becomes very focused," spending countless hours trying to master it.
It was during her academy summers, when midshipmen fan out to sea and Navy installations, that she set her sights on flying. "Flying seemed like one of the more fun options, rather than getting a regular desk-type job," she said.
She began flying a T-34 training plane at a training base in Pensacola, Fla. But, when it came time to choose a specialty, she agonized among helicopters, propeller-driven planes and jets.
At the last minute she picked jets, telling her mother, Amy Workman, "If I don't apply for it, I'll never know if I can do it or not."
Selecting jets was something of a gamble. Because women were not allowed to fly in combat, her career would be limited to instruction or endless training. There was no space for her on a carrier wing.
"Basically it was not a front line job," said her classmate, Lieutenant Wright. "For women doing that then, it was a risky thing to do. You could only go so far in the pipeline."
Lieutenant Workman soon was aware of other dangers. The day she arrived at Pensacola, a photographer scheduled to take her official class portrait had to leave early -- to snap shots of a crash scene.
Later, she learned that it was Steve Pontell, an academy classmate, who died when his jet slammed into the deck of the USS Lexington, the carrier she was to have practiced landing on that day. The crash also killed four crew members.
Now she can't count the number of people who have been involved in crashes since she got her wings four years ago. "As soon as you start flying," she said, "it's just a fact of life."
Lieutenant Workman said she still has much to learn about the Prowler. But so often during the last year, she has been pulled away by reporters and their incessant questions: What's it like being the first woman? How are you treated by the men? Can you handle combat?
She's uncomfortable with the attention, especially because she's a young pilot with so much to learn. She's certain that the more experienced pilots resent the television crews that tail her.
"It is pure circumstance that I was the first female to come into a combat squadron," she said. "All I really want to do is my job. Anything else is a distraction."
And Lieutenant Workman worries about the Navy's rush to place women aboard the Eisenhower. One unqualified woman could poison the atmosphere for them all, she said.
"I haven't seen it at all up to this point. But because the Navy is so energized about the 'woman thing,' I could definitely see where that could come up," she said.
Aboard ship she will be returning to "dorm life," she told friends. And she'll be far from Marysville, Wash., on Nov. 28, her second wedding anniversary. But her husband, a stockbroker whose years as a combat pilot also kept him from home, understands, she said.
"He knows what I'm going through," she said. Mr. Kittelson declined to be interviewed.
And away she goes
Shortly after one training flight she was back in the ready room, chatting with her fellow Zappers and preparing for another flight. Once again she crossed the tarmac, scrambled into her jet and was off in a roar.
Lieutenant Workman's mother said that when she was rearing Shannon, her major concern was that her daughter would grow up with the ability to take care of herself. She laughs about that now. "I don't worry."