ALL HANDS ON DECK

By DOUGLAS WALLER/U.S.S. EISENHOWER

The night was moonless, the kind of darkness that pilots liken to flying into a black hole. On the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lieut. John ("Tuba") Gadzinski inched the F-14 Tomcat forward so a deck crewman could hook it to the catapult that would hurl the fighter skyward at 260 km/h. In the Tomcat's backseat, radar-intercept officer Lieut. (j.g.) Kristin ("Rosie") Dryfuse glanced out the cockpit to another deckhand holding a lighted box that flashed "66,000 lbs.," (30 metric tons) the plane's weight. Dryfuse circled her flashlight to signal that the weight was correct.

Gadzinski, 31, got his nickname because he plays the instrument with symphony orchestras and aboard ship. Dryfuse, 24, got hers after a port call when her male squadron mates discovered she took kidding well, snapping out comebacks that would make comedian Roseanne blush.

Tuba powered up the engines and made one last scan of his panel. Tonight they would practice intercept maneuvers over the Adriatic Sea with the carrier's F/A-18 Hornets. Rosie grabbed a bar over her instrument panel and tensed every muscle in her body. Launch!

The Tomcat jumped like a bucking bronco. One second. Two seconds. That's all the time Tuba and Rosie have to decide if the jet has enough power to lift off. If not, they would have to eject in a half- second, plunge into the ocean and hope the Eisenhower wouldn't run over them.

The Tomcat dipped slightly as it flew off the bow, then rose. "Two-one-one airborne," Dryfuse radioed the ship, indicating the tail number of their plane. Tuba and Rosie flew off to work.

At the end of this week the Eisenhower arrives at its home port in Norfolk, Virginia, completing a historic six-month cruise with the first group of women to serve on a combat ship. The results of the experiment have been eagerly awaited. Before the ship even began sea trials last summer, the Navy's macho diehards spread dark warnings that women, ordered on board by the U.S. Congress, wouldn't perform as well as men on the nuclear-powered carrier. Mixing the sexes in cramped quarters for so long, some critics argued, would turn the Ike into a Love Boat. The camaraderie of its male jet jockeys, others declared, would be shattered by having females in cockpits.

In fact, there were some initial rough patches. Before the ship set sail, a female crew member claimed she had been sexually assaulted. After the carrier got under way, 15 women left early because they had become pregnant -- 12 before the cruise began; three during port calls, two of those with their husbands. Two women also complained that they had been sexually harassed. The Navy considered those incidents within the bounds of a successful mission, acknowledging that the integration of the sexes in such close quarters was bound to create new disciplinary dilemmas and awkward situations.

The important point, the Navy insists, is that the Eisenhower operated more than efficiently. During a busy half-year stint, the Ike suffered no decline in combat readiness. With more than 400 women in its crew of 5,000, the ship was deployed off the coast of Haiti for the U.S. intervention last September; it then steamed to the Middle East in October, when Saddam Hussein marched Iraqi troops to the Kuwaiti border. In December it was posted in the Adriatic, where its jets patrolled the no-fly zone over Bosnia and Herzegovina. Throughout the cruise, the ship performed "as well as if not better than before women were aboard," says the Ike's executive officer, Captain Doug Roulstone. "As a matter of fact, if you took women off the ship now, it wouldn't feel right."

More than $1 million was spent renovating bathrooms and sleeping quarters to accommodate women. Crewmen received color-coded brochures on how they should act around their female shipmates. (A polite compliment, for example, was in the "green zone" and acceptable. "Red zone" behavior included promising promotions for sex.) Squadron commanders conducted seminars for pilots' wives, some of whom were nervous about their husbands working in close quarters with female aviators. Doctors trained in gynecology were brought on board. The ship's barbers were even given classes in cutting women's hair.

Some adjustments were almost comic. Females quickly learned that their lingerie would be ruined in the ship's laundry, which has no gentle wash cycle. The mess-hall menu was geared to hungry young males, with few low-fat items. More bathrooms had to be allotted to women in the 333-m-long carrier so they wouldn't have to walk city blocks to find one. Male sailors received so many lectures about fraternization that at first they were afraid even to talk to females. "Everyone was on edge," says Bosun's Mate 1 Isaac Small.

The women too were intimidated in the beginning, says the ship's assistant operations officer, Commander Jan Hamby. "But," she adds, "a comfort level was eventually established. There was almost a sigh of relief by the women when they realized they weren't walking into a den of chauvinists-and by the men, who realized the women weren't out to charge them with sexual harassment at every turn."

Male pilots were worried that women would be in cockpits before they were ready. But their fears were assuaged in December, when Lieut. Shannon Workman, an EA-6B Prowler pilot, was sent ashore because she had trouble landing her radar-jamming jet. (A male pilot was sent home for the same reason.) Female aviators were relieved as well. "Nobody wants lives on the carrier sacrificed on the altar of political correctness," said Lieut. Commander Janet Marnane, an F-14 radar intercept officer.

Women improved things -- because of military skills and because of gender. Wives noticed they were getting better gifts because during port calls their husbands had female shipmates to advise them on shopping. "Some of the guys have an easier time talking to females than males about family problems," said Airman Heather Weers. Feeling competition, the men worked harder. And foul language was toned down. "I think we've become a little more civilized," said the skipper, Captain Alan Mark Gemmill.

Still, morale and discipline were not always perfectly paired. Gemmill strongly discouraged dating, but officers admit many crew members secretly fraternized. Half a dozen couples went to the captain and announced they had fallen in love. Last month a male and a female crew member videotaped themselves having sex in a ship's compartment. The man was caught after he showed the tape to other sailors. "We have taken the focus away from being a potent fighting ship and made the Ike a showboat," grumbled a lieutenant. "We succeeded in this deployment, but would we succeed in combat?"

The Navy says disciplinary problems were quickly resolved. The two involved in the videotape incident were kicked out of the Navy. The harassment cases were settled by officers on the ship and deemed minor. Investigators could not find enough evidence that the female crew member was sexually assaulted. Gemmill says the total number of disciplinary cases was less than on previous cruises, while the carrier's maintenance levels and performance improved. Defenders of the new policy point out that the pregnancy rate aboard the Ike was far lower than the overall pregnancy rate for Navy women serving on land. And the six pairs of lovebirds? They were split up-half transferred to shore jobs, half remaining on board. The Navy is willing to tolerate love-as long as love doesn't get in the way of fighting. ^1