Navy submarines to get female officers for first time in history

HARTFORD, Conn. -- For Ensign Peggy LeGrand, the biggest concern about serving on a submarine is not spending weeks at a time in tight quarters with an entirely male crew. What worries her is the scrutiny that comes with breaking one of the last gender barriers in the U.S. military.

"I have a feeling more people will be focused on us. Our mistakes and successes will be magnified more than they deserve," said LeGrand, a 25-year-old Naval Academy graduate from Amarillo, Texas.

LeGrand is among a small group of female officers who are training at sites including Groton, Conn., to join the elite submarine force beginning later this year. While the Navy says it is not treating them any differently from their male counterparts, officials have been working to prepare the submarine crews -- and the sailors' wives -- for one of the most dramatic changes in the 111-year history of the Navy's "silent service."

The initial class of 24 women will be divided among four submarines, where they will be outnumbered by men by a ratio of roughly 1 to 25. The enlisted ranks, which make up about 90 percent of a sub's 160-sailor crew, are not open to women although the Navy is exploring modifications to create separate bunks for men and women.

The female officers, many of them engineering graduates from Annapolis, are accustomed to being in the minority, and so far they say they hardly feel like outsiders. The nuclear power school that is part of their training, for example, has been open to women for years because the Navy in 1994 reversed a ban on females serving on its surface ships, including nuclear-powered vessels.

A submarine group spokesman, Lt. Brian Wierzbicki, said the Navy would not facilitate photographs or interviews with the female submariners because it does not want to distract them from training or make them feel different from their male peers.

The female officers will report to their submarines starting in late November or early December. All of the vessels are guided-missile attack submarines or ballistic-missile submarines, which are relatively large by submarine standards. They are the USS Wyoming and USS Georgia, based in Kings Bay, Ga., and the USS Maine and USS Ohio, with their home port in Bangor, Wash.

On submarines with corridors barely wide enough for sailors to brush past one another, the six female officers on board will all share a stateroom. Their shifts will be divided so that women are assigned to each sub's two rotating crews. The lone bathroom for officers will have a reversible sign, letting men know that it's in use by women and vice versa.

The change is a source of anxiety for others, including the wives of submariners, who worry the close contact at sea could lead to sailors' cheating.

Submarines had been the last class of military vessel off-limits to women. Navy officials say one lesson they learned from integrating surface ships is to make the transition gradually. The Navy wants to make sure it is aware of any potential issues that might arise, according to Lt. Cmdr. Jean Sullivan, chief of the naval personnel's office of women's policy.

"There are going to be leadership challenges and maturity challenges anyone would face in their first job. There is just a spotlight on it because they're the first on submarines," Sullivan said.