[url=http://kfwb.com/news_local.asp?displayOption=&contentGUID={E75ED645-85F1-4F08-906A-363FE0C212B9}&groupName=AP%20Top%20California%20Headlines&siteGUID={3B62BF55-4A93-48E6-A45D-6A495DC423AD}]New Destroyer's Female Captain Avoids Feminine Touch On Warship[/url]

PENSACOLA, Fla. 6.6.03, 3:48p -

The first woman to command a Navy combat vessel from the time its construction got under way had a chance to put a personal imprint on the ship but avoided giving it any feminine touches.

"I try to stay away from that on purpose because I don't want people to be able to say 'Oh, a woman did this,'" Cmdr. Ann Claire Phillips said Friday aboard the guided missile destroyer Mustin.

The ship, which will get its "USS" designation when commissioned in July at San Diego, its home base, made its first port call at Pensacola Naval Air Station after sailing from Pascagoula, Miss., where it was built.

Most of the building was to strict Navy standards, but Phillips and her 329-member crew, including 65 other women, could choose such items as the flooring pattern and color scheme. They went with a patriotic red, white and blue. There's nothing pink aboard the Mustin.

"You wouldn't see that in my house," Phillips said with a smile. "I might wear it, but I'm not going to put it on the house."

Phillips is among a handful of women commanding U.S. warships, including the captains of two other guided missile destroyers.

"We do try to keep in touch, but all those people are professionals, and there's no secret women's network," Phillips said. She also keeps in contact with other destroyer skippers regardless of gender.

Her passengers for the final leg of the trip here included U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., Pensacola Mayor John Fogg, who is a former Marine Corps fighter pilot, and retired Vice Adm. Jack Fetterman, once in charge of all Navy training and now chief executive officer of the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation.

"The commanding officer is fully qualified," Fetterman said. "Gender to me is not an issue."

It is, however, to some of his contemporaries, who still have a hard time accepting women in combat and command positions.

"They're caught up in a time warp and they'll never get out of it," Fetterman said. "I'm sorry for them."

Phillips was commissioned 20 years ago through the ROTC program at the University of North Carolina, where she earned a degree in French. She grew up in Annapolis, Md., home of the U.S. Naval Academy.

"I'm not from a Navy family, but the interest was constantly there and, of course, that's where I got the idea" to join the Navy, she said. "I saw it every day. I wanted to do something different and I wanted to do something that would be challenging."

She said it was a major victory for a woman to get sea duty when she began her career, but she landed an assignment aboard the USS Lexington, a training aircraft carrier then based in Pensacola. Now, she said, women can do practically anything in the Navy.

"I'm just fortunate to have been on the crest of that wave," she said.

Her ship is named for the Mustin family, which has a long history with the Navy.

Capt. Henry C. Mustin, a pioneering naval aviator, was the first commanding officer of Pensacola Naval Air Station from 1914 through 1917. His son, Vice Admiral Lloyd Mustin, served during World War II. Two grandsons, retired Vice Admiral Henry C. Mustin, and Lt. Cmdr. Thomas M. Mustin, are Vietnam veterans.

The Associated Press

Way to suppress your femininity, commander.

She speaks French. Enough said.

That just means she can accept the French Navys surrender request in it's native language.

Fritz
 

I'm glad I got out before this started.

I can't imagine being on a tin can with 65 feemales, though I bet there are plenty of requests for 100' of chow line.

Are they putting females on subs, too?

Is it common practice to allow Navy commanders to pick decator patterns for their ships?  Is it not a standardized type of thing?

Also, I believe this was an article looking for a problem... pre-asserting feminine stereotypes.  Oh a woman commander... I bet she'll put doilies (sp?) on the lifeboats and flowers arrangements on the artillery.  

The a lot of the interior color schemes are usually up to the commisionnig crew, generally the captain. Paint is paint and the flooring material is flooring material, the color is usually immaterial. There is also money available to personalize the ship a bit, usually for stainless steel to cover high traffic areas of the ship, it's cheaper in the longrun. Then there are other things that you can't change. We wanted to get rid of a particular TV for a cheaper one and to move it. Well it was put there as part of an engineer change proposal, so moving it would have been illegal because it specifically called for that model of TV in that place, go figure.