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Meet the Female Aviator Who Made Daring Libya Raid Possible

Commander skirted combat rules to allow navigator to fly 38 years ago


spinner image Gail Wojtowicz was one of the female pilots who refueled fighter aircraft during a 1986 raid on Libya.
AEC Staff; (Source: Gail Wojtowicz)

Gail Wojtowicz didn’t intend to make history when she joined the Air Force in 1980. But in April 1986, she and six other female aviators refueled fighter aircraft during a raid on Libya.

The women didn’t engage the enemy in combat — a 1948 law prohibited that — but their proximity to the combat zone raised eyebrows. By 1986, women had flown as military aviators for more than a decade, but each commander interpreted the law’s vague wording differently; some allowed women to fly combat-related missions and some did not.

For the Libya raid, Wojtowicz’s commander sided with the women.

With three older brothers serving as Air Force enlisted members and an uncle who retired as a lieutenant colonel, Wojtowicz — known as Wojo — “always saw blue suits growing up and thought it was pretty cool.” The Michigan native also liked the idea of a team with everyone “all wearing the same uniform and fighting for each other.”

spinner image several people representing multiple generations smile while talking to each other at a barbecue

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But in the late 1970s, women weren’t yet joining the military in large numbers. Instead, after graduating from Ferris State College with a degree in advertising, she earned a master’s and pondered getting a Ph.D. But then conversations with a Vietnam veteran in one of her classes convinced her she was missing out on something.

An Air Force recruiter quickly scooped her up, but she broke her leg while skydiving, which delayed her entry to Officer Training School. After commissioning in 1981, she headed to navigator training.

Graduating second in her navigator class, she had her choice of aircraft as long as it wasn’t a fighter or a bomber, since a law at the time forbade women from flying combat aircraft.

Wojtowicz chose the KC-135Q tanker, which refueled the SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft.

Arriving at Royal Air Force base Mildenhall in the U.K., Wojtowicz didn’t even unpack her bags before she was assigned to a team planning tanker support to a highly classified mission: a raid to bomb targets in Tripoli in response to Libya-sponsored terrorist attacks in Europe.

The mission called for U.S. Air Force F-111F fighter-bombers and EF-111A electronic attack aircraft based in the U.K. to join forces with carrier-based U.S. Navy aircraft. The Air Force planes required aerial refueling support to make the seven-hour round-trip flight.

After two weeks of planning, Wojtowicz and her team learned the date of the raid — April 14, two days later. But the next day, they were told that U.S. aircraft would not be permitted to fly over France. The new flight path to the west over the Atlantic Ocean doubled the mission length to 13 hours and tripled the number of tankers to 28.

Col. Lynn Berringer, the chief planner of Operation El Dorado Canyon, was unfazed. He grabbed a brown paper bag and sketched out a new game plan that would bring in extra tanker aircraft from all over the world. He made it clear he would not juggle crews to keep women tanker pilots, navigators, and boom operators from flying the mission.

Wojtowicz and the other planners booted up their rudimentary office computers and worked nonstop for the next 24 hours. By the eve of the raid, Wojtowicz hadn’t slept for three days.

On April 14, she jumped on a KC-10 to act as mission commander for the tankers that would refuel the EF-111A jamming aircraft. U.S. aircraft began departing the U.K. about 5 p.m. under radio silence. In addition to Wojtowicz, the tankers also held six other women — a pilot, four copilots and a boom operator.

Acting as “mother ships” to fighter or jamming aircraft, the tankers led the way to Libya. Night refuelings were conducted in radio silence.

The attack on the Libyan targets succeeded, although one F-111F, Karma 52, went down in the sea after hitting its target. Both crew were killed.

The performance of women aviators in the Libya raid and, later, Desert Storm, convinced Congress to repeal the 1948 law in 1991. In 1993 the services began training women to fly fighters and other aircraft. But by then, Wojtowicz and her contemporaries were too far into their careers to re-train.

Wojtowicz spent another 20 years in the Air Force, retiring in 2006 as a colonel. After another decade working as a contractor and Air Force civilian, she retired in 2016 and lives in South Carolina with her wife, Macie, a schnoodle named Angus, and a cat, Stella.

Turning 69 this month, she loves retired life. “Every day is Saturday,” she said. “I live my life waking to opportunities and not to obligations.”

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