Linda Aldrich

Quick Facts

Significance:

One of the first female Air Force Officers to serve on a Minuteman missile combat crew in the mid-1980s.

At 30 years old, divorced, and with a daughter, Linda Aldrich decided she wanted to be an Air Force officer, and against long odds succeeded in becoming one of few female space and missile officers in the United States Air Force in the early 1980s. After three years at Little Rock Air Force Base (AFB), Arkansas, on the Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile system, she transferred to Whitman AFB, Missouri, to become one of the first female missileers on a combat crew for the Minuteman ICBM. Overcoming gender-integration challenges on the Minuteman weapon system, Colonel Aldrich rose to become crew commander and instructor commander at Whitman AFB before transferring to Vandenberg AFB, Calif., where she became the first female Minuteman operations instructor in the Air Force. She served two years there, finishing her assignment as a senior instructor at the Space and Missile Operations Course. The colonel had a variety of additional assignments, including missile squadron commander at F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming, senior military advisor at the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and a variety of staff jobs. Colonel Aldrich retired from the Air Force in 2011 after 29 years in the Space and Missile Career fields. 

Colonel Aldrich was interviewed for the park's film project in 2015. Below are several excerpts from her interview.

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What's the difference between crewing the Titan II and Minuteman systems?

Women in the Titan II system or mixed crews, I'll put it that way, was not so much a problem, because of the fact that you did have a three-level capsule. In the upstairs area there was a bedroom, a separate bathroom. There was some privacy aspect there. And two people were always awake. And you had a lot of room to move around in, I guess I'll put it that way. It wasn't a confined space in that sense.

The difference in Minuteman is there is no place to go. You had a bathroom at the end that looked like something out of Alcatraz, with what they referred to as the aesthetic curtain around it, which meant there was no privacy, and the bed was right there. There is really no changing area. You could stand upon the bed, close the curtains and change your clothes in there so you could sleep at night. Simply a matter of no privacy whatsoever in the Minuteman capsule.

And one person had to stay awake. You didn't have two people awake in a four-man crew. So, the structure was really quite different, and the privacy aspects made quite a difference as far as deciding whether or not to put women on Minuteman.
 

What were the concerns about men and women serving together in that small space?

The concerns about men and women serving in a small space initially were about privacy issues. But I think it's also a consideration that a crew force is mostly, young people, that means young marriages, and that can bring with it some insecurities. There had been a survey that Strategic Air Command, SAC, could send out to both male crew members and their spouses and they would ask questions such as, how do you feel about your husband being below ground, behind a locked blast door with a female for 24 hours? That starts creating something in your head like, oh my gosh, do I need to be worried about that?

So, I think insecurity and fears, ignoring the fact that crew members are professional was indeed a problem. I would not say that our welcome to Whiteman Air Force Base was friendly. In fact, I admit I found it amusing that the day that we arrived they had an emergency officer's wife club meeting. I'm not sure what that meant or what that is. But apparently, that was worth an emergency, simply that we’re showing up and ready to go on alert.

I would occasionally find notes stuck on my windshield when I would come off alert that were very unkind. They would say, we don't want you here. I honestly do not believe it was my male counterpart crew members that were leaving those notes. I believe it was the spouses. And probably, the funniest thing that happened is if I would go to the club after work on a Friday night, there was a particular group of wives that if I sat too close to them, they would all get up and move. So, things that I think a good sense of humor was very helpful, at least on my side of the fence. But I think it was just a lot of fear and insecurity about a situation they hadn't had to deal with before.
 

Could you describe a routine day for a missileer?

At that particular time, the routine at Whiteman Air Force Base, like every other crew member was you were probably, pulling between eight or nine alerts a month, and that meant that you had to go in for a pre-departure briefing at 7:00 in the morning, before you were going out into the field. You'd get a briefing, you'd check out your vehicle, and you'd head on out into the field, and you probably were there 24 hours. Weather permitting you were able to come home when the next crew relieved you.

Of course, considering where missile sites are, sometimes you didn't get to come home. You might be there for 48 hours or occasionally, even longer. Once again, let's go back to the conditions in a Minuteman capsule. There is no shower. You have no place to go and it's confined quarters. So, we were pretty ripe by the time we came home if we did get stuck out there because of weather and a relief crew couldn't get to us.

You would come back the next day. You'd have probably two days off, and then you're going back on alert again. But in between there you also had weapons system training, emergency war order training. So, you had classroom work and testing that you had to do in between the times that you were pulling alerts. I would like to share at that point that was a problem with gender-specific crews. There were only six of us initially, and they put two in each of the three squadrons at Whiteman.

If one of the women became ill, there was no one to pull alerts with, since we couldn't go out with a fellow. And the weapons system training systems are slightly different in each of the squadrons. So, I was in the 508th. But if someone was sick in the 510th, I wasn't what they called at that time, ERTS qualified in the 510th. So, I couldn't fill in another squadron. That was a particular disadvantage of gender-specific crews, because if you can’t go on alert because your partner was ill, you couldn't do your job.
 

How did the two-person rule affect mixed gender missile crews?

Having a two-person control is an issue when you're in the capsule and if you were transporting classified. But if you were only taking routine things out, you could always stop and get coffee. Someone could go the restroom. That really wasn't an issue. So, it had to do with what you were carrying and where you were as to when it became an issue of staying with your crew partner at all times.

In the capsule there were safeguards on certain components in the capsule. That is why one person was able to go to sleep in the Minuteman system.
 

How did you regard the work you were doing?

I think during the timeframe that I was on crew I was particularly cognizant of the importance of the job. It was still during the Cold War. I felt that every Command and Control site was a target. I knew that the Communists were enemies. I understood what Russia had in terms of weapons systems. I was very aware of the importance of being meticulous, sticking to your checklist and doing a job, because we had so frequently heard that if we did our job, deterrence was real and Russians would say, "Not today, Comrade. They're on alert."

That really makes an impact on believing how important your job is. And I think that attitude was shared by, I would say, all of us on crew at that time during the Cold War.