America's North Shore Journal

Sgt. Stephanie Cole, Flight Lt. Michelle Goodman, Flight Lt. Joanna Watkinson, and Sgt. Wendy Donald. Picture: SAC Andrew Morris, Crown Copyright/MOD 2009

Once, there were four girls who joined the Royal Air Force…

They’re not Charlie’s Angels, but to the soldiers whose lives they save when they swoop in to a hot landing zone to evacuate wounded, they are angels.

Meet Flight-Lieutenant Michelle Goodman, her co-pilot Flight-Lieutenant Joanna Watkinson and loadmasters Sergeant Stephanie Cole and Sergeant Wendy Donald. They are part of the British contribution to the ISAF in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

Hot pilot Flight-Lieutenant Michelle Goodman has been noted here before. Not hot as in attractive, though she is very much so, but hot as in daring, skilled, and courageous. Hot enough to have been awarded the Brit’s Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC).

Four female combat helicopter aircrew are on their way to Afghanistan to fly the RAF’s Merlin aircraft into action against the Taliban.

The four female aircrew will form part of a pool of Merlin pilots and loadmasters and will be assigned to aircraft as individuals.

The four – two pilots and two loadmasters – include Flight Lieutenant Michelle Goodman, the first woman ever to be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

The women, aged from 24 to 32, have been training hard in California to cope with the ‘high, hot and dusty’ conditions of southern Afghanistan.

The team will be expected to pick up casualties and fly resupply missions into the teeth of hostile fire in Helmand province.

The four women have been focusing on night-time dust landings and gunnery and expect to come under enemy fire frequently.

The two loadmasters, Sergeants Stephanie Cole, 24, and Wendy Donald, 32, have been honing their weapons skills on the helicopter’s three 7.62mm general purpose machine guns in order to be able to defend their aircraft in Afghanistan.

And Flight Lieutenants Goodman and Joanna Watkinson, 28, have been practising evasive flying manoeuvres to minimise their exposure to enemy fire.

U.K. Ministry of Defence