Dispatches Tailhook, the Sequel

By JORDAN BONFANTE, in San Diego

Nothing like two years of unremitting public contempt to throw a wet blanket on a party. The 36th convention of the Tailhook Association, the Navy and Marine Corps carrier pilots society, took place in San Diego last weekend, and it was a somewhat more low-key gathering than the bacchanalian riot that occurred the last time the organization met, two years ago in Las Vegas. Back then, the attendees sexually assaulted dozens of women, and their behavior resulted in 40 disciplinary actions, 11 court-martial investigations, the resignation of a Navy Secretary, the near firing of the Navy's top admiral, and a universal condemnation of the pilots, the most swaggering lads in the land. This time around, the occasion had all the libidinous excess of a talk on estate planning at a nursing home.

At the Friday-night mixer, held in the bare, harshly lighted Town and Country Room of the convention's suburban hotel, a desultory troupe of 750 mostly middle-aged guests drank beer and mineral water -- a far cry from previous years, when you could count on 5,000 former and current flyers to show up. Active-duty personnel stayed away because an ominous Pacific Fleet edict had warned that no officer could attend in uniform or join in public discussions, and the 20-odd young pilots who did appear were far outnumbered by the media and seemed as fearful as they were disconsolate. What was there to do? "Listen to a bunch of old geezers talk about the times when planes were wood and men were steel," according to a pilot in his 20s.

On account of Tailhook's reputation, a militant feminist "security patrol" with Guardian Angel-like berets and walkie-talkies circled the perimeter to protect other women on the hotel grounds, but the leader admitted that "it seems to be a pretty tame crowd. They're all old. I guess what we're doing is - mostly symbolic." Participants in the Mrs. America pageant, who happened to be convening in another hall 200 yds. away, also displayed uneasiness. Mrs. Florida, Jacqueline Mallery Solomon, said she had "expressed my concern" to the hotel and asked for "proper security."

In fact, women could not have been safer in a seminary. "I was just saying to my friend, 'You know, the men here are acting as though they're afraid to even talk to a woman!' " observed Charlene Fulton, a nurse from Escondido, California. "They'll make eye contact and then quickly look away." Fulton came on the arm of retired Lieut. Commander Warren Schmidt, 72, an Okinawa veteran who, when asked if he had been in Vegas in '91, smiled and replied, "No, dammit, I missed out!"

He may get another chance. "Sure, this is nothing compared to 1991, nothing," insisted bearded retired Navy Captain H.P. ("Jeep") Streeper, also 72, a skipper of the U.S.S. Hancock in Vietnam and a pilot with 800 carrier landings. "But that's what we want, a tone-down. It'll be a couple of years before we get back to battery."