The original statement was, "[All] Women don't have the lower body strength to [fly any WWII-era military airplane]." This is a very strong statement, clearly too strong to be supported. (I mean, the article. And all the aircraft delivered from factories by female pilots. And those Soviet combat pilots. (But everyone knows Soviet women were big and beefy, right? Right?))
The second statement, on the other hand, "But not on average. The average woman is physically weaker than the average man. Which means, on average, women lack the body strength needed," is much easier to support (in fact, I'll accept it as true). It also looks like it offers support for the original position.
Unfortunately, it doesn't. It serves only to divert the argument from an unsupportable position to a supportable one. That is why it is a logical fallacy.
> "[All] Women don't have the lower body strength to [fly any WWII-era military airplane]."
No. You're significantly altering the statement with the words you're injecting. Consider this:
"Dogs have four legs."
Would you correct people and point out that there are amputee dogs with fewer than for legs? Most wouldn't, because referring to a group without a qualifier is understood to refer to the majority or state that something is the norm, not that it applies to literally every single item in that group.
So you are arguing that the original statement should be interpreted as something like, "[Normal] women don't have the lower body strength to [fly normal (?) WWII-era military aircraft]?" That doesn't seem to be a wildly meaningful statement without an addition, "[but normal men do]."
Unfortunately, that latter addition doesn't work; according to [1] (an interesting document), 60% of RAF crews were rejected on medical grounds.
So we are seemingly left with, "[Normal] women don't have the lower body strength to [fly normal (?) WWII-era military aircraft], [but superior men do]," which once again is approaching the "so what?" stage.
Again you're finding objections not in the words that were actually written, only in the in the ones you have injected. Here's the full paragraph in the original comment:
>For example, a B-17 could fly with only one outboard engine running. But the pilot could barely hold the rudder in position to do it, and would trade off with the copilot. Women don't have the lower body strength to do it. Flying a damaged B-17 is just not possible without the leg and upper body strength.
It's clear that the commenters recognizes that flying the aircraft pushed male pilots to the extremes of their physical ability, "...the pilot could _barely_ hold the rudder in position..." Furthermore this is in reference to combat situations (a plane with 3 of 4 engines damaged). You're complaints about this comment do far have been that it:
* Denied the existence of _any_ women that could perform these tasks. This wasn't claimed, see the "dogs have four legs" comparison.
* Claimed that women couldn't fly "normal" WWII aircraft. No, the commenter highlighted a combat scenario of flying a damaged plane that pushed pilots to their physical limit.
* That the average man could be a pilot. I don't see where this is claimed in the original comment. It actually states the opposite, that piloting in combat demanded peak physical performance.
Again, the Motte and Bailey only exists if you're injecting some other message. The point is simply that piloting a WWII aircraft in combat was physically extremely intense and demanded physical ability beyond typical women (a point corroborated by your evidence that even most men were rejected for their physical condition).
Right, because subtlety and implication aren't a part of communication, especially in English, which is so precise that sentences in it are practically computer code.
I wholeheartedly agree that implication is important. That's why the interpretation of the original comment you have made in this reply chain is ineffective. It fails to adhere to the commonly understood implication that unspecified references to a group refers to the majority or the norm - not every single member of that group.
"Dogs have four legs" != "Every single dog that exists has four legs"
>For example, a B-17 could fly with only one outboard engine running. But the pilot could barely hold the rudder in position to do it, and would trade off with the copilot. Men don't have the lower body strength to do it. Flying a damaged B-17 is just not possible without the leg and upper body strength.
Because, as you say, dogs =/= all dogs (and men =/= all men).
Sure. The statement that, "men don't have the lower body strength to do it" is true. That has no impact on the veracity of the original claim that, "women don't have the lower body strength to do it".
Pilots also were put through boot camp (which has a heavy emphasis on physical strength building). Being a pilot was in demand for its prestige (first with the ladies!) and extra pay, so the Air Corps had their pick of the finest men. Retaining flying status meant passing regular physicals, too.
> And all the aircraft delivered from factories by female pilots.
That's true. But delivering aircraft is not the same thing as flying combat maneuvers, nor is one flying in emergency situations like damaged flight controls or extreme weather. Many of those delivery flight airplanes were lost anyway.
> And those Soviet combat pilots.
True. Perhaps the Soviets designed their combat planes with lower control forces in mind because they were meant to be flown by women. But the US planes were designed for male strength. Keep in mind that those planes were not designed for any notions of equality or fairness, they were designed as killing machines needing maximum performance. Even a 1% edge meant victory rather than death. And that meant being constrained by the limits of what the pilot could do.
Honestly, I think that if you look into the history, you'll find:
- Those aircraft that required large control forces were disliked for that reason, no matter the pilot's sex, age, race, religion, or choice of favorite vegetable. It was regarded as a flaw in the design. (The B-17 in particular had a long history of changes to its control surfaces and aerodynamics.)
- No engineer is going to say, "Yeah, we cocked that one up." The response to criticism will be, "We made the best trade off of conflicting requirements that was possible at the time."
- The reason women didn't fly combat missions in WWII was that women don't fly combat missions except in extraordinary circumstances. The Soviet Union being the exception that proves the rule: the "girlies" (as described by one general) seem to have done as well as anyone else, but were pulled out of service following the war.
I don't happen to know specific details about any of the aircraft, particularly those flown by the 588th Night Bomber Regiment[1], but I suspect the 586th Fighter regiment[2] flying Yak-1s, -7s, and -9s would face more physical stresses than bomber crews and dive bombers like the 125th Guards[3] are notorious for their pull-out g-forces. (Bonus, cute quotes:
"While the Pe-2's flying characteristics were generally favorable once it was airborne, it took a good amount of force to pull the elevators up to rotate the plane for takeoff. Russian night bombing missions often flew with female pilots and some of the women were not strong enough to get the airplane airborne by themselves. When such a situation occurred, the procedure was to have the navigator get behind the pilot's seat and wrap her arms around the control wheel and help the pilot pull the wheel back. Once the aircraft was airborne, the navigator returned to her duties and the pilot continued to fly the plane without assistance."
"The 587th's Petlyakov Pe-2 dive bombers also required a tall person to operate the top rear machine gun, but not enough women recruited were tall enough, requiring some men to join the aircrews as radio operator and tail gunner." So there's that.)
- Aircrew's sex was not a parameter in aircraft design at any point; I find a certain entertainment in the image of the response to "Well, the control forces are too high with all but one outboard engine out, so we'll have to limit it to male pilots."
I mean, if you're judging solely by physical attributes, the idiots (I mean, airmen) in the ball turrets should have been women---you could have fit in more ammunition.[5]
The second statement, on the other hand, "But not on average. The average woman is physically weaker than the average man. Which means, on average, women lack the body strength needed," is much easier to support (in fact, I'll accept it as true). It also looks like it offers support for the original position.
Unfortunately, it doesn't. It serves only to divert the argument from an unsupportable position to a supportable one. That is why it is a logical fallacy.