For first time female pilot wins RAF's Distinguished Flying Cross

Getting women into RAF combat aircraft was a long, hard struggle against numerous objections - some reasonable but surmountable, some unreasonable and much harder to surmount. They got there in the end, and today comes news of a little bit of history that chips away at some of the remaining unreasonable ones.

Flt Lt Michelle Goodman, an Agusta Westland Merlin helicopter pilot has become the first woman to win the DFC. It follows an operation at Basra in Iraq.

Here's Flt Lt Goodman:

And here's the DFC.

She was one of 184 British servicemen and women decorated today.