Tammie Jo Shults, the Southwest pilot who landed her plane in Philadelphia after an engine caught fire Tuesday, was one of the first group of women to become fighter pilots in the Navy, the service confirmed on Wednesday.
Not long after the dramatic landing, in which one woman was partially sucked out of the cabin and later died, news reports began citing archived articles that said Shults was the first woman to pilot the F/A-18 Hornet.
[Also read: Southwest ramps up engine inspections after deadly in-flight failure]
The official Navy statement stopped short of the claim, but confirmed that she was among the first in the service to fly tactical aircraft.
“In regards to the question on whether she was the first female Navy fighter pilot we can confirm that LCDR Shults was among the first cohort of women pilots to transition to tactical aircraft,” Lt. Christina Helenaleka Sears, a Navy spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Shults received her commission in 1985 and left active duty in 1993, remaining in the Navy Reserve until 2001. She attained the rank of lieutenant commander. She completed flight training in Pensacola, Fla., served with Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 34 in Point Mugu, Calif., and was an instructor pilot for Hornets and EA-6B Prowlers. Both are tactical aircraft that takeoff and land on aircraft carriers.
“In AOCS [Aviation Officer Candidate School] if you’re a woman [or different in any way], you’re a high profile; you’re under more scrutiny,” according to the March 1993 edition of “All Hands,” an internal Navy magazine.
She also discussed the challenges of being a woman in naval aviation. “It would be nice if they would take away the ceilings [women] have over our heads,” she said. “In VAQ-34, gender doesn’t matter, there’s no advantage or disadvantage. Which proves my point – if there’s a good mix of gender, it ceases to be an issue.”
