Death Of A Pioneer -- Fighter Pilot Died Doing What She Loved

SAN DIEGO - Navy Lt. Kara Hultgreen thought the F-14 was a "gorgeous" airplane.

In an interview last summer after she became the first woman to qualify as an F-14 pilot, Hultgreen said, "It always surprises me when people ask me: `Why do you want to do this?' And I think, `God, who doesn't want to do this? This is the greatest job in the entire world.' "

It is also one of the most dangerous. Yesterday the Navy announced Hultgreen was lost at sea when her plane crashed in a training mission.

Hultgreen, 29, was attempting to land on the carrier Abraham Lincoln off Southern California when her F-14 Tomcat crashed Tuesday afternoon. The fighter's radar officer ejected and was rescued, suffering minor injuries. An extensive search failed to recover Hultgreen's body.

Hultgreen was born in Connecticut. Her family moved frequently, and she remarked once about being shocked by a move from Canada to Texas. In Canada, high school girls played any sport they chose. She was a high school basketball and tennis star and later became an expert surfer. In Texas, she said, girls were expected to become cheerleaders.

As a teenager, she dreamed of being an astronaut, then decided it would be more fun to fly jets.

She joined the Navy after getting an aerospace engineering degree in 1987 from the University of Texas, and was among the first group to apply for training when the restriction on women flying combat aircraft was lifted in April 1993.

"She just thought of herself as a lucky woman, that she had got to do what she wanted to, which was to fly combat jets, those wonderful planes," Hultgreen's mother, Sally Spears, said yesterday.

"She didn't like to be singled out as the woman F-14 pilot," Spears said. "She was just happy that the law was changed and she was able to do what she was able to."

Spears said her daughter believed the F-14 was "the most beautiful airplane that they made, and it is. She loved it.

"She loved the Navy, and she loved us, and we loved her."

Hultgreen gave several interviews last summer in which she stressed the exhilaration and danger of flying the $38 million F-14.

"I mean it's fun to go fast and light up the afterburner and pull out of G's and zip around the clouds," she told KNSD-TV in San Diego. "I don't think I've mastered it quite yet. It's going to take a lot of hours and a lot of training."

She recalled the thrill of making her first landings on a carrier:

"I barely remember my first four traps, because all I could think of was how can I work the rest of my life to buy this drug. It's just an adrenaline rush."

Hers is the first fatality of a woman Navy combat pilot. Capt. Mark Grissom, commander of the Navy's fighter wing for the Pacific fleet, based at Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego, said an investigation was under way to determine the cause of the crash.

The plane may have stalled out at 200 feet above the ocean as Hultgreen attempted the day landing. Typically, when one person ejects, the other person automatically ejects as well. The Navy has not said whether Hultgreen's ejection device worked.

Grissom said Hultgreen had initially failed F-14 qualification: a grueling process that includes 10 daytime landings on a carrier and six night landings. Carrier landings are perhaps the most difficult and dangerous procedure in aviation. One in four pilots fails on the first attempt at qualifying, Grissom said.

In her second attempt, Hultgreen qualified last August. Another woman pilot, Lt. Carey Lohrenz, has also qualified in the F-14, but Hultgreen did so first, Navy officials said.

The Navy said Hultgreen had more than 1,000 flying hours in A-6 bombers and radar-jamming aircraft. She logged 217 hours in the pilot seat of the F-14. She had made more than 50 day and night "traps," as the hair-raising carrier landings are called.

"She was a seasoned aviator who was picked to transition into the F-14," said Doug Sayers, public affairs spokesman for the naval air station. `"he came to us with a great deal of experience."

A Navy spokesman at the Pentagon, Lt. David Albritton, said: "The Navy sends its deepest condolences out to the family. We definitely feel for . . . (them) in their time of loss. However, the risks associated with flying naval aircraft are known to all naval aviators and to everybody in the Navy every day."

Information from the Los Angeles Times, Knight-Ridder Newspapers and Associated Press was used in this report.