Think all the Navy’s top pilots are men? Think again.
In 1994, retired Navy Lt. Carey Lohrenz became one of the first women to fly the F-14, one of the most lethal airplanes ever built and made famous by Tom Cruise in the movie “Top Gun.”
“Flying an F-14, I can’t even believe it's legal,” Lohrenz said in the latest installment of AARP Studios’ Reporting for Duty YouTube series.
Lohrenz explained that the F-14 flies at over twice the speed of sound.
“It’s one of the most glamorous as well as one of the most lethal airplanes ever built,” she said.
At the time Lohrenz was flying the F-14 in the 1990s, people still thought women should not be flying fighter jets.
“All I wanted desperately was just to blend in,” she said. “I definitely learned having courage means you have to feel the fear and go for it anyway.”
Lohrenz said she knew early on that she wanted to fly. She graduated from Aviation Officer Candidate School in 1991.
“And I knew from the beginning that I wanted to fly fighters because those pilots were the cream of the crop,” continued Lohrenz.
A law in place at the time prohibited women from flying fighter jets.
“I think to myself, it takes about two years to get through this program, so maybe by the time I’m done, they’ll have lifted the law,” she said.
The day that Lohrenz’s class was filling out their “dream sheets” or their top six selections was the day then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin lifted the law.
“The steps we are taking today are historic,” said Aspin at the time.
Lohrenz said she was “stoked” when she learned the prohibition had been lifted.
That made Lohrenz one of five women selected to fly combat aircraft.
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“You have to be able to think at high speeds and react,” noted retired Navy Cmdr. Ward Carroll, who served as an F-14 radar intercept officer for 14 years, working with pilots from the backseat of the aircraft.
“This airplane is challenging, you’re traveling at supersonic airspeeds,” he said. “So your adaptability in the airborne environment has to be 110 percent. Not everybody walking into the front door of flight school possesses that so the F-14 pilots, in general, were the best among their peer group.”
Carroll said the “machismo” identity of the community-led male pilots to believe it was something only they could do.
“And now you say to him, women can do this,” he said. “In terms of Carey in the case of the Tomcat squadron with the wrong leadership, this was a problem.”
Lohrenz said there was a perception that she and another female pilot who came into the squadron were taking over men's positions.
“When you hear these little comments, whether it’s about your fingernail polish, about your hair, or about what you’re wearing at times it can feel like water torture,” she said.
“Like, why are we even talking about that stuff?” she asked.
Lohrenz said certain people made it clear to her that any woman belonged behind the controls of an F-14.
“And it was devastating to learn that there were people actively working against us being successful in the cockpit,” she continued.
All of that was occurring while Lohrenz was still figuring out how to fly the aircraft. “I felt that hot burning of the spotlight,” she said. “All I wanted desperately was to just blend in and just be a fighter pilot, not a female fighter pilot.”
Lohrenz said the catapult shot takes pilots from zero to over 200 miles an hour in just under two seconds.
“I can’t believe it's legal for us to take,” she said.
Lohrenz said they did a lot of low-level flying at speeds of 500 miles per hour to flying high-altitude engagements where they could sometimes see the Earth’s curvature.
“It was the most difficult airplane ever to land on the aircraft carrier,” she continued. “It was big, it was heavy and it tended to be slightly underpowered."
When landing, the F-14 comes across the back end of the aircraft carrier at speeds of 165 miles an hour, Lohrenz said.
“And you slam down on that deck and come to a complete stop in just under 1.2 seconds,” she explained.
Carroll described the pressure on carrier aviators as unrelenting.
“Every landing is graded, day and night for your entire career,” he explained. “The missteps that would normally be attributed to just to being a first tour pilot were suddenly attributed to the fact that you are a female pilot.”
In May of 1995, Lohrenz was indefinitely grounded due to a brief period of low carrier landing scores, while male pilots with similar scores received lesser penalties.
“I wasn’t perfect,” she said. “No pilot on their first deployment is.”
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Lohrenz and her fellow female pilots were carrying the weight of an entire gender on their shoulders, Carroll said.
“Because if they failed, it would set American female status back decades,” he explained.
Lohrenz said the relentless scrutiny she was under because she was female was nonstop. She became the focus of an investigation that found the Navy was ill-prepared to integrate female pilots into carrier-based flight crews. Ultimately, she was given her flight status back, but Lohrenz never flew the F-14 again.
“I flew almost a decade in the Navy and I also flew the T-34, the T-2, the A-4 and the C-12,” Lohrenz said.
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She ended up with about 1,000 hours of flight time and 172 carrier landings.
“And I faced a lot of ups and downs but I started my career in the cockpit and I ended my career in the cockpit and I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Lohrenz said.
Carroll said Lohrenz’s efforts to “kick in doors” paved the way for comprehensive female integration.
“So now if you visit a squadron, you will see a large number of female naval aviators and you will see the attitudes of their male counterparts,” he said. “There is zero stigma. There is no differentiation. It is a regular thing.”
Today, Lohrenz is a sought-after leadership expert, and dynamic keynote speaker. CEO, and executive coach.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.