Jammie Jamieson: pilot who broke the glass ceiling

• The Air Force now has an estimated 14 000 pilots, including nearly 3 700 fighter pilots and of that, seventy are women.
• It's an honour to be able to fly an aircraft like the Raptor.
• I'm excited to come back to Washington

In a world dominated by men, Jammie Jamieson proved that women are very capable of being at the controls of a Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, both as a United States Air Force officer and the first operational female fighter pilot selected to fly the F-22 with the call sign "Trix".

Jammie was born in Tacoma and lived in Prosser from 1982. It was there that the Prosser High graduate got her first taste of flying growing up when she shared the cockpit with her uncle in his Cessna 172 during local flights around central Washington. She earned a nomination to the Air Force Academy in 1996. She received a degree in aeronautical engineering in 2000, then a graduate degree in public policy from Harvard. She is married to a fighter pilot who teaches at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

The quest that started in part from a strong desire to be an astronaut soon took on a more direct connection with flying at the academy as Captain Jamieson worked as an instructor in the glider programme. After receiving her commission through the academy in 2000 and a master's degree in public policy in national security and political economy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2002, she completed the F-15C Basic Course at Tyndall AFB. For three years, she flew the F-15C in Alaska before going on to complete the F-22A Transition Qualification Course at Tyndall in 2008 while also serving as a glider trainer.

She was on hand as part of the F-22A Raptor static display featured at McChord Air Expo 2008, and the following year, she was a guest speaker in the Air Force TV Report that featured a story on American and Iraqi women celebrating Women's Equality Day together on 11 September 2009.

"I'm excited to come back to Washington," said Captain Jamieson, who at the time was stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, as the mobility flight commander for the 525th Fighter Squadron." (At the expo) you get to meet a lot of people excited about aviation and air power, so that's inspiring. It's definitely an honour for me to be there."

"It's cool to have a job with the view that it offers when I'm in the sky"

Although her job as a fighter pilot requires long hours of flying practice each week, Captain Jamieson said, “It's an honour to be able to fly an aircraft like the Raptor. It's a challenging and exciting experience every day," the captain said. "Air-to-air combat is very fluid and is always changing."

Like other women who have begun flying combat missions since restrictions were lifted in 1993, Jamieson sees herself as a fighter pilot and officer in the U.S. armed forces, period. "Either you can meet the standards and do the job, or you cannot. In this life-or-death business, my demographic is irrelevant," Jamieson said. "The two things that bring me (or any other fighter pilot) safely home from missions every day are my knowledge of the aircraft and my ability to physically execute the necessary tactics -- my gender, race, religion, etc., have nothing to do with it."

1974 was a year to remember

Although the WASPs flew in World War II, it wasn't until 1974 that women in the U.S. military could be naval aviators, and Army and Air Force helicopter and jet pilots -- but not combat pilots. The Navy and Army took the first steps. The Air Force lifted its restrictions in 1976.

The first female fatality in a combat zone was Army Maj. Marie T. Rossi, 32, with the 101st Airborne Division. Rossi died when her Chinook helicopter crashed on 1 March 1991, during the first hours of Desert Storm.

After 1993, the first female aviator cleared for combat, Navy Lt. Kara S. Hultgreen, lost her life on 25 October 1994, when her F-14 Tomcat crashed off the California coast. In March 2003, Marine Corps Captain. Vernice Armour became the first African American woman in any branch to fly into combat during the invasion of Iraq.

The Air Force now has an estimated 14 000 pilots, including nearly 3 700 fighter pilots and of that, seventy are women.