BY: Seattle, WA



As top military fighters descend on Tacoma and Seattle air shows to spotlight their flying skills during the next few weeks, they will be joined by some very talented women.

At McChord Air Force Base, two from the nation's growing group of female fighter pilots will appear this weekend, building on the hard-fought legacy of flying women such as the famed Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II -- the WASPs.

Maj. Samantha Weeks, 32, a member of the Air Force Thunderbirds aerial demonstration team, will handle the lead solo F-16 Fighting Falcon jet in two Air Expo 2008 performances at McChord Air Force Base this weekend.Joining Weeks is a Washington native, Air Force Capt. Jammie Jamieson, 30, who serves with the 525th Fighter Squadron at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska. She is the first combat-ready woman fighter pilot to qualify to fly the nation's newest fighter plane, the F-22A Raptor.

It took 10 months of training after flying F-15Cs for three years in Alaska to transition to the F-22A, said Jamieson, who will be available to chat at McChord this weekend.

Jamieson called the Raptor "a highly lethal, highly survivable tactical aircraft with a much improved human interface and a very sophisticated avionics suite."

She grew up in Prosser and 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.

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."

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 Mar. 1, 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 Oct. 25, 1994, when her F-14 Tomcat crashed off the California coast. In March 2003, Marine Corps Capt. Vernice Armour, now 35, 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, 70 are women.

At McChord, the Thunderbirds' Weeks represents the second woman flying with the group. She succeeds the first military woman ever to fly with any military high-performance demonstration team, Maj. Nicole Malachowski in 2005.

In Seattle, meanwhile, the Navy's precision flying team, the Blue Angels, is expected for its annual performance at Seafair Aug. 2 and 3.

When Jamieson watches either demonstration team, "I don't think about who is in the cockpit of each plane, I just assess their performance -- and feel thankful that I don't have to fly that close to the ground on a daily basis!" she said.

Flying high-performance aircraft is physically and mentally demanding.

"Particularly in the high G-force world of air-to-air dogfighting," Jamieson said. "Every fighter pilot must pass a high-G-force screening riding in a centrifuge before ever touching an actual fighter aircraft."

There's ground work, too, successfully completing recurring combat survival and evasion training.

What does it take to be a fighter pilot? In addition to being medically qualified mentally competent and physically capable, Jamieson's short answer for kids is:

"You basically need to work hard, get a college education and a military commission, be mentally and physically prepared, and excel at actually flying."