Kara Hultgreen

Who was Kara Hultgreen?

Kara Spears Hultgreen, was a lieutenant in the United States Navy and the first female naval carrier-based fighter pilot. She died just months after she was certified for combat, when she crashed her F-14 Tomcat into the sea on final approach to USS Abraham Lincoln . A formal investigation found that the cause of the crash was pilot error.

During her training, Hultgreen had accumulated four "downs," or major errors. Normally, having just one or two of these "downs" would be enough to permanently prevent someone from being a military pilot.