Colonel Jeannie Flynn Leavitt spoke at the change-of-command ceremony when she became commander of the U.S. Air Force’s 4th Fighter Wing.
In May 2012, Colonel Jeannie Flynn Leavitt became the first female commander of a combat fighter wing in the United States Air Force. She now commands the 4th Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina. With more than 5,000 airmen and civilians, the 4th Fighter Wing is one of the Air Force’s largest fighter wing forces.
Leavitt joined the Air Force in 1992 after she earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering and a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics. During that time, some people in the military thought that women should not be allowed to become fighter pilots. In 1993, however, then Secretary of Defense Lee Aspin ordered that the military must allow women to fly in combat. Later that year, Leavitt became the first woman fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force. She soon inspired other women pilots to train for combat flight. Today, the Air Force has 700 female pilots. Sixty of them fly in combat.
Before Colonel Leavitt became commander of the entire 4th Fighter Wing, she commanded the 333rd Fighter Squadron at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. When she served in Afghanistan, she was deputy commander of the 455th Operations Group at Bagram Air Base. Throughout her career, Leavitt has logged more than 2,700 flight hours. Three hundred of those hours were in combat missions over Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now Colonel Leavitt trains others for combat flight. Flying in her F-15E Strike Eagle, she leads mock bombing raids in the sky above North Carolina. She believes that if someone wants to become a fighter pilot, his or her background does not matter. What matters is how well he or she performs.
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