Customer Reviews

Call Sign Revlon: The Life and Death of Navy Fighter Pilot Kara Hultgreen

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

As a former fighter-pilot and, later, commercial pilot, there can be no doubt the Navy rushed Kara into the fleet with special treatment. I have reviewed the video tape of her unfortunate accident, and that's what it was... an accident, over and over and the conclusion remains the same: she overshot the turn to final, tightened her turn too much in an attempt to get lined up properly, and compressor stalled one of her engines due to the high angle of attack she achieved in her desperate, fatal attempt to tighten the turn! Most pilots have done it; I certainly have... many times, but, the answer is to roll wings level while adding full power, and go around for another pattern. The experienced pilot will swallow his or her pride and go-around to live for another day; the inexperienced or inept pilot will foolishly continue to pull the jet tighter, eventually achieving the same result Kara experienced that bleak day. It was an accident, granted, a pilot error accident, but an accident nonetheless. They happen all the time in the fighter business. It's a dangerous game, with little room for error. Kara made a mistake. Despite her parents' understandable attempts to prove the F-14A flawed, it remains... a regrettable accident.

If I could have chosen a life for myself that would have been ideal, it would have been as the driver of pointy nosed jets with after-burners that fly off of ships at sea. I am 53 years old now so being able to fulfill that dream will have to wait until my next life. I never lost interest, though, and that's what made me turn my head when Kara Hultgreen started to make her mark in the early 1990's in the Navy.

I knew then that she was probably meeting with more than just a little antagonism. Being a woman in the military can be challenging enough. Being a woman who flies jets can meet with even more atagonistic attitudes and being a women who wants to fly jets from carriers...well, you probably get the idea.

I cannot and would not ever be willing or able to argue any point related to Kara's ability to fly carrier based jets successfully. My experience and knowledge eliminates that as a possibility. Some pretty experienced folks in the U.S. Navy must have thought Kara was pretty good or she never would have gotten as far as she most certainly got with it all. I will never believe that all these folks involved would have buckled to what pressure detractors say might have been applied, if she had not been what she needed to be.

I have to believe in the Navy's judgement and I would have a difficult time really believing that any truly untalented pilot could get thru the system, regardless of gender or politics, if they didn't have what it really takes. If the claims that Kara's training was accelerated because of her gender are true for any reason, that cannot take away from the fact that she was undoubtedly confident and good at what she did and she went thru some real struggle and up hill battles to follow her dream.That is what this is all about...it is about Kara's dream.

I think that Sally Spears' work and effort to write this book about her daughter is marvelous. If a reader has trouble agreeing with an exact source or the validation of certain facts...I can understand that. Not every fact and occurance can be right on the mark. Get to know Sally thru her book and you may agree with me that she seems to be the sort of writer who would be as sure as she could be about many facts, if not all of them.

The facts that we cannot dispute, though, are those Ms. Spears tells us that relate to her feelings for her daughter, her daughter's work, her daughter's life and her death. That is why we need to read it. Not to suddenly discover the right or wrong of any issue but to learn about a marvelous young woman as seen thru the eyes of her Mom.

That she wrote it, I would argue, is amazing enough. That she wrote it with such detail about aviation things that a San Antonio lawyer, who never flew, would have to spend hours upon hours getting right, and that she wrote it with such objectivity towards Kara's personality, both the perfect parts and the not so perfect...well, that is what impresses me the most. The pain of losing your vivacious, young daughter is difficult enough. To write about it is, I think, the most difficult of all.

Some folks would understandably say that Sally Spears may have been too emotionally biased to write this book and she was out to lay blame. With what she has had to endure, I would reply that Sally has earned the right to feel those feelings. After reading her book, I think that she did her very best to be as objective as she could. If any of the emotion and pain of her loss lets an opinion or fact here or there be biased...well, somehow I never thought it got in the way. I understand.

Read Call Sign Revlon. It will show you a person who had a dream and went after it...written by someone who knew her the best. I think it is very good. If anyone is biased in all of this, it is me. Kara did what I always wanted to do. She became a driver of pointy nosed jets with after-burners that fly off of ships at sea.

Go Get Em, Kara !

I don't know any of the individuals in this book, but I've been in the Navy long enough to recognize all the types and to confirm the descriptions of many of the settings here. Sally Spears did a good job of researching and writing this book, and she was more objective than I'd expect a mother to be. It's easy to see Kara brought on a lot of her own problems, but I understand the reasons for her behavior. Because of our different personalities, I wonder whether I would have liked her as a fellow officer.

I have the greatest admiration for this first generation of female fighter pilots. Being a woman in the man's world of naval aviation is tough. (I know that from my experiences, described in "Navy Greenshirt: A Leader Made, Not Born.") And fighter pilots are tough on each other. To take on that double challenge and succeed in this harsh environment requires a woman with extraordinary guts and determination. Those who haven't experienced the emotional pressure can't comprehend it.

As for whether Kara got special treatment, people seem to forget the pilots who trained these "tokens" are ordinary naval aviators (and men), and I have to believe they wouldn't give false grades because of command pressure. It they did, they don't deserve to be commissioned officers. Kara did get special negative treatment. Releasing a mishap investigation to the public, as someone released hers, would normally be a court martial offense.

As someone with F-15 experience myself - the Air Force's F-14 "equivalent" - I know how quickly airborne circumstances can change which can turn a seemingly routine sortie into a potential tragedy. I've lost six friends (highly qualified pilots) in F-15 and F-16 mishaps over the years and never once did their flight records become available for public consumption and analysis. Kara should've been given the same consideration. We're all aware of the inherent dangers being a fighter pilot; its just unfortunate - posthumously - that she was the military's first female fighter pilot which prompted such unprecedented scrutiny.Its a thought-provoking book for many reasons.

Even though the ending to this story is obvious from the outset, it was still difficult to read and no doubt was much more so for her mother to write. I didn't realize the amount of turmoil the military services were going through at the time which was to me a big contributor to the second guessing and backbiting that resulted from the crash and subsequent investigations. Ms. Spears has been accused of bias, but come on - this was her daughter and I found it to be as objective as possible given that perspective. For the reader not into aviation the book has a lot of terms that would seem pretty dry but the story can't be told without them. The death of this woman was no more tragic than those of any other American out there with the passion to defend this country. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't have liked the chance to have met Kara.

This is a well-written, sensitive review of Lt. Kara Hultgreen's life as a fighter pilot, and her death in an F14 accident. The author, Kara's mother, has used Kara's letters home about her career in the navy to give an illuminating portrait of carrier & pilot life. Kara herself had a wonderfully positive approach to life, which served her well. This is a very good read.

That the death of Navy Lt. Kara Hultgren has caused and will continue to cause controversy is without doubt...see several of the reviews on this web page. "Call Sign Revlon" has its own opinion, which many will doubtless disagree with, but considering that it's written by the mother of the deceased, it is an astonishingly even-handed account of the life and death of the Navy's first female fleet fighter pilot. Ms. Spears doesn't attempt to whitewash her daughter's life, presenting her warts and all, including many clearly unexpurgated letters. Ms. Spears has been trained as a journalist, and it shows; she makes her argument early, clearly, and rationally. Indeed, after Kara leaves for college, the author rarely makes an appearance in the story at all. She chooses instead to focus on her daughter's Navy life, which is, after all, the crux of the story. The story reads like an expanded article of the sort one might find in "Newsweek" for example. Of course, when her involvement in the story is called for, it's even more powerful, as when she describes holding and weeping over Kara's helmet and flight jacket, recovered from the wreck of her Tomcat. Her "reconstruction" of the last minutes of her daughter's life is moving, technically accurate, and must have been absolutely heartbreaking to write. In all, this is an excellent piece of journalism. Highly reccommended for someone looking for a personal perspective on the "women in combat" debate.

I worked with Kara in VAQ-33 and became a close friend. Regardless of the circumstances surrounding her training or death, anybody that took the time to get to know her was impressed. She was cocky, funny, sensitive and more driven than anyone else I've ever met. Thinking of her drive to pursue her goals has helped me persevere to accomplish my own dreams. Her mother has written a book that reflects who Kara was, and to me that is what it's all about - the amazing woman Kara Hultgreen was.

As one of the O-4's mentioned in the book in a not too kindly manner, I found the book interesting. The writer did not always get her facts straight with the events with which I am personally familiar which makes me wonder about the rest of the book. Be that as it may, the book tells the story of a misguided lady who had no business flying Navy jets. Kara had such a big chip on her shoulder that she could not discern constructive criticism from good natured ribbing or just nit picking remarks from those who might not like women in the military no matter how good they are. In short, she never knew her own limitations and pressed the envelope before she was ready. Somebody should have stood tall and stopped her, but they didn't. It wasn't a matter of if she was going to have an accident, it was a matter of when.

The book is obviously tilted towards showing how Ms. Hultgren was as good a pilot as any male. Never mind the fact that if a male had four downs he was history. Writing is extremely shoddy with no references to sources. A very poor book. Ms. Hultgren deserves much better.