56 Boeing Frontiers said, ‘Nelda, it’s your airplane,’ ” Lee recalled. “As we got closer, I said, ‘Gary, we’re about ready to touch the ground.’ He had to have his hand back on the stick by then, but I’d like to think my hand was on the stick, too.” Lee always has wondered if she should have pursued a career as a pilot, but she never regretted becoming an engineer. She took her job seriously. She was high-energy and a problem-solver. She worked until it was time to hand everything over to her younger peers. As for turning into a pioneer, it was never something that she actively sought. It just happened. She was focused on the basics. “I didn’t think about blazing a trail or becoming one of a kind,” Lee said. “I didn’t come to work to do that; I came to work to work. I wanted to do my job well.” n da niel.w.ral ey@boeing.com Photo: Nelda Lee was the first woman to serve as a flight-test engineer for the F-15 Eagle program. courtesy of nelda lee because it intrigued her. She read books on flying. She learned how to fly a Cessna 150 while at Auburn as part of a class. One month after graduation, McDonnell Douglas put her to work designing the DC-10 wing. Eventually, she transferred departments and became the original woman flight-test engineer for the F-15. “I thought about space, but I fell in love with that airplane,” Lee said. In her new role, she coordinated testing for the F-15, which involved talking to pilots, other engineers and customers. She wrote test plans and made sure each jet matched order specifications. Lee continued to fly privately, joining in cross-country competitions that involved women. She also was the 247th woman in the world to earn a Federal Aviation Administration rating to operate helicopters, something she did temporarily as a hobby. She has 3,000 flight-hours. Her hands-on F-15 excursion happened by circumstance. In the early days of the program, employees had the opportunity to sign up in the radio room to fly in the back seat, but they needed to wait and see if their name would be called. Mark Bass, a fellow flight-test engineer who would later become vice president for the F-15 program, was selected but couldn’t be located at the time. Lee took his place. It was the ultimate reward. She was well-acquainted with the F-15. “I locked in with the airplane,” she said. “I knew something about it. I wasn’t going into it blind.” Lee pulled on a pressurized flight suit and the ground crew guided her through evacuation procedures. The jet lifted off in a gradual climb rather than steep vertical ascent because of the rainy weather. It stayed under 18,000 feet (5,500 meters), because Lee wasn’t qualified in a pressure chamber. It traveled at speeds between 400 and 450 mph (640 to 725 kilometers per hour), staying subsonic. She logged an hour and a half of flight time. She got to fly the jet, and more. “We had a long approach that started in Illinois and Gary (the pilot)
Frontiers September 2015 Issue
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