March 11, 2013; NAS Oceana, Virginia Beach, VA
I sat in the Blacklion Ready Room, drinking coffee and preparing to fly, when one of the guys got up from the table and stepped away to answer his phone. He came back, pale, and struggling to speak.
“A prowler,” he said, “just crashed … in … uh … Washington. Two hundred and fifty miles from Whidbey Island. Unknown at this time if there are any survivors.”
Someone grabbed the remote and switched the TV from SportsCenter to FOX News. We read the scroll at the bottom—Navy Jet Crashes in Central Washington.
The prowler, an antiquated and notoriously dangerous plane to fly, is currently being replaced by the E/A-18G Growler, an electronic attack version of the F/A-18, meaning instead of dropping bombs they jam the enemy’s radar and comms. Prowlers are usually manned by three or four aviators: one pilot and multiple naval flight officers. Naval Air Station Whidbey Island is just northwest of Seattle and I thought about who I knew there.
My mind immediately flashed to Valerie Delaney, a prowler pilot I knew from the Naval Academy. She had been the first female midshipman to study at the French military academy, Saint-Cyr, while at the same time I had been the first to study at the German naval academy.
In our community, when a tragedy like this happens, we refrain from talking about who it might have been until we know for certain, but that morning, I had a strong premonition it was Val. As was the case with the training crash the year before, every officer in the mishap squadron would have to lock their phone in a metal ammo can, ensuring no one could call their families until the loved ones of the deceased had been notified. When someone perishes in an accident, depending on their wishes, normally the chaplain and casualty assistance calls officer will show up at the victim’s house to notify the family in person of the loss.
This happens rapidly. As I had thought, it was Val. Once Val’s family was notified, the word had spread by six p.m. that evening. Val had been at the controls, flying the VR-1351 in a low-level training route known as a million-dollar ride, the most challenging run for prowler pilots based in Whidbey Island.
I was living with my friend Ashley, who, like me, had become an F/A-18 WSO. We lived in a gorgeous home she built for herself in Virginia Beach. Ashley came home from the base close to midnight that night. I lay in bed sleeping with her puppy but woke when I heard the door unlocking.
“Dad, it was Val. Valerie Delaney, one of the Jet Girls,” Ashley sobbed into her phone to her father, a retired Navy submariner. “I just can’t believe it. It was one of us. Could have been me.”
I let her puppy slip out from the covers and followed downstairs to comfort my friend, but before I made it to the staircase, I heard the door shut and lock, followed by the rev of Ashley’s BMW starting. She left as quickly as she had come in.
Normally, I might think her distress was a bit of an overreaction; after all, she didn’t even know Valerie that well—neither of us did—but it was more that Val was one of us. She was a Jet Girl, and suddenly, she was gone
Hey, Ash, I heard you come home. I guess you just got the news, I texted.
On my way to Taylor’s, Ashley wrote back. She’s a wreck and I need to be w/ her for the night.
Taylor and Ashley were best friends, and from the sound of it, Taylor, normally an emotional rock, had been badly shaken. I tried to compartmentalize the crash so I could sleep, telling myself, It was an isolated incident, we can’t know what happened, stay focused on tomorrow. I eventually coaxed myself into a half sleep, but for the rest of the night, each time my brain sunk into deep sleep I awoke in a nightmare, seated next to Val. Ahead of us was the ground growing larger and as it rushed toward the cockpit, I saw the slant of the wide field we were flying into. I felt the heavy pull of the Gs in the turn. I tried to yell to Val to help her, to alert her to the threat but couldn’t speak. The cockpit crumbled, flames enveloped us, and I woke up in bed, believing it was on fire. Each terror jarred me awake, my heart hammering and my pillow soaked with sweat.
In a turn, flying as fast and low as Val had been, you only have six seconds before you impact the ground. Six seconds. It really could have been any one of us.
In fact, it was three of us.
Three people died in the crash, all immediately upon impact.
After waking up repeatedly from the nightmares, I took a shower, made coffee, and drove to the squadron in the predawn darkness to brief for my flight. It doesn’t matter what your emotional landscape is, the show goes on.
Seated in the Ready Room with my usual cup of coffee steaming beside me, I mentally worked myself into a hard focus. Visualizing my flight, I walked through my checklists, seeing my fingers pressing the proper switches and buttons, reciting my targeting calls. This process of preparation is called chair flying, and it is something aviators do to perfect their craft. Blue Angels go through it before every show. And that morning I needed the time and focus to stay safe.
While in this state, a friendly enlisted Sailor walked into the Ready Room to empty the trash and mop the floor. He looked at me and other aviators sitting around drinking coffee, unaware that we were prepping for a simulated battle to take place over the Atlantic at five hundred miles per hour. The Sailor was jittery, like he’d had too many energy drinks. “Sir, did you hear about that crash out in Whidbey?” he asked one of the officers seated by the coffeepot. “Sounded gruesome. Three dead. A girl, too.”
The pilots and WSOs who knew Val and the other victims eyed each other across the table as the Sailor continued. “I heard it was pilot error. Do you know what happened?”
I wanted to grab the kid, tell him to have some decency and common sense enough to be quiet and let us work. We all did. But he was a young Sailor working as support staff, and like a civilian, his misunderstanding of our work and culture couldn’t be held against him.
“Yeah, buddy,” the officer said, filling his mug, his tone clearly trying to shut the conversation down. “We know. Why don’t you come by after we clear out. Okay?”
The Sailor left, maybe he got it. Maybe not. I sat back in my chair, refocused, and mentally returned to my plane.
Ashley’s picturesque home sat on the north shore of Virginia Beach, in a neighborhood of beautiful houses rumored to have been styled after the movie Pleasantville. They were new, but built to look like old, classic beach cottages with broad porches, all clad in pastel colors. On warm days, neighbors would sip cocktails and play croquet on a neatly manicured croquet pitch a few blocks away.
I was out for an afternoon jog in this serene environment when my phone buzzed in my windbreaker pocket. I checked the caller. It was Eric, an old friend who had attended the Air Force Academy and lived with my family on the weekends with another cadet, Tyler. I slowed to take the call.
“Hi, Eric! How are you?” I said, winded but chipper.
“Eh, not so good,” Eric mumbled and then paused.
I stopped moving. “What happened?” I said.
“I hate to be the one to break the news,” he said. “But Tyler…” he barely spoke his best friend’s name before his voice cracked.
A year ahead of me, Tyler Voss had already deployed to Kyrgyzstan. He flew the KC-135, one of the giant refueling jets that extended the range and presence of our air assets in faraway, hostile places. His plane was the kind that I would hook my fighter jet up to, to refuel in combat.
On the morning of May 3, 2013, Tyler took off from Kyrgyzstan bound for Afghanistan when a catastrophic mechanical failure caused the tail of his airplane to rip off. There was no saving the massive jet, fully loaded with aviation fuel. Tyler and two other crew members perished in the fiery wreckage.
As with Val, I’d actually heard the news of the downed plane and even suspected I knew someone on it, but then tried not to think the worst. It’s eerie, once you get into the aviation community, every aircraft that goes down doesn’t carry faceless service members, but friends, acquaintances, and classmates.
I hung up the phone and called my brother, then my mom. Too distraught to finish my run, I walked home, dragging myself through the front door into the kitchen where Ashley stood at the counter arranging vegetables on a platter for a dinner that night. A beautiful spring evening, the sun hung low outside the kitchen window and a breeze blew in from the bay, fluttering the flag on our neighbor’s porch. I grabbed a glass of water and a bottle of rosé from the fridge.
“How was the run? You look pretty flushed,” Ashley noted, lining up carrots. Friends would be arriving soon and I had to tell her before they got there. Ashley, too, had known Tyler.
I downed my water, poured two cold glasses of wine, and slid one over to her. “Hey, Ash,” I said trying to keep it together. “Remember Tyler Voss?”
She smiled, trying to bring back a memory. “Yeah, of course. Cute Air Force boy from your parents’ house when we were still at Academy.”
Her eyes lit up, likely remembering the night she and Tyler had met—flirting by the bonfire at my parents’ house for the Air Force–Navy game six years earlier. “What’s going on with Tyler?” She looked over at me and I could tell from her face that she’d connected the dots.
“Don’t tell me…” She set down her wine and leaned on the marble counter. “He was a pilot on the KC-135.”
Sitting in the middle of the chapel at Arlington National Cemetery, I looked behind me and saw that the back of the large chapel was standing-room only. Among the hundreds of mourners, fifty-five female aviators.
A horse-drawn carriage carried Val’s remains to her gravesite. Following three volleys from the honorary Navy firing squad, four jets buzzed overhead in a missing man flyover.
The military fanfare was honorable and fitting, but one of the most lasting tributes to Val came when we gave her our wings. Since there wasn’t a coffin, long strips of green webbing—the same technical, military-grade fabric that holds our flight gear together—were decorated with the gold flight wings of over two hundred female aviators. These wings, technically called US Naval Aviator badges, were bestowed on us when we graduated flight school. Each measured about an inch from top to bottom and three inches wide, and stacked on top of one another, on the four-inch-wide strip of webbing, the wings for Val stretched over twenty feet. Many of the women who sent their badges didn’t actually know Val, but had heard of her stellar reputation and her tragic sacrifice. I watched through tears as the gleaming wings were presented to Val’s family at Arlington that morning in June.
The wings are now on permanent display as part of the Women in Military Service for America Memorial. Inspired by Val’s impact, her family launched the Wings for Val Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting and supporting women in all fields, but especially aviation, and inspiring future generations of female leaders. To learn more about Valerie Delaney and her legacy go to www
Our business is risky. It doesn’t matter if you’re employing weapons in combat, getting shot at by the enemy, or training to fly the war machines, it can all end in mistakes and accidents that take fractions of seconds to occur. A lot of people will glamorize death and sacrifice, but that’s not my intention. I dearly wish Tyler and Val and their fellow aviators were still here with us, but you cannot defend a country without being willing to risk your life so that others may preserve theirs. To be willing to do this, to be willing to place yourself in harm’s way for the safety of others, I believe is life’s highest honor.
It was impossible, after Val and Tyler’s deaths, not to reflect on my own mortality. In the ceremony, the priest talked about Val’s motto, “adapt and overcome,” which I couldn’t help but apply to my own situation, as I struggled with harassment and bullying from those I would go into battle with. We were all willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice for strangers, yet some couldn’t treat a fellow squadronmate with dignity and respect. I did not yet know how I could continue to endure the disrespectful treatment, but saying goodbye to Val, I knew one thing: I would adapt and overcome.