USAF People is a monthly feature of the USAF Museum web site presenting information from our archives about famous Air Force personnel.

Capt. Carmen A. Lucci is featured during April, 2000

A Supreme Sacrifice

In March 1981, Capt. Carmen Ann Lucci was killed in an aircraft crash near Edwards AFB, Cal., the first female flight-test engineer to lose her life either as a student or a graduate of any of the four formal test-pilot schools in the Free World (U.S. Air Force, US Navy, British Empire Test Pilot School, and the French Test Pilot School). One of the USAF's truly promising young officers, Capt. Lucci had already distinguished herself in her short military career and had even been nominated to NASA as a Mission Specialist Astronaut for the Space Shuttle Program.

While in college at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, she was a member of the AFROTC and was one of the first women in the nation to receive an AFROTC scholarship. When she received her BS degree in Aeronautical Engineering in 1975, she was named an ROTC Distinguished Graduate.

Capt. Lucci went on active duty in 1977 after receiving her MS degree in Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Tennessee Space Institute. Her first assignment was at the Space and Missile Systems Organization (SAMSO) near Los Angeles. While there, she worked on a project to change the launching method for Navstar Global Positioning System satellites from expendable space-launch vehicles to the Space Shuttle, at an estimated savings to the US,. Government of more than $300,000,000.

Although selected for USAF pilot training in 1979, Capt, Lucci declined in order to attend the USAF Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB for training as a Flight Test Engineer. While on a test mission on Mar. 3, 1981, she and two fellow fliers were killed when their B-26 crashed. The distinguished career anticipated for her by those who knew and worked with her was not to be.