Fact check: The first female F-35 fighter pilot has never crashed a plane, contrary to claims

Bayliss Wagner, USA TODAY
·4 min read
72

The claim: World's first female F-35 pilot crashed a fighter jet on its first flight

In 2015, Lt. Col. Christine Mau became the first woman to fly the fifth-generation F-35 Lightning II, also known simply as the F-35.

Mau has never crashed a plane, she told USA TODAY. But an article from February 2022 that claims she ran an F-35 into the ground has continued to circulate on social media.

One Facebook post from July 26 with more than 80 shares shows a screenshot of the article's headline.

"The world's first female F-35 fighter pilot crashed a plane on its first flight," it reads.

It is juxtaposed with an image of a We Are the Mighty article that praises Mau for "proving flying is a gender equalizer."

The link to the February 2022 article from Russian aviation blog Avia.Pro has been shared on Facebook more than 120 times in total, according to social media data aggregator CrowdTangle.

The claim is false, Mau said. The article references an incident that occurred this year, and Mau retired from flying in 2017.

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The U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet declined to comment on the record for this story. USA TODAY reached out to a user who shared the claim and the editor-in-chief of Avia.Pro for comment.

Lt. Col. Christine Mau, 33rd Operations Group deputy commander, puts on her helmet before taking her first flight in the F-35A on Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., May 5. Mau, who previously flew F-15E Strike Eagles, made history as the first female F-35 pilot in the program.
Lt. Col. Christine Mau, 33rd Operations Group deputy commander, puts on her helmet before taking her first flight in the F-35A on Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., May 5. Mau, who previously flew F-15E Strike Eagles, made history as the first female F-35 pilot in the program.

Mau has never crashed a plane

The article screenshotted in the Facebook post associates Mau with a real incident that occurred aboard the USS Carl Vinson, an aircraft carrier in the Navy's Pacific Fleet, on Jan. 24, 2022. A video included in the article shows an F-35 jet crashing into the deck of the ship while attempting to land, previous reporting from Navy Times confirms.

None of the coverage from credible news outlets, including CNN and Navy Times, reveals the name of the pilot, nor does the Navy's press release about the incident.

While the article claims a crew member leaked the fact that "the fighter was flown by a woman" to the media, there is no evidence Mau was flying the plane.

The former Navy pilot retired from flying and became a teacher four years before the crash occurred, as she told USA TODAY through LinkedIn Messenger.

Before she retired, Mau was deputy command of the 33rd Fighter Wing Operations Group based at the Eglin Air Force Base in Florida – not a pilot for the U.S. Pacific Fleet or the Navy.

Furthermore, Mau said she has never flown a plane from the deck of an aircraft carrier. She said it is rare for Air Force pilots to do so, as such planes are normally flown by Navy or Marine pilots.

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Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that the world's first female F-35 pilot crashed a fighter jet on its first flight. Mau said this didn't happen, and all credible evidence backs that up. The article that makes this baseless claim says Mau was the pilot in a crash aboard the USS Carl Vinson in January 2022, but Mau had been retired from flying for four years at that point.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: The first female F-35 fighter pilot never crashed plane