Flying Fat Albert: Severna Park’s Katie Higgins Ascends As First Female Blue Angels Pilot

When the Navy and Marine Corps released their annual message in 2014 detailing positions they were looking to fill, 28-year-old Marine Corps Captain Katie Higgins knew the sky was her limit.

Though young, she was an experienced pilot, and she applied to fly the U.S. Navy Blue Angels’ C-130 Hercules — affectionately known as Fat Albert — that stars as the opening act of every air show. Higgins wrote essays, solicited letters of recommendation, observed air shows, attended briefs and got to know the pilots. She was selected as one of two finalists for the job, and last July, went to Pensacola, Florida, for a formal interview and to get to know the team better over the course of a week.

Back home, she called at her scheduled time that Friday to learn her fate. “Hey, Katie, it was great meeting you. You’re an outstanding marine,” the Blue Angels boss said on the other end of the line. “But you’re really junior. Maybe in a couple years, when you get more hours in the plane or you get a little bit more senior, we’ll see you again.”

Thinking she hadn’t made the cut, Higgins replied, “OK, sir, thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it.”

But before he hung up, he added, “Oh, Katie, one more thing: Welcome to the team!”

Higgins recovered from the joke and checked in with the Blue Angels in August, becoming the first female pilot to fly with the United States Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron. Born in Florida, Higgins moved from state to state growing up as the daughter of retired Navy Captain Bill Johnson, USNA ’81, who flew F-18 hornets up until his little girl was following his footsteps at the Naval Academy. While she was there, her family landed in Severna Park, where Bill and her mother, Jan, reside today. Higgins considers Maryland home; she’s never lived in any one place longer.

Growing up, she didn’t settle on being a pilot immediately, though flying runs deep in her blood. “My family has a rich history of service to our country. I’m a third-generation aviator,” she said, noting that her maternal grandfather flew “pretty much everything the Army Air Corps had” including C-130s, her paternal grandfather flew B-24s, her father flew A-7s in addition to F-18s, and her uncles flew F-18s and A-10s. “So I knew I wanted to do something with service, but I didn’t know if that was a police officer, a firefighter – I even considered nunnery at one point – but I eventually landed on the military being the best path for me.”

Higgins graduated from the Naval Academy with a degree in political science in 2008 and was commissioned in the Marine Corps. She deployed twice – to Afghanistan and Africa – and has flown nearly 400 combat hours in operations in seven countries. After checking in with the Blues last summer, she trained in Fort Worth to fly the C-130T, the same model as Fat Albert. Higgins flew the C-130J for the Marine Corps.

From September through November, she and her fellow “newbies” selected for the team shadowed the Blue Angels for three months of on-the-job training, then donned their own blue suits and started their season. Higgins immediately began training in Fat Albert, mastering maneuvers ranging from the parade pass – in which the cumbersome cargo plane does a 300-foot pass at a 60-degree angle, appearing to be on its side – to the high-pitch climb, a 45-degree, nose-up climb to 1,200 feet, at the tail end of which the pilot pushes over to capture the plane’s altitude and passengers in the back experience zero G, or weightlessness.

“What’s really awesome about my plane is that any C-130 pilot you meet in the Marine Corps does these maneuvers; we just do them a little bit faster and a little bit lower for entertainment purposes,” Higgins highlighted. “It’s neat to be able to show off what my plane and what my fellow marines can do.”

Higgins performed her first show in El Centro, California, in March. She explained Blues’ three Fat Albert pilots – herself and Majors Dusty Cook and Mark Hamilton – rotate seats from show to show. In May, she manned the right seat as co-pilot, operating the radios for the USNA Air Show. In June, she will fly left seat, as pilot, for the Ocean City Air Show. During each demonstration, which last only eight and a half minutes for Fat Albert, three enlisted members also assist as flight engineer, operator of the navigator’s station and loadmaster.

On the ground, Higgins serves as the Blues’ aviation safety officer, writing reports for mishaps such as hitting birds – most of which don’t cause damage, she noted. The avid bookworm spends what little free time she has reading, swimming and going to the beach. Her little brother, Chris, who is one of her biggest supporters, graduated from the Naval Academy two years after Higgins, in 2010, and was commissioned in the Navy.

Though she is the first female to fly with the Blue Angels, Higgins was quick to note that women have played critical roles on the team since Lieutenant Mary Russell served as an administrative officer in 1969. Currently, there are two other female officers on the team – an event coordinator and a public affairs officer – as well as 17 enlisted females who work in everything from paint shop to avionics. “Women are in almost every corner of our squadron here at the Blues,” Higgins emphasized.

She humbly downplayed her gender as the pinnacle of her achievement. “I didn’t come to this team to break any barriers … like any marine, I just wanted to come and do my job, and do my job well,” she said. “But if my presence on this team helps encourage little girls or women to pursue a career of excellence – whether that’s in the military, aviation or being a doctor – then I’m doing my job and I’m fulfilling the mission of the Blue Angels.”

“Women have been involved in the military for a very long time,” she explained, noting their involvement in World War II and, for the last two decades, their service as pilots in the Marine Corps. “There have been people in front of me and there will be women behind me, and there are people overseas – women and men who are serving their country right now who give us the freedom to be able to go to all these huge events like air shows.”

It is for them, she emphasized, that she most enjoys flying for the Blues. Seeing unbridled excitement on the faces of active-duty members of the military who get to ride in the back of Fat Albert is the highlight of performances for Higgins; she treasures the opportunity to talk to them and thank them for their service. At the end of her three-year tour with the Blue Angels, she hopes to rejoin them, again piloting C-130s for the Marine Corps.

“Now that Afghanistan and Iraq aren’t dominating television coverage every day, the normal American sometimes forgets that we still have men and women overseas standing watch, keeping us free, fighting ISIS,” she stressed, citing being able to tell their story as the biggest perk of being a Blue Angel. “There are still men and women overseas fighting the good fight, and being a Blue Angel, I get to tell the American people about those heroes.”

The Blue Angels will perform in the OC Air Show June 13-14 in Ocean City, Maryland. To learn more about the United States Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, go to www.blueangels.navy.mil.