There are reliable but controverted reports that it was one of the world’s top woman military pilots who narrowly escaped death on Wednesday when the F-16 she was flying crashed into Searles Valley Dry Lake near Trona.
The Air Force has yet to officially confirm that the airwoman involved was Major Laney “Rogue” Schol. Nevertheless, statements made in the aftermath of the incident and the process of elimination based upon the known circumstances compel the conclusion that it was Schol at the helm of the Thunderbird F-16C Fighting Falcon that was involved in a training exercise with four other aircraft which originated from from Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada earlier that morning and was engaged in a training mission over the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake’s controlled airspace when a yet-unknown or undisclosed incident led to the single-engine, General Dynamics-designed, multirole, supersonic-capable fighter to plunge to earth.
The fiery crash occurred around 10:44 a.m., about three miles south of Trona Airport and about 25 miles northeast of the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, and was seen by civilian witnesses who were situated on Trona Road in Trona.
A video shot by an onlooker captured the sound of the impact and the formation of a dark black mushroom/oak tree-shaped cloud of smoke in which a fireball migrates upwards near the ground level while off to the left and higher within the video frame, at a height of approximately 200 feet, the pilot and a secondary object, perhaps the F-16 ejection seat or its cover, are visible dangling beneath an opened parachute as they progress toward the ground.
According to the San Bernardino County Fire Department, known officially as the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District, firefighters and paramedics from its agency resources in Trona as well as safety personnel from the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake responded to the site of the downed aircraft near the San Bernardino County/Inyo County line.
Upon arrival, the firefighters suppressed a fire in the dry lake bed which had ignited as a result of the crash.
The pilot, the sole occupant of the plane, despite having ejected cleanly from the Thunderbird, sustained what were described as “minor injuries,” the nature of which were given no further illustration. The pilot was treated on the ground by paramedics and transported to a hospital for further precautionary treatment of the injuries, which were cataloged as “not life threatening” by fire department personnel.
One of those within visual range of the crash site said he saw the parachute deploy almost simultaneously with the aircraft diving into the ground, which he said created a “terrible” explosion.
At 20:41 Coordinated Universal Time or 12:41 p.m. California time, the Air Force released a statement that the Thunderbirds display team experienced an “incident” at approximately 10:45 a.m. local time in which a pilot of one of the team’s craft had successfully ejected. “[The] Pilot is in stable condition with minor injuries,” according to the statement.
There were conflicting reports as to whether the plane that went down was Thunderbird 5 or Thunderbird 6.
The pilot currently assigned to Thunderbird 5 is Major Jeff Downie, the lead solo pilot on the Thunderbirds team. The pilot assigned to Thunderbird 6 is Schol.
Schol, who was most previously an F-35A Lightning II instructor pilot with the 60th Fighter Squadron, is now a member of the 2025 Thunderbirds Team, the only female in the squadron, assigned to what is referred to as the #6 Opposing Solo slot. Thunderbird 5 and Thunderbird 6 perform an intricate set of aerial maneuvers as part of the Thunderbirds exhibition of the flying capabilities of the F-16 aircraft for air shows throughout the country, meant to promote the U.S. Air Force and serve as a recruitment draw. The Thunderbird Squadron, which has been in existence for 75 years, is the Air Force’s premier aerial demonstration team and performs some of the service’s most demanding precision maneuvers, executed in tightly choreographed formations that involve constant training and extensive flight hours.
As Schol is currently the only female member of the Thunderbird Team, it appears that she was the pilot in the aircraft that was downed by a factor or factors unknown on December 3.
In a monitored communication involving either or both Air Force personnel and the air control towers at Nellis and China Lake and/or the emergency response team, it was reported that “She made it out.” Others on the ground said that the parachuting pilot was a woman.
Major Laney Schol, known by her handle “Rogue,” was born in Denton, Texas and is a fourth-generation military service member. She enlisted in the Air Force while attending the University of North Texas. She was accepted into the service’s pilot training program and upon getting her wings was deployed for four years as a fighter pilot flying the A-10C Thunderbolt II at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia before transitioning to the F-35 at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
Fewer than 11 percent of pilots in the United States are women and even fewer – under three percent – of pilots in the Air Force are women. Schol is the seventh woman to be welcomed into the Thunderbirds, that trail having been blazed by Major Lauren Schlichting, Major Michelle Curran, Major Caroline Jensen, Captain Kristin Hubbard, Captain Samantha Weeks and Captain Nicole Malachowski.
Air Force fighter pilots invited into the Thunderbird Squadron are given a two-year tour on the demonstration team, after which they are returned to active fighter assignments.
With luck, grace, providence, skill or some combination thereof, Schol avoided the somewhat sadder, though no less noble fate of a female U.S. Military pilot, Marie Michell Robinson, who met her end in the East Mojave Desert in 1945.
Born on May 23, 1924, in Detroit, Michigan, Marie Michell joined the WASPs in late 1943 when she was 19. She already had her private pilots license when she reported for duty. The WASPs were Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), also known as the Women’s Flying Training Detachment (WFTD) and the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), pioneering organizations of civilian female pilots first organized in September 1942 employed to fly military aircraft under the direction of the United States Army Air Forces, the predecessor of the U.S. Air Force, during World War II. One of the major contributions of the WASPs was the ferrying of planes – 12,650 aircraft of 78 different types between September 1942 and December 1944 – to Greenland. There, the planes were handed off to American, British, Canadian and Russian pilots who employed them in the fight against the Germans and the Italians.
On October 2, 1944, Michell Robinson reported to replace another WASP pilot on what was in official log books described as a “day transition” training mission in a B-25D Mitchell bomber. With her were First Lieutenant George Danilo Rosado and Staff Sergeant Gordon L. Walker. Rosado was the pilot; Michell Robinson was the copilot; Walker was acting as the crew chief, whose task would be to lower the landing gear in the case of a hydraulic failure.
The plane took to the air in clear weather from Victorville Army Air Force Station, later known as George Air Force Base and today known as the civilian-run Southern California Logistics Airport, at 1:15 p.m. local time with Rosado, who had 1,521.5 flight hours to his credit, at the controls.
Two other aircraft, Bell-P-39s, were in the air during that approximate time. One of the P-39 pilots, Second Lieutenant Lawrence A. Beishel, reported that he saw the B-25D stall and then enter a spin from which there was insufficient altitude to recover. The centrifugal force from the spin would have prevented any of the crew from ejecting. Lieutenant Beishel reported he could see no parachutes emerge from the plane, which crashed into the desert floor roughly 25 miles west of Victorville Army Air Force Station at 1:30 p.m., and burst into flames.
The army board looking into the crash made a finding that the pilot, assumed at that point to have been Rosado, had permitted the B-25D, serial number #41-30114, to stall and enter a spin from which there was insufficient altitude to recover. Who was actually flying the craft at the time of the fatal plunge could not be conclusively determined. The North American Aviation Corporation flight manual for the B-25 gravely warned pilots that the aircraft should not be intentionally entered into a spin under any circumstance.
Things were different then.
Unlike Army Air Corps pilots, WASPs were considered civil service employees and did not receive military benefits. Because they were not considered military under the existing guidelines, a fallen WASP was sent home at family expense without traditional military honors or note of heroism. The army would not allow the U.S. flag to be placed on the coffin of the fallen WASP. Major Robinson, however, was granted leave to accompany his wife’s body home to Flint, Michigan, where her remains were interred.
-Mark Gutglueck