HILL AIR FORCE BASE—For Capt. Emily “Banzai” Thompson, soaring above the clouds is all in a day’s work. Thompson is the first female pilot to fly the F-35 in combat and uses her skills to help keep the country safe.

“In July of 2016 I was selected to go fly the F-16 in Tucson, Arizona,” Thompson said during a presentation at Hill Aerospace Museum. “I made it through the initial training in a fighter. It was nine months long then you’re an aviator so you have wings on your chest and you can go fly airplanes.”

Thompson said it was her first introduction to a real fighter. “It's the first time you’re doing air-to-air engagement and the first time dropping bombs. I loved flying in Tucson. It was an awesome time.”

After pilot training for the F-16 she moved on to training for the F-35. “I upgraded my motorcycle to a much better one,” said Thompson. “That’s also when I met my boyfriend Dan, who is also an F-35 pilot.”

Her assignments have taken her all over the world including a deployment to Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirate area. “It happened to be the first few moments of combat,” she said. “I didn’t anticipate that. It’s not the first time a stealth fighter aircraft flew around Afghanistan. There was Enduring Freedom in the early 2000s.”

The F-35 is filled with high-tech equipment, she said. “It can carry ordnance internally and we have a special helmet that is customizable and fitted to the pilot. I don’t know if we should even consider it to be flying because it is so easy.”

It’s designed so that when a pilot is up there they can focus solely on their mission, said Thompson. “You can be working your sensors and interpreting your maps and get all that information while the aircraft is pretty much doing its thing. We’re the quarterback of the flight. We can see more than anybody else to make the decisions that keep everybody safe.”

In addition to combat missions, the F-35 is also used as an escort. “We provide protection to get them into the target area and keep them safe and bring them back home.”

The F-35 can go up to 50,000 feet, she said. “It’s about where you can see the curvature of the Earth and to the point where you start panicking. That’s really, really high. Usually we only fly up to 20,000-30,000 feet.”

Thompson said it’s fun to fly over cars when the F-35 is taking off from Hill. “If I was the guy driving along that road I’d think it was pretty awesome.”