Mary Feik ( ; March 9, 1924 – June 10, 2016) was an American aviation engineer, mechanic, pilot, instructor and aircraft restorer. She received many awards and honors in her storied career and was a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol. Early years She first became interested in aviation at the age of seven when a barnstormer came through her hometown area in a Curtiss JN-4 biplane. She rode in the aircraft and was enthralled. Feik learned welding by age 11, and overhauled her first automobile engine in her father's repair shop when she was 13, then turned to aircraft engines and military aircraft at the age of 18. However, when she tried to enroll in engineering in college, the registrar told her, "We don't take women." She then took a job teaching aircraft maintenance at Seymour Field in Goldsboro, North Carolina. The base was not ready to operate, so she wrote to Wright Field for a position, which was accepted. Aviation engineer During World War II, Feik became an expert on many military aircraft, and taught aircraft maintenance for the United States Army Air Corps in 1942. She is credited with becoming the first woman engineer in research and development in the Air Technical Service Command's Engineering Division at Wright Field, Ohio. At a time when men dominated the cockpits of military aircraft, Feik logged more than 6,000 hours as a B-29 flight engineer, engineering observer, and pilot of P-51, P-47, P-63 aircraft. She rapidly transitioned from primary trainers to the P-51 in two and a half weeks. When the Lockheed P-80 entered service, she was issued a brand-new model nicknamed "Mary's Little Lamb" in her honor. While flying a P-59 jet fighter during gunnery training, she witnessed tracer rounds coming within feet of the aircraft's nose. "I was the only person to fly open cockpit in a jet airplane ... the airflow over this little windscreen was so great that I think I was off the seat no matter how tightly I was strapped down," she said. The job of a test engineer was a dangerous one. Feik also used her expertise to design high-performance and jet fighter pilot transition trainers and aircraft maintenance trainers. The pilot training manuals and technical engineering reports she authored were distributed throughout the Armed Forces. Her deployable rigs allowed aircraft procedures and limits to be tested with running engines on the ground.