Voices of Valor
Close Call: Fighter Pilot Saves Troops and Her Damaged "Warthog"

A thank you note written on a paper napkin was the only confirmation that an Air Force fighter pilot needed to know she had done her job and done it well.

On April 7, 2003, the US Air Force’s 23rd Fighter Group stood ready as always when the call came in. Ground troops in Baghdad needed the massive and powerful close-air support that the A-10 “Warthog” fighters could deliver. Flying to their aid was fighter pilot, then Capt. Kim (Reed) Campbell, a veteran attack pilot who fellow airmen nicknamed “KC” for “Killer Chick.” The 28-year-old captain would save the day for those troops but nearly lose her aircraft, and her life, in the process. And, the battle to fly her Warthog home earned now Maj. Campbell the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC).

Capt. Campbell and the A-10 Fighter Squadron had already sped through bad weather and a dust storm to reach the troops’ location before they burst down upon enemy positions, firing each Warthog’s 30mm, seven-barrel Gatling gun and anti-tank missiles.

	Capt. Kim Campbell assesses the damage to her A-10 "Warthog" one day after it was hit by enemy fire over Baghdad, Iraq. USAF Photo by Staff Sgt. Jason Haag.

A-10 Warthog Takes a Hit
Just after she fired her last shot, Capt. Campbell turned her Warthog toward home base. Moments later, she heard a large explosion and felt a jolt in the back of the aircraft. The A-10 had been struck by a surface-to-air missile. The pilot later learned that an enemy missile punched a large hole in the right horizontal stabilizer and left hundreds of shrapnel holes in the fuselage and tail.

Capt. Campbell’s jet immediately began pulling to the left and down toward the ground. As caution lights flashed all around, one glowed most ominously—the hydraulic system, which indicated that the Warthog’s hydraulics had been shot out.

“When you lose all hydraulics, you don’t have brakes and you don’t have steering,” she explains. Without either, there was only one way to “avoid a quick parachute ride” into the hostile city of Baghdad—and the all-too-real threat of capture or injury. Capt. Campbell had to instantly switch to “manual inversion,” using a system of cranks and cables, to fly the aircraft manually. Fortunately, the A-10 responded and climbed up and out of Baghdad.

Taking the Damaged A-10 Home
Though the worst of the insurgent heat was now far below, Capt. Campbell still had to fly a damaged aircraft through antiaircraft artillery fire on her way out of the city, and the shrapnel-ridden Warthog still had many miles to fly.

	Damage to Capt.Campbell's A-10 included hundreds of shrapnel holes in the fuselage and tail and a large hole in the right horizontal stabilizer, which took out the Warthog's hydraulics leaving Campbell without steering or brakes and forcing the veteran fighter pilot to fly the A-10 manually back to base. USAF Photo by Staff Sgt. Jason Haag.

“The trip back to Kuwait was one of the longest hours of my life,” Capt. Campbell told a crowd of Air Force Association members at the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum March 24, 2004. “I didn’t know what exactly was going to happen, but the aircraft was performing extremely well, considering, … I had no doubt in my mind that I was going to land that airplane."

Landing an A-10 manually was no easy task even in ideal conditions, and the conditions, and the aircraft, were less than ideal that day. As a seasoned pilot, Capt. Campbell knew well that few pilots had ever attempted, and fewer still had survived uninjured, a manual landing of such a severely damaged Warthog. Yet, she remained confident, she says, because of her training and the faith she still has in the durable and reliable A-10 as well as the reassurance she received from a skilled and directive flight lead, Lt. Col. Richard "Bino" Turner, flying at her wing. That faith, and her skill, carried the A-10 within sight of home.

Then, as the Warthog crossed the landing threshold, it started to roll quickly to the left. Capt. Campbell’s split second counteraction righted the roll and she executed a nearly perfect landing, employing emergency braking techniques to bring the damaged A-10 to a stop.

	Capt. Kim Campbell (left) and Lt. Col. Richard "Bino" Turner, the A-10 squadron commander and flight lead who helped guide her back to base during the harrowing flight on April 7, 2003. Photo Courtesy of Maj. Kim Campbell.

All Three Wheels Hit the Ground
“When all three wheels hit the ground, it was an amazing feeling of relief,” she recalled in 2004. The next day, Capt. Campbell was back in the cockpit of a new A-10, rushing to provide air cover when a fellow A-10 pilot was forced to eject from his aircraft near the Baghdad airport. (He was rescued and recovered.)

Capt. Campbell wasn’t the only one in Iraq who was grateful for her flight and impressed with her ability to bring the devastated aircraft home. In addition to receiving the DFC, the South Carolina General Assembly adopted a bill to “commend Captain Kim ‘Killer Chick’ Campbell, United States Air Force, for her tremendous courage, tenacity and bravery.”

Notes of Thanks
The fighter pilot found even more touching words among notes she received, she says. Among the many letters she received about the flight was a thank you note, which was written on a napkin and addressed to her and her fellow Warthog pilots by the ground troops in Iraq whose calls for fire support she had so often answered. “When you get a note from somebody saying, ‘If you’d been a few minutes late, I wouldn’t be here now’ – that’s what it’s all about,” she says.

 “These guys on the ground needed our help. That’s our job—to bring fire down on the enemy when our Army and Marine brothers request our assistance,” the captain told the Smithsonian crowd.

That job is one that the A-10 pilot has completed often during three deployments in support of Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom, including her second, in 2003, when she earned the DFC. In all, MAJ Campbell has flown more than 400 hours in the A-10, including 120 combat hours during the Global War on Terror. She is currently stationed—along with her husband, a fellow A-10 pilot—at Nellis Air Force Base, Las Vegas, NV, with the 422nd Testing and Evaluation Squadron.

Maj. Campbell’s Air Force career took flight upon the wings of another Air Force veteran, her father. Born in Honolulu, HI, while her dad, a social actions officer, was stationed there, Maj. Campbell grew up in San Jose, CA. She graduated from Piedmont Hills High School, East San Jose, CA, where she was a cheerleader and competed in cross country.

	Cadet Kim Reed, US Air Force Academy, 1997. USAFA Photo.

One Goal: USAFA or Bust
As the future fighter pilot prepared for high school graduation in 1993—the same year that women were first permitted to fly combat aircraft in the US military—she had just one goal: to be an Air Force pilot. The same tenacity, skills and perseverance that would one day carry her to high honors in the Air Force, helped the high school senior complete a critical first step toward her dream, gaining acceptance into the US Air Force Academy.

“In April, I received a rejection letter because I had a really hard time with SATs,” she recalls. Determined to still attend the [Air Force] academy, she sent a letter every week updating the administration on her SAT progress and on her physical fitness regimen. “I took the SAT several times before I got a high enough score, and I wrote the academy weekly so that they would know how hard I was working to improve. In each letter, I said ‘if you have an opening, I remain interested.’ Then, June 2, I received a notice that I had been accepted; we started June 28.”

In 1997, the cadet graduated from the Academy with honors and distinction; she ranked number one in her class in order of military merit. Maj. Campbell has been flying for the Air Force ever since and, in between, has earned a bachelor’s degree in International Security Studies from the University of Reading, England, and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of London, England.

Women Fighter Pilots
By the time Maj. Campbell was flying that fateful mission over Baghdad in 2003, the then captain was one of fewer than 50 female fighter pilots in the Air Force. “There was one other in the squadron of 40 I flew with,” she recalls. “But, gender was never an issue,” she stresses. “They were all like brothers to me and still are; we are all brothers.”

She adds that being a female is the furthest thought from her mind in the Air Force. “I get asked that a lot, ‘What’s it like to be a female in a fighter squadron?’ Honestly, I never think about it. The important thing is to work really hard and be good at it, and then nobody cares what gender you are. I’m not a female fighter pilot. I’m just a fighter pilot, and I love it.”

The troops on the ground in need of the "Killer Chick’s" fire power don’t care about her gender either. Being trained and ready to help those troops is what Maj. Campbell loves most. “The best part about being a fighter pilot is that our mission supports the ground troops,” she says. “They have a very difficult job to do and when we can do something to make that job a little easier, to help them out, that’s the most rewarding.

(March 2008)

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