12/03/2025
Warthog pilot
April 7, 2003. The skies over Baghdad erupted in orange flames as Captain Kim "KC" Campbell felt the explosion tear through her A-10 Thunderbolt II. In that split second, as her controls went limp and the aircraft rolled violently toward the earth, she had to make a choice that would define the rest of her life.
Campbell was one of only 50 women flying fighters for the United States Air Force. She'd entered the Air Force Academy in 1993, the very first year women were allowed to become fighter pilots. By 2003, she was living the dream she'd held since fifth grade, when she watched the space shuttle Challenger launch and explode before her eyes. That tragedy hadn't deterred her. If anything, it had forged her resolve.
On that April morning, Campbell and her flight lead, Lieutenant Colonel Rick Turner, were flying from Kuwait toward Baghdad with a straightforward mission: destroy Iraqi Republican Guard tanks and artillery positions. But as they approached the city, everything changed. A desperate radio call crackled through: American troops on the ground were pinned down, taking heavy fire in downtown Baghdad. They needed help immediately.
The forward air controller making that urgent call turned out to be from Campbell's own squadron. Her brothers-in-arms needed her.
Without hesitation, Campbell and Turner diverted into the heart of the Iraqi capital. The conditions were treacherous. Dense clouds hung over the city, forcing them to fly dangerously low. Surface-to-air missiles tracked their every move. Below them, civilians moved through streets that had become a battlefield. Every decision carried impossible weight: fly too high and lose sight of friendly forces, fly too low and become an easy target.
Campbell made multiple attack runs, her 30mm cannon and rockets finding their marks on enemy positions threatening American soldiers. The mission was working. Her squadron mate on the ground was getting the support he desperately needed.
Then came the final pass.
The surface-to-air missile struck her A-10's right horizontal stabilizer with devastating force. Shrapnel tore through the fuselage, ripping hundreds of holes in the aircraft. Both hydraulic systems severed instantly. The explosion was deafening. Campbell felt her flight controls go completely dead in her hands as the aircraft rolled hard left and pointed its nose straight down toward Baghdad.
For a moment that stretched into eternity, she was falling toward a city of millions, her multi-million dollar jet transformed into a plummeting coffin. Every instinct screamed at her to pull the ejection handles. But ejecting meant certain capture in hostile territory. It meant her aircraft would crash into the densely populated city below.
Campbell made her choice. She would fight.
With anti-aircraft fire erupting from every direction, she switched the crippled jet into manual reversion mode, a backup system so dangerous that Air Force training explicitly warned pilots to "attempt only under ideal conditions." Manual reversion meant no power-assisted controls. Instead, Campbell would fly using an archaic system of cranks, pulleys, and cables, moving the aircraft's control surfaces through pure mechanical force.
The jet responded. Slowly, agonizingly, it began to climb away from Baghdad.
But Campbell's ordeal was just beginning. She faced 300 miles of flying a mortally wounded aircraft back to base in Kuwait. Every input required enormous physical effort. The stick felt like it was made of concrete. She had no speed brakes. No steering. No brakes for landing. The aircraft wanted to kill her with every mile.
Turner stayed on her wing the entire flight, talking her through each moment, providing the technical advice that kept her alive. For an hour, Campbell wrestled with the controls, her arms screaming with fatigue, anti-aircraft fire still tracking them as they fled south.
The statistics haunted her. Only three pilots had ever attempted to land an A-10 in manual reversion mode. One had cartwheeled the aircraft and died. Two others had crashed and destroyed their jets. The Air Force didn't even practice manual reversion landings in training because they were considered too dangerous.
Campbell knew all of this as she lined up for her approach. She had no hydraulics. No brakes. No steering. Her horizontal stabilizer was shredded. Her aircraft looked like it had been through a shredder. Every system that made landing possible was gone.
What she did have was 1,800 hours of experience in the A-10 Warthog, a aircraft legendary for its ability to absorb punishment and keep flying. She had her training. She had Turner's voice in her headset. She had every lesson she'd learned since that fifth-grade dream of flying.
The crash recovery team waited at the end of the runway, certain they were about to witness a catastrophe.
Campbell brought the aircraft in, fighting it every inch of the way. The touchdown was smooth. Perfect, even. Lieutenant Colonel Mike Millen, the wing's chief of safety, watched in disbelief. Later, he would say what many were thinking: "Kim landed that jet with no hydraulics better than I land the A-10 every day with all systems operational."
The next morning, Campbell was back in the cockpit, flying a search and rescue mission for another A-10 pilot who'd been shot down near Baghdad. There was no time to process what had happened. Her squadron needed her. That's what A-10 pilots do.
For her actions that day, Campbell received the Distinguished Flying Cross, one of the Air Force's highest honors. General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took special notice: "She's one of the few pilots who ever landed the A-10 in the manual mode."
But Campbell never saw herself as exceptional. When asked about being a female fighter pilot, she always gave the same answer: "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."
Over her 24-year career, Colonel Kim Campbell would fly over 100 combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, protecting troops on the ground and inspiring a generation of aviators. She rose to command hundreds of airmen, led complex organizations, and eventually served as Director of the Center for Character and Leadership Development at the Air Force Academy, where her own journey had begun.
Her battle-damaged A-10, tail number 81-987, was deemed too damaged to ever fly again. Today it sits on display at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, a permanent testament to what courage, skill, and an indomitable will to survive can accomplish.
Campbell's story isn't just about one extraordinary landing. It's about a fifth-grader who watched tragedy unfold and chose to fly anyway. It's about being one of the first women to break into an all-male domain and proving that excellence has no gender. It's about facing impossible odds and refusing to quit. It's about the split-second decision to fight when every instinct says to flee.
On April 7, 2003, over the skies of Baghdad, Kim Campbell didn't just save her own life. She demonstrated the absolute best of what it means to serve, to lead, and to never give up on your wingman, your mission, or yourself.
That's not just heroism. That's who we are at our finest.
God bless this American hero.
