Someone You Should Know: Steely Eyed Chick Warthog Pilot

By John

Blackfive profiles Major Kimberly Cambell for his weekly Someone You Should Know series with the Pundit Review guys.

Kevin and Greg at WRKO also linked Major Cambell's Distinguished Flying Cross citation:

Captain Campbell’s aviation prowess and coolness under pressure directly contributed to the successful completion of the critical mission and recovery of a valuable combat aircraft. The outstanding heroism and selfless devotion to duty displayed by Captain Campbell reflect great credit upon herself and the United States Air Force.

Translating the usual obtuse Air Force-ese into English, Major Cambell's Warthog was seriously damaged by an Iraqi SAM during OIF. She had to first right the thing -the hog was upside down- with Saddam's Republican Guard doing their best to finish her off. Then she had to land the A-10 in manual mode, no hydraulics, a maneuver that has claimed the lives of many an A10 pilot.

Thanks for finally getting around to profiling a ~~zoomie~~ pilot, Matt. heh.

April 18, 2007 07:15 AM Air Assault

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://op-for.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/901

Comments

Not the first Zoomie, just the first pilot...

Blackfive · April 18, 2007 07:31 AM

alright alright, fixed.

John · April 18, 2007 07:33 AM

Link (or include) the pics of her plane... full of holes and entire pieces of the wing blown off.

Impressive performance... The pics can be found here

TheNewGuy · April 18, 2007 10:46 AM

She's a home town girl. Graduate of a good high school with an ROTC program.
Her Dad is a first rate citizen hisself. Both are Air Force Academy honor students, I believe first in their respective classes. I heard that's a first at any service academy, but that may just be scuttlebutt.

I do nknow that her Dad was a councilman and is currently mayor of our town of about a million folks. Kim and her Dad were guests of honor at our Veteran's Day parade, last year.

As ex-Navy, I do not have many heroes in the Air Force. I'm sure there are plenty like her, but to me this young lady is just incredible.

V/r
-SJBill

SJBill · April 18, 2007 12:45 PM

You can really see the wisdom of placing the engines above and forward of the tail in those pictures. The missile was presumably infra-red guided and aiming for the engine exhausts, but because they exhaust over the tail, it hit that instead, shielding the engines from the damage they would otherwise have taken.

Nicholas · April 18, 2007 02:59 PM

Not to take anything away, but they train to fly the Hog without hydralics, Cause the probability of it happining over the battlefield is pretty high. It just takes a lot of muscle. And hitting the Emergency Jett. switch to clean the plane of helps!

mustang · April 19, 2007 10:54 AM

Simply an amazing aircraft. It flies in the face of everything the Air Force establishment likes (high-tech, high-speed, stealth) and yet it remains their FINEST close-air support platform.

And to think they tried to kill this thing time and time again. I hope it outlives the F-16.

Joel · April 20, 2007 06:51 AM