CS#57: A-10 Fighter Pilot who Survived a Surface to Air Missile Hit | 100+ Missions | "Killer Chick"

and as we got below the weather i can just remember this seeing this fire fight i'd never been so low seeing a fire fight so it was very real i mean i could see the tracers and smoke and you know i could see bright flashes and just this huge firefight happening back and forth across the river and then suddenly as i'm kind of watching this firefight happening and we're talking about how we're going to set up to do a quick guns pass i suddenly see these puffs of gray and white smoke and now they're now they're in the air right next to my cockpit and you know just bright flashes and so you know it's the sudden reality of not only is there a firefight happening across the river but now the enemy is shooting up at us too welcome to combat story i'm ryan fugit and i serve war zone tours as an army attack helicopter pilot and cia officer over a 15-year career i'm fascinated by the experiences of the elite in combat on this show i interview some of the best to understand what combat felt like on their front lines this is combat story today we hear the combat story of kim casey campbell a retired air force colonel and a-10 fighter pilot she racked up over 1800 flight hours in the warthog 375 of those in combat across more than 100 combat missions in iraq and afghanistan she's also got one of the coolest call signs ever killer chick for anyone who's been on the ground and seen an a-10 on a gun run you can understand why so many ground pounders love this platform for apache pilots like myself the a10 is our fixed wing cousin and we feel a very close affinity with this incredible machine outside the cockpit kim is steeped in leadership development she led the air force academy's center for character and leadership development and since retiring has carried that expertise into the private sector where she provides leadership assessment and development in addition to keynote and motivational speeches for companies and organizations she's delivered rounds on target in heated battles and narrowly avoided death on multiple occasions including being hit with a surface-to-air missile i hope you enjoyed this insightful combat story from the cockpit of the killer chick as much as i did jim thanks for taking the time to share your story with us today yeah absolutely happy to be here so for nine out of ten of my guest interviews i start out with kind of the origin story where they were as a kid but the exception i make are for pilots where i like to get straight into the uh the nitty-gritty of call signs so yours is kim kc campbell i think i know what the kc is but i just wanted to you to explain the origin of that and if there's anything crazy that came about because of it so fighter pilot call signs are always kind of interesting because uh we're not actually in the room when we get our call sign we uh we're generally sent outside the room tends to be on a friday night with a lot of uh heavy drinking in the bar so the stories get elaborate and you kind of just hear what happens when you come back in from the room so uh on this friday night as i walk back into the room uh you know to cheers from all the other pilots in my in my squadron they said your call sign is now killer chick so kc is yes it is my initials but it all is also killer chick and uh i think the obvious part of this is that i was the only female in my fighter squadron and it's an a10 squadron so you get the callsign killer chick but there is a story from one of my instructors we were out on a air-to-air ride which is not something that we do regularly in the a-10 and air-to-air thing top gun dog fight and uh usually the instructor will kill the student most of the time uh but i managed to sneak in a few more kills on this ride and uh simulated of course killed my instructor and so uh that was one of the stories that was told as part of that very cool killer killer chick casey for short it's just much easier to say yeah it's an awesome call sign though because you could get a bad one right i mean people can get some some bad ones and that's something yeah and once you fly in combat with it it's yours for life but you know if you get a bad call sign really the only way you can get rid of it is by paying it back you know buying kegs for the bar something like that so uh you know and sometimes we like to do it just for fun true who's in the room when they're making those decisions and having those discussions behind closed doors the entire squadron everybody but what so they send everybody out everybody is in the room having a great time and they usually have a white board up with different call signs some of them are you know no way they'd ever give you that call sign they're just for fun uh but the the entire squadron's there other than you and you get sent out so it's a bit of a surprise when you come back in but it's like it's a great night it's obviously something that as pilots we all look forward to because i think it really means that you've you know you've got to that point you know you've reached that pinnacle you finally have a fighter pilot call sign is it a democratic process or in the end is the squadron commander making the call no it's generally democratic based on a level of cheers for a certain call sign although a commander will step in and say absolutely not you know maybe draw the line through some call signs that are less appropriate and uh we call it the red flag test could you stand up on stage at red flag which is a huge exercise out at nellis air force base and say this is my call sign if it doesn't pass the red flag test then it's usually off the board that is funny so one of the other guys i interviewed um caesar i think is uh rodriguez he was saying that he mentioned red flag and i asked well i've never heard a red flag what's that and the comments i got for not knowing what red flag was was pretty pretty serious so it's funny you bring that up okay um maybe just before we jump off of off of call signs what was the the worst one you heard as you were in the room for uh that somebody actually got i guess oh gosh i've heard some really terrible ones what are two or three that are bad some terrible ones that i probably can't even talk about on the on uh okay on the podcast here but i think so i think some of the best ones are ones that tend to be acronyms and so you're always kind of wondering what they are um one of them is an a-10 pilot who on a low-level mission accidentally hit one of the guide wires that connects to a tower and so his call sign was frybat flew right into big ass tower uh so those are some fun you know those are always the fun ones that's a great one that's great yeah those are those are some of the better ones that are based on something stupid that you've done in the airplane so it's you know generally it's a playoff of your name or something stupid that you've done in the airplane so thank goodness for me i hadn't done it i'd done a lot of stupid things in the airplane but nothing at that point that made the call sign so right okay perfect so now that that's out of the way let's get to the origin story for the killer chick if if we look at the community you were in with a-10s and the academy and everything you've gone on to do i mean it's a very type a community or at least people have this impression so were you a type a as we look back to you as a kid growing up uh the alpha in what you were doing what were you like as a kid i'd say short answer is yes uh but not early on i i don't think i flipped that switch for me until i decided i wanted to go to the academy and become a fighter pilot it was like that gave me the direction but for me that moment was ironically i think um when the space shuttle space shuttle challenger accident happened back in 1986 there was something for whatever reason in that moment that i really connected with of just doing something more important than yourself something bigger than yourself and i was also just enamored by this thrill of flight and ideas of being an astronaut and so i after talking to my parents decided that was what i was going to do i was going to the air force academy i was going to be a fighter pilot and that for me flipped it you know that was the switch that turned me maybe into this type a person of really just working hard and starting to pay attention in school i mean even my parents were like thank goodness you decided so early at a young age because after that i was just really focused on going after that goal and working really hard at it what was it that enamored you with flight was there a moment for you where that you just felt this is the right thing i i you know i maybe i just thought it was going to be really cool to go do this idea of flight so much so that i asked for flying lessons for my 16th birthday and so you know then now you know when i get to that point i'm hooked i mean i flying for the first time and then i got to solo and asesta i think i was 17 at the time but flying for the first time and being in control of the airplane was just i knew at that moment it was like oh now i'm really hooked if i wasn't hooked before now i'm really hooked because i love the thrill of flight i loved being in control of the airplane myself knowing that i could do it even though my first couple landings weren't actually that good i'm pretty sure i had multiple landings long as i bounced down the runway but i learned very early any landing you can walk away from is a good one it's a good one yes and isn't that crazy that at 17 you can solo in in an airplane uh yes i probably i mean i think of the things you know i look back now and 17 seemed so young um and the fact that i could solo in an airplane by myself and at san jose international airport i mean it wasn't just it wasn't a little airport it was san jose international airport i'm taxiing behind like united and american it was just no way the fact that we let kids do that is amazing but that hooked me i mean i just i loved flying absolutely so the challenger uh moment was a big one for you yes and and somehow it's okay i want to do something bigger than myself but there are a lot of things you could go and do right that are bigger than yourself were your parents military like what what was it that made the air force or just the military service come into play there yeah it's funny that you say there's a lot of things you can do that are bigger than yourself my mom was an oncology nurse which i you know i look at that as a tremendous amount of you know service and doing something more important than you my dad had been in the military only five years so i didn't get to see your experience military life as a brat but i got to hear a few of his stories once i decided it was something i wanted to do he opened up a little bit about it so he spent time at the he went to the air force academy as well and then spent five years in service but not a pilot hates flying but it was just that connection of knowing that how you get to be an astronaut is something that i talked to my parents about and so he said well you know most of the astronauts are pilots and a lot of them come out of the academy so that might be an option i'm not sure he realized that it was something that i was really gonna go do i think there was this moment of like well we'll see you know we'll see if this is something she sticks with and then i think when i really decided i was gonna stick with it you know i think it was hard for my dad to see his little girl go off to the academy a place where when he was there there were no women and it's hard it's a really difficult school and so i think there was part of him that you know it was hard for him to see his little girl go off to to do these things and i'm sure it's been hard for them throughout my career you know um playing a tens and flying in combat and i'm sure that's really difficult for parents but uh i i was hooked and i wasn't gonna i wasn't quitting on this goal that's for sure man so if uh maybe if you asked your parents hey if if kim didn't go into the military what was she gonna go do if not like what was your other path you think at one point i wanted to be a pediatrician um except i've realized that i don't really like blood all that much so i deal with it with my own kids but that whole career field would not have been for me got it and then as you as you're looking at the different ways you can go did you look at all at the navy or was it just like hey i'm going in the air force to do this it was only the air force i i didn't even apply i didn't apply to annapolis or west point i applied to a few other schools mostly because my parents made me so that i would have a backup plan which i needed because getting into the academy didn't come easy um i actually got a rejection letter from the academy in april of my senior year and i was totally devastated because i worked so hard for it was all i'd ever wanted and then to get the letter from the academy that says you know thanks for applying but um you're you're essentially not good enough i mean is really what it said at least what i read into it is um it's competitive and you know um thank you for applying but you know try again next year uh and so that was april of my senior year and i was i mean i was crushed i mean that i had like that was everything that i had worked for and wanted um and the academy said no um thankfully i had really supportive people around me and wrote the academy letters every week um to say i'm still interested i'm this is still what i want to do i can do 10 more push-ups i can do five more pull-ups whatever it was that i could do i told them i had plans of showing up at the academy on initiation day like if someone else decided they weren't going to get off that bus i was going to be like hey i'm here i'm ready to go thankfully i didn't have to do that i got an acceptance letter um in early june so just a few weeks before we were to really yeah from from writing these letters i don't know my guess is somebody else turned down their appointment but you know i think with you know something the academy is looking for is somebody that's committed and really wants it and so i don't know maybe the letters did make a difference i know i know the admissions office got them because when i was a freshman at the academy they called me up to the admissions office because they wanted to meet me because i had written so many letters that they were like okay we've got to meet this cadet who you know wrote us letters every week for months so whether it worked or not i found my way there so we might just take a tangent here because yeah this is interesting to me that's a cool story first of all and it reminds me one of the guys i interviewed tom shea is a former seal and he went to buds five times and for the fifth time he waited outside of an admiral's office every day for a year at lunch like let me back in the guy was basically on the verge of kicking him out of the navy entirely and he was finally like all right i'm gonna give you your last shot um and i've got a couple moments in my life where i feel like nobody was gonna stop me from doing it but it's not everything like it's just a couple things i've done and i wonder for you that maybe there's an impression for people for the for the type a's out there and the fighter pilots like everything you approach is this 110 or were there a few things in life where you just knew like i really want this thing and i'm gonna i will stop at nothing to get it yeah i think that whole path i mean i've i think about just getting to the point of being a fighter pilot and it was something you know this is fifth grade when i made this decision and it was not easy and i think about all the times that i could have quit you know i struggling to get into the academy i had some medical issues that i had to deal with while i was at the academy and had to ask for an exception to policy from the secretary of the air force and go through some additional testing i struggled with air sickness and pilot training i mean there were so many times where i don't know it was just like is someone telling me this isn't the right path or is this life testing me and you know i look back about all the times i could have quit and i think about all the opportunities i would have missed i mean if i had just quit when times got tough or i quit when things weren't going my way or when people said i'm not sure this is the right path for you but this was something that i wanted i mean i was just so committed to it and so driven and maybe you know i think about it maybe some of those moments were helped me actually be more vote motivated because if if somebody's saying no or maybe you're not good enough or maybe this isn't the right path i think for me i'm like well i'm gonna show you that it is right i'm gonna i'm gonna prove to you that i am gonna you know that i am gonna work my ass off to be good at what i can do even if there are doubts so i don't know i think all those tough things made me better at doing hard things i think all those hard painful things because they were painful at the time i mean it's not talk like it was easy but it was it was painful and it was it was those moments i think that probably made me a stronger person and a better pilot down the road and then as we as we look at how they narrow the pool of candidates for this profession right i mean just getting into the academy is tough getting to fly i'm sure is hard at the academy like as you come out getting fighter fighter you know capabilities is another so when it comes down to choosing the aircraft for you was it always like i want to go do a10s did you figure it out over time like how tell us about that uh journey for you yeah you know i i knew i wanted to be a fighter pilot so even getting to pilot training we start with roughly 30 people and i knew that i wanted to be a fighter pilot and and not everybody and it's not for everybody i mean it really is not but i knew it was for me and then i got to the point where it's time to really start thinking about the assignment you know which airplane do i want to fly and there were seven of us in the fighter track that were getting assignments and i think over time i just started talking to people about what aircraft they had flown and what they liked about it but also through the course of my training i realized that flying the air-to-air formation stuff while it was cool it wasn't really for me because where i really enjoyed flying was down low uh at 500 feet cruising around and doing those missions we didn't get the chance to draw bombs or anything like that at pilot training so i didn't really know anything about that but the more i talked to pilots that had flown close air support and this whole concept of supporting our troops on the ground and knowing that the a-10 was absolutely the best airplane that could do that really led me down that path and so more than an airplane it was a mission and you know the airplane especially the a-10 you know it's not your sexy sleek fighter i mean it's a beast it's nicknamed the warthog for a reason but i love the mission i absolutely love the idea of providing close air support and this was pre-911 and so you know i i would i didn't know how the world would change after 9 11 but for me it was all about close air support so um it was a journey trying to get there but it was really trying to find the mission that i felt um most closely uh aligned to you you mentioned something there that i i also picked up on reading about you which was kind of talking to former pilots along the way like whether it's mentors or just trying to to do your own research in a time that was like before the internet as we know it today right yeah i know it's it was slow we had it at that time but but i think a lot of people myself included didn't really go out and ask those questions and really seek out that guidance it sounds like you did could you talk a little bit about that of like how you went about doing that what you found most useful sounds like it helped you find the right aircraft for you yeah i think you know what was interesting for me is there were very few fighter pilots at pilot training and so we would only get really one side of the story we heard from a lot of heavy pilots who you know could talk about their experience flying cargo aircraft or airlift or refueling whatever it was and so it was almost a necessity to go find the fighter pilots who could talk a little bit about their airplanes and the instructors there really encouraged us to do it because nobody knows your your airplane or your career you know unless you've been in that environment you know i can maybe talk a little bit about the other paths but it's so important to hear personal stories and that's one of the things for me i think it's really important to share those stories too i think you know we have a responsibility to share those stories with the next generation um to help them and in their decision-making process and so yeah for me it was a necessity it was about really finding out what was going to be the right fit for me um pilot training is a 10 year commitment and so i tell people like you want to find something that you're going to love like go find something that you really want to do and so i was all about trying to figure out the best way to do that and learning from other pilots about their experiences that's cool so i think you mentioned also this is pre-911 but it's not that far pre-911 right i mean we're right on the cusp of of that so maybe if timing wise i understand you you go through the academy then you go and do two years i think two years of grad school and then you go to pilot training and where are you at on 9 11 i am in a 10 training at davis-monthan air force base on 9 11 um i was actually flying a night mission and so i was asleep and crew rest and the phone rang and it was one of the guys from my class and you know my first thought of course is why why are you calling me and busting my crew rest because i you know he knew i was flying nights i didn't get to even say anything because he just said kim turn on the tv you know turn it on right now and so i turn on the tv and it was about that time where the second plane hit the world trade center and i i mean i just remember that moment so vividly because i it was no there was no doubt in my mind i mean i i knew we were under attack and it was just this realization that you know our lives were changed forever and you know my life as an a10 pilot was likely going to change forever and it did i mean we i finished my a-10 training in december of 2001 and deployed in early 2002 uh and so it was yeah i mean it was we had to be ready i mean it was whatever little bit of training we had it was enough and we were going to combat so yeah our lives did change forever as did many peoples how did the training change if at all i mean i guess we're just talking a couple months between when that happens and you guys are finishing up the training did they did you get a sense of urgency or any difference from from the instructors i think it was a sense of urgency to get us done and get us out the door i knew already that i was going to pope air force base to the 75th fighter squadron and there was already talk about squadrons ramping up to deploy and so it was getting us ready knowing i think more increased pressure i mean when you're sending students out the door you want them to be ready i mean you're signing them off as they're ready to go and so i think it was just increased pressure to get us done to have the training done right and get us out the door to our units because very likely we were going to be deploying very quickly wow and and you said you're deploying in o2 so you go to afghanistan right off the bat yeah we started in kuwait our squadron was tasked to deploy as part of operation southern watch but about this time operations in afghanistan were picking up and there was a need for close air support our unit was there shortly after operation anaconda and so it was this realization that we needed a close air support aircraft closer than kuwait because kuwait to afghanistan is uh roughly five hours of flight time so that's not a real quick close air support response time and so they decided very quickly that aircraft they would start rotating aircraft between uh kuwait and afghanistan so we started in kuwait for operation southern watch and then they would just rotate pilots through and of course that's where we all wanted to be i mean kuwait at the time was enforcing a no-fly zone and for us in the a-10 it mostly meant flying circles and race track patterns uh south of iraq in a combat search and rescue alert role so it wasn't very exciting and that wasn't where the the action was the action was in afghanistan and that was our job that was our you know our bread and butter is to fly close air support and so that's what we wanted to do so we were all anxious to go um to get our to get our turn in afghanistan i will say just from the apache pilot perspective there's nothing worse than just like flying it but just flying from a to b and and practicing or that's not what you trained to do right i think that's it you want to be you if your team is on the field you know you want to be part of that and so i think that's what we all felt was just this desire of we knew as a10 pilots that we could make a difference right we knew that we could save lives and so we wanted in on that we that was that is our primary mission is close air support and so we wanted to be there so if you can could you take us to the first time you're flying in afghanistan um yes how how long have you been out of flight school and again you're a single pilot right i mean you're in the yeah you're in the cockpit on your own there's not somebody else who's going to help you out and you were in training four months prior like maybe four months before that yeah it was it ended up being about five months before my first combat mission and uh i got the word i think at breakfast one morning one of the uh the senior pilots so what they would do is pair a junior pilot with a senior pilot and uh for our combat missions and so he came up and said all right casey uh we're going to afghanistan pack your bags and so we had a couple hours and we by this point we had already been studying up on maps and missions and materials and rules of engagement and all of those things and we started the trek to afghanistan which was uh ended up being a seven hour flight altogether refueled multiple times on the way you know there's no easy way into afghanistan from kuwait because you can't fly across iran so you're skirting around iran going through pakistan and then into afghanistan and i remember this was my first air refueling overseas i had done it in training but i had to refuel multiple times to get to afghanistan and flight and i remember just being so nervous because i thought you know if i can't put gas in this airplane i'm gonna have to divert on my very first combat mission because i couldn't get it done um and i remember being very nervous but you know once the first time was done it was like all right i got this and then we made our way into afghanistan and we were tasked to support some troops on the ground it was a convoy escort and we ended up not doing anything in terms of kinetic activity we didn't drop any weapons but i just remember the feeling of how reassured the guys were when we checked in like when we said hey you know this is hog flight overhead we'll be here for the next hour it was just like this relief of like there's a tons overhead you know nobody's gonna mess with us and we we it was very quiet we did escort meaning we kind of we stayed overhead the convoy and then we would go ahead of them and look at the road and just make sure that there wasn't anything that looked out of the ordinary but we essentially spent an hour flying circles in the sky overhead the convoy you know at the time i it was like you know i think everybody wants to employ and drop weapons and but i in hindsight you know looking back i did many of those missions during my time in afghanistan and over time i really understood the importance of it of just being overhead knowing that if if something happened we would be there i mean we weren't going to let them down we were going to get them all the way to their next forward operating location and we were going to be overhead and so i think just talking to the guys that we supported and knowing how much that made a difference i kind of gave me a different view on that mission so my first combat mission was was eerily quiet no ordinance dropped and then having to land at bagram air base for the first time was a whole experience in itself and probably more terrifying than the combat mission was my landing there because bagram at the bagram at the time was like the wild west and i remember the controllers saying when we came in you know uh just stay on the right side of the runway when you land and i thought well that's an odd request but okay i'm gonna listen and this we didn't really fully understand the threat at the time so we did this what we call the whirlpool so we'd go right over the top of the field very high and then whirlpool our way down to get to lower altitude very fast so we could maintain our speed up and just stay right over the field and i remember coming in for that approach and just trying to make sure i stayed on the right right side of the runway and as i landed on the left side of the runway i can see these like rocks and holes all over the runway and then off the runway on the right side is these signs that say danger minds and so i'm on this narrow little strip of pavement on one side i've got holes and rocks like you know just fod foreign object damage waiting to happen and on the right side i have mine so like if i blow a tire you know what's i don't know what's the least worst alternative but that was an interesting approach down to the field an interesting landing but that began my a couple months at bagram flying missions in afghanistan if we can just nerd out for a second on the aviation side what uh what altitude do you start at when you're doing that whirlpool well it's been a while but we started um i'm trying to we'll talk above ground level probably at about 10 000 feet above the ground and so you're literally like you're just above the airfield coming down it's not like you got some nice like final approach where you're coming in gingerly oh no like you're spiraling just like that's like coming in gingerly on a final approach at that time was like triple a you know man pads waiting to happen and so we would just come over the field and essentially do what we call a split s which is roll inverted and pull uh to get down to a lower altitude and then we'd have to like put out the speed brakes and everything to slow down so it was a little sporty uh we got we got much better at it the more times we did it but it was a little sporty the first time around how how hard is that technically to do uh the hardest part is not over speeding the airplane and being on your approach speeds when it times comes time to put the gear and flaps down so you get too fast and now you're just going to screw yourself because you're not going to be able to to lay on the airplane and then you and then you just created more problems because now you got to go around and now you're even more exposed to potential threats in the area so we got good at it over after after time though yeah were you guys living in tents at the time at bogger yes we were living in these um i equate them to when i was a cadet at the air force academy we in our basic cadet training we had to put up these tents and they were just dusty with open flaps there's no air conditioning there's just cots and a big tent it's really interesting because that was 2002 and there's one tent one giant tent for men women officers enlisted everybody we're all in one tent and so i've got my little cot in the corner and i've surrounded myself with ponchos to have a little bit of privacy um and then you know i went back to afghanistan several times 2005 now there's like officer female only housing you know just but back in 2002 i mean it was it was the wild west and you know but it worked right we were your maintenance and pilots all together we were you know i wouldn't have wanted to be separated from my crew and you know there just there wasn't that many people there in the first place at least on our little compound and so um yeah it was it was interesting living we had baby wipes for showers we ate uh it was uh it was it was it's a good thing for pilots to experience that's true it gives you some a little bit of uh of recognition of what our ground guys go through on a daily basis i feel like you just uh held off many an air force joke that was coming in the comments of this so that i think that's so true it's so true though it really is um so on the a10 right with the different weapon systems from an apache perspective like there's a certain um almost pressure kind of recoil effect that you feel when you fire these things for the first time what's it like firing those for the first time on that beast yeah my my favorite thing about flying the a-10 um in addition to the mission of course but my favorite thing about actually flying the a-10 is shooting the gun because it's a 30 millimeter gatling gun if you've seen the pictures the air the gun itself is 19 feet long so they built the airplane around this 30 millimeter gun and so when you're in when you're in a10 training we don't actually consider you an a-10 pilot until you've shot the gun so you don't get your patch that says you're an a10 pilot until you've shot the gun which is uh let's see maybe 10 rides into the program ish but going out to the range for the first time knowing that you're going to shoot the gun i mean that we're all so excited it's generally we're all doing it on the same day and so we're super fired up and nervous because you don't want to screw it up but the first time that you actually do it your flight lead is tucked in right behind you to make sure that you're going to do everything correctly and the way we do it is we get set up in a rectangular pattern around a target it's very academic in a way and we roll in we're at a 30 degree dive angle pointing at the ground and i just remember you know fine tuning my aim point putting it right in the center of our heads up display and then pulling the trigger and when you pull the trigger on the gun i mean it is immediate like you can you can smell the gun gases you can see it out in front of you the whole jet shakes around you and then ideally you see sparkles when your bullets impact the training target um and so when you feel that the jet rumble you're supposed to hold the trigger down for you know about a second and a lot of guys will just immediately come off the trigger because it's so overwhelming but i just remember pulling that trigger for the first time and it was such a such a sense of like all right now you've made it now you're actually an a10 pilot um it's just it's hard to compare i mean it is just a really cool sensation um but you know the whole point of that gun is that it is incredibly accurate incredibly precise um but there's no better feeling than pulling that trigger knowing that you can hit the target because it is very accurate i think so many ground pounders right now are also saying that's their favorite thing about the a10 as well just for being down there yeah and it has a very unique noise it doesn't sound like that from the airplane but for guys on the ground like when you hear that you know a-10s are nearby overhead and i think it's just a sense of relief like that we're there and we can make a difference that's cool okay and just out of curiosity do you guys set it for a 10 round like what is the burst round clip that you do when you're so when you're in combat it's roughly 70 rounds per second is what we shoot and in combat we'll do about two to three seconds so you're looking to get a couple hundred rounds down on the target just for one burst basically yes yeah just one burst so oh man yeah it can go quickly though i mean we uh you know we can run out of those things but again we fly in pairs so you get you know you've got your your weight grounds too okay great so that first time you're in afghanistan when you fly from kuwait into afghanistan you have this initial mission um and you're there you mentioned for a couple months do you end up getting kinetic in that first deployment or does that come later no afghanistan by right after i guess spring of 2002 got very quiet i think as uh you know the enemy regrouped and found its way to pakistan and so we did a lot of uh convoy escort and overwatch missions we did some support for uh some special operations uh missions i think my only kinetic if you will was dropping a flare at night for special operators to help illuminate a landing zone um you know which you know it made a difference it was something but it definitely wasn't the close air support that we anticipated um that quickly changed a year later when we went to when we went to iraq was there any i guess just your honest impression like leaving that combat zone without having gone kinetic was there any frustration there or was it just like hey we did this mission because truthfully convoy escort you probably save people just by being there no kidding will keep the enemy away but what was your feeling as a fighter pilot at the time i think there's always a little bit of frustration because we felt like we weren't um doing the close air support that we had been trained to do i think for me the unique thing about being at bagram was we were so close to um the guys that we worked with and we we interacted with them regularly whether it was conventional army or special operators we got to talk to them about what we were doing we sometimes would brief with them or debrief with them and so i think there was a real rapport so i think it took a while i mean don't get me wrong it's frustrating to not drop weapons when that's kind of what you're trained to do but i think we all realized over time what a difference we made just by being there got it and sometimes it was you know a low pass a show of force with flares and that was enough you know um it's just different you know knowing that the enemy will regroup the next day and i think that that was the frustrating part more than anything and then just before we jump to some of the more hairier moments as you as you leave afghanistan that time after your first no kidding combat rotation are you feeling at that time kind of yeah this path i chose is the right one this is where i should be yes um i think you know 911 changed us for in many ways and for me it was just this you know this idea that i started with of committing yourself to something more important than yourself it was this commitment to service i think i don't think i recognized that in high school i mean as a teenager i didn't i didn't i don't think i really knew what service was and so i think after 9 11 and deploying to afghanistan i really connected with the mission and just service and my husband and i were we had we'd been married for a couple years at this point and he was he's also an a10 pilot and we were rotating back and forth where our squadrons weren't deploying at the same time they there was this note there's no known history of a husband and wife couple flying a-10s they didn't really know what to do with us so they kept us in separate squadrons and so we would like pass in kuwait you know spend a few days uh together and that was it but i think you know looking back at the time we were just so committed to the mission and what we were doing and we believed in it so much um that that sacrifice like we we understood why right we understood the importance of what we were doing but i don't i i did not recognize that as a young teenager no way it definitely grew over time right okay so after you come back and and you head out and maybe as you mentioned your husband which one of you two ends up dropping bombs first uh he did he actually flew an operation anaconda so he flew really yes he flew 810 missions in operation anaconda and made a significant impact on the mission there um i'll brag for a second he was awarded three three distinguished flying crosses um for his work and operation anaconda which is pretty impressive so yeah um yeah he he did and you know it's i think the nice part about being an a-10 couple if you will is i got to learn kind of from his stories and his experiences and what he went through um we switched places because iraq i was the one that got to deploy and dropped a lot more ordinance and end up having a lot more combat missions than he did but yes he was he was first and i will say just people who listen to this podcast have probably only heard me mention this once but operation anaconda for those who don't know definitely look it up but huge battle right at the beginning of afghanistan a lot of the guys i went and served with in the 101st flew apaches there so i got to read about them there's a great book not a good day to die maybe yeah i think that's it um which really details this and the a-10s role there like it really talks about everybody who is fighting in that battle it's amazing and i can't even imagine how you get three dfcs in that time frame that's pretty special it was a it was it was a pretty impressive operation yeah definitely i'd suggest looking it up it's uh it's you know obviously that was early 2002 and a lot of time has passed but definitely significant time in in the a-10 world in terms of what our capabilities were man all right so so let's then fast forward to if you take us to your first kind of kinetic operation could you just tell us where you were what was going on like how much experience had you built up at that point in time yeah so we after coming home from afghanistan we turned pretty quickly and went to iraq we deployed our same unit deployed in early 2003 as the war was getting ready to kick off we went back to kuwait and i remember landing in kuwait that first time uh after flying across the pond as we call it the atlantic ocean but flying in a-10s all the way there is a long long trip but i remember landing at kuwait and it was so different from my first experience there because there were aircraft everywhere i wasn't even sure how we were going to park there were eight tens as far as as you can see the marines were there uh there was rescue helicopters there i mean clearly war was coming i mean it was just this was march of 03. wow yeah and we spent two weeks um you know just kind of waiting you know waiting really to see what was going to happen i think we all knew war was coming we talked you know we we talked about our preparations and what we would be doing but at this time i mean i had 300 hours in the a-10 i was a very inexperienced wingman compared to everybody else that you know in general was a thousand hours or more and so i didn't know if i was gonna if they were gonna ask me to fly i thought i might just sit in our mission planning cell the whole time i really so and uh it turns out we needed every pilot we could get because we were constantly flying missions and uh once the war kicked off and again you know the my very first combat mission into iraq was uh eerily quiet as we we pushed into iraq i will never forget this line of dust that we could see is that we watched our ground troops just press their way to baghdad and i think because initially the resistance just wasn't what we thought it would be until they made it further into iraq and so those first few days was just this dust trail and us being overhead and i remember the first um ground controller that we talked to on that first mission and he was like look it's your cr it's christmas it's your birthday it's easter it's whatever holiday you want it if you can find an enemy vehicle you can take it out and i remember we were just like this is crazy we're at the time we were held to a higher altitude we we had binoculars we didn't have targeting pods so we're trying to find you know enemy vehicles anything my flight lead ended up shooting um a tank an enemy tank with a missile which was awesome to see but there was nothing left i mean that was it there was nothing for me and so it was like it was almost just like wow that was my first combat mission and you know there was all this build up all this excitement you know we thought there was going to be all this resistance which there's a good there's goodness to this right we don't we don't necessarily want that close air support fight because it means that our guys are engaged with the enemy so it was kind of a letdown uh my first mission uh but that quickly changed i mean it by by maybe this first week by the end of the first weekend of the war we were dropping on almost every mission uh and we were it was every mission was kinetic um whether it was we would find you know these areas that the iraqis had abandoned but there were vehicles and weapons and missile launchers you name it that we were tasked to take out less close air support in terms of close contact with the enemy for our ground troops which again is a good thing but we spent a lot of that first couple weeks or so just taking out enemy weapons and material that all changed once our ground troops got close to baghdad i mean that was uh things drastically changed about early april time frame as both the army and marines made their way towards baghdad and kim when you're going in and taking out these position you know pieces of equipment and whatever it is at that time before they get close to baghdad is there a triple a threat in the area yes there's triple a there's missiles in fact so at the time it was called the super mez which was a missile engagement zone around baghdad but we would every day before we would fly we would go in and we'd stare at this paper map on the wall and all the known or suspected missile locations would be plotted out on the wall and we would figure out our path i remember one mission being very nervous because they had reports of a sa-6 which is a pretty lethal surface-to-air missile especially for an a-10 yeah and they said look you know here's this area we need you to go in there and take some things out it was actually over on the marine side of operations uh thankfully they sent in some surface or suppression of enemy air defense some seed assets to go in with us so that we would have some protection but it was it was nerve-racking the closer we got to baghdad the higher the threat for us and we had guys regularly talk about reacting to missile launches um the aaa you couldn't really see during the day once i switched to nights it was amazing you realized how much they were actually shooting at us all the time and we just couldn't see it but why why is that uh kim i think you know during the day it's just it's not um you don't see the flashes that go with it unless it's right near you um but at night you could just see it everywhere i think and a lot of it was they were just shooting it up you know hearing aircraft noise not necessarily specifically targeted at us um so i preferred flying in the day just to the uh ignore that it's there did you guys fly at night with nvgs or was it thermal no we flew with nvgs okay um did you ever get painted with um radar or did you get hit with any of these surface-to-air missiles uh we get painted all the time with on our on our radar warning systems so there was a lot of threat reacting and and trying to assess you know um what their capabilities were and what our capabilities were without getting into the classified side of things but really just it was as we pressed to baghdad i mean our the missions changed drastically um and for me that mission changed most significantly um on april 7th of 2003. um by that time we were thoroughly engrossed in baghdad and so the tactic for us was we would take off from kuwait and fly to baghdad and then they had us in these stacks around baghdad because the situation on the ground at that point was so intense and that they just needed aircraft stacked up around baghdad so that if somebody called for close air support we were there and we were ready so we would take off from kuwait fly up to baghdad we'd air refuel before we'd go into the stack and we just sit in the stack and wait to hold and i would say the period of the about the 5th 6th 7th 8th of april was really i'm sure high stress and intense for the guys on the ground because for us in the air it was equally so um just in terms of the amount of the threat level and also the troops in contact our guys being engaged with the enemy and just the constant calls uh for close air support assistance um april 7th for me was it um i would say the i don't know my life-changing mission in the a-10 i mean it was certainly a defining moment for me we had we were waiting in the stack as we did on on many missions and that on april 7th the weather i mean it was just clouds covering baghdad as far as we could see and so we actually you know we kind of were chatting just while as we were waiting in the stack of you know i'm not sure we're going to be able to do anything today just because we we can't drop through the weather at the time in the a-10 we didn't have those upgrades yet and we had to be able to get below the weather and then we got the call for troops in contact and we were like all right let's let's figure out what we can do um the guys were taking fire they were on the north side of baghdad near the north baghdad bridge ground controller told us that our guys friendlies were on the west side of the tigris river uh third infantry division and then the east side was iraqi republican guard and they were shooting rocket propelled grenades into our guys and so we were just pressed there as quickly as we could kind of hovering over this what we knew with the target coordinates and then my flight lead said all right casey i'm gonna i'm gonna find a hole in the clouds and and follow me through and so i remember watching him he just dove down through disappeared through the clouds and then i found my own uh hole in the clouds and dove through and as we got below the weather i can i just remember this seeing this fire fight i'd never been so low seeing a firefight so it was very real i mean i could see the tracers and smoke and you know i could see bright flashes and just this huge firefight happening back and forth across the river and then suddenly as i'm kind of watching this firefight happening and we're talking about how we're going to set up to do a quick guns pass i suddenly see these puffs of gray and white smoke and now they're now they're in the air right next to my cockpit and you know just bright flashes and so you know it's the sudden reality of not only is there a firefight happening across the river but now the enemy is shooting up at us too so we decide we're going to do a quick pass of guns just try to lay down some fire down on the enemy to try to take the pressure off on our friendlies and my flight lead goes first he rolls in north to south and he's trying to get right underneath the north baghdad bridge where the enemy is hiding so if you can picture trying to this is a bridge like a bridge that you might see every day in any city and we're trying to get underneath the bridge like underneath the overpass go under it well we're trying to get our weapons underneath there we don't want to fly under it but our weapons forward firing we can get the guns there so we're low we're at an angle where we're trying to get at it and my flight lead shoots first and the ground controller says not effective i've got to have you come in from south to north so i break off my pass and we pull around to do another guns pass and we come in south to north we're also now very predictable because we're coming in south to north coming off west over the friendlies to stay over the friendly location we decide we're going to do two passes each that's it try to take some pressure off and then we've got to climb back up to get our energy back a 10's a bit of a pig at low altitude and so we we decide two passes of guns and two passes of rockets and then we'll get our energy back and uh as i set up for my last rocket pass i kind of refine everything get my nose pointed right underneath the bridge hit the weapons release button and then pull off target just to get away from the ground away from the threat and that is when i just feel and hear this loud explosion at the back of the airplane and there is no doubt in my mind i mean i know i'm hit it's like this fireball involves the airplane it dumps the airplane nose low i can see baghdad it's like just getting closer in the front of my windscreen and i instinctively just pull back on the control stick just pull back trying to get away from the ground and nothing happens i mean i pull back on the stick and nothing nothing happens and so at this point the ground is still getting closer and i know i might have to eject but the thought of ejecting to where we were just strafing the enemy is you know not appealing at all and so it's this time stand still i mean i know i've got to make every second count and so i quickly analyze the situation i can see like my master caution lights flashing at me i've got a caution panel down on my right side it's lit up like a christmas tree and i remember looking down at it and these four lights at the top hydraulic pressure and reservoir for the left and right sides and they're all on and right above that is my hydraulic gauges and they're both at zero and so at this point i've got two options i look at my ejection handles and again i'm you know not yet that's the last thing i want to do and so thankfully the a-10 was built to take hits and so i flip our backup emergency system to put the airplane in manual reversion and the airplane thankfully slowly starts to climb out and away from baghdad and this is like okay i think i i think i might make it out here alive oh damn yeah where did you go like did did you i mean are you able to limp back to kuwait yes limp is a good term i at this point um i let my flight lead know that i had been hit i tell him um over the radio i key the mic so flying you know we we aviate navigate communicate right we prioritize on that mission i think i communicated first because i'm pretty sure the very first thing i did was said [ __ ] two got hit two got hit um which my flightline told me later he's like well we normally don't say that over the radio but it was very appropriate at the time um but i had told them that i was hit and you know we talk about in an a10 you're you're solo you're by yourself there's nobody else in that airplane that's gonna do anything but i would say that my flight lead was so critical in that moment because the second i told him that i got hit he immediately told me to start going west in my little brain i am focusing on just getting the airplane under control i don't have enough brain bites for all this other situational awareness but he does and he tells me to move west because he knows that if i have to eject my best chances of survival are to float down in that parachute ideally over the friendly location and i tell him that i'm in manual reversion and as soon as i say that you know he immediately he tells me to continue putting out chaff and flair but to emergency jettison everything off my airplane because i'm struggling to climb i'm telling him that i can't climb and i'm in manual version and he tells me to emergency jettison get rid of all the other ordnance on my airplane and so i do and the airplane starts to climb a little bit so that first i don't know minute or so is just pure survival mode it is get the airplane under control but now get west try to get some energy back try to climb back up i had lost altitude they're still shooting at us and so you know and the airplane is flying you know it's a pig it's it's struggling to climb i'm not very maneuverable because i'm in this backup system which is like old school cranks and cables trying to control the airplane and uh it's rough i eventually make it above the weather and kind of outside of baghdad which at this point i i feel like a little bit of relief if you will because to me if i have to eject outside of baghdad i feel like i can maybe have a chance to evade and escape the enemy inside of baghdad i feel like uh just not good and so i feel like a little bit of relief once we get outside the city god all right so so many questions here but you mentioned as you started this story that this was life-changing i can understand why but why do you say that in this case um i think you know looking back right it's taken me you know it's taken me a while to kind of look back and and realize everything that i've learned from this but i think you always wonder like in that moment in that moment when there's nobody else there to help you like can you do it can you respond under stress can you be decisive can you take action and i and i proved you know that i could um i i was ready for that moment for a lot of reasons but for me it really comes down to being prepared and practicing you know i i look back at the things where i the reason i think i was successful in that moment was because i had you know i had prepared by knowing my aircraft systems i had practiced by visualizing we used a technique and flying called chair flying so kind of practicing and thinking through critical steps before you even get in the cockpit and then kind of planning for the worst case scenario so i was ready for that moment even though you know i said i wasn't scared when it happened the truth was i listened to the video afterwards and i can hear the fear in my voice right of course i was scared but it's all about what you do in that moment like you know can you take action can you respond under stress and and what in your life have you done to prepare you for that moment so i think that was just a critical moment for me that where i proved to myself that i could do it i i knew what i had done to be successful in that moment and now by the way i still have to get back and figure out what to do with this airplane you know do i get it back to friendly territory and eject do i take it back and try to land it and having to make that decision which to me feels a little bit like it has the potential to be the difference between life and death like i can make the wrong decision you know and and crash um being able to make a tough decision and feel confident in it you know i think really set me up for success for the rest of my career the rest of my life as a follower as a leader as a person to be prepared in those critical moments whether they're in your personal life or professional life like i proved to myself i know how to do it and i can do it but that man that flight back that hour flight back was the longest hour of my life you know i didn't know what was going to happen when i attempted to land i it's hard to stay focused for an hour like i thought about crashing i thought about dying we we talked about it i mean we talked about do i try to land in iraq at talial air base which we at the time had owned but there's one fire truck and no hospital we discussed if i crashed there you know that there's only one fire truck and there's no hospital so you know the likelihood of dying was higher i mean those are the conversations we had on the way back um i couldn't dwell on those i had to kind of push those thoughts aside and really just focus on flying um but i felt very good about the airplane i had an hour to fly it i had a very experienced slightly with me who was providing me with this mutual support uh so i felt i felt good about it um i also knew about the stories you know we were talking about stories earlier i knew about the guys who had come before me in desert storm you know i knew about sadly you know i knew about the aircraft crashes we lost a pilot trying to land and manual reversion and so i i knew what happened i knew why he crashed and so i had those stories with me and so that you know they you know they weren't there that day but their stories were i remember those stories we'd talked about those stories um and so that helped me and then a really good flight lead my wingman who was with me kind of providing me that mutual support and talking me through it you know weighing the pros and cons fully evaluating everything and then feeling really confident that i could lay on the airplane dude i should i think there's this impression that oh okay so you get hit you climb out and then everything's good because you're you're out of that that area of immediate danger but it sounds like you're far off from that were you able when you came in to land kim was it was it just like a controlled crash or like a slow glide in i mean what about like so it's interesting so we we only train to fly in this backup mode once in in our initial training and it's just so we know how it responds we know it's not the greatest to fly in but we only train to fly in manual reversion once we spend about five minutes in it and that's it we don't we didn't ever try to land in manual reversion never it's too dangerous like we it's not a training it's not something we can do in training we didn't even try to do it in the simulator back then that's all changed now that's that has all changed thanks to you is it the kc protocol or something i wish i wish i would have at least practiced it a few times in the simulator knowing that i could crash or land but it's it's deemed too dangerous the checklist for manual reversion says attempt under ideal conditions never you know i don't know how it's ideal and you're in an emergency situation but it's a different story um but it talks about flying when you come in to land to do a essentially a navy carrier landing like a power on no flare just fly it all the way to the ground a very shallow approach higher on speed to maintain control and so that's what i was going to do i did my controllability check as we got into friendly territory meaning i got the gear down through our backup emergency system all these backup systems that i had to use make sure everything was good and then decided to that i was gonna go with the final approach and uh i came into that final approach and i just remember you know everything seemed fairly smooth i was very comfortable and then i got very close to the runway into the ground effect and the airplane just did this quick roll to the left i thought i was gonna i thought i was gonna crash i thought the airplane was gonna flip over on its back and i wouldn't have time to eject and you know this is all happening in probably microseconds and i just yank the stick back to the right it levels out and i continue with the approach and uh i kept my hand off the throttle knowing that i didn't want to pull the throttle back as i always do on landing to slow down that's kind of our normal procedure but i knew if i did that in manual version it would cause the nose to dump and then airplane to potentially cartwheel down the runway so power on navy style landing and uh just flew it right into the ground and uh you you asked controlled crash it was probably one of the better landings i have ever done at least probably never so focused on a lot i'm so focused on landing i've never spent that much focus on actual initial landing um you know but i got the airplane on the ground and i just remember feeling like such an intense feeling of relief and i i need to find a better word because relief is just like this understatement yeah it's just a weight of like i did it you know like i'm safe i'm on the ground at this point the airplane's pretty slow rolling down the runway i don't have brakes i don't have steering and i we have a backup emergency braking system so i just slowly apply the brakes and and bring the airplane to a stop but yeah it was uh that was definitely the most terrifying moment i've ever had in the airplane but also a true testament to the durability of the airplane you know it got hit by a missile and you know incredible damage and uh got me safely back home and all the backup systems seem to have worked you know like all these things that you you might wonder is this going to work when i need it they they worked yeah back up flight controls back up back up braking backup getting the gear down everything was an alternate procedure that i had not used before and they all worked exactly as advertised so as you hop out of the aircraft do you at that moment have this feeling like this is a life-altering event or you realize it later like in your mind are you thinking i'm lucky to be alive right now does it change your perspective on life at all how are you feeling at that moment i definitely felt lucky to be alive i mean i was still super hyped up on adrenaline yeah to be honest but i i you know at that point i just wanted to see the damage i couldn't i hadn't seen any of it from from the cockpit i couldn't tell what the damage was like and so i was just you know i hopped out of the airplane there's like 10 marine firefighters all staring at me like what the hell just happened and i'm thinking the same thing and i walked back to look at the back of the airplane and it is i mean it's dripping with hydraulic fluid there's holes there's probably 600 holes in the airplane there's a giant hole about the size of a football in the back horizontal stabilizer the back of the airplane is charred like a fire happened it's covered you know it's just i had no idea the amount of damage this airplane took their their pieces of the airplane are gone like the the outside structure of the airplane is gone and i can see that the dark honeycomb underneath i mean it is just it is uh more damage than i expected um so yes i feel very lucky to be alive uh i i just you know my first thought is i need to go find my crew chief because i just destroyed his airplane i'm really sorry about this well yeah like what do you say i'm i'm really sorry i just destroyed your airplane so i got a ride over to my parking spot because i had to leave the airplane on the runway and there's my crew chief and he you know he just has the biggest smile on his face and he's just like ma'am welcome home i didn't have to say anything i just it was awesome um my crew chiefs were awesome i mean that airplane flew exactly like it was supposed to um i don't think the reality of what happened sunken i i honestly think it took months i think i compartmentalized a lot of what happened on that mission because we were still flying in combat there were still missions to fly and i didn't i didn't have time to really think through the fact what i had just survived and what could have happened and i just couldn't go there while i was deployed and so i didn't really unpack all that until after i got home was there a thought at all of maybe i shouldn't go back up again no i no i think you know i i haven't i wrote in a journal i was there someone gave me the idea of you know hey write it you know take some notes while you're such a good idea you know thank goodness i have it because i have all my thoughts from that night i wrote it i pages that i wrote about that mission um i think i was definitely nervous about getting back in the air but there's a war going on i mean there are guys on the ground that needed our support we needed every pilot we could get and i think my flight lead um recognized that i needed a little bit of downtime so on april 8th which was the day after this mission he signed us up uh well he runs he ran the schedule but he signed us up to sit uh combat search and rescue alert which normally is a down day i mean it's a you sit in a shack next to the runway you rest you read books you play video games whatever you want to do and so it was supposed to be kind of like decompress and then the alarm sounded and it was not a drill we got launched because an a10 pilot had been shot down in baghdad and so yeah so we we ran out to the jets as fast as we could we like got our gear on hopped in the jets and just took off and then we spent 30 minutes just gathering information you know where was the pilot what shot them down where were the closest helicopters that we could bring in to pick them up i did not have time to think about the fact that i was going right back to baghdad you know right where i had escaped my own shoot down and so maybe a good thing no like yes honestly the best way to get back in the airplane i didn't have time to think about it it was like you know get back on the horse again right like it was a great way to be back in the airplane and have a mission that was so important because somebody needed you yeah those guys were there for me the day before and i was gonna do the same for this pilot i mean he was on the ground and um thankfully we made it about 30 minutes into iraq and we got the call that we could turn around and we were at first we were like um hell no we're not turning around there's a pilot on the ground i mean i don't know what we were thinking the the controllers have radar they can see us they can tell that our airplanes aren't turning around so they eventually are like all right sandy uh you can turn around the pilot has been picked up and we're like he's been picked up well later we find out a friend of mine another a-10 pilot so we found out the story he ejected obviously incredibly scared grabs his parachute his weapon and runs for a ditch and he can hear a whole lot of commotion noise vehicles and he he thinks that the enemy is like they're coming from he's about ready to get captured and he hears hey pilot dude so he immediately knows they're american turns out the ground convoy had been going past saw him a jacked and went over to get him so he was very that's great um so that mission didn't last long but it was a great way for me to get back in the air and it was just you know get back into it get back into the fight knowing that there's a war going on and and they need every a-10 pilot they can get and you you mentioned something else during this story about the video and listening to it afterwards and this is something that i think people on the ground often don't have the opportunity or the unfortunate circumstances to endure during a some type of incident like this in the aviation community like you sit in a room i would imagine with your peers yeah and everybody listens to what you did and they watch it like you're watching an nfl game the day after and you're on the team like hey you missed this block or you should have done this so did that happen for you we did we debrief uh after every mission yeah so this mission was no different you know after kind of coming in and doing the initial debrief with our intel team um so they could get the word out about what happened um we sat down and watched the video and kind of debriefed it all and talked through it all it was it's really it was really interesting to go back and watch because i think like people talk about when they're in a car accident and time slows down there was 20 seconds to pass from the time that i got hit to the time that i was in manual reversion i felt like that was like five minutes like i just felt like all this time it was 20 seconds and so we went back and we watched and we debriefed and talked about you know what we did well what we could have done better and i think the most important thing about a debrief right is we talk about our objectives and and this mission essentially was a success right we you know we supported the troops on the ground i landed safely but there's always little things that we could have done better and we talk about those things and think about what we would do differently the next time we talk about the things that we did well right that we want to repeat but then we walk out of that room and we share those lessons right they're not just my lessons in my flight lead like we shared them with the entire a10 community so a-10 pilots around the world we shared the lessons of flying and manual reversion and things that we could do differently and i think that's really important is you know anytime you face a stressful event or a difficult situation it's worth a debrief and it could be a five minute conversation of how do we do there you know what do we do well what can we do different the next time but that debrief is huge it's so so much part of our fighter pilot mindset of what we do to help focus on this idea of continuously improving and always getting better and learning from your mistakes and kind of changing the way we look at mistakes because it really just you know yes they're painful when they happen and yes you know people will point them out and everybody's around watching your mistakes and that that part sucks don't get me wrong but walking out of there knowing how you can learn from those and then you know to do better the next time uh is really critical so yeah that mission was no different we watched the film we critiqued it all painful painful yeah yeah so um i want to get to some of your post service work but just i i want to touch on maybe just one more story from your time in combat um and i would kind of leave it up to you to choose kim and i'm i'm just thinking i would imagine you've had a couple danger close shots um or if there's a particular mission that you just think back on from a leadership perspective or it was difficult or maybe it was a routine mission that that you just think about sometimes if you could just take us to maybe one more operation that you were on there's so many i mean there's so many in different i think in many ways i mean i will tell you this particular mission on the 7th of april was i think drove home a lot of things for me and i was thankful it happened so early in my career um you know i because i realized the importance that a a flight lead you know a wingman has yeah um in helping you and giving you that critical support like i said everything from that mission i went and and kind of adjusted how we did things in a-10 training and how we taught our young pilots to deal with surface-to-air threats and how to make time-critical decisions so there were so many lessons that came from that but i was a follower right in that mission i was a wingman i was a young wingman so i wasn't leading that mission but i'm really thankful it happened so early in my career because it changed me as an a-10 pilot from being a two-ship flight lead to a four-ship flight lead you know to an instructor in the airplane and then later in life being a commander and leader of large organizations um i think if i would talk about one other mission that comes to mind and i think this this one is now very different because now i'm a flight lead i'm an instructor and an evaluator in the airplane i have thousands of hours in the airplane i've this is my third combat mission and i was leading a four ship of a-10s into afghanistan we had started as a 12 ship and a few airplanes had broke along the way so i was bringing the last four a-10s into afghanistan maybe a common theme here but the weather was terrible um we were supposed to stay vfr visual flight rules meaning we're not supposed to fly into the clouds um but there were clouds and coming from pakistan all the way to bagram or through again um through pakistan and into bagram you know there's there's nowhere to turn around there's nowhere else to land so we did the best we could and then they give us procedures if you have to go in the weather here's what you do but there's no radar at the time there's no other we don't have radar on the a10 so we can't see what's out there uh and there's no big controllers out there watching us either until we get closer to bagram so i'm leading the sportship into bagram and we're very close we're about 100 miles maybe less outside of bagram and we're in the weather we're following our procedures and uh and i lose contact with my number four airplane i just i can't hear him anymore on the radio and i remember you know afghanistan is has beautiful mountains they're also deadly i mean they're very high they're at the altitudes that we in the a-10 fly now if he's my number four is following the procedures he's fine but i can't hear him he's not responding anything and at this point i don't know if he's crashed i don't know if he's had an emergency if he's had something wrong in the airplane or if he's just there's something wrong with the radios but i'm also leading a four ship and i have three other airplanes that i have to get on the ground safely and so we spend a few minutes i'm you know constantly you know hog four hog one radio check hog four hog one radio check but as i'm doing this i realize i'm not focused on leading my airplane the other airplanes are following the procedures and so kind of have this quick moment of reflection of like i've got to let somebody else deal with that and i have to i have to lead this warship down to the ground and so um i passed it off to my number three to continue to try to contact him and i think all of us at this point we're now getting very nervous you know did we just lose number four did he pack it into a mountain we don't know but he's not on the radio and he should be and uh we're just trying to keep us all safe at this point make sure that we're separated that we're separated from the mountains that we're not gonna hit each other um and and now i realize you know i'm kind of my back to my basic lead in crisis um mantra if you will that we learned earlier in our pilot training which is aviate navigate communicate and so i i go back to that i i've got to fly my own airplane first i've got to get my other three airplanes in a safe space you know i've got to get them down to the ground by navigating clearly and now it's time to communicate and tell the controllers at bagram like look we need help we're not we're not seeing number four we're not here in number four what can we do um and so we just i we i i'm getting everybody in to try to land through the weather which is dangerous and you know when we don't have radar can't see the ground don't know you know exactly where we're going to come out of the weather thankfully at this point we gain control we we talk to our controllers at bagram and they can start picking us up but i still can't hear number four i have no idea what's happened to him and uh we eventually um pop out below the weather and i can i can only see three airplanes at this time but he's above us and behind us and slowly as we get down lower i start to hear this crackle over the radio and he comes up on radio uh and uh it's a huge relief another word relief that doesn't seem to fit the situation because i was honestly i was terrified that i had lost my number four airplane and no matter what had happened i was still responsible right i was the leader in this you know i i had to own it no matter what happened but kind of going through that whole situation which again only lasted probably you know five minutes in the scheme of things was terrifying in the thought of losing one of your wingmen um and i would have been responsible um but i you know again i kind of go back to those early missions you know the things that i learned about decision making and leading and just trying to be calm and a crisis and if if there's one thing that a10 pilots do i think really well is that we have the ability to remain calm whether it's with our wingmen even though i was terrified that you know something had gone wrong i had to keep my entire four ship calm and then when we're in those moments where the guys on the ground are screaming for fire and screaming for us to get in as quickly as we can to be calm and to remain calm and composed and to kind of go back to the aviate navigate communicate right i still have to fly my airplane i have to know where our friendlies are i have to know where the enemy is so that i don't harm our own troops on the ground um and then communicate and let those guys know look i've got it we're gonna keep you safe no matter what um so many things what's that what happened to number four in the weather up high altitude something happened with his radio we still don't know so even but he yeah he obviously was sorry i left you hanging there now he eventually came up over the radio and uh he didn't even know anything was wrong he was like why can't i talk to you why aren't you talking to me you know so it was something wrong with this radio but we eventually got him on the ground um you know i remember rolling in at a bathroom and i have a picture of this of these the a-10s taxing in and it's like snowing and it's just terrible weather and i'm like how do we even make it down in that and uh but it took me a while to like you know um i think losing somebody that you're responsible for was i mean it was terrifying yeah um and just knowing that that would have been on me no matter what right i think as leaders it's always on us no matter what happens we're responsible so um but learning kind of that flight leadership of always having a wingman and supporting each other in various moments whether it's getting hit with a surface-to-air missile whether it's leading a force ship in the weather whether it's just being overhead some guys on the ground who need our help i think being the leader that's calm in the chaos is really critical of just helping to keep the rest of the team calm i love it so as we as we look back at some of these scarier moments that taught you a lot and i think it's evident that you carry these over into your post-military service and what you do now is a keynote speaker leadership development also some of the last assignments you did in the air force it looked like were in this vein of of creating leaders and how you manage in difficult situations i want to touch on that a little bit but i also wanted to make sure and we can edit this out later kim if you don't want to go here but i think what many people would say is the elephant in the room you're at the air force academy in the 90s i don't know how long they had had women at the academy but you're in a male-dominated institution you then go into flying which is largely a male dominated environment then you go into fighters which is the alpha male environment so i would i open this question to how you'd like to to move with it but specifically looking at leadership development if you have somebody whether it's another young woman or somebody who's an outsider in a community asking you how do i do this how do i make it in this community what advice do you give them you know i think for me when i went to the air force academy when i started out we were at about 12 women there and so it was obviously a very male dominated environment but you know getting into the academy was really hard for me you know i obviously had faced a little bit of rejection and so once i got there it was all about proving myself not so much proving myself because i was a woman but proving myself to prove that i had earned my spot and that i could do it and i ended up graduating as the number one cadet in the military order of merit and towards the top of mind for your whole class yeah so i mean i was like all right i needed to go back and tell the admissions office all right thank you for taking a chance on me yeah you know i had i had done it but i had come from this environment of being you know just there were four women in my squadron of cadets and so it already had been this environment of being so few women and then when i went into the fighter community i was the only woman when i walked into my fighter squadron on day one i was the only female fighter pilot there were other women in some of the other areas in the squadron but i was the only female fighter pilot and at the time i was one of just 43 women in the entire air force that were fighter pilots out of about 3 500 fighter pilots at the time so the numbers were very small i put a lot of pressure on myself to do well that was pressure that i put on myself you know and these are my words but i didn't want to ruin it for all the women that followed me and so i put that pressure on myself i think in truth you know no matter who you are no matter what your background is when you walk into a new unit or into a new team or to your organization there is proving yourself there is showing that you're credible and capable and no matter what it is that you do but my advice to people is not to put so much pressure on yourself i mean go out be good at what you do be credible work hard have a good attitude but don't put so much pressure on yourself i mean i was i was afraid of making mistakes i was afraid of failing you know because i thought that i had this burden to carry we all make mistakes we all fail i made plenty of them along the way i made plenty of mistakes and pilot training i had failures in pilot training but part of you know part of what they're looking at is how you respond in those moments you know how do you respond when you make a mistake how do you respond when you fail can you get back up again can you you know do you have a good attitude and keep working learn from those mistakes and so i think my advice to really anyone is to just work hard be good at what you do and don't put so much pressure on yourself because you will make mistakes you will fail you need to think about how you're going to react in those moments i think that's that that's probably the advice that i wish i would have taken or had when i was younger and quite honestly advice that i still have to remind myself of today like it's still not easy right i still put pressure on myself to do well um so advice for young and old alike yeah as we as we then look at what you're doing now i have a few questions around it but i wonder if you might just share give some context to the leadership development side of your of your life but both following the tail end of your military career and what you do now and then i'd like to ask just a few questions about that yeah you know i spent my entire career flying a-10s but i also had the opportunity to do some tremendous leadership opportunities as well and commanding squadrons and groups so talking about 100 people to over a thousand people and i found that i absolutely loved being a leader and having the ability to impact people's lives and connect with them and make a difference just like on the ground in the a-10 i know we made a difference and i feel like as a leader you have a responsibility and an opportunity to make a difference as well and i i loved it i um i enjoyed that opportunity you know i think probably most important was this idea that you can both connect with your team on a human and personal level and you can also hold people accountable and push your team to excel those are all things that i learned from flying those are things that i learned in my early days of being a fighter pilot at the very end of my career in the air force i got asked to go back to the air force academy and take on the role as the director for the center for character and leadership development and i couldn't think of a better way to end it i mean it was for me it was coming full circle and going back to an a place that really changed me and um helped me be the person that i am today but also to help influence the next generation of leaders and so we focused a lot on developing leaders of character at the air force academy and helping young men and women to be ready to go out right as a second lieutenant in the air force or space force to be in a position to lead young men and women into combat and so we're asking a lot of them on day one and so i wanted to be a part of that that leadership development leadership development role was very important to me and so now that i'm out of the air force recently retired this year i am continuing on that path i'm continuing on the path of sharing stories i i'm a keynote speaker and share stories about my combat experiences while also talking about some of the roles that i've had in leadership spaces and learning how to lead with trust and courage and vulnerability and also taking that to the leadership development side as well i'm working with a company a team called victory strategies which is a leadership development firm we're comprised of i would say elite military performers like special operators and fighter pilots but also fortune 500 executives and elite athletes and entrepreneurs and we're all focused and passionate about leadership and so it's trying to share some of our stories and our experiences and share that with the corporate and business world as well and so yes it is different than flying the a-10 and i do miss flying the a-10 but i love i love the next chapter as well it's an opportunity to do something different and a way to continue service just in a different way and so you've got what i would imagine is a lot of reps in terms of growing leaders right and watching this both growing up yourself as a leader in the air force but then leading as a commander in some difficult situations have talked about then in in this role like overseeing leadership development at a military academy and now what you're doing so i wonder and i think in particular the reason i'm bringing this up i think people in this audience appreciate some of these skills they can pull out are there any items or characteristics that you see what maybe one or two that are particularly difficult for young people to grasp when it comes to leadership that you might point give some advice on so i think to me it comes down to leading with courage and when i talk about leading with courage i'm not talking about big heroic courage i'm talking about the small things i it's about showing the human side of leadership and and taking the time to connect with your team i think there's that side of it it's hard to to be vulnerable and put yourself out there and and as a leader we often have to show trust to earn it right like we have to give our team trust and trust in their expertise trust them to do their jobs and then we can earn trust i think that leading with courage also extends to being able to have the hard conversations to make the tough calls to hold people accountable i think that's probably the biggest thing that i see with younger leaders is we want to be liked i mean that's just part of our nature we want to be liked but for a leader to truly be effective they have to have the courage to do the hard things right have those hard conversations provide feedback there's a way to do it it doesn't have to be harsh feedback but you owe it to your team you owe it to yourself to hold yourself accountable and hold your team accountable as well that all takes courage none of it's easy right it may be simple in this idea but it's not easy to go out there and have those tough conversations to hold people accountable to give the feedback um and so to me that's what it comes down to it's it's leading with courage meaning you you have the courage to connect with your team to show trust but also to hold your team accountable and to hold yourself accountable as well love that and for myself having worked recently at a big tech company is there any advice or guidance you give to companies as they're trying to develop leaders because i feel like the military it's just part of the process in how they develop but it's not second nature in corporate america i think you know the one thing that the military the one thing there's many things that the military does well but the one thing that i will point out in terms of this discussion is we spend time on leadership development when we we set aside time we set aside resources to focus on leadership development i don't necessarily see that all the time with the business and corporate world it's just it's hard to find the time it's hard to find the resources there's a finite amount of time and resources and so how do we set aside time to do leadership development you know that that that's hard but i think that's one thing that i see the military does very well is we set aside time we make it a priority we tell it our team it's a priority and i think as leaders we can set the example with us right we we should never stop growing as a leader we should always have the ability to learn new things try something new get outside our comfort zone for me it's this idea that you know i always have something to learn from others i can i can never stop growing and learning i think we can take that into the business and corporate world as well leaders can set the example whether it's you know taking the time to make leadership development a priority whether it's coaching or training in whatever way works for an organization make it a priority focus on it even if it's it's even if it's internal you know find ways as a leader to take the time to sit down and talk with your team set expectations we talk a lot about commander's intent in the military um you know simon sinek talks about a why taking the time to sit down with your team and underst understand making sure they understand your intent and the why behind what you're doing those are all things that i think help develop leaders because when they understand your intent they understand a why then you can empower them to make their own decisions to take action in those critical moments but you have to empower them you have to trust them to enable them to do that so i think there's a lot of things that we can we can learn from the the military example there um to bring into the corporate and business world as well so true so as we round out here there are a couple questions i like to ask everyone there's just one i wanted to throw in for you as we are wrapping up in particular for you which was do you think looking back that you would have made it as far as you did if you didn't get rejected early on academy no i honestly think no i think it set me on a path of like good or bad of proving myself right of like um i think sometimes when you are somebody doubts you or you you face rejection i think you want to work that much harder to prove yourself i worked my ass off at the air force academy because i felt a little bit like i had to prove myself to prove that i belonged there because i you know had received that early rejection letter that set me up for doing well enough at the academy to get a pilot slot you know to have to overcome some medical issues and to be able to go get a pilot slot and have the opportunity to fly well when i got that exception to policy it was a letter from the secretary of the air force that said we expect a lot of you i mean the pressure was on like i had to prove myself again like hey they took a chance on me and so i think every step of the way those hard things help me get where i am um i worked really hard i mean none of this came easy i'm a huge believer in practice and preparation and and that helps in those moments of fear those stressful moments of getting hit with a missile over baghdad not that we all need to experience a life-or-death situation like that but in those crucial moments i think the reason i was successful was because i had worked hard i had practiced i had put in the work i had done my homework i prepared for all of those things probably because there were those bumps in the road along the way you know where i felt like i had to prove myself and work hard so i think it really set the stage probably the trajectory for the rest of my career of you know it's not going to come easy but i'm going to work at it because it's what i want and then you've got big shoes here because i get some great responses on these from pilots but is there is there anything you used to carry with you on missions that had sentimental value good luck charm something that somebody gave you that you had to have on you uh i i don't know that it's um it's probably not unique uh to many pilots but i i carried a flag with me on every single mission um not not a full flag but just a small size flag and i flew it on every mission that i ever flew in the airplane not just in combat if you look at pictures of an a10 up in the cockpit we have a space where we can put things and so this was a basically eight and a half by 11 flag that i slid right on the side of my cockpit and so every mission that flag was displayed it's been flown in combat it's been flown on training missions it's been float on missions where i excelled it's been on missions that i uh did poorly and so um i don't know that that's necessarily unique to many pilots i think a lot of us fly with flags but it is one that i've i have carried with me um from day one of flying the a-10 and so it's got a lot of uh sentimental value if you will um the other thing i will share this one's not as sentimental for sure uh i still carry it with me today it is definitely unique uh and i don't think i've ever told anybody this but i did mention that i had a problem with air sickness at pilot training so i always carried an air sickness bag with me on on every mission well i got over that air sickness and uh and in my pilot training days the same air sickness bag so the the last one that i never used right was folded up into my knee board it is still in my knee board today uh you know i guess if for fear of ever having uh to use it again but all i think more for me it's that reminder and the proof that like i i got through that tough time and so it's folded up in a little square the only time i've taken it out is to show my students because i have uh i i got the opportunity to be an instructor at the air force academy and my students a lot of times had problems with air sickness you know first times in airplanes and i would always show them the the beat up little air sickness bag that i had folded up to show them that hey you you know you can do it too like you're going to have these bumps in the roads you're going to have things that don't go your way uh but you can so you can do it too so an american flag and an air sickness bag why not right did you have to sneak the air sickness bag on is it looked down upon if you're an a10 pilot with a thousand hours and you still gotta have a bag with you like do you have to kind of sneak it into the cockpit well it's it's a little bit it's in the keyboard right so no one ever knew it was there um until i decided to show my students because i thought it would help um it wasn't really there for a need uh anymore you know i got well past the air sickness but it was more of like just a reminder of those tough moments and those tough times that i made it through and then on the flag where is that today um the flag is actually still in my saddle bag i have so a saddle bag is what we carry with all our pubs in the a-10 um and it's it sits on the kind of the in front of the cockpit with all our maps and publications and it's still in there it's interesting i haven't unpacked that bag it has my my and my maps and my knee board from my last flight in the a-10 that's really cool that'll be an interesting moment when you unpack that thing yeah i'm at cer at some point it needs to go somewhere maybe it's my maybe it's my hope that someday i will just i will magically get the opportunity to fly the a-10 again hey c we need you we need you and i would say hell yes so that's my last question if uh if you could go back and all the times like nearly dying obviously and getting hit like that and the weather and the leadership challenges um and pushing yourself harder than you you may have advised others would you go back and do it all again yes absolutely in a heartbeat you know it wasn't easy um i wouldn't want to do it again let's make this clear i would i don't i wouldn't change anything but i don't want to go through those things again once was enough but yeah i mean all those things made me the person that i am today i think i'm a better fighter pilot leader mom wife you name it because of all those hard experiences so yeah absolutely um i wouldn't change anything i don't want to do it again except maybe fly the a-10 again perfect well i am so appreciative of your time this was so much fun for me personally i'm really grateful that uh you spent this long with us and and dug into a lot of these stories this is so fun to hear from a pilot's perspective but i think i i believe people on the ground who have seen an a-10 in action and have saved their ass just love hearing about what it was like for you being up there so thank you for this yeah it's been fun thinking about and reminiscing about some of those old times and we'll have ways for people to get a hold of you in the show notes to reach you both for the speaking and just to follow what you're doing from a leadership perspective so thanks a lot kim awesome thanks so much ryan i appreciate it our first comment comes from t norby on youtube and it's about the jeff morris interview and he says i commanded a company in 2id and ramadi i lost too many guys some veteran stories i have a hard time believing i believe this guy i agree with you i think for those who have served you can tell when somebody's blowing smoke and we know jeff isn't he he was telling some some serious stories about the mistakes he made people he lost and how how much it hurt and you could just tell it was true so thanks for leaving that uh t norby um very cool to hear that you were in ramadi commanding a company that's a huge deal obviously so thanks for your service and thanks for taking the time to leave that our second comment comes from mike s also on youtube this one is about the travis hall interview says travis was an instructor i had it of course super awesome and crazy competent with mad skills definitely a class favorite as he is truly world class yeah i guess um when you're a long time green beret you know how to train other people but you can just tell he's so laid back and mellow and just so chill i'm sure he was great to have as an instructor somewhere i'd love to watch him uh train in some of the uh the local forces back in the day but i'm sure he still gets his training in with the second chance k9 so thanks for leaving that comment mike really appreciate it stay safe everyone

Channel: Combat Story

Views: 111,907

Keywords: Combat Story, Army, Veteran, Vets, Ryan Fugit, Apache, helo, helicopter, AH-64, AH64, aviator, training, special operations, specops, SOCCOM, Afghanistan, Podcast, Delta Force, Rangers, Green Berets, Iraq, US Air Force, fighter pilot, A-10, Distinguished Flying Cross, DFC, OIF, OEF, Kim KC Campbell, Killer Chick, leadership, team building, motivational speaker

Id: oGUJabFbGs4

Length: 107min 35sec (6455 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 08 2022