How "Killer Chick" Got Her Battle-Damaged A-10 Home

all right joining me now is Colonel Kim Campbell and Casey you are the first Air Force officer I've interviewed on the channel that's shocking to me single Air Force officer yet huh well so I've profiled Robin old's and Frank Borman I'm in good company yeah you're in good company right but this is the first time I've actually talked to an Air Force officer so so no pressure right no I think you're up for it um so let's go through the sort of compulsaries of your life uh where were you born and raised how did you wind up going to the Air Force Academy and then what motivated you to to choose um pilot Azure service selection at Colorado Springs yeah so I grew up in San Jose California and decided when I was in the fifth grade that I wanted to be a fighter pilot part of that was I had decided that I wanted to be an astronaut and I figured that being a pilot going to the Air Force Academy was the best way to get there part of that was the influence of my dad who was also an Air Force Academy graduate and kind of understood the process so fifth grade I had my heart set on going to the Air Force Academy and did everything I could in high school to get there spent four years at the Air Force Academy uh working hard again to make sure I was in a position to get a pilot slot and then eventually made it to Pilot training and uh selected the A-10 so my audience maybe because we don't do Air Force as much as we should um doesn't know what the training track is uh can you start with whatever Aviation indoc looks like then primary and so forth and talk about how long it lasts and what are the airplanes you fly and where were you based until you got your wings a lot has changed I will say so I can talk about my experience and I can touch a little bit on how it's changed since then so I spent a year flying first the t-37 which was where we uh all about 30 of us flew the t-37 and then from there we just get wrapped and stacked to choose where we wanted to go next so I think there were eight of us that went to the fighter track you could also go helicopters or you could go kind of the heavy cargo track um and then from there I went on to fly the t-38 at Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi stayed there uh the whole time um so spent six months flying the t-38 and from there that's where we track select or we select for which aircraft we're gonna fly um out of my class of eight I think we had two that went to be first instructor uh first assignment instructor pilot so they stayed there to be instructors we had a couple bombers and then uh the rest of us I think there were four Fighters uh out of that my math is correct and so from there uh once we're done with the fighter track at Pilot training we go spend time in the centrifuge to make sure we can sustain the g-forces that are necessary for our specific fighter thankfully the A-10 has the the lowest out of the fires in terms of g-forces so not as bad for me as it was for the some of the other guys uh then we do some water survival training um I had already done my sear school so survival evasion resistance at Escape so I had that done and then finally I went to introduction to fighter fundamentals I spent about eight weeks at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas and this was flying the at38 which really just means that you're still flying roughly the same airplane but we do a little bit more of the fighter fundamentals the air-to-air kind of dog fight just to get us familiar a little bit of the bombing again just to get us familiar we're not really good at any of it and then from there we finally go on to our platform so for me I started A10 training in July of 2001 uh six months of training learning to be an A10 pilot so Casey we got some training AIDS here walk us through the the A-10 for those who aren't familiar this is my favorite view right I think straight on right here if I can get it right the enemy's least favorite view yeah I know so um so that I think the awesome thing that I love about the A10 is well obviously the 30 millimeter Gatling gun but the airplane is built around the gun so the gun itself is 19 feet long and you can't really see the wheel on this one but if you look at an A10 straight on the gun is going to be the very center of the airplane so where we point is where we shoot which means that the nose wheel is actually slightly offset so the next time you see an A10 out there you'll see that the nose wheel is is offset but uh pretty incredible airplane I mean really designed for the close air support Mission our fuel tanks are enclosed and protective foam lining so the fuel tanks are on the wing uh wing sections are in protective foam lining to prevent fire after battle damage uh obviously a way of two very reliable engines we like to poke at our single seat fighter uh engine friends that we have too they're very reliable very durable and then all of our flight controls are built with redundant backup systems so um left and right hydraulic lines are separated throughout the aircraft awesome airplane has 11 stations 11 pylons to carry weapons so we can occasionally get that full Loadout with a full gun and then full load of weapons with uh whether it's aim9s for uh we'll call it defense of an air-to-air Mission Rockets Maverick missiles bombs now with the upgraded a10c will carry laser guided bombs GPS guided bombs um but in the early days it was just dumb bombs and then we can also carry which you can kind of see over here is an electronic countermeasure pod so full Loadout makes us very heavy talking like 47 000 pounds of an airplane fully loaded which in the summers in Afghanistan or Las Vegas at Nellis Air Force Base makes us pretty uh heavy rolling down that Runway so this is a 30 millimeter bullet this is a target practice round you can tell by the blue tip um but this is and it's inert just for the record but this is what a 30 millimeter round looks like um and uh I mean these the shells so this um when we shoot uh the 30 millimeter round we'll the shells come back on the airplane um so we end up recycling the shells but pretty awesome there are several different types of rounds that we can carry so we've got um essentially a high explosive incendiary around we have the target proc just rounds we have an armor piercing uh round as well um and we do also have what we call combat mix where we'll combine different types of rounds but very effective uh we shoot about 70 rounds per second um in the A10 um in combat maybe a couple second burst is really all all that you need so we're not going to pull that trigger for very long it's not very good for the gun it actually heats up the gun barrels makes it a little bit less accurate but a couple couple second pull uh is all you need a couple second burst so now we'll jump into the DCs a10a so Casey walk us through what we got here no afterburner not on this one burner okay and then uh the the main part of the panel there looks a lot different now with the a10c so you can see on the right side of the panel is that five well it's a it's a color it now and the a10c is a 5x5 color display monitor so you're not seeing that you would have matching ones in the a10c on both the left side and the right side and that's everything for us that's a lot of moving map that's how we do our weapons uh that's our data link it's a little bit of everything so a lot of the things that you see now are replaced what isn't replaced is all our gauges I mean all of our um you know all of our systems our instruments our displays in terms of our attitude all of those things are still there so we still have all the round aisles in addition to the new uh I'll call them pretty Gucci screens in terms of their capability and the attitude indicators and Ava Jabba as a you know old school that's good for um sort of uh you know unusual attitudes you can basically figure out uh unlike the vdi and the Tomcat pilots who always complain that that one was not good for unusual attitudes but this habit jab is really good for that it's huge yeah it's I mean it's right there in the middle so that I mean obviously we have that replicated in our heads up display as well but um in terms of you know nighttime spatial disorientation you name it it's really effective that it's right there in the center and then uh to the left of that above is the raw gear indication okay you got your the radar warning receiver what raw gear did you guys have because that's very important for yourself we had the ALR 69 okay um we have a fully uh upgraded countermeasure system now that is embedded so now we have all the systems that you know that I wish I would have had in 2003 um that if a missile is sensed an infrared signature is sensed by the aircraft on the sensors then it will actually dump uh chaff and flare for you so that would have been nice uh back then but at the time it was all manual manual depressions uh and then your airspeed indicator is kind of weird you've got kind of a clock thing and then I guess that little wheel in the middle is is increments of of 10 knots right yeah I would have to say I probably don't look at that one very much because I use the HUD for that primarily okay so yeah so speaking of the Hide let's look through the HUD here so talk to us about our symbology here I've got my flight velocity vector and yep you'll have your elevation or your altitude and then air speed up there as well okay and so down the right console it looks like we have your telelight panel for emergency you know fire warning light or whatever else yep that's our Master caution panel that was uh that's got all of our indications of a problem with the aircraft uh and then is this your navigation uh display down here it is what we we referred to as our Iggy system but our GPS system okay and then your radios and your O2 and some other things so pretty cool all right so that's our cockpit fam we call it the fleet replacement Squadron also known as the rag what do you guys call it the the initial training in in the the fleet airplane you're flying we call it rtu so replacement training unit and and where was that what what air station were you at that was at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson Arizona I was in A-10 training when 9 11 happened and for me it was just you know I think we all knew that things were going to change dramatically we were grounded for maybe a week and then we went right back into flying and I think there was this just desire to get to our operational units because we knew that we were likely going to deploy which is exactly what happened for me I finished my A-10 training in December moved to Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina as part of the 75th Fighter Squadron and we deployed two months later uh to go to Afghanistan so where were you based in Afghanistan uh we were at Bagram Air Base so we started in Kuwait as part of operation Southern watch and then we moved operations pretty quickly to Bagram rotating pilots and aircraft in an autobiograph as we stood up operations there to support operation enduring Freedom what sort of missions did did you do I imagine a lot of close air support but but and and what was your op Tempo while you were there by the time we arrived um things had gotten very quiet this is post-operation Anaconda and so for us we did a lot of Convoy escort we did a lot of just OverWatch we did some support close air support for usually Special Forces for some of the raids that they were doing but surprisingly it was very quiet and I think the only weapon that I dropped on that entire deployment was a flare an illumination flare and that was it it was I mean it was amazing because we had built it up I mean there was so much expectation and in reality we just we hung out overhead and provided support and made sure that guys got where they needed to go and um you know without significant amount of enemy fire so it was it was a really interesting experience for close air support Pilots so how often were you flying during that that tour uh We've we flew I'd say almost every day I mean that was it was pretty regular for us to fly almost every day we were either flying or sitting alert so how does your tasking come down was it an air tasking order out of yes where uh out of uh Al UD out of the air operations center so we'd get an air tasking order figure out uh what we were you know all the missions that were assigned to our unit and then we'd kind of divvy them up for the different pilots in the Squadron usually flying as a two ship we had very few four ship launches so mostly two ship formations and uh we did a lot of alert sitting as well so not only did I fly close air support missions I got launched on alert once uh because there was a humanitarian disaster one of the a dam had burst in ghosney and we launched to go help rescue survivors and kind of point out survivors to the helicopters and also to do some battle damage assessment if you will uh for the dam just to help with the engineers so they could fix it so kind of a unique again experience for a close air support pilot right so what was your nominal Loadout during a mission we carried Rockets generally uh Willie Pete for marking we carried high explosive Rockets we carried um are targeting pods once we had them and then we also carried usually some sort of array of bombs so in the early stages so a10a when we didn't quite have the same technology that we do today we're talking uh dumb bombs usually Air Bursts to go against soft targets think light Vehicles troops in the open so that was our primary Loadout because of the elevation that you mentioned and the high temps in the summer we actually would restrict our Loadout a bit really focus on uh having a full gun obviously but full gun full Fuel and then sometimes a limited more limited Loadout so that we could take off at the high elevation of Bagram so what is a full gun how many rounds is that uh 11.50 is what we would load yeah that's that's that's about what three times more than the Tomcat can carry yeah yeah and these are the 30 Mike Mike uh you know Kick-Ass bullets yes um so how long was that tour uh so my first tour in Afghanistan uh we were gone for about only three months I mean that was kind of the initial rotations right and and so you go back home and and then so what happened after that when did you get uh to your your exciting tour uh so we came home from Afghanistan in 2002 late 2002 and we turned around and went to Iraq in March of 2003. so we left or end of we left the United States end of February arrived in Kuwait on March 1st 2003 for operation Iraqi Freedom did you feel right from the get-go the the vibe was going to be a lot more intense yes yeah we I think we could tell in the build up to it that it was going to be more intense I mean just the discussion we also knew kind of in terms of the Threat Level based on our intelligence briefings in terms of what kind of air defense systems that Iraq had compared to Afghanistan so very different environment and then when we landed March 1st 2003 on the ramp at Al Jabra Air Base in Kuwait I mean we were probably the last A-10 unit there there were also Marines there um helicopter units and the ramp was just lined I mean as far as you could see with these other aircraft so it was the build up was you could you could sense it you could feel it this was different I worked out of Al jabber in 1995 um what were you a plebe or probably a what do you call a youngster a yearling we call them Dooleys but 95 I was a sophomore so we we also we we do the four degree three degree two degree in first East okay I was at three so I was a department head in this Squadron vf-102 aboard the USS America cv66 not the amphib that we have now called USS America cv66 is on the bottom of the Atlantic I'm sorry to say now but this is the final deployment of of cb66 and as the ship transited we came through the Suez Canal and as the ship hit the Red Sea and transited the Arabian Peninsula we flew two Tomcats off and landed at Al Jaber and supported operation Southern watch from Al Jaber for six days doing tarps missions reconnaissance missions with the the reconnaissance on the bottom of the airplane time off the boat is good time and so I know it's always glasses or you know the other side is aggressive Greener kind of thing because I remember when the Air Force officers would come aboard the boat they'd be like oh you have ice cream you know we have the soft ice we call it auto dog and and uh we're like oh you you get to run you know you can run like long distance you know straight away and yeah and uh you know you guys have air-conditioned tents and you know all the other things but it was really fun and the the the rep who was there um was a a F-18 guy who had gotten in trouble um actually I I did a fictionalized version of of him I called him Hornet Porky in in my debut novel um but he had a van and he drove us to Kuwait City and so we'd go to Kuwait City every night and you know have like Fuddruckers and you know just hang out in Kuwait City was like I have been to that Fuddruckers it's run by third party Nationals right so everybody all the workers are Filipino at the uh these these countries are weird right but this is an amazing experience so anyway I've operated out of out of Al Jabra the other thing I'll mention is all of the revetted hangers were still blown up from Desert Storm I don't know if they were still there in that condition when you were there they were they We There were still several that were blown up I mean they repaired some but there were still several kind of the remnants from Desert Storm did you operate out of Al jabber or did you did you mobilize into uh into Iraq we did both so we started out all jabber and then once uh our army and Marines uh units moved forward we eventually stationed out of uh what we called at the time Toledo Air Base uh outside of el nazarea um so we but we started in Kuwait we didn't move up there until uh probably closer to July of 2003. so you were there when the troops stepped off the line of departure we were we were in they had to be super intense right it was you know we there was so much build up because I think for us it was like we knew it was coming and we just every night it was like it's tonight the night it's tonight the night and um we knew pretty quickly when it was happening because we started getting uh alarm Reds uh in at Al Jabra with which was an indication of an incoming missile we're in full chem gear I mean when it kicked off it kicked off so uh it was it was pretty eye-opening I mean I was a very young wingman at the time you know in terms of I had I was you know I had already had a deployment through Afghanistan but I was relatively young in terms of the the pilots that we brought over and so I didn't know if I was gonna fly I thought maybe I'll just get stuck in the mission planning cell for the duration of the war but I mean we needed every pilot we could and so the war kicked off and it was just it was really non-stop I I look back at my journal of flights and I was either on alert or flying missions almost every day so are you a first lieutenant at this time are you a captain already I was a captain but only because I had gone to graduate school first ah okay so I was a little bit late uh getting started just based on the fact that I had gone grad school Roger um so but you mentioned you're you're still a wingman generally for these two ships that you're you're yeah 40s that you're doing yeah and the great thing was I mean we paired our very experienced instructors with the young wingman so I was always flying with a very experienced instructor just so that we could balance out you know the the level of experience in a flight and then we would we would be combat paired so we would fly with the same pilot for two weeks so we got to know each other we really under understood kind of strengths and weaknesses and how to support each other so it was uh we did it right I think in terms of how we how we set that up yeah that's what you know we call the attack or do you wanted to fly with the same pilot in Rio and the same wingman in so far as the administrative side of the uh the schedule allowed yeah um so again I assume you're getting your tasking through an air tasking order in a 24-hour cycle but there must have been a lot of flexibility in in the close air support missions because the you know the Ford line of troops is moving very rapidly at this point uh so you must have seen a lot of kinetic stuff and also flexed a lot during the course of any given sortie yeah it was uh you know we have this saying that flexibility is the key to air power and it it's a key to close air support for sure because we you know we knew that we were launching we knew generally where to go um but it was all about you just had to be on your game and make the best possible decisions based on the situation you had you knew um we would go see the the glow the ground liaison officer for the Army just to get kind of okay where is the forward line of troops you know where what is kind of going on in that current area what are the threats but it was moving so fast especially you know initially in the early stages I mean the Army was just pushing fast and there wasn't a ton of resistance initially in fact so much so that we actually would uh we got a little frustrated because we were bringing a lot of ordinance home and so we finally figured out that if the Army didn't have anything for us we actually would get a brief at the Marine um talk and we would the Tactical operations center and then we would switch over to the Marine AO area of operations and we would work with the Marines so you know then we were more effective because it it didn't make sense we kind of felt like we were wasting gas and so we would just be really flexible we would either be working with the army or the Marines we could be on the west side or the east side of area of operations and just completely Flex to whatever was asked and close air support is among the most intense missions that I've ever done Tomcat got into it late in my career we actually had fact A's and and you know but just nine line briefs and smoke in the air and you're in the pop and all that sort of stuff it is intense so so talk to us about uh sort of uh how that flow would go once you actually were working with a fact and there was going to be some real uh ordinance being delivered you know ideally we could get a nine line early and start building our picture but sometimes that nine line would come so fast we wouldn't even get all the pieces and parts to it I mean most importantly for us was knowing where the target was so some coordinates for the Target the elevation of the target which is how we um how our systems work to help us make sure that we have the right Target and the information in our systems and then also understanding where the friendlies were in relation to the Target I mean that was the most important thing if you could get more than that that was always beneficial things like an initial point to come from the direction that you needed to go and the distance from the target we rarely use that because most the time we were just overhead a location um generally just supporting immediately as it was happening um but in a in a in a beautiful world you would get a mark from the friendlies as well whether that's smoke uh to Mark artillery you name it um then it just corresponds what you're seeing in your cockpit in terms of where that Target should be with also kind of when where the friendlies are telling you where it should be and then from a pilot perspective my job is to make sure I understand looking outside visually where is the Target and where are the friendlies in relation to that Target because that that's how I set up my target attack I want to make sure that I am not pointing at the friendlies in most cases and you know make sure that everything's set up correctly so really important kind of back and forth communication very clear concise so we know what's going on on the ground so for a single seat airplane that's got to be you you know because you're writing on your kneeboard you're trying not to hit your wingman yeah um you know this is it's hard enough with two airplanes or two seat airplane lines were the Rio is doing all of the administrative stuff kind of as the pilots flying form and you know looking for the smoke or whatever the first 10 years of my career the Tomcat was exclusively exclusively an air-to-air platform and then as we got into bombing and Cass we did an exercise in Northern Louisiana we were operating out of Barksdale I I can't remember what that I'm sure you've used that range complex there you know this was like not quite live fire but but it was it was you know two armies and a lot of you know vehicles and and tanks and and so we were doing casts in fact a and a bunch of other stuff and all this proved to me is it is really easy to have a Blue on Blue uh yeah right I mean even with a good nine line and everything else and you roll in and you know it it when when there's a lot of entropy it's easy to to frag the wrong thing yeah I mean it's I would say any Pilots worse nightmare I mean it's just it's why we train so hard I think that's why you know honestly I the A-10 is the best airplane to do close air support because we train for it and we we try to mitigate as much risk as we can when it comes to that but we really put ourselves in those tight scenarios and trainings so that ideally they don't happen in combat um we really put ourselves in situations where there could be a Blue on Blue in training um just so we see what it looks like to kind of catch ourselves and and so that when kind of the hair on the back of your neck stands up and you're like something doesn't feel right then it's then it's not right um but you're right I mean we shoot very close to Friendly forces and so um they're always you know there is that possibility and we have had those horrible situations in the past I mean and it's just I don't know it's it's it's um heart-wrenching to watch it back because you know hindsight you know I can watch it now and look you know I can pinpoint all the things that went wrong um but in the moment it's just difficult um and so that's part of the nine line is really confirming what you see matches now granted technology today in the a10c compared to the a10a I mean like you said in the a10a we're either writing down on our kneeboard or we also were writing in grease pencil on the on the canopy um we now have the ability to do a lot of it digitally we also now have the helmet mounted queuing system which just it helps speed us up it makes us more effective um I think we're less likely to make some of those errors um that we had in the past but uh in the end it still comes down to the pilot hitting the pickle button uh the weapons release button or pulling the trigger and you know that's why you got to do it right uh so let's talk about your most infamous famous sorting yeah um was that during this this deployment yeah this was this deployment it was uh April 7th 2003. okay so walk us through that day in in the events of that day so April 7 2003 I would say so by that point we're talking you know really massive close air support role in downtown Baghdad because by this point both the Army and Marines um have are approaching Baghdad um and it is intense I mean that to this point the situation on the ground had really become intense and there was a lot of requests for close air support and so what we were doing is just stacking up aircraft around Baghdad so you'd have kind of the north south east west stack and by Stack I mean like stacks of airplanes so that as soon as the call for close air support came in someone would flow out of the stack whoever whoever was closest and had the right equipment you know type of aircraft would flow to the stack so immediately I mean it was just um we took off knowing that we were going to the stack the way we would do it from Kuwait we'd take off we'd fly to Baghdad we'd air refuel because we needed gas uh and then we would go wait in the stack and just wait for a tasking um the weather on April 7th was terrible Over Baghdad I mean we could not see the ground below so I remember my flight lead saying to me at one point I hope you have your lucky rabbit's foot with you today because I think we're gonna need it and he was really referring to the weather like it was just going to be really tricky we refueled and then went to wait in the stack and almost immediately we got a call from a ground controller just saying they were taking fire they needed immediate assistance and we so we started moving that direction luckily it was we were pretty close to the location um and I just you know remember my flight lead going all right we got to find a way to get through you know we got to find a way to get below the weather because at this point we're not we're not dropping or shooting anything if we're above the weather and can't see our ground troops below um and we didn't really know exactly where the bottoms of the clouds were or how this was going to work luckily it's over Baghdad It's relatively flat and I remember I just looked over at my flight lead and he said he said he's like I see a hole in the clouds I'm going and he just kind of rolls inverted and disappears um and then he said all right Casey as soon as you find a hole in the weather dive through so found a hole in the clouds and Dove down through the weather and I remember as soon as I popped out down below the weather I mean I could instantly see the fire fight I mean there were tracers there was a lot of smoke um it was just what altitude were you at below the clouds about uh we were roughly about seven thousand feet okay so that's low yeah it's not a good it's a terrible altitude to be at quite honestly I mean it's it's right in the area especially with that the cloud cover above us I mean it just there was nothing really uh good about the situation but you know as a troops in contact they were taking fire we had the coordinates we understood the situation and our plan was to go in there do a couple strafing runs or rockets and get out um the Target that we were given was underneath uh the what we called the north Baghdad Bridge our troops were on the west side of the Tigris River enemy Iraqi Republican guard was on the east side they were putting RPGs into our troops and um our guys at the time were kind of hunkered down awaiting resupply and as they were making their way through Baghdad and uh the Iraqi Republican guard was just shooting into them so our plan was to go strafe uh use gun and Rockets and then climate climb up and reassess get above the weather kind of just see how things were going before we went back down again um apparently we stayed one pass too long I don't know that's my my hindsight of it all right um but we uh my flight lead went in pretty quickly he immediately saw the bridge and had kind of the the situational awareness of everything that was going on in terms of like clean uh targets if you will I mean to have a river where the friendlies are on one side and the enemy is on the other I mean it doesn't get much better that than that in terms of making sure that you have a clear distinct distinction between the Target and the friendlies um so it made it in that sense fairly easy but my flight lead rolled in first from north to south and uh unfortunately the the ground controller said it was not effective and we had to come in from south to North um instead so we did a couple passes we did gun and Rockets uh and then my last pass and this is where my flight League's already saying hey after this pass we're going to climb up we're going to get our energy back and rolled in strafe or sorry shot Rockets right underneath the bridge and then came off Target and pulling away just to get away from the ground away from the threat and just the loudest explosion at the back of the airplane I mean I knew I had been hit there was no doubt in my mind it was just the whole jet shook I remember seeing kind of this bright orange Fireball surround the airplane and dumped the airplane over immediately um you know time kind of slows down in these situations and pull back on the control stick and I remember absolutely nothing happened I could see baghdad's coming up at me and uh remembering that I looked down at the ejection handles thinking there is no way that I am ejecting right over where we were just strafing the enemy uh so quickly trying to analyze the situation and figure out what's going on and looked at everything on my you know flashing Master caution light I had the caution panel down at my sides lit up like a Christmas tree and then I remember seeing the hydraulic lights and the hydraulic gauges and they were at zero the system was completely depleted at that point I really only have two options uh one I can eject which I've already decided I don't want to do and then uh the really my only hope at this point is our backup emergency system called manual reversion and flip that switch and the airplane thankfully just slowly started to climb up and away from Baghdad uh kind of the first time I'm like all right I might I might be able to get out of here alive so what's the poor man's engineering behind the backup system yeah so the poor man's engineering is um these are cranks and cables and pulleys that are connected to the stick that go out to the flight control surfaces and um for the ailerons they actually so ailerons how we turn the airplane but how um instead of being connected to the actual actual aileron itself it's connected to these small trim tabs to allow you to maneuver the airplane um so it's I don't know best way to describe it is kind of like old school mechanical flying uh I think like right brother days when like that's the image that comes to my mind when I just normally you'd have hydraulic actuators and stuff right that's your hydraulic actuators to move everything which reduces pilot workload really is what what it comes down to um and manual or version just at least allows you to to control the airplane in a more manual mechanical mode so you go from say a 3.5 to 4th gen airplane to a first gen sock with camel kind of airplane yeah it's like it's a struggle to fly so the couple descriptors I've heard of what manual or version flying is like is driving a dump truck or a semi truck without power steering um you know that's I have not done that I've driven a car without power steering so it's just it's hard to maneuver right it was just really um not very responsive um very heavy stick and just really tough to maneuver but honestly at that point like the airplane is flying I don't care about any of it I just want to get out of Baghdad so no engine problems you didn't have a fire um I had all of that I had engine problems in a fire but I never knew I didn't know until after I landed which is amazing to me um the number two engine so my right engine took a very significant amount of shrapnel I mean some of the fan blades were completely damaged on the engine and yet I think it just like chewed it up and spit it out I mean it was just again a testament to the A-10 but um the uh there was also a fire at the back of the airplane the whole back end was charred dripping with hydraulic fluid and after I landed and got out and looked at it I mean I could push on the skin of the airplane and it was just soft to the touch so all of those things I mean fire engine damage and yet that airplane kept flying honestly if I had lost an A-10 or if I had lost an engine in the A-10 in manual reversion uh I think my story could have been very different you know I think it's likely that I would have lost control of the airplane and there's no way that I would have ever landed an airplane with a in manual reversion with an engine out it's just it would have been really uh complicating so how far was your Transit from where you got hit to to back to uh it's about an hour so 300 miles about an hour in the A-10 our super fast airplane uh so yeah what 200 knots indicated how fast are you going uh so I slowed down initially getting out of Baghdad I was like trying to get as fast as I could so fast right 300 knots how fast it was more like 250 so yeah okay yeah and then I slowed down a little bit coming out of Baghdad once I trying to figure out at what air speed I felt like I could really get control of the airplane and it was easier to fly so it turned out slowing down a little bit uh was helpful to get out of Baghdad and make that trip home so did you do any slow speed sort of testing to make sure that or did you just land no flapper how did you account for the damage and and how did you get the airplane on Deck yeah I um we didn't do any of that while we're while we were still in uh Iraq just because combat territory if something went wrong I really wanted to be in Friendly territory so we just really tried to stay as high as we could at a good decent AirSpeed making our way home I found out later we had f-15s overhead providing us kind of that combat Air Patrol to help us out um but we were really just trying to stay out of the threats at this point because I could not take much more damage and so we once we got back into Kuwait then slowed down we did a controllability check I had to make sure I could get the gear down right so I have no Hydraulics meaning I've got to do our manual extension of the gear as well um so just to get a feel for how the airplane is going to fly once it's configured and yes it was just geared down no flaps I had you know no normal braking no steering no flaps no speed brakes you know all the things that you rely on for a normal Landing I didn't have the images associated with you back on Deck are amazing yeah um you know they as you said the airplane was shot up pretty good a testament to both as you've already said the the A-10 takes a licking and keeps on ticking as we used to say about the Timex watches but also your airmanship and I know that somebody said that your final pass looked better than he could fly a full-up FMC A10 so I know your colleagues and your squadron mates were like you know this is pretty pretty Kick-Ass performance here I was just happy to be on the ground you know right any Landing that you can walk away from is a good one and uh I uh you know it was a different a different Landing so the interesting thing about flying in manual or manual reversion is that when you pull the power back the nose wants to dump and when you push the power up the nose wants to climb so if you think about a normal Landing when we normally come in we pull the power back well if you do that manual reversion your nose is going to hit the runway first it's not going to go well and so I very clearly you know we went through the checklist for manual reversion landing and I knew that this was going to be kind of the if you will Navy carrier Power on all the way to the runway Landing um and uh just trying to get it back on the ground I mean it was just kind of holding my breath the whole time trying to keep it stable and steady which actually was fine right until end game right when I got into the ground effect close to the runway and I thought the airplane was going to flip over on its back and that was kind of the first moment of like this may not go so well um because at that point I don't think I would have been able to eject you know angled towards uh the ground thankfully I kind of just brought the stick back and it was able to level out and put it on the ground and huge huge sense of relief to be back on the ground um and then I had to get it stopped which I had five only our emergency backup braking system allows us for five brake applications it was plenty because long runway in Kuwait not a big deal did you have a tail hook in the event that you couldn't stop for the A10 okay okay did that airplane fly again or was it struck from the inventory sadly no uh they sent a team from Hill Air Force Base they have an aircraft battle damage repair team they came out to uh really try to cover all the holes and then do the sheet metal work on it and there just wasn't enough time we're getting ready to move our airplanes um out of uh out of Kuwait and into Iraq um there were just too many holes and not enough time to fix it so maintenance did what every good maintainer would do which is strip the airplane of all the parts they took out the gun the ejection seat uh the stick I actually have back here on my shelf but they took out all the pieces and parts of the airplane so they could use it as uh parts and for replacing uh you know Parts on other airplanes so at least it had some utility but uh sadly 987 never never flew again so I guess yeah I was gonna ask that behind you is is the actual piece of the airplane once they decided they couldn't fix it they said hey do you want a piece of the tail and I said well yeah can we do that and I said sure so I don't know maybe it's because we're we're in deployed location but they just took you know cut that out cut that right out and gave it to me so uh it's uh it's been here on my wall for several years and have been able to share it with the cadets at the Air Force Academy as well when it was in my office there so certainly tells a story no that's that's badass um so how much longer was that deployment how many uh how many more sorties did you have roughly a lot uh we stayed through July of 2003. so we that that mission happened in April we stayed I think through the end of July um I believe our deployment got extended um but there were several more missions so much so that we moved our operations into Iraq and then I actually upgraded to be a flight lead while I was there in Iraq um it you know had flown several missions as a wingman and so they just started um you know rotating me through the flight lead upgrade upgrade as we were flying missions uh in Iraq I mean things had quieted down significantly by then um but uh yeah flew a lot of a lot of operations after that and and then finally came home and decided you know at some point got to talk about this and kind of uh talk about everything that happened and kind of where to go from here so I think probably the most important thing I did from that mission was we changed the way we operated as Pilots just in terms of some of the training we did I had an opportunity to go back to the A-10 training unit and train uh Pilots um so that was great because I got the opportunity to fly their initial manual reversion rides I got the opportunity to talk about flying in manual reversion I talk about you know decision making and in combat and kind of that mindset of what happens you know when you have to make decisions quickly so I tried to take a lot of the lessons that I learned from that mission and share them with other Pilots but uh we went back to Afghanistan in 2005 I went back and again to Afghanistan in 2010 um kind of fast forwarding the whole career I spent time at the A-10 test Squadron we transitioned from the a10a to the a10c really upgrading the A10 to a place where it needed to be in terms of kind of the latest and greatest technology and really made us more efficient and effective as pilots and then went on to have leadership roles in the Air Forces both the squadron commander and group Commander responsible for more than a thousand of our Airmen both civilian and Military so really some tremendous opportunities and then closed out my career at the Air Force Academy I got to go back and teach in the military and strategic studies department and then spent my final year as the director for the center for character and leadership development so full circle talk to us about what you're doing now I know you've been you were a contributed to one book and you have your own book coming out in March I believe and you're also doing some some leadership seminars so talk to us about that stuff yeah so I retired from the Air Force after 24 years about a year ago now and uh I'm really kind of enjoying this next chapter um I have been doing some keynote speaking for different companies and businesses talking about the lessons I learned in combat and in training flying a tents and have a new book coming out on March 8th it is called flying in the face of fear of fighter Pilot's lessons on leading with courage and it's really just stories and lessons from my 24-year Air Force career but their Leadership Lessons it's really focused on leadership and some of the hard lessons that I've learned through you know some successes but also some failures through Challenge and opportunity and through what I call fear and courage and so it's all about kind of over overcoming those difficult things in life and the lessons that I've learned from them and how they contributed to my role as a leader in the Air Force as well and really connecting with people on the leadership on the leading teams that have that I've had the opportunity to command so I'm really excited about that it comes out in March and then I'm working for a great team now called Victory strategies we're a group of uh I'll call it Elite performers where we've got fighter pilots Navy Seals Olympic athletes Fortune 500 Executives xcia officers and we're all passionate about leadership so we do the speaking we do workshops we do executive coach teaching it's a great it's really been a lot of fun to be part of the team again because I think when we leave the military sometimes that's the thing we miss is that camaraderie so it's great to be part of that and I have a dog a lab named Bandit who's now barking in the background familiar I'm familiar we have three three dogs here you're also a wife and mom so how many kids do you have and how I have two boys they are 10 and 14. they keep me busy they keep me grounded and they remind me of what's most important absolutely well Casey as we said at the outset this has been our first Air Force interview I'm honored well thank you you you did it with flying colors and we'll have to have you back on the Channel Once the book comes out in in March absolutely would love to all right thanks all right take care so that'll do it for this episode if you're not already a subscriber hit the button and ring the bell so you don't miss anything also if you'd like to help support the Channel please consider using the super thanks the heart icon below or become a patron at patreon.com Ward Carroll in the meantime I look forward to talking to you again very soon [Music]

Channel: Ward Carroll

Views: 2,165,637

Keywords: Ward Carroll, Kim KC Campbell, U.S. Air Force, A-10 Warthog, BRRRTTT, Iraq War, War in Afghanistan, fighter pilot, close air support

Id: 7VzXN4Ohwro

Length: 48min 50sec (2930 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 20 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/xampl9]

Former F-14 pilot Ward Carroll interviews Col. Campbell about her time in the A-10 and the experience of flying back to base after her aircraft was shot-up over Baghdad.

[u/AFnobody04]

She was my commander in a place a few years back and even got coined by her. She was a pretty awesome commander and I met her husband on one of their trips down.