Profiles of Valor: Col Kim Campbell (USAF)

On 7 April, a few months after deployment, Kim would prove her skills as a pilot when, on a mission out of Ahmad Al-Jaber Air Base, Kuwait, her aircraft was hit with extensive enemy anti-aircraft artillery fire, suffering critical system failures over enemy territory.
Launching in a standard two-ship attack formation with her wingman, Lt Col Rick “Bino” Turner, for a CAS mission in Baghdad, once there, they made several passes over the city before locating their target. Cloud cover forced them to lower altitude, exposing them to AAA fire, and on her final pass, she was hit by a surface-to-air missile.
Determined to save the $45 million aircraft, she performed several pre-landing checklists as emergency ground crew crash teams readied for her landing.

“When you lose all the hydraulics, you don’t have speed brakes, you don’t have brakes, and you don’t have steering,” she said. Despite that fact, she pulled it off. Of her fear on approach, she said, “When I go back and listen to the audio recording [of the flight], I can hear the fear; I just didn’t have time to think about it.”