If you watch this little episode and don’t fall in love with KC, we can’t be friends. (Here’s her story, if you don’t have the time to watch the video, although the video does her more credit.)
And astonishingly, she went back out the very next day (in a new aircraft, as hers was just scrap at that point).
I’ll bet that there is not a man alive — a real man, that is — who wouldn’t take a bullet for KC.
Well I’d follow her anywhere!
Ward Carrolls YouTube channel is worth subscribing to and worth watching. He posts regularly and always has great content. He served as a Tomcat REO so he has lots of great contacts and an endless well of great interviews like this one. Somebody will make a movie based on KC’s story – which will instantly be panned by the critics as too far fetched and overdone to be believable.
Great channel!
Just saw the KC story a few days ago. Great pilot, great aircraft…having redundant flight control systems is one thing, knowing how to use them and staying collected enough to execute with precision, while under duress, is another. The respect shown to her from her fellow pilots and ground team speaks volumes. I’d feel better if she was still flying for Uncle Sam.
His analysis and breakdown of the Kara Hultgreen Tomcat carrier crash is another great story that goes behind the mass media headlines at the time ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFUXshaaMQM&ab_channel=WardCarroll ). His real-world insight into aspects of carrier/Tomcat aren’t gleaned from reading a book or studying a manual. Seems to be a good dude.
“I’d feel better if she was still flying for Uncle Sam.”
I’d feel better if she was in charge of the whole Air Force.
Hardly scrap, my friend. I worked on Hawgs for most of my USAF career; that’s readily repairable. Where most of those holes are is hollow, the stab leading edge is replaceable and it doesn’t appear from the picture that the spar got dinged. They might have tagged the right elevator or rudder hydraulic lines, but it doesn’t look like it. Knowing the guys who specialize in fixing battle damage, I’d wager that was back in the air inside a week.
Nah, it was scrapped.
There’s also a longer video with her on the Combat Story Youtube channel https://youtu.be/oGUJabFbGs4
I remember reading her story not long after that incident in 2003, as her father was the mayor of San Jose, CA where I was living at the time. Impressive to say the least, but to learn of where she has gone from there, and to have retired as a full-bird colonel, I’m smitten!
I want to share her story with my soon to be 21 year old daughter, or any other young girl, as an exemplar of what one can do with their life.