Kimberly's Flight
Subtitle: the Story of Captain Kimberly Hampton, America's First Woman Combat Pilot Killed in Battle
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9781299970960; 9781480411241; 9781480406568; 9781612001142; 9781612001029
Subjects: United States; United States. Army Air Forces; Military Air pilots; Military; Iraq War (2003-2011); HISTORY; Women helicopter pilots; Biography; Helicopter pilots
Description: US Army Captain Kimberly N. Hampton was living her dream: flying armed helicopters in combat and commanding D Troop, 1st Squadron, 17th Cavalry, the armed reconnaissance aviation squadron of the 82nd Airborne Division. An all-American girl from a small Southern mill town, Hampton was a top scholar, student body president, ROTC battalion commander, and highly ranked college tennis player. In 1998, she was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the army. Driven by determination and ambition, Hampton rapidly rose through the ranks in the almost all-male bastion of military aviation to command a combat aviation troop. On January 2, 2004, Captain Hampton was flying an OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter above Fallujah, Iraq, in support of a raid on an illicit weapons marketplace, searching for an elusive sniper on the rooftops below. A little past noon, her helicopter was wracked by an explosion. A heat-seeking surface-to-air missile had knocked off the helicopter & rsquo;s tail boom. The helicopter crashed, killing Hampton. Kimberly & rsquo;s Flight is the story of Captain Hampton & rsquo;s exemplary life. This story is told through nearly fifty interviews and her own e-mails to family and friends, and is entwined with her mother & rsquo;s narrative of loving and losing a child.
Table of contents: title: Fallujah, Iraq: January 2, 2004; title: Ann Hampton: Easley, South Carolina, 1982; title: A second chance; title: Time to fly: 1998-2000; title: PIlot in command: 2000-2001; title: The captains course; title: Afghanistan: November 2002; title: A cavalry command; title: Kuwait: September 2003; title: Iraq: September 2003; title: Bird down: January 2, 2004; title: Easley, South Carolina: January 2, 2004; title: A flag-draped coffin; title: Redbirds, dragonflies and other miracles: epilogue.; title: Iraq: 2010.