U.S. Pilot Tames 'Warthog' Over Baghdad

April 12 -- Flying over the battle for Baghdad in an anti-tank plane that's so slow and ugly it's commonly known as the Warthog, an Air Force captain known as "K.C." faced the moment every pilot dreads.

"I heard a loud bang and the jet rolled fairly violently to the left, and I knew immediately that I had been hit," she said. "I think the first thing was just trying to regain control of the aircraft. [I] also thought that there was no way I wanted to eject over Baghdad."

Her plane had been strafed by anti-aircraft bullets. It was on fire, its hydraulic system knocked out.

"Bino," her wing man and commander, flying his A-10 Warthog next to hers, wondered whether K.C. should eject.

"She had the option [of bailing out] the whole time," he said. "She figured the plane was flying well enough. She told me she could handle it. I got to take her word for it. She is a good pilot."

K.C. knew she would have to land the plane manually, a maneuver A-10 pilots never train for.

"But I knew I was going to do it this time," K.C. said.

Although landing the A-10 manually without hydraulics requires great physical strength, K.C. managed to nurse the jet back to her base in Kuwait for a perfect landing.

"Besides the engineers who did the first tests at the beginning of the flight of the A-10, she is the only one who has ever landed in the manual reversion mode that didn't destroy the airplane," said Bino, whose real name is Lt. Col. Rick Turner, the commander of the 75th Squadron. The "Fighting Tigers" fly the Warthog.

Slow and Ugly

The Warthog, designed to knock out tanks from the sky, looks like a plane only a mother could love — and, of course, the pilots who fly it.

"I'm willing to go to the battle with that," Bino said. "I know that if I get hit it's going to bring me home."

He has faith even though the A-10 model was first produced in 1972 and has been flying since 1975.

In other words, it may be old and slow, but, "I'm old and slow, too," Bino said.