Kimberly's Flight
de Anna Simon
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.
