Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [50]
This time, our weapons hit the target and we sank one of the ships. The other was sunk a short time later by another aircraft from our squadron.
I ended up getting an award from the Navy for “heroic achievement” on that mission. You can’t celebrate awards like that. I was doing what my country asked me to do, and I recognize that there was great violence inherent in my act.
I have no idea how many people were on those two ships. I did see men jumping into rafts as we flew away, so I know some of them lived.
When the war began, a couple of men in our air wing decided they couldn’t serve in battle. They were left back on the Midway, standing watch as duty officers, ostracized by some of their comrades. Whether they were scared or just disagreed with the legitimacy of the war, they made a decision I wouldn’t make. As I saw it, I was trained as a combat pilot for a singular purpose—to deliver weapons to an enemy target when my country called. It wasn’t my job to question the decisions that put us in that position, at least not at twenty-six years old.
I believed that 1991 war with Iraq needed to be fought. I still believe that. I was proud to serve. But I never lost sight of the sobering fact that I had a job, sanctioned by my government, that required me to kill a lot of human beings.
I know the magnitude of what it means to use destructive force against people. I saw it as a twenty-six-year-old pilot flying combat missions off an aircraft carrier. I saw it again at age forty-six, on that terrible Saturday in Tucson.
After Gabby was shot, and eighteen others were killed or wounded alongside her, I did a lot of thinking about the violence humans are capable of committing. Much of it is beyond senseless, like the gunman’s rampage in Tucson. But even violence with a purpose—including my missions in the skies over Iraq—requires solemn reflection. It can never be taken lightly.
In my Navy career, I logged nearly six thousand hours in the air, flying fifty different aircraft. I landed planes on aircraft carriers 375 times. I’d risen to the rank of captain and was able to earn a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. I also attended the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. By 1994, I was a project test pilot on a variety of aircraft. My training and experience had left me with a pretty formidable résumé.
The following year, at age thirty-one, I decided to apply to be an astronaut. Ever since I was a boy, I’d dreamed about the possibility that I’d be chosen. The job of an astronaut involved everything I was interested in: adventure, risk, speed, the unknown, and massive amounts of adrenaline. My high school girlfriend remembers me promising her that I’d be the first human on Mars. Back then, I had more confidence than experience, knowledge, or sense.
As an adult, though, I knew the odds were long that I’d actually make it into the program. First, the Navy had to agree that I was qualified enough to have my application packet forwarded to NASA. About 2,500 military personnel and another 2,500 civilians apply for each NASA class. For the upcoming class, NASA would end up taking just thirty-five Americans and nine international candidates—two Canadians, two Japanese, an Italian, a Frenchman, a German, a Swede, and a Spaniard.
I was lucky, though. The first step went my way. The Navy agreed to send my application on to NASA. A few weeks later, I was having dinner with my brother, and I told him he ought to apply, too. He and I had similar résumés; he was a naval aviator and a test pilot. The Navy agreed to send in his application, too.
I continued my military duties as an instructor at the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Maryland. Almost a year later, out of the blue, I got a call to head down to Houston for a weeklong NASA interview. I didn’t have a business suit, so I borrowed the one suit my brother owned.
I was nervous. I knew this was a real opportunity—a childhood dream within reach—and I didn’t want to screw