Photo By Airman 1st Class Thomas Hansford | U.S. Air Force Airman 1st Class Rachel Pakenas, aerial combat camera journeyman, Staff...... read more read more
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JOINT BASE CHARLESTON, S.C. – I didn’t grow up dreaming of flight. Fast-forward only two years into my adult life, and I’m soaring in a huge cargo jet, gazing at the watery pastel blues and greens of the coast 1,000 feet below and reminiscing about the shifting sands of Iraq from my recent deployment.
This bird’s-eye view is an incredibly rare perspective, which I am lucky enough to capture professionally as an aerial combat cameraman in the Air Force. I lace up my boots, clip a camera to my belt, and step or climb into any number of aircraft to share that perspective with those on ground.
I can hardly believe this is my day job.
Yet until May of 2021, I didn’t know much about planes or even think about them. The small town where I grew up had an airport, but it rarely caught my attention. Even my mother’s stories of working with the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), a nonprofit organization with an emphasis on aviation, went over my head.
When you think of an Air Force recruit, especially an aircrew member, you might assume their bedroom walls are plastered with images of our fighter planes. C’mon, picture it, the kid with an Air Force baseball cap, big dreams and books about history’s groundbreaking aviators. Not me! But I still live their dreams every day, and my dreams fly higher than ever before.
Actually, I grew up intending to be a professional soccer player. I have a deep love of physical fitness and a natural inclination to the competitive, aggressive nature of the sport. On weeknights after practice, even throughout Michigan’s icy winter, I would return to our apartment complex and bounce a ball against the curb to perfect my passing technique. I was determined to become the best.
Sadly, this very grounded grassy dream was not meant to be. After several years fighting recurring injuries, I had to look elsewhere for my next stage in life. Three years out from graduating high school, I’m not sure of the exact moment, but I really started to consider joining the military. They would give me similar physical challenges (I get paid to attend PT now?!) and an escape from the anticipated monotony of academia, even just temporarily while I reset from high school burnout and discovered my long-term goals.
Around this time, while I was still weighing the branches of military service and their unique job offerings, my mom finally dragged me to a CAP meeting. If a CAP cadet earns their “Billy Mitchell” award, requiring several prerequisite achievements and tests about aerospace, leadership and drill, they can enter the Air Force as an E-3 immediately after graduating basic training. This accelerated first promotion could be a significant career advantage, my mother argued, if I chose to enlist in the Air Force.
At this point, I still thought planes were boring.
However, drill and ceremonies caught my attention, so I joined CAP and started to climb through cadet ranks toward that coveted “Billy Mitchell” achievement named after the famous aviator. For the aerospace portion of my promotion tests I studied my way through textbooks and skated by, just like my schoolwork.
Then the events of May 31, 2021, forever changed my life.
Monday morning dawned as a clear spring day in central Michigan, sunny and bright. I cruised over to the Mason County Airport in a yellow convertible Volkswagen beetle, my first car, after skeptically agreeing to attend a “cadet orientation flight” - a program in CAP which introduces the wonder of flight by enabling cadets to fly for free with qualified pilots. My pilot pulled open the local CAP hangar to reveal a red, white and blue painted Cessna Skyhawk, a common single-engine aircraft.
Preflight seemed dull – nothing but a long checklist to verify the aircraft’s operating condition. The engine roared so loudly while we taxied that I needed to borrow a headset, which fit uncomfortably tight on my head, because I never adjusted it. My seat was the copilot seat, right next to my pilot behind the propellor. I sat and looked out my window…
And then our wheels lifted off the ground, and the runway was gone.
Within seconds, the trees beneath us were hundreds of feet distant, the airplane hangar a speck, and our surroundings became wispy clouds spaced throughout the deep blue of a summer sky. My heart rose in my chest, free as a bird, a feeling I’d longed for before I even knew this escape existed. Just outside our glass-covered cockpit, the ground had simply fallen away, and all my fears as a teenager were far below with school and deadlines and pressure for my future success.
Departing airport proximity, my pilot was soon able to converse openly within our plane communication system, and before the end of the flight I was allowed to take command of the aircraft to maintain steady flight. This technique is known as “hand flying” since many new aircraft have precise autopilot which is used the majority of flight time instead.
By the time we landed, I knew my dreams had reached new heights.
Entering my last year of high school, I studied through the academic side of private pilot qualification for single-engine aircraft like the Cessna, but my ideal scholarship for aerial training didn’t work out. Still, I maintained a love of flight while rolling towards high school graduation with honors, encouraged by my continued membership in CAP even to this day as a senior member.
The pressures were strong for a student like me. I was at or near the top of several classes, offered college scholarships based on standardized test scores and recruited by law enforcement agencies for my performance in a specialized training class. I didn’t want to sit in a college classroom for the next four years, but it felt like all the other kids were planning on doing just that. When we did assignments to plan for our futures, mine rarely fit into their neat little boxes.
During one particularly memorable incident, the school district superintendent informed one of my teachers that his student would be “wasting her potential” by enlisting in the military. Intended as a compliment to my abilities, his words infuriated other adults in my life who understood the value of military service. To this day, I remain motivated to prove him wrong.
No one had enough power to push me forward or hold me back. I wanted to enlist.
Pursuing multiple passions at once, I received an assignment in Public Affairs and was shipped off to basic training within two weeks of graduation. Due to this, I missed my team’s state soccer finals (congrats on the 2022 win, Williamston High School!), but never really regretted it. After basic training came technical school, where I learned about the role of Combat Camera in tactical and aerial documentation. I applied to join the best of the best at the 1st Combat Camera Squadron, and after an intimidating interview, they accepted me to join their specialized team.
Dancing forward from my youth to the present moment, I have over 200 flying hours in seven different airframes and get to wear an authorized flight suit to the office, even on days that I complete ground administrative work. I’ve spent many nights among the stars on the opposite side of the world, working alongside incredible pilots and career enlisted aviators to document aerial operations in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, and had the honor of sharing their stories with those whose freedom we defend. I’ve chatted with A-10 pilots above an endless expanse of sand and stayed on my feet during tactical steep bank turns in cargo aircraft. I shoot the photos that end up lovingly taped to other dreamers’ bedroom walls, and scrolling through my phone I often recognize my own images attached to news articles.
With all the challenges to get here and the continued harsh reality of military life, I can’t lie and tell you it was easy to follow my dreams to the sky. Yet there’s one thing I will admit: from the moment I watched the ground slip away in that little plane in Michigan, I knew it would be worth it.
| Date Taken: | 12.31.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 12.31.2024 18:24 |
| Story ID: | 488565 |
| Location: | CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, US |
| Web Views: | 77 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, The Day My Dreams Reached the Clouds, by SrA Rachel Pakenas, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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