Nathan D White
Profile
Age: 30
From: Mesa, Ariz.
Assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron 195, based in Atsugi, Japan, and deployed with Carrier Air Wing 5 aboard the carrier Kitty Hawk.
Incident: Navy Lt. Nathan D. White was killed when his F/A-18C Hornet was lost over Iraq. The incident remains under investigation.
Died: April 02, 2003
Aviation was Navy Lt. Nathan White’s passion. “Regardless of the destination, I feel I am trained and prepared for any mission or contingency,” he wrote in an e-mail to his family. “I have to have faith that those at the helm have fully weighed the consequences and have determined that the resulting good will far outweigh the bad.”
White, 30, was the first U.S. pilot killed in the Iraqi war when his single-seat Hornet jet was shot down over southern Iraq on April 2. The military said his jet was “probably” brought down by a U.S. Patriot missile in a “friendly fire” incident under investigation. Last month, a Patriot missile apparently downed a British jet near the Iraq-Kuwait border, killing two.
White grew up in Abilene, Texas, where he was a 1991...