C-7 M-8

 

Construction is officially over. The Porta-Potty is gone!

So, Campers, the countdown is continuing and while the clock does seem to be clicking slower and slower, I've been reassured that the phenomenon is only a figment of my imagination.  We are a week from closing as this is published and a week and a day from moving in.*  Packing is fast and furious, indicated by the half life of rolls of tape, packing paper and boxes which seems to be measured in nano-seconds.  My close personal friends on the Lowes Staff have learned to keep an eye out for my pickup and clear the aisles to the moving supplies area.

And...Thankfully, the Big Guy has been working to keep the juvat family record intact.  This will be my 48th move in my lifetime.  Each and every one has encountered rain during either the departure or arrival phase...or both.  Thankfully, we've received almost two inches of rain over the last couple of days.  The sucking sound the ground has been making is deafening.

So, we've got that going for us...which is nice.

On with this week's post, juvat!

¡Sigamos con el correo, sí, mi sargento de la Fuerza Aérea mayor incluso que Methusala!

Last week, in the comments on my post about Capt Walmsley's Medal of Honor, OldNFO (whom, legend has it, may even be older than Our beloved OldAFSarge...if you can believe that!) posted a comment that said "Usually, the crew or backseater is never even mentioned, especially talking about the Army and USAF awards."

I thought that was an interesting comment so did a little research on some of the more "spectacular" aerial missions I was aware of in which the person in command did what he thought was required and for which he was awarded a medal of considerable prestige.  I didn't limit the search to just the Medal of Honor because I'm aware of only one incident where two people were awarded the Medal of Honor while on the same aircraft on the same mission.  That would be Lt Truemper and SSgt Mathies.

 

Source

But, as I thought about the statement, I remembered another Medal of Honor Recipient I'd written about, Col Leo Thorsness. The courage, skill and luck that earned him The Medal was brilliantly displayed on a very spectacular mission flown in a two place F-105F in North Vietnam.  His Backseater, Capt Harold Johnson, received the Air Force Cross for his participation in the mission. The Service Cross (Navy Cross, Air Force Cross or Distinguished Service Cross for the Army) is the second highest award for valor.  I've heard it said that the difference between receiving the Medal of Honor and your respective Service Cross is the talents of the Award Nomination Letter Writer.  Having read some of the AFC letters, there's a fair amount of truth in that statement.

In any case, Capt Johnson was not left unmentioned.

Source

 

Another mission which required some unusual airmanship and occurring with a two person crew became famous as "Pardo's Push".  On that mission, one of the F-4s took battle damage and lost most of their fuel.  Unable to reach home, the other F-4 had the damaged one lower his tail hook.  He then flew under the damaged aircraft, made contact with the tailhook with the nose of his plane and pushed it to Laos.  There was considerable consternation among the multi-starred folks about the maneuver as both aircraft were lost with both crews ejecting  safely in Laos.  Eventually, Col Pardo and his back seater received the Silver Star but not until 1989, well after the war.  

But again, both the Pilot in Command and his back seater received an appropriate award.

Hadley's Harem participated in the Ploesti Raid and is resting on the bottom of the Mediterranean

My final example is that disaster in WWII known as "The Ploesti Raid". This attack on Oil Refineries in Romania involved 177 B-24's launching from Benghazi Libya. Some bad luck, bad planning and a well executed defensive plan resulted in 88 B-24s being shot down and of the 89 that returned, more than a third were not repairable.  Nearly 500 men were killed, captured or interred. Many of the aircraft that managed to return had severely injured men on board who would not be able to return to flying.

During this mission, there were 5 Medals of Honor awarded, three posthumously.  However, ALL crew members who went on the mission were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Which brought me back to OldNFO's statement. As I reread my main source for the posting on Capt Walmsley, I found a sentence towards the end that I had overlooked.  Turns out his entire crew, including himself, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.  The DFC is the Air Forces 4th highest medal for Valor behind the Medal of Honor, the Air Force Cross, and the Silver Star.  There are some other medals in between the Medal of Honor and the DFC in order of precedence, but by and large those are paper pusher medals. I can say that as I have several myself. The DFC is not a paper pusher medal.

Doing the research on Col Thorsness's Back Seater, I discovered this DOD site which lists the recipients of all three top awards for valor, broken down by Service, Medal and Conflict. The list apparently contains recipients dating back to the creation of the Medal of Honor in the Civil War.  That should be a pretty good source for future reference.  As I trolled through the Air Force lists, I recognized a pretty fair amount of names on them (Well...for Vietnam anyhow) and once again, realized how fortunate I was in my Fighter Pilot seasoning to have them as Flight Leads.

I also found this site to be pretty poignant with respect to the Ploesti raid.  Lots of photos, medals, letters to family from the government.  Ploesti was a BAD day.

During the research, I had a question about how a Medal of Honor was approved.  The Army  stepped up and provided that.  Essentially, the nomination has to make it through several layers of shoe clerks for vetting, then it enters the political arena with the Chief of Staff, then Service Secretary's then finally the Secretary of Defense approval before it goes to the President.  

All of this, normally, has to be completed within a Five Year window from the time of the action.  DOD was allowed to extend that window in 2017 and conducted a review of post 9/11 actions that might have qualified for upgrade. Several have been upgraded.

I wonder what possibly could have changed in January 2017 that might have affected that decision?

 And while looking into this, I came across a very Interesting Story.  Which you'll have to wait until next week to read.

 

*In case anyone was wondering about the title.