Category: Air Force

Dennis sends us a link from af.mil which tells the story of how Technical Sergeant Phillip Dyer earned the Airman’s Medal for rescuing double amputee, Christi, from a raging flood in Missouri while Dyer was on leave from 366th Training Squadron Detachment 3, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.

Because of weather conditions, rescue personnel were hours away, so Dyer took it upon himself to rescue the woman;

The husband and another man on the scene tried to rescue Christi, but could not carry her above the water. With the waters rising toward the couple’s roof and no chance to tow the vehicle without possibly losing his own, Dyer made a call.

“I told my brother, ‘they are going to drown her, I am helping,’” said Dyer. “If we waited for rescue personnel, she would have either succumbed to the cold or been washed away. There was no more time to wait. She needed help right then.”

When Dyer reached Christi, he said she was very cold and turning blue. The Airman took her from the two men and used a fireman carry to get her through the close-to-freezing current to a less-deeply flooded area. Then Christi began to panic.

“I carefully put her down and sat in the water with her,” said Dyer. “I explained to her ‘I can only help if you stay calm.’”

At this point, Dyer said much of his military training took over. The self-aid buddy care, combat life saver, operational risk management and his own EOD technician composure allowed him to accomplish the specific mission he had before him.

“My training helped me stay calm in a torrent of rushing water, pouring rain and darkness not knowing when the situation could go from bad to worse,” he said.

He quickly briefed the two men, who’d attempted to rescue Christi earlier, on how to perform a chair carry. At this point, Christi was so weak, she couldn’t hold herself up. One man held her back, while Dyer and the other rescuer performed the carry to remove her from the current and get her to safety.

“I was worried, at least up until I heard him take complete control of the situation,” said John Dyer, Phillip’s brother. “Once he got in the water, there was no misunderstanding who was in charge. Phillip may have been afraid, but the only thing he showed was calmness.”

Dyer’s brother, John, who couldn’t attend the ceremony, also added praise for his brother and all military members.

“If this is even a small cross-section of the type of men and women serving our country, we should all be proud,” he said.

The Military Times reports that A-10 Thunderbolt (Warthog) pilots Major Tyler Schultz and Captain Samantha Harvey of the 354th Fighter Squadron were awarded Distinguished Flying Crosses for their actions over al-Shaddadi, Syria last May 2d as they provided close air support for American troops engaged in firefights with ISIS fighters;

The call first came from an American joint terminal attack controller, who reported that his team was surrounded and under direct fire from ISIS fighters.

Schultz and Harvey then executed multiple “gun runs” against an enemy force that had pinned down the American ground team.

First, the two pilots located the friendly forces and began to assess the enemy’s coordinated attack.

“Talking with the JTAC — I learned what fear sounds like,” Harvey said. “All that mattered was he needed us at that moment.”

While Schultz executed four strafe runs against the enemy fighters, Harvey descended in order to conduct a show of force maneuver to deter further attacks.

“It was dark, but I had a job to do,” Harvey said. “I thought to myself, this is the moment that I’ve been training for.”

The team’s coordination and quick response under pressure was credited with saving more than 50 Americans.

The Air Force Times reports that a five-man surgical team is going to be awarded Bronze Stars for their efforts in the war against ISIS in 2016;

Emergency medicine physician Lt. Col. Ben Mitchell, nurse anesthetist Lt. Col. Matthew Uber, surgeon Maj. Justin Manley, and emergency room nurse Capt. Cade Reedy of the 720th Operations Support Squadron will receive Bronze Stars for their work assisting civilians and local fighters wounded in the fight against ISIS for two weeks in the summer of 2016.

Maj. Jonathan Chin, another SOST airman who was on a different deployment, will also receive a Bronze Star.

A SOST consists of six mobile surgical specialists with advanced training who can deploy to the field to save lives as quickly as possible.

[…]

Mitchell, Uber, Manley and Reedy along with emergency room nurse Maj. Nelson Pacheco and respiratory therapist Technical Sgt. Richard Holguin, at least one of whom has already received his Bronze Star and has separated from the Air Force worked around the clock during their deployment to the undisclosed location. They treated 750 patients, responded to 19 mass-casualty events, conducted 16 life-saving surgeries, and treated victims of a chemical weapon attack.

My son is currently deployed with another Air Force Austere Surgical Team somewhere, making his dad proud. (Don’t tell his mom)

Stars & Stripes reports that Air Force Captain Charlotte A. Raabe and Staff Sergeant Gary P. Bjerke of the 9th Special Operations Squadron were awarded Distinguished Flying Crosses for their actions on January 5, 2016 aboard their MC-130J special operations aircraft over an Afghanistan firefight.

Their award citations said enemy fire hit the aircraft multiple times as it successfully dropped the ammunition to a Special Forces team at the base, enabling a successful counterattack.

Bjerke’s identification of ground threats “prevented further successful emergency engagement with the aircraft,” while Raabe’s “decisive actions and expeditious recalculation of the combat airdrop” was key to the mission’s success, the citations said.

“When the crew was told they had to put their bundles within 50 meters of the compound walls, or risk losing it to the enemy, they didn’t hesitate,” [Brig. Gen. William Holt II] said. “And they didn’t hesitate because there were friendly forces on the ground who were under fire from 360 degrees around the compound. They had already taken two casualties and were in danger of being overrun.”

Stars & Stripes reports that Air Force Captain (Chaplain) Sharior Rahman, an imam at Ramstein Air Base and one of only a few Muslim clerics in the Air Force, was convicted of stealing from a German store and sentenced to forfeit $3,000 of his pay for one month but did not dismiss him from the service.

Whether Rahman will remain in the chaplaincy with a general court-martial conviction still needs to be determined by the organization that endorsed him as a military chaplain, officials said.

The charges stem from a shopping trip last year at an Edeka store in Homburg, where Rahman and his wife, Sanam, a civilian, shoplifted about 70 euros worth of groceries, according to court testimony. A second shoplifting involving the couple occurred two weeks later at the Exchange on Ramstein, though no criminal charges were filed in the latter incident.

According to the article, he and his wife had a well-rehearsed plan to buy some items and smuggle other stolen items out of the stores. If he had tried that in Saudi Arabia, he’s be missing one of his sticky mitts now.

According to Stars & Stripes, the Air Force has fired Lt. Col. Jason Heard, the commander of the Thunderbirds – officially known as the U.S. Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron, for unknown reasons;

Brig. Gen. Jeannie Leavitt, commander of the service’s 57th Wing, dismissed Heard, citing a loss of confidence in his “leadership and risk management style.”

“This was an incredibly difficult decision to make, but one that is ultimately in the best interests of the Thunderbird team,” she said in the statement. “I am personally grateful for Jason’s dedication to the 2017 season.”

A Thunderbirds spokesman insists that the crash in June in Ohio which destroyed a $29 million F-16 aircraft and slightly injured a pilot had nothing to do with the firing.