Camp Holloway Discussion Forum Archive 05 - 02/12/06 to 01/21/10

Re: Air Medals
In Response To: Air Medals ()

The criteria for the air medal was as follows.
1 Airmedai for every 25 hours of combat assault time. (when you loaded the troops and flew them to the assault ,that time was CA) once you dropped them off and flew back for supplies you started logging DCS (Direct combat support) It took 50 hours DCS to earn an airmedal.
Then if you flew an admin flight or a maintenance flight or something else that was logged as OCS (Other Combat Support) and it took 100 hours of "OCS" to get an airmedal. So if you flew 60 hours total time and had 10 hours of actual combat assault and 50 hours of ash and trash (DCS) you'd have one air medal for the DCS time.
It got complex. And after the war some folks had some medals taken away because they did not have an MOS "to get that many hours". I never did understand that logic but it did happen. (like I said Personnel folks sucked sometimes). Crappy deal but that's what they did. Just as they took away the Presidential Unit Citation from the 119th back in the mid 1980s when they "recaculated" and decided the PUC awarded to the 52nd BN and attached units for the battles of Dak To should only go to the 52nd Headquarters detachment. and not one of those bastards (except possibly for the BCO and S-3) were any where near Dak To. The army is a strange beast and the cockroaches come out when the light (War) is off and mess up stuff.
Anyway I hope this answers your question. I know one pilot who was DROS shuffled out of the 119th to the 1st Cav after about 6 months and somehow his flight records from the 119th did not follow or were lost in transit, so he left the 119th with one award of the airmedal. The orders for the initial one. He went to the cav and got more for his flights there but never the ones he deserved for the flights in the 119th. The 119th was a bit sloppy in it's awards and records I think. I also think some folks at HQ and BN may have used some of the time for themselves for flightpay purposes. I don't know that to be true but I heard some of the troops gripe about that a few times. To me the Air Medal is to Aviation what the CIB is to the infantry. If you got one be proud. You've done your duty. If you have more, then you were lucky to survive.
BT

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