No, YOU shut up
The Distinguished Flying Cross, or "DFC", is one of the highest honors that a military pilot can receive. During WWII, my grandfather was nominated for but did not receive a Distinguished Flying Cross after a mission in which his bomber sustained 148 bullet and shell fragment hits in the area between the front edge of the wing and the nose of the aircraft. My grandfather, sitting in the middle of that hellstorm and wounded twice, managed to bring his plane back to base on two (out of four) engines, and land it safely even though he was passing out from blood loss and both his copilot and navigator were unconscious. My grandfather brought 9 men home in an airplane so badly shot up that it never flew again, and he didn't get the DFC.
So while I'm amazed to be here given what my grandfather went through and yeah, I think it'd be pretty cool to have a DFC winner in the family, I also understand why he didn't get it. See, back then the DFC was awarded to people who did truly extraordinary, brave, heroic, sometimes ultimately futile things. A good portion of the DFC's given out during WWII were awarded posthumasly. This was an award that was reserved strictly for people who completed their mission even though their airplane was on fire.
So why the sour history review?
This is why:
"Kunsan Pilot Awarded DFC"
An F-16 pilot assigned to the 35th Fighter Squadron at Kunsan AB, South Korea, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for extraordinary achievement in Iraq.
The awardee was Capt. David Anderson, a 35th FS flight commander assigned to the 524th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron at Balad AB, Iraq, from September 2006 to January 2007.
On Nov. 16, 2006, Anderson responded to a “troops in contact” call east of Baghdad. Insurgents, who were near American troops and firing from behind a berm, had pinned down US forces. Anderson, though critically low on fuel, rolled into the fray at extremely low level with his 20 mm cannon blazing. Anderson unleashed all of the gun’s 510 rounds, killing the six enemy fighters, one of whom had been in the process of setting up a 60 mm mortar.
So lets review. Back in the day you only got a Distinguished Flying Cross if you muttered something inspirational like "fuck it" into your radio and elected to stay strapped in to a fireball packed with explosives just long enough to fly said explosives up the enemy's ass, or die trying. NOW you get the DFC if, while flying through completely uncontested airspace, you pause to strafe a handful of disorganized peasant militia with your fully automatic anti-tank cannon.
I'm not saying it didn't take skill for that pilot to fly the plane, or line up a shot on those six guys, or even budget his fuel so that he didn't have to land at one of the other airbases we've built in that country. I'm not saying that he's not good at his job, but that's exactly my point. He did his fucking job. Judging by the criteria that earned this pilot his DFC, we owe a lot of pilots a lot of medals. And really, we should backdate that to a time when our pilots were still in danger of getting shot down. Imagine telling this story to a Vietnam era pilot who had to fly low level ground attack missions along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Imagine telling this story to a pilot who had to fly daily missions against an enemy that was copiously equipped with missiles specifically designed to shoot down the kind of airplane he was flying. Then imagine getting kicked in the junk.
...
Mindless propaganda ruins it for everyone.