The Army awarded Distinguished Flying Crosses to 15 aviators who helped kick off the air campaign of Operation Desert Storm in January 1991.
The men received the high honor May 15 at the 2025 Army Aviation Mission Solutions Summit hosted by the Army Aviation Association of America in Nashville, Tennessee. The cross is the fourth highest award for military valor.
The pilots and weapons operators originally received Air Medals with “V” devices for valor following the historic mission. Retired Gen. Richard “Dick” Cody served as battalion commander for the unit — the 1st Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment — during Desert Storm.
Cody worked for multiple years to secure upgrades to the medals for the aviators, who were part of Task Force Normandy, according to an Army release.
Maj. Gen. Clair Gill, commanding general of the Aviation Center of Excellence and the Aviation branch chief, presented the awards to the aviators.
“This is one of those truly significant moments for us, both as an Army and as an Aviation branch,” Gill said. “Every one of us who joins the Army looks to those who came before us. We need to use these example setters as people we should recognize and honor and then replicate the commitment that they made on that night of January 17, 1991.”
The task force of eight Army AH-64 Apache helicopters and four Air Force MH-53J Pave Low helicopters were divided into two teams for the mission, Red Team and White Team.
The Distinguished Flying Cross recipients from Red Team are: Chief Warrant Officer 4 Lewis Hall, Warrant Officer Jerry Orsburn, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Shawn Hoban, Warrant Officer Tim Vincent, Chief Warrant Officer 3 James Miller, Warrant Officer Jody Bridgeforth, Capt. Newman Shufflebarger and Chief Warrant Officer 3 Tim Roderick.
From White Team, they are: Chief Warrant Officer 3 Dave Jones, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Tip O’Neill, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Ronald Rodriguez, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Lee Miller, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Tim Zarnowski, Lt. Tom Drew, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Brian Stewmon and Lt. Col. Dick Cody.
The teams destroyed two Iraqi early warning radar sites 22 minutes before H-hour, which disabled the adversary’s air defenses and established a 20-mile wide air corridor in the first minutes of the air campaign.
The Apache crews launched 27 Hellfire missile, hundreds of rockets and thousands of rounds of 30mm ammunition during the mission, according to the release.
The citation for their awards said the men “displayed heroic actions” during the 15-hour mission, which occurred in darkness, 90 miles into enemy territory.
“The eight crews of Task Force Normandy fired the first shots of Desert Storm leading to the destruction of the Iraqi radar and ground control sites and officially kickstarted the allied air campaign,” the citation reads.
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
