Milestones: Heroic women of the DFC

The Distinguished Flying Cross is the highest award bestowed by the United States for extraordinary aerial achievement. Congress created the DFC in 1926, and it is America’s oldest military aviation award. The medal was first awarded in 1927 to Charles A. Lindbergh, then a captain in the U.S. Army Air Corps Reserve, for his solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Since that time, the DFC has been awarded to more than 6,000 individuals, but few of them women. The DFC Society, established in 1994, will honor women in aviation at its annual convention September 24 through 28 in Dallas.

“Heroic Women of the DFC” will recognize 12 women, nine of whom are still living. Featured speakers will be DFC recipients retired Air Force Col. and astronaut Eileen Collins and Lori Hill, a U.S. Army OH–58D Kiowa pilot during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2006.

“They [Collins and Hill] represent a stark contrast in personal bios but represent the span of diversity in our recipients,” said J. Bruce Huffman, chairman of the board of the DFC Society. “Eileen took us to the edge of space, while Lori was decorated for combat heroism in Iraq.” 

The first female recipient of the DFC was Amelia Earhart, honored in 1932 for her solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic. Only two women are known to have received the DFC during World War II. U.S. Defense Secretary Les Aspin ordered the chiefs of the military to drop the prohibition of women flying in combat missions in 1993, and in 1995, Martha McSally became the first woman to fly in a combat role, in Iraq. Since then, the DFC Society has actively looked for women to achieve the DFC.

“This is an extraordinary group of aviation personnel covering quite a unique spectrum of accomplishments,” said Chuck Sweeney, president and CEO of the DFC Society. The DFC is awarded to pilots and aircrew in all five of the U.S. military services (Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard). “Recipients represent a diversity of backgrounds, ethnicity, rank, and gender, whose aerial achievements are chronicled from the chaos of combat, to epic rescues, out to the very edges of space,” according to the DFC Society.

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