Air Force pilot awarded for saving Green Berets surrounded by Taliban fighters in 2018

An Air Force F-16 fighter pilot with the Oklahoma Air National Guard received one of the military’s most prestigious awards for heroism in recognition of his work to save U.S. and Afghan special operations forces during a fierce gunfight in Afghanistan in 2018.

“If Maj. [Michael] Coloney had not executed his F-16 strikes flawlessly and decisively, more friendly lives would have certainly been lost,” said Col. Ryan Jones, quoting the words of the ground commander whose troops’ lives were on the line that day.

Now a lieutenant colonel, Coloney received the Distinguished Flying Cross, the nation’s fourth-highest award for combat valor, at a ceremony on Sunday at Tulsa Air National Guard Base. At the ceremony, Jones explained in detail what Coloney did to receive the award, which recognizes a pilot’s “extraordinary aerial achievement.”

“2018 was a fierce time of fighting for both coalition and enemy forces,” Jones said. “The amount of ordnance expended on this one particular deployment alone eclipsed all combined weapons employment events over the preceding 11 combat deployments” for the 125th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron.

The award stemmed from an engagement on April 29 that year, when a detachment of 53 Army Special Forces and Afghan soldiers “cleared compounds of interest” in the village in Kapisa province in order to disrupt Taliban networks there, Jones explained. The detachment stayed overnight, but the next morning, April 30, they were attacked by 80 Taliban and Haqqani Network fighters. Coalition troops were pinned down in three compounds in the village by small arms, machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire coming from positions to the east and south of them. The enemy knew what they were doing, because while one group battled the coalition troops from afar, a second moved in from the west close enough to throw hand grenades over the compound walls.

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