Twelve members of the United States Air Force received Medals of Honor for heroic actions in Vietnam. Just one month prior to the Easter Sunday beginning of Operation Abilene, Major Bernard Francis Fisher became the first person to earn the newly designed Air Force Medal of Honor. (During the Korean War, four Air Force pilots were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor but all received the Army design for the award.)
Four years after William Pitsenbarger's death, Airman First Class John Levitow became the first and only ENLISTED airman to receive our Nation's highest military award.
William Pitsenbarger's story survived for more than three decades, making the young airman something of an Air Force legend. In the 1990s, a campaign was initiated by numerous private citizens as well as federal officials, to revisit the story of the boy from Piqua, Ohio. Subsequent review determined that the level of voluntary heroism displayed by the 21-year old PJ in the jungles of Vietnam was more in keeping with the levels of valor reflected by the Medal of Honor.
On December 8, 2000 an impressive ceremony was held at Wright-Patterson AFB in Pits' home state of Ohio. The guest list included combat veterans, hundreds of pararescue airmen, a Congressional representative, and the Air Force Chief of Staff. Also attending was an elderly gentleman, now well into his 80s....William F. Pitsenbarger. Amid a flood of memories, an invocation by the Chief of the Air Force Chaplain Service, and remarks by the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, Secretary of the Air Force the Honorable F. Whitten Peters stepped to the podium. Then, with the dignity unprecedented valor demands, the story of William Pitsenbarger was read in greater detail than his Air Force Cross citation had set forth. At long last, after 34 years, the young PJ would indeed receive the Medal of Honor. The elder Pitsenbarger gratefully accepted the award on behalf of his only son.
