A half-dozen pilots from one of the Air Force’s premier F-16 units, the 20th Fighter Wing at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., have been awarded one of the service’s highest decorations for their role in Operation Midnight Hammer, the June 2025 strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.
The six Airmen received the Distinguished Flying Cross for their actions while escorting B-2 Spirit stealth bombers that struck the Fordow and Natanz nuclear sites in Iran. The medals were presented May 5 by the head of Air Combat Command, Gen. Adrian Spain, in a ceremony at the South Carolina base.
The DFC recognizes acts of heroism or extraordinary achievement in the air and is the military’s fourth-highest award for heroism.
The pilots who received the decoration were from the 55th Fighter Squadron, a unit nicknamed the “Shooters” that is trained and equipped to suppress enemy air defenses, known as the Wild Weasel mission.
“Operation Midnight Hammer, the strike that helped end the 12-day war, doesn’t happen without these six Airmen,” Spain said at the ceremony.
The F-16s were among an armada of fighters, including F-35s and F-22s, that escorted the seven B-2s that dropped 14 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordinance Penetrator weapons on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Around 125 U.S. aircraft of all types were involved in the mission, which came after a nearly two-week Israeli air campaign against Iran.
“That mission reminded every adversary watching that American airpower can be delivered anywhere, anytime, and for better or worse, make it look easy,” Spain said. “But we know it’s not easy.”
U.S. forces used around 75 precision munitions in the raid, according to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Air Force Gen. Dan Caine. That included numerous anti-radiation missiles—the key weapon carried by Wild Weasel F-16s—fired by American aircraft to suppress enemy air defenses, a defense official told Air & Space Forces Magazine after the raid. The U.S. also employed decoys, Caine said last year.
The pilots flew “high-risk flights into heavily defended airspace” and engaged in “direct combat with adversaries,” a release from the 20th Fighter Wing stated.
The pilots who received the DFCs were:
- Lt. Col. Christopher M. Beckett, who commands the 55th Fighter Squadron
- Maj. Matthew J. Croghan
- Maj. Alexander J. Trembly
- Capt. Abigail D. Maio
- Capt. Megan C. Langas
- Capt. Daniel J. Dodson
“When tensions kind of started escalating between the two countries, we were kind of on standby, watching things happen,” an unnamed pilot from the 55th Fighter Squadron said in a video released by the 20th Fighter Wing in December 2025. “Then, as we started getting the words that we might get involved, it became like a week straight of mission planning. And so we were in and out of the vault 12 hours a day, just trying to get everything prepped, make sure that we could execute at a moment’s notice. And then when the order finally came down that, ‘Hey, it’s a go,’ then it was just like a switch flipped, and we’re ready to go.”
The Shaw Weasels are the only SEAD wing within Air Combat Command. Forward-deployed elements of the 20th Fighter Wing previously received the Gallant Unit Citation for their actions in the Middle East in 2025, equivalent to the Silver Star for an individual, wing officials said.
”When I look at it as a commander, bringing home everybody was questionable during some of these missions,” Beckett said last year.
Shaw’s 79th Fighter Squadron, the “Tigers,” also supported operations against Iran last year and other missions in the Middle East during a deployment to the region. Another Weasels squadron from Shaw, the 77th Fighter Squadron, the “Gamblers,” helped support mission planning for Operation Midnight Hammer from the U.S., wing officials previously said.
KC-135 Stratotanker aircrew from the 92nd Air Refueling Wing were awarded DFCs for actions during Operation Midnight Hammer last month.
Other F-16 pilots from Shaw have been active against Iran in this year’s Operation Epic Fury, both in a SEAD role and as a strike and anti-air platform. The SEAD mission in particular has been important given that U.S. officials have said the attrition of Iran’s air defenses is a primary objective in the conflict.
F-16s bearing the markings of the 79th Fighter Squadron at Shaw—including signature tiger print tail flashes—appeared in official U.S. military images with multiple markings for bombing missions on the side of the fighters. At least one aircraft also carried a kill mark with the silhouette of an AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM), likely indicating the destruction of an Iranian surface-to-air missile system.
“When I talk Shaw, we are the only ones that are available to go anywhere at any time and execute the Wild Weasel mission,” said Beckett, the 55th Fighter Squadron commander, last year. “So it is a unique position to be in that we have to be prepared for any and all locations, which means any and all threats, which means when we start looking at our training, we have to be able to focus on a wide spectrum. And we can’t just concentrate on any one thing, which makes us very valuable for national defense, but also very busy when it comes to just how we have to be ready all the time.”
