The President of the United States of America, authorized by Title 10, Section 8742, U.S.C., awarded the Air Force Cross to Captain Barry F. Crawford, Jr., for extraordinary heroism in military operations against an armed enemy of the United States as Special Tactics Officer near Laghman Province, Afghanistan, on 4 May 2010. On that date, while attached to Army Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha and their Afghan partner force, Captain Crawford conducted a helicopter assault into [REDACTED]. Upon landing, Captain Crawford received reports that multiple groups of armed enemy were maneuvering into prepared fighting positions in the high ground around the village. As the assault force initiated clearance operations, they began to receive a high volume of accurate machine gun and sniper fire from an enemy force well over 100 fighters. As the assault force was attacked, Captain Crawford took decisive action to save the lives of three wounded Afghan soldiers and evacuate two Afghan soldiers killed in action. Recognizing that the wounded Afghan soldiers would die without evacuation to definitive care, Captain Crawford took decisive action and ran out into the open in an effort to guide the helicopter to the landing zone. Once the pilot had eyes on his position, Captain Crawford remained exposed, despite having one of his radio antennas shot off mere inches form his face, while he vectored in the aircraft. Acting without hesitation, Captain Crawford then bounded across open terrain, engaged enemy positions with his assault rifle and called in AH-64 strafe attacks to defeat the ambush allowing the aid-and-litter teams to move toward the casualties. While the casualties were being moved the team's exposed position once again came under attack from two enemy trucks that had moved into the area and were threatening the medical evacuation landing zone. As one of the aid-and-litter teams was pinned down by enemy fire, and the medical evacuation helicopter took direct hits from small arms fire, it departed with only four casualties leaving one wounded Afghan soldier on the ground. Captain Crawford developed, coordinated, and executed a plan to suppress the enemy, enabling the helicopter to return to the hot landing zone to retrieve the last casualty. While Captain Crawford's element exfiltrated the village, the assault force conducted a two kilometer movement over steep terrain with little to no cover. Captain Crawford again engaged the enemy with his assault rifle while integrating AH-64s and F-15E's in a coordinated air-to-ground attack plan that included strafing runs along with 500 and 2,0000-pound bomb and Hellfire missile strikes. Throughout the course of the ten hour firefight, Captain Crawford braved effective enemy fire and consciously placed himself at grave risk on four occasions while controlling over 33 aircraft and more than 40 airstrikes on a well-trained and well-prepared enemy force. His selfless actions and expert airpower employment neutralized a numerically superior enemy force and enabled friendly elements to exfiltrate the area without massive casualties. Through his extraordinary heroism, superb airmanship, and aggressiveness in the face of the enemy, Captain Crawford has reflected great credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.
Caught in the Crossfire

April 6, 2012—Capt. Barry F. Crawford Jr.,was caught in the crossfire. He waved his arms toward the HH-60 Pave Hawk that hovered above as he ignored the bullets pelting the ground at his feet, kicking up dirt and rocks. His headset muted the sound as a round flew just past his ear, though he definitely felt the antenna of one of his radios slap the back of his neck hard after the bullet struck it. The special tactics officer thought he had been shot. He felt for blood, but there was none. He carried on.

The landing zone was hot and it was tiny. More than a hundred enemy fighters were hidden in the jagged mountainside surrounding the remote Afghan village in Laghman Province, in eastern Afghanistan. The insurgents had been accurately firing machine guns and sniper rifles down at the US and Afghan commandos for hours. Two Afghan soldiers were dead and three more were severely wounded. Crawford knew the casualties didn’t have long to live, but the wind and rain combined with the fortress-like terrain was making it difficult for the medevac helicopter to land. Without regard for his own life, he remained exposed to heavy fire and guided the pilots onto the landing zone.

For Crawford's actions that day, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton A. Schwartz will award him the Air Force Cross—the second highest honor for valor in combat, after only the Medal of Honor—at a Pentagon ceremony April 12. Crawford will become the fifth Air Force special operator to receive the service’s highest honor since Sept. 11, 2001, and only the third living recipient to receive the award in that time. Only seven other airmen have earned the honor since 1975.

Multiple mission participants “painted a consistent and compelling picture of Captain Crawford’s technical expertise and exceptional courage under fire during the day-long battle with the enemy,” said Lt. Col. Parks Hughes, commander of the 21st Special Tactics Squadron, Crawford’s home unit at the time. “They credited his decisive actions with enabling the US ground force and their Afghan partners to survive and escape an extremely dire situation.”

No one expected the massive assault that took place on May 4, 2010. Crawford was assigned to Army Special Forces Operational Det. Alpha, which was partnered with a group of Afghan infantry trained to mirror US Army Rangers. The operation was part of a larger scale plan to work with International Security Assistance Forces in a completely denied area East of Kabul that had gone a long time without coalition presence.

The US forces were acting as mentors. The idea was to put an Afghan face on the operation, which was intended only to be a regional engagement effort. The soldiers wanted to sweep the area and talk to the village elders. The area was known to be sympathetic to the Taliban, but the assault force, which included about 100 US and Afghan personnel, only expected resistance from about 10 fighters. Unbeknownst to the troops on the ground, though, the mission had been compromised and insurgents were holed up in tunnels and caves in the mountains waiting for them.

It turns out the assault force was ambushed by a highly capable enemy force roughly 10 times what they had anticipated.

As the troops entered the village, they quickly realized the normal signs of life were eerily absent. The villagers should have been getting up for their first prayer. Women, children, and men should have been moving around. “There was none of that, so our 'spidey senses' picked up and we knew something wasn’t right,” Crawford told Air Force Magazine in an interview from Maryland where he is now assigned to the Air National Guard’s 104th Fighter Squadron in Baltimore.

Army AH-64 Apaches, Air Force F-16s, an AC-130 gunship, and a manned ISR platform circled overhead passing information to Crawford. Initially, aircrews could make out about 50 insurgents moving in the mountains, but that they later saw that number more than doubled. After intercepting an enemy communication, it was clear the insurgents were preparing to attack once the sun came up.

Within the first 30 minutes the assault force found the first cache of weapons--grenades, RPGs, anti-tank mines, and some recoilless rifles with ammunition. The houses were empty, but were set up like defensive fighting positions with firing ports built up in the corners. There was no doubt they had walked in to a Taliban stronghold, said Crawford.

Around 5 a.m., an element just north of the village started taking fire. Immediately after, bullets began raining down inside the village. “One of my teammates referred to it as getting shot at like fish in a barrel,” said Crawford. “Once the enemy started firing on us, it didn’t stop for 10-plus hours. . . . Wherever we moved everyone was constantly under fire. It was like running the gauntlet, like it was straight out of a movie.”

Loaded down with 50-plus pounds of gear, Crawford and his team ran down the street as rounds struck the ground near their feet and the walls exploded alongside them.

“We were certainly lucky that day. A lot of guys had a lot of close calls,” he said.

Others weren’t so lucky. The first casualty suffered a gunshot wound to the face, so one of the medics ran across the open terrain to provide medical treatment.

“Then it was like dominos. The first guy was wounded, we took another guy, he was killed in action. A few minutes after that we took another wounded,” said Crawford. In less than 45 minutes they suffered five casualties—two killed in action and three more severely wounded. All were Afghans.

Throughout the fighting, Crawford remained in constant communication with the Apaches, which were strafing the mountainside with 33 mm rounds and rockets. One of the elements spotted a large boulder, roughly 250 feet in diameter, that was serving as shelter for a couple of fighting positions. Crawford called on the F-15E Strike Eagles, which had replaced the F-16s, to lay down 500-pound and 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions.

The shooting stopped, but only for about 15 minutes, said Crawford. That’s when they realized the insurgents were maneuvering through a tunnel system dug high up in the mountains.

A few hours in to the fight a heavy layer of clouds covered the mountaintops and rain started pouring down, forcing Crawford to rely heavily on the Apaches. Two-thirds of the weapons employed during the battle were danger close, he said. “The professionalism of the Apache’s [crews] was incredible,” said Crawford. “They were actually waking people up to come out and putting ad hoc flights together to support us. If I said I need weapons here, they didn’t question it...because they knew too many lives were on the line.”

The casualties still needed to be airlifted out, but the village was too hot with ground fire, so Crawford held them off. The Pave Hawks went to get gas and when they came back, he tried to guide them through what he called “the worst possible conditions.”

The long battle was starting to take its toll on the men. They had been dodging bullets all day and they were running out of ammo. The Afghans knew their buddies were hurt and they knew some had died. They also saw the first failed attempt to land the medevac. Some of the teammates were pinned down. It was windy. It was rainy. And, they were out of markings for the landing zone.

“I knew it was a dire situation,” said Crawford. He also knew he had one shot left to get the wounded out, so he came up with a battle plan to unleash hell on the mountainside.

“Recognizing that the wounded Afghan soldiers would die without evacuation to definitive care, Captain Crawford took decisive action and ran out into the open in an effort to guide the helicopter to the landing zone,” reads his Air Force Cross citation. “Once the pilot had eyes on his position, Captain Crawford remained exposed, despite having one of his radio antennas shot off mere inches from his face, while he vectored in the aircraft to his position.

“Captain Crawford then bounded across open terrain, engaged enemy positions with his assault rifle and called in AH-64 strafe attacks to defeat the ambush allowing the aid-and-litter teams to move toward the casualties,” states the citation.

The helicopters successfully evacuated four of the five casualties despite taking at least 10 direct hits, but then Crawford had to call them off due to the overwhelming fire. There was one casualty still on the ground, and he was in bad shape. As the senior medic dragged him to the landing zone, he sustained another wound. Without rescue, the Afghan would only have a few minutes to live, and the HH-60s were out of gas.

Crawford began communicating with a conventional Army Blackhawk overhead. “I said, ‘I’m not going to lie, it’s really nasty down here, but we still have a commando on the ground. He just got shot again en route to the HLZ and the senior medic is laying on top of him providing him with medical treatment and trying to block him from getting hit again,’” said Crawford. The Blackhawk came in and successfully evacuated the last wounded commando without taking any direct hits.

The ground force commander--a US Army captain--called headquarters and requested a quick reaction force be launched for support. As the team landed a couple kilometers west of the village, they too immediately came under fire, so they stayed in place to secure the final landing zone. Crawford split the air assets to provide them some cover. At this point, there were more than 160 US and Afghan personnel on the ground in multiple elements.

Crawford continued engaging with the Apaches, which were unleashing gun, rocket, and Hellfire attacks on the mountainside, as the friendly assault force began the one and a quarter mile trek over steep terrain out of the village. As they were leaving a small pickup truck carrying about three insurgents came in firing RPGs. “We engaged the truck and neutralized the threat,” said Crawford.

The US troops and Afghan soldiers bounded through streets and alleyways trying to clear the way out, but the insurgents kept launching ambushes. “We knew the air was doing an incredible job because at one point the enemy said they were dying like vegetables. We kind of laughed about it after the fact because we don’t even know what that means, but they knew we were moving and we knew they were going to make one last ditch effort to mass us and move in to the village. We had to get out of there,” said Crawford.

As they moved south, another small pickup truck rolled in firing on the troops. Crawford called in a hellfire attack. After the explosion, the truck’s fender blew over the small ravine where they were fighting and landed on the infill HLZ. “It was up close and personal,” he said.

As they left the village, Crawford’s element was ambushed from multiple fighting positions. The enemy was less than 500 feet away, firing from caves, houses, and a ravine that had been dubbed the “green zone” because the vegetation made it almost impossible to see down in there. The men were pinned down in the open, so Crawford relocated the air assets.

He then “moved alone across the open terrain in the kill zone to locate and engage enemy positions with his assault rifle while directing AH-64 30 mm strafe attacks,” according to the citation.

After roughly 10 hours of constant battle, coalition forces were running out of ammunition. The men started handing around magazines as they fought back against the insurgents.

Crawford integrated AH-64s and F-15s in a coordinated air-to-ground attack plan that included strafing runs, Hellfire missiles, 500 and 2,000-pound bombs allowing the men to successfully evacuate the village without sustaining any more casualties.

As they finally reached the landing zone, Crawford kept some air assets over the village to confuse the enemy, which was plotting its fourth major ambush of the day, according to more intercepted radio calls.

“Throughout the course of the 10-hour firefight, Captain Crawford braved effective and well-prepared enemy force. His selfless actions and expert airpower employment neutralized a numerically superior enemy force and enabled friendly elements to exfiltrate the area without massive casualties,” reads his citation.

Now with the Maryland Air National Guard, Crawford is waiting on a slot for pilot training. He hopes to fly A-10s for the Guard.
             Hero ANG Captain to Receive AF Cross Thursday
Sent by SgtMac'sBar Correspondent, Joe Edwards
12 April 2012
A former Air Force Special Operations Combat Controller is set to receive the Air Force Cross Thursday in a ceremony at the Pentagon.

Capt. Barry Crawford, now a member of the Maryland Air National Guard’s 104th Fighter Squadron, is being awarded the Air Force’s second-highest medal for valor for actions two years ago, when his Army Special Forces unit was ambushed with a group of Afghan commandoes.

During the 10 hours of fighting that followed, Crawford called in rotary and fixed-wing air strikes, medevac helicopters, and repeatedly exposed himself to fire as he to engage enemy positions and rescue comrades.

At one point, according to the medal citation, one of his radio antennas was shot off just inches from his face as he vectored in a rescue helicopter for wounded men. All the while, enemy rounds were hitting the rocks and dirt all around him.

“Even though this is an individual award … everyone [there] exhibited that day pure acts of heroism,” Crawford told reporters on Wednesday. Not only the soldiers and Afghan commandos on the ground, he said, but the helicopter and F-15 pilots who flew the support and rescue missions.

“I’m able to talk to you guys today [because of] the actions they did in my defense as well as the commandos. I credit them with all this,” he said.

Crawford, who graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2003, said he hoped as a cadet to go on and become a pilot. Traipsing around mountains and valleys with Army Special Forces was not the original plan. But the astronautical engineering major had no aviation background and competition for the coveted undergraduate pilot training slots was intense.

On the other hand, he heard from officers just returning from early tours of Afghanistan, among them Combat Controllers who worked with Special Forces, some riding horses in the mountains and calling in air support.

“It sounded like a pretty cool experience and an awesome job. They said only the best of the best can do it. I wanted to try it out,” he told Military.com.

With commissioning he was soon off to the 19th Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Fla., then on to various bases while training as a Combat Controller. Eventually he was assigned as an assistant director of operations and flight commander with the 21st Special Tactics Squadron at Pope Field, NC.

He was attached to an Army Special Forces detachment and their Afghan commando partners on May 4, 2010, when a meet-and-greet mission to a village – intended to win hearts and minds while looking for weapons caches – became a day-long combat operation.

“As soon as we entered the area, helicopters picked up Taliban communications,” he said. They were told the enemy was building up forces to the east but more were also coming in. It was still dark at this point, but as soon as the sun came up they began taking small-arms fire, he said.

“A few minutes later multiple enemy positions began shooting at the friendlies in the village,” he said. It was clear that an overwhelming enemy force had set up around the hills overlooking the village and the firing was coming from everywhere.
Two of the Afghan commandoes were killed and three others were severely wounded. As Crawford began calling in for support he and the Army soldiers on the team began taking fire.

About 100 Taliban fighters had taken up position around them. Crawford immediately called in to evacuate the wounded commandoes and the two dead. But bringing in the rescue helicopter meant exposing himself to the fire all around; one round went past his face, shearing off a radio antenna, according to the Air Force Cross citation.

Crawford then laid down suppressive fire on one enemy position and called in strikes from AH-64 Apaches and F-15E Strike Eagles, directing them to multiple targets on the hillsides. When the battle was finally over, the air strikes had inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy, while Crawford’s courage under fire and expert capabilities prevented massive casualties among the U.S. and Afghan commando forces, the Air Force said.

“Throughout the course of the ten hour firefight,” the medal citation states, “Captain Crawford braved effective enemy fire and consciously placed himself at grave risk on four occasions while controlling over 33 aircraft and more than 40 airstrikes on a well-trained and well-prepared enemy force ... Through his extraordinary heroism, superb airmanship, and aggressiveness in the face of the enemy, Captain Crawford has reflected great credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.”
In the interview on Wednesday, Crawford said he is now going for the flying career he originally envisioned for himself at the Air Force Academy. He transferred from the active-duty Air Force to the Air National Guard last June, with the aim of flying.

And he learned on Tuesday that he has been accepted to pilot training and expects to begin this summer.

“I was hired by the 104th Fighter Squadron with the intent of getting me to [pilot training], to eventually be a member of their unit,” he said. “In a little under two years I expect I’ll be a fully qualified A-10 pilot.”



VFW Magazine, September , 2012; Recognizes Capt. Crawford.  Click Here!




On May 4, 2010, Captain Barry Craw ford Jr., then a special tactics officer assigned to the 23rd Expeditionary Special Tactics Squadron in Afghanistan, and a team of approximately 100 Army Special Forces and Afghan commandos flew into the steep mountains of Laghman Province. When the team landed in darkness, they heard enemy chatter on their radios. Within 30 minutes of landing, they found a substantial weapons cache inside the village. Captain Crawford also received reports that armed enemy forces were maneuvering into fighting position in the high ground. As soon as the sun came up, the coalition team came under heavy enemy fire from all sides from over 100 fighters. The team was pinned down in the middle of the village and had no choice but to run the gauntlet of enemy fire. Enemy fighters used sniper and machine-gun fire to target the friendly forces, and as insurgent forces closed in, three Afghan commandos were gravely wounded and two others were killed. Recognizing that the wounded Afghan soldiers would die without medical evacuation (medevac), Captain Crawford ran into the open to guide a medevac helicopter to the landing zone. Even though one of his radio antennas was shot off mere inches from his face, without hesitation Captain Crawford ran across the open terrain, engaging enemy positions with his rifle and calling in AH-64 strafe attacks. This allowed the medevac team to move in toward the casualties. As the casualties were being moved, the team was once again pinned down by enemy forces that were threatening the medevac landing zone. Stuck in an open, narrow valley with mountain cliffs around them, the medevac helicopter took small arms fire and was able to depart with only four of the five casualties. With the enemy only 150 meters away at times, Captain Crawford once again called for “danger-close” attacks from AH-64 and F-15E aircraft overhead. In order to mark the enemy locations, he exposed himself to enemy fire by running more into the open and engaged the enemy while directing airstrikes. As a result, the medevac helicopter was able to return and exfiltrate the last casualty. Throughout the harrowing 10 hour fight, Captain Crawford braved effective enemy fire and consciously placed himself at grave risk on four occasions, all while controlling over 33 aircraft and more than 40 airstrikes on a well-trained and prepared enemy force. More than 80 insurgents were killed during the engagement, including three high-ranking enemy commanders.

For his brave actions that day, Captain Crawford was awarded the Air Force Cross, the second highest military decoration, behind the Medal of Honor, that can be awarded to an Airman. * Captain Crawford was a special tactics officer when this event occured but is now training to become an Air Force pilot.