A Strike/Flight Numeral is a Department of the Navy device that may be awarded for wear on the Air Medal to individuals serving in any capacity in the United States Armed Forces. A Strike/Flight Award is awarded to individuals for meritorious achievement while participating in sustained aerial flight operations, under flight orders. Strike/Flight Numerals are bronze Arabic numerals 5/16 inch in height and are worn to denote the total number of Strike/Flight awards
Only personnel under flight orders are eligible to receive the strike/flight award of an Air Medal. Officers in the rank of Captain (or Colonel in the Marine Corps) are not eligible for award of the Air Medal on a strike/flight basis unless the sorties they fly are required in the performance of their regular duties.
- Strikes are sorties that deliver ordnance against the enemy, insert or extract assault personnel, or engage in Search and Rescue (SAR) operations that encounter enemy opposition.
- Flights are sorties that deliver ordnance against the enemy, insert or extract assault personnel, or engage in Search and Rescue (SAR) operations that encounter no enemy opposition. The distinguishing feature of a flight is that although it takes place in a nominally hostile environment, it does not encounter enemy opposition.
The Strike/Flight Numeral device is similar to the bronze or gold Numeral device (3/16 inch) sometimes called an award numeral. Strike/Flight Numerals are positioned to the wearer's left on the ribbon bar and suspension ribbon of the Air Medal. Since August 22, 2006, total individual awards of the Air Medal that were denoted by gold 5/16 inch Arabic numerals on the medal have been replaced by gold 5/16 inch stars to denote second and subsequent individual awards of the medal
Famous quotes containing the words strike and/or flight:
“Submission is the only good;
Let me become an instrument sharply stringed
For all things to strike music as they please.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.... Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)