Gregory Rockwood

Major Gregory "Rocky" Rockwood has served six deployments, three each in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was one of the crew members awarded the 2004 Mackay Trophy for the "most meritorious flight of the year" by an Air Force person, persons, or organization. Jolly 11 Flight launched to rescue a five person crew of a U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook that crashed in a sandstorm with near zero-visibility. En route to the crash scene, crews realized their forward looking infra-red and night vision goggles were ineffective. Despite this handicap the crew of Jolly 11 was able to locate the survivors. Both aircraft then made near zero-visibility approaches relying nearly exclusively on the flight engineers and aerial gunners inputs for precision navigation. Following the successful survivor contacts and recovery by the Flight's Pararescuemen, Jolly 11 and Jolly 12 were individually engaged by separate multiple surface-to-air missiles attacks. Using evasive maneuvers Jolly 11 evaded two missiles. Both Jolly 11 and Jolly 12 continued to provide support with defensive fire until the formation was clear of the threat area saving the lives of five U.S. Army personnel.