FLWG Unit Citation?

[DC]

The FLWG Facebook page is reporting that the wing has been awarded a Unit Citation Award. I haven't been able to find any information on this anywhere else, is anyone here on CT in the know on this?

[DBlair]

I haven't heard anything about it yet other than what you mention on the Facebook page. I'm wondering if this was just for Wing Staff or for the entire Florida Wing. Either way, considering the conference is this weekend, we can probably expect award announcements to go out within the next week or so.

[MSG Mac]

I expect it will show up on the FLWG page within the next couple of days.

[BillB]

It's for the mission on the Gulf oil spill. It was awarded to Florida Wing.

[starshippe]

. . alabama did a lot of work too, as i remember, and mississippi was involved.

bill

dwh ic
georgia wing

[CAP Producer]

It was a team effort not just the work of 1 wing.

[Eclipse]

A properly submitted Unit Citation will include a Personnel Authorization with the list of names of the recipients, if you are on it, you will know.

[Mikecookis@yahoo.com]

Its for the entire wing membership from a certian time period. 

So if you were a lazy member and sat on your [Filter Subversion], you will benifit from the hard workers that really deserved it.....

I guess its the Wing Commanders way of 'Thanking us' .  I along with many are not happy about it.  There were only a handfull of key players responsible for the Mission, I belive around 50 from FLWG .  So lets award everyone else too!   

[Hawk200]

Its for the entire wing membership from a certian time period. 

So if you were a lazy member and sat on your [Filter Subversion], you will benifit from the hard workers that really deserved it.....

I guess its the Wing Commanders way of 'Thanking us' .  I along with many are not happy about it.  There were only a handfull of key players responsible for the Mission, I belive around 50 from FLWG .  So lets award everyone else too!

I did quake relief in Cali back in '94. One of the staff at the end of the mission talked of how National was discussing a Unit Citation for the wing. He didn't feel it was fair that everyone got something when only a percentage did anything directly supporting the relief. He got the names of everyone who showed up for the mission for at least a day, and wrote batches of Commendations for them.

There were different stories on what happened. Some folks say the wing king refused to sign them, it was too much paperwork for one shot. Others said that it was never submitted. Still not sure which happened.

[lordmonar]

A properly submitted Unit Citation will include a Personnel Authorization with the list of names of the recipients, if you are on it, you will know.

Right.....

NVWG got a National Commander's Unit Citation for the Fosset Search........we (that is the squadron) had to send the names to wing so they could do the PA.

[lordmonar]

It was a team effort not just the work of 1 wing.

Yes....but only one wing sent in the paper work.

[lordmonar]

Its for the entire wing membership from a certian time period. 

So if you were a lazy member and sat on your [Filter Subversion], you will benifit from the hard workers that really deserved it.....

I guess its the Wing Commanders way of 'Thanking us' .  I along with many are not happy about it.  There were only a handfull of key players responsible for the Mission, I belive around 50 from FLWG .  So lets award everyone else too!

Welcome to world of unit citations.

You have to take the good with the bad.  The real military has been dealing with this for eons.  What needs to happen is that the 50 key players form FLWG need to get individual awards for their actions.  The Unit Citation takes care of the other 100 who had some hand in the mission but were not "key" players and it covers the actions of those who took up the slack from the people who were busy with Oil Spill Mission.

[RiverAux]

Any unit citation will cover some folks that probably didn't do anything special to deserve it.  Thats part of the game. 

However, I think for a unit citation to be valid, a significant percentage of the unit must have been involved.  If the numbers involved are accurate and much less than 10% of the entire wing was involved, then unit citation for the entire wing is certainly not justified. 

Perhaps it would have been more appropriate to give unit citations to those squadrons or groups that actually did the most and then individual citations for others that were involved. 

[Spaceman3750]

When you look at it from a top-down perspective, I understand why the whole wing is getting a citation from higher HQ. When you look at the incident from a region or NHQ perspective, who did the work on the incident? It was the WING, not the 50 members of the wing. "Hey Joe, Florida Wing really did an awesome job on DWH", not "Hey Joe, Bob Jim Johhny Bill and Pete really did a great job at DWH".

The wing just needs to make sure to individually recognize those who did an outstanding job in a time of crisis.

[RiverAux]

Sure, but you have to drill down to the level that did the actual work so that there is at lease some plausible relationship between who gets the citation and who did most of the work.  I suspect that one or two groups did most of the response, so why not actually reward those groups specifically? 

[jimmydeanno]

The whole point of a unit citation is to recognize units that set themselves apart from others.  If 50 people from everywhere did something cool, is a unit citation really the best award for that?  Probably not.

However, you can't discount that there are people who have put forth effort "behind the scenes" in supportive roles that weren't related to a specific action.

If your squadron rocks the socks off the similar units they should get a unit citation.  If the criteria is mostly because of some super-awesome activities, growth rate, etc I can't imagine that the unit admin officer played a critical role to those successes, but none-the-less they are part of the unit and without them the unit wouldn't be as successful. 

The first step is to identify the appropriate award.  The second is to actually award it.  Personally, I think that the unit citation isn't awarded enough.

[SarDragon]

I have a couple of Unit citations. In no case do I feel that I was a significant part of the effort involved to get the citation.

#1 was awarded to the entire NE Region back in the late '60s, WIWAC. I still don't have any idea why the entire region got the award.

#2 was to CAWG for the 2003 Columbia recovery effort.

What's a guy to do?

[lordmonar]

However, I think for a unit citation to be valid, a significant percentage of the unit must have been involved.  If the numbers involved are accurate and much less than 10% of the entire wing was involved, then unit citation for the entire wing is certainly not justified.

The U.S. Military does not agree.

What matters is what got accomplished.....not how many people actually did it.

[lordmonar]

Sure, but you have to drill down to the level that did the actual work so that there is at lease some plausible relationship between who gets the citation and who did most of the work.  I suspect that one or two groups did most of the response, so why not actually reward those groups specifically?

No....because it is a UNIT award.  All members of the unit during the affected period get it.  Even if they joined the unit on the last day or left the unit on the first day.  The rule is if you were a member during the time you get it.

If you are going to drill down to specific accomplishments.....then you might as well just do the specific awards for the specific individuals.
The whole point of a unit citation is to reward everyone for a job well done....no matter who insignificant their contributions to the effort were.

[JROB]

This discussion kinda reminds me of a scene from Band of Brothers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPFjM0v-r1c Skip to 2:30