Medal of Honor Aircraft To date , the United States Medal of Honor has been awarded on 103 occasions for actions involving the use of aircraft . Awards for actions that took place in a single flight are the norm , with 74 individual aircraft accounting for 82 of the 93 medals awarded for actions while in flight ( including eight dual awards representing the same aircraft ) . Of those 75 planes , 41 were destroyed during the MoH action , while others were lost later . In a few cases the MoH recipient survived while the plane did not ( Jimmy Doolittle ' s B - 25 , as an example ) . The reverse also occurred : Lts . Jack W . Mathis and Robert E . Femoyer received posthumous awards while their respective B - 17 s survived , only to be scrapped later . Some aircraft were recognized following their crew ' s award but were not preserved , including Butch O ' Hare ' s F4F , which wasn ' t stricken until two and one half years after his MoH action , as well as Maj . James H . Howard ' s " borrowed " P - 51 , whose identity remains a mystery . In wartime often the pressing needs for serviceable aircraft overcame their need for preservation in programs or museums that did not yet exist . WWII . By far the most MoH ' s were issued to crewmen flying on Boeing aircraft . B - 17 crewmen received 17 awards from 1942 to 1945 . Eleven of the Flying Fortress MoH ' s were posthumous awards , while in 1945 a B - 29 crewman was awarded the MoH for saving his plane despite crippling burns . Eleven Consolidated aircraft were involved in MoH missions , including two PBY Catalinas . The MoH awarded to B - 24 crewmen ( including one Navy PB4Y ) were largely associated with the series of attacks on the Romanian oil refineries in 1943 – 44 . The Grumman F4F Wildcat represents the most MoH ' s for a fighter aircraft serving in WWII by a sizable margin , with 8 MoH recipients . Seven F4F MoH ' s were to Marine Corps pilots , six of whom received their MoH for missions in the Solomon Islands during 1942 – 43 . The lone Navy pilot was Lt . ( j . g . ) Edward H . " Butch " O ' Hare , recognized as the Navy ' s first WWII ace . Cmdr . David McCampbell ' s two MoH missions in 1944 were in a F6F Hellcat bring Grumman ' s tally to nine MoH aircraft . Korea . Korean War MoH aircraft include a wide range of types , from WWII vintage aircraft to jets . They include one each for the F - 51 , F - 80 , F - 86 , A - 26 , F4U , and the first MoH helicopter , a HO3S . Vietnam . The Vietnam War produced 20 in - flight MoH awards . They include a very diverse group of 7 fixed - wing aircraft and four helicopters , which range from a Cessna O - 1 to a Fairchild C - 123 Provider , to a F - 105 Thunderchief , plus the well - represented Bell Huey . The F - 4 Phantom is represented only by pilot Lance Sijan , who was awarded a posthumous MoH for his exceptional courage as a POW . Notable for its absence is the A - 6 Intruder . Survivors . Very few MoH aircraft survive today , especially since nearly half of all awards have been posthumous , and with the exception of the USMC , the military branches have done a poor job of preserving MoH aircraft that did survive . Today four MoH combat aircraft still exist , plus two non - combat aircraft and the parts of one MoH F4F . One near - survivor was C - 123 ( 55 - 4542 ) , the aircraft MoH recipient Maj . Joe Jackson was piloting when he made his daring rescue of Air Force personnel trapped on an airstrip being overrun by Communist forces in 1968 . By the time the Air Force History Office learned the aircraft still existed it had been transferred to the South Vietnamese government , who later transferred it to the Thai government . The aircraft was apparently not scrapped until the early 1990s .