An Air Force squadron commander who led a history-making deployment to the Middle East was recently presented with the military’s third-highest combat award for combat heroism that reads like a Blockbuster movie script.

Lt. Col. William “Skate” Parks, who commanded the 480th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron out of Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, until earlier this year, received the Silver Star at the Pentagon on Wednesday in recognition of a high-risk flight on March 27 that helped save the lives of his wingmen as well as his own from the urgent threat of running out of fuel, in addition to incoming enemy missiles.

The 480th EFS was designated in 2010 with one of the Air Force’s rarer and more risky missions: Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses, or SEAD. As the only squadron in Air Forces Eu

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