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NavSource Online: Amphibious Photo Archive

Contributed by Mike Smolinski

USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7)

Captain Dana R. Gordon

In 1992, he completed flight training in the SH-60B Seahawk and has since accumulated over 3,500 total flight hours, with over 3,250 coming in the SH-60B, making numerous deployments onboard CRUDES ships while serving multiple tours with HSL-40, HSL-42 and HSL-44.

From 2006 through 2009, he was privileged to become Executive Officer and then assumed the title of WARRIOR ONE as the 201 Commanding Officer of the HSL-42 Proud Warriors. Under his leadership, the Proud Warriors won three consecutive Battle Efficiency Awards, the 2008 HSMWINGLANT Sikorsky Maintenance Golden Wrench Award, and the Secretary of the Navy Aviation Safety Award as the Navy's safest operational fleet Squadron. During his Command tour, CAPT Gordon was also peer-selected by his fellow Commanding Officers as the 2008 Naval Air Forces and Navy and Marine Association's Senior Leadership award winner for COMHSMWINGLANT.

Other assignments have included tours at the Naval Personnel Command in Millington, TN, at Commander Naval Air Forces in San Diego, CA, on the Joint Staff, J-8, Force Application and Assessment Division and as an Aide to Secretary of the Navy, the Honorable Ray Mabus, at the Pentagon in Washington, DC. He has a Masters Degree in Business Administration from Embry-Riddle University, completed his JPME Phase I and II from the Air Command and Staff College in Montgomery, AL and the Joint and Combined Warfighting School in Norfolk, VA and has also completed coursework at the Harvard Business School, in Cambridge, MA.

CAPT Gordon has received two single action Air Flight Medals and two Sikorsky Aviation Rescue pins for lifesaving heroics in Naval Aviation both deployed and ashore. He has numerous awards for leadership and aviation valor, as both an Instructor Pilot and as Officer of the Year from HSMWINGLANT, the Naval Helicopter Association, Naval Air Forces, and the Navy and Marine Association. CAPT Gordon was also nominated by the Navy and was ultimately selected as one of Diversity MBA Magazine's top 100 Diverse Executive Leaders under 50 years old. He is, however, proudest of the many unit, campaign, and service awards that he shares with his fellow service members throughout his many tours of duty both at sea and ashore.

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