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Contact Info
Home Town Brooklyn, NYC, NY
Last Address near Bishop, California
Date of Passing Dec 12, 1941
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
He was a pioneer military aviator and one of the first ten recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1886. His last known residence was in Morristown. United States Military Academy, Class of 1911. On Dec. 16, 1914, he participated in the first military communication by radio while in flight. In 1916, while piloting a Curtiss JN-2 known as a "Jenny", he set a flight distance record on a long-range reconnaissance mission of 415 miles with only two stops. In 1926 he aided in drafting the legislation that became the Air Corps Act, which led to the establishment of the United States Army Air Corps. During World War II, he was asked to investigate the lack of preparedness for the Pearl Harbor attack. On his way to Hawaii, Maj. General Dauge was killed when his B-18 plane crashed near the Sierra Nevada Mountains on December 12, 1941. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, Section 7.
.Major General Herbert Arthur Dargue, United States Army Air Forces, Service Number: O-003084
Early Life
Herbert Arthur Dargue was born on 17 November 1886 in Brooklyn, New York. His nickname was "Bert". His father, Arthur Percy Dargue, born 12 March 1858 in New York, New York County (Manhattan), New York, died 31 March 1941 in Midland Park, Bergen County, New Jersey was a Textile Mill Executive. His mother, Madeline "Maddie" Newins was born on 1 April 1856 in Patchogue, Suffolk County, New York, and died on 21 November 1935 in Midland Park, Bergen County, New Jersey. She had been previously married in 1878 to Robert Eugene Miller (1857-1880) and they had a daughter. Herbert"s parents were married 18 June 1882 in Islip, New York. Herbert was the eldest of four children in the family; he had two younger brothers and a younger sister.
An excellent biographical article pertaining to his life can be found at:
On 17 November 1915, he married Marie Virginia Salmon, born November 1884 in New Jersey, died 20 September 1943. They had a son who became a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Air Forces who is buried with both parents at Arlington National Cemetery.
Military
Herbert Arthur Dargue entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1907 and graduated in 1911. He was one of the early pioneers of Army aviation and earned his wings in 1913. He was friend and contemporary of both Billy Mitchell and Hap Arnold. He served a wide variety of aviation assignments up until the time of his death including tours of tour during the Mexican Punitive Expedition, World War I and as the Commander of numerous squadrons and bases. He was enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame
Death and Burial
Herbert Arthur Dargue died in the crash of a B-18 Bolo Bomber (#36-306) on 12 December 1941 in the Sierra Nevada mountains, fifteen miles south of Bishop, Inyo County, California. This plane was on its way to discuss the recent Pearl Harbor attack. He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, Section: 7, Site: 10088 on 21 June 1943.
From Find-A-Grave.com:
Major General Dargue was one of eight men killed when his U.S. Army Air Corps B-18 Bolo Bomber (#36-306) struck a mountainside, in the Sierra Nevada mountains, fifteen miles south of Bishop, California. The bomber was transporting him and other high ranking Army officers to Hawaii to investigate, at the direction of Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, why the United States was unprepared for the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Those killed in the crash were:
Capt. James G Leavitt, pilot Col. Charles W. Bundy Maj. Gen. Herbert A Dargue Col. George W Ricker Lt. Col. Hugh F McCaffery 1st Lt. Homer C Burns S/Sgt. Stephen W Hoffman PFC Samuel J Van Hamm, Jr
This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen saved on Together We Served and Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smartphone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.
If you noticed anything missing in this profile, you may contact the author by clicking on this link: (Mulvanny, Robert (Red) (SBTS Historian), CDR) at redandbon@outlook.com
World War II
From Month/Year
December / 1941
To Month/Year
December / 1946
Description Overview of World War II
World War II killed more people, involved more nations, and cost more money than any other war in history. Altogether, 70 million people served in the armed forces during the war, and 17 million combatants died. Civilian deaths were ever greater. At least 19 million Soviet civilians, 10 million Chinese, and 6 million European Jews lost their lives during the war.
World War II was truly a global war. Some 70 nations took part in the conflict, and fighting took place on the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe, as well as on the high seas. Entire societies participated as soldiers or as war workers, while others were persecuted as victims of occupation and mass murder.
World War II cost the United States a million causalities and nearly 400,000 deaths. In both domestic and foreign affairs, its consequences were far-reaching. It ended the Depression, brought millions of married women into the workforce, initiated sweeping changes in the lives of the nation's minority groups, and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life.
The War at Home & Abroad
On September 1, 1939, World War II started when Germany invaded Poland. By November 1942, the Axis powers controlled territory from Norway to North Africa and from France to the Soviet Union. After defeating the Axis in North Africa in May 1941, the United States and its Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943 and forced Italy to surrender in September. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Allies landed in Northern France. In December, a German counteroffensive (the Battle of the Bulge) failed. Germany surrendered in May 1945.
The United States entered the war following a surprise attack by Japan on the U.S. Pacific fleet in Hawaii. The United States and its Allies halted Japanese expansion at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 and in other campaigns in the South Pacific. From 1943 to August 1945, the Allies hopped from island to island across the Central Pacific and also battled the Japanese in China, Burma, and India. Japan agreed to surrender on August 14, 1945 after the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Consequences:
1. The war ended Depression unemployment and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life. It led the federal government to create a War Production Board to oversee conversion to a wartime economy and the Office of Price Administration to set prices on many items and to supervise a rationing system.
2. During the war, African Americans, women, and Mexican Americans founded new opportunities in industry. But Japanese Americans living on the Pacific coast were relocated from their homes and placed in internment camps.
The Dawn of the Atomic Age
In 1939, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt, warning him that the Nazis might be able to build an atomic bomb. On December 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi, an Italian refugee, produced the first self-sustained, controlled nuclear chain reaction in Chicago.
To ensure that the United States developed a bomb before Nazi Germany did, the federal government started the secret $2 billion Manhattan Project. On July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert near Alamogordo, the Manhattan Project's scientists exploded the first atomic bomb.
It was during the Potsdam negotiations that President Harry Truman learned that American scientists had tested the first atomic bomb. On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress, released an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. Between 80,000 and 140,000 people were killed or fatally wounded. Three days later, a second bomb fell on Nagasaki. About 35,000 people were killed. The following day Japan sued for peace.
President Truman's defenders argued that the bombs ended the war quickly, avoiding the necessity of a costly invasion and the probable loss of tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives. His critics argued that the war might have ended even without the atomic bombings. They maintained that the Japanese economy would have been strangled by a continued naval blockade, and that Japan could have been forced to surrender by conventional firebombing or by a demonstration of the atomic bomb's power.
The unleashing of nuclear power during World War II generated hope of a cheap and abundant source of energy, but it also produced anxiety among large numbers of people in the United States and around the world.