This Military Service Page was created/owned by
SSgt Robert Bruce McClelland, Jr.
to remember
Lopez, Donald Sewell, Sr., Lt Col USAF(Ret).
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Contact Info
Home Town Brooklyn, NYC, NY
Last Address Alexandria, Virginia
Date of Passing Mar 03, 2008
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
He destroyed 5 enemy aircraft, 4 while flying P-40s and 1 in a P-51, during 101 combat missions in China.
After the Air Force, he served on the Apollo and Skylab programs with Bellcomm, Inc., and had a distinguished career with the National Air and Space Museum.
(Citation Needed) - SYNOPSIS: Donald S. Lopez, United States Army Air Forces, was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in connection with military operations against an opposing armed force during World War II.
General Orders: Headquarters, 14th Air Force, General Orders No. 33 (1945)
In his later years he was heavily involved in developing and running the National Air and Space Museum.
He spent his last days in the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., near to where his daughter lived.
Description The plan of the Pacific subseries was determined by the geography, strategy, and the military organization of a theater largely oceanic. Two independent, coordinate commands, one in the Southwest Pacific under General of the Army Douglas MacArthur and the other in the Central, South, and North Pacific (Pacific Ocean Areas) under Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, were created early in the war. Except in the South and Southwest Pacific, each conducted its own operations with its own ground, air, and naval forces in widely separated areas. These operations required at first only a relatively small number of troops whose efforts often yielded strategic gains which cannot be measured by the size of the forces involved. Indeed, the nature of the objectivesùsmall islands, coral atolls, and jungle-bound harbors and airstrips, made the employment of large ground forces impossible and highlighted the importance of air and naval operations. Thus, until 1945, the war in the Pacific progressed by a double series of amphibious operations each of which fitted into a strategic pattern developed in Washington.
21 Named Campaigns were recognized in the Asiatic Pacific Theater with Battle Streamers and Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medals.