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Contact Info
Home Town Lancaster, Ohio
Last Address San Antonio, Texas
Date of Passing Oct 01, 2010
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
US Air Force General. After graduating from St. Mary's High School in 1940, he attended Ohio State University in 1942. In 1943, he was inducted into the US Army and after graduating from the aviation cadet training program, he received his pilot wings and commission as a second lieutenant in 1944. He flew 31 B-24 Liberator bomber combat missions in the European Theater during World War II while assigned to the 566th Bombardment Squadron and the 389th Bombardment Group. After the war, he continued his military service in the United States until 1949, when he was assigned back to Europe to fly C-54 Skymaster aircraft during the Berlin Airlift. In October 1949, he was assigned to the Air Training Command at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, where he served as a basic training squadron commander and later as an executive officer in the US Air Force Preflight Training School. In April 1955, he was sent to the Far East Air Force at Tachikawa Air Base, Japan, where he was the transport aircraft operations officer with the 483rd Troop carrier Wing and in May 1956, as the chief of current operations for the 315th Air Division. He returned to the United States in June 1958 where he was assigned to the Western Transport Air Force (now 22nd Air Force) at Travis Air Force Base, California. He then attended the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama from August 1960 to July 1961. After graduation, he was assigned to Headquarters US Air Force, Washington DC as an operations staff officer in the Plans and Capabilities Branch of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Operations, and in July 1964, he became the deputy assistant director for joint matters in the Directorate of Operations. He then served as the deputy commander for operations of the 1502nd Air Transport Wing at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, from July 1965 to August 1966. In September 1966, he was assigned to Headquarters Military Airlift Command (now Air Mobility Command) at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, where he was the director of current operations and later as the assistant deputy chief of staff for operations. In July 1968, he was reassigned to Travis Air Force Base as the commander of the 60th Military Airlift Wing. He then returned to Headquarters Military Airlift Command as the deputy chief of staff for operations. In March 1971, he returned to the Pentagon as the deputy director of programs, and became the director in December 1971. In May 1974, he was assigned as the assistant deputy chief of staff, programs and resources, and assigned as the deputy chief of staff, programs and resources in July 1974. In June 1977, he returned to Hickam Air Force Base to be the Commander in Chief, Pacific Air Forces. His final assignment was back at the Pentagon where he assumed his duties as the Vice Chief of Staff on July 1, 1978 and was promoted to the grade of general on July 10, 1978. He retired from the Air Force on February 29, 1980 after 37 years of military service. Among his military decorations and awards are the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal with oak leaf cluster, the Legion of Merit with oak leaf cluster, the Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf cluster, the Air Medal with four oak leaf clusters, and the Air Force Commendation Medal with three oak leaf clusters. After his military retirement, he joined Bell Aerospace Services in 1981, leaving the firm in 1983 to pursue private interests. He died after a long battle with myelodysplastic syndrome.
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.
