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Contact Info
Home Town Las Cruces, New Mexico
Last Address Unknown
Date of Passing Aug 12, 1971
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
Edwin Bowman Lyon was born at Las Cruces, N.M., in 1892. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy and was appointed a second lieutenant of Cavalry June 12, 1915. His first assignment was at Douglas, Ariz., where he served with the Seventh Cavalry.
In March 1916, General Lyon joined the Punitive Expedition into Mexico, and the following December was called to the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps at San Diego, Calif., as recorder for the examining board for flying cadets. He later graduated from the flying school at Rockwell Field, Calif., and remained at that station as president of several boards having to do with Air Corps expansion.
He then went to Ellington Field, Texas, where he graduated from the Bombardment School in September 1918, after which he went to Aracadia, Fla., to take pursuit and gunnery courses. In November 1918, he was assigned to Garden City, Fla., for duty with a heavy aircraft group, and later served at Mitchel Field, N.Y.
General Lyon, in November 1919, went to California where he was stationed at the Presidio of San Francisco, On July 1, 1920, he transferred to the Air Service, and the following month became an instructor at the U.S. Military Academy. He was chosen First Corps Area air officer at Boston, Mass., in August 1921, and two years later entered the Air Service Tactical School at Langley Field, Va.
After graduating in June 1924, he was an instructor there for two years. He completed the course at the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenvorth, Kan., in June 1927, and then entered the office of the Chief of Air Corps, where he became chief of the Schools Section.
In July 1929, General Lyon went to the Panama Canal Zone to command the 25th Bombardment Squadron at France Field. In August 1931, he entered the Army War College, from which he graduated with honors in 1932. He then was assigned to the office of the assistant chief of staff for materiel on the War Department General Staff.
General Lyon became assistant commandant of the Air Corps Primary Flying School at Randolph Field, Texas, in August 1936. Four years later he was commandant of the Basic Flying School at Moffett Field, Calif., and in June 1941, was named commanding officer of the West Coast Air Corps Training Center there. The following month he was assigned to the Panama Canal Department and in May 1943, assumed command of the Antilles Air Task Force.
In January 1944, General Lyon assumed command of the 75th Flying Training Wing at Fort Myers, Fla., and the following May was designated deputy to the commanding general of the Army Air Forces Training Command at Laredo, Texas.
In February 1945, General Lyon was assigned as commanding general of the Army Garrison Forces at Oahu, Hawaii. The following July he became deputy commander for administration of the Army Air Forces in the Pacific Ocean Area. In September 1945, he was named commanding general of the Sixth Air Service Area Command, and the next month assumed command of the Army Air Forces in the Mid Pacific. In February 1946, he returned to Army Air Forces headquarters and the following month was assigned to Air Materiel Command headquarters at Wright Field, Ohio. In July 1946, he returned to Army Air Forces headquarters as chief of the Army Air Forces Officers Selection Branch, with additional duty as president of the Army Air Forces Officers Selection Committee.
When the U.S. Air Force was reorganized Oct. 1, 1947, General Lyon became director of administrative services in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel and Administration. The following January he was appointed president of the Secretary of the Air Force Personnel Board at U.S. Air Force Headquarters, and in April 1948 was designated director of the Secretary of the Air Force Personnel Council.
General Lyon has been awarded the Legion of Merit and the Air Medal. He is rated a command pilot, combat observer and aircraft observer.
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.
