Citations Accompanying Distinguished Service Medal Presented to General Henry H. Arnold.

CITATION FOR DISTINGUISHED SERVICE MEDAL

(Oak Leaf Cluster)

GENERAL OF THE ARMY Henry H. Arnold, United States Army. For exceptionally meritorious and distinguished service in the performance of duties of great responsibility as Chief of the Air Corps from September 29, 1938 to May 31, 1941, as Deputy Chief of Staff for Air from November 29, 1940 to March 8, 1942, and as Chief of the Army Air Forces from June 20, 1941 to March 8, 1942. He performed the duties required by the office in a superior manner during the most strenuous and trying period in the history of the air arm. During this period, an Air Corps Program of Expansion and Procurement was inaugurated whereby the personnel of the Air Forces was increased in excess of a thousand per cent and the number of aircraft increased proportionately. A program of expansion and procurement of this magnitude demanded comprehensive planning, its execution required outstanding ability, foresight, and leadership, all of which were exhibited by General Arnold in a high degree. He impressed this high quality of leadership, so vitally needed during this period of readjustment and difficulties, on the Air Forces as a whole, thereby maintaining at the highest standard the morale and efficiency of the personnel of the Army Air Forces for the accomplishment of the tasks before them.

HARRY S. TRUMAN

CITATION FOR DISTINGUISHED SERVICE MEDAL

(Oak Leaf Cluster)

AS COMMANDER of the Army Air Forces during World War II, General Henry H. Arnold gave his nation outstanding service. To him fell the mission of building American air power for a global war in which victory or defeat depended on control of the skies. He fulfilled his mission in a manner that overwhelmed this nation's enemies and awed its allies. He welded the civilian productive genius of the aircraft industry, an expert military nucleus and more than 2,000,000 American soldiers to form an indomitable, unprecedented destructive weapon which coordinated with our land and sea forces to obliterate the Axis powers. As a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the United States and British Combined Chiefs of Staff, General Arnold helped shape the strategy and direct the resources of the victorious Allied forces. His wide knowledge of the employment of air power was of great value to the deliberations of the Chiefs of Staff. From concept to execution, General Arnold's leadership guided the mightiest air force in history. No single factor of the great allied victories was more vital than the destruction of the capacity of Germany and Japan to wage modern technological warfare. The long range precision attacks of massed air power which accomplished this objective were the products of his genius. At the same time General Arnold directed the training and equipment of the United States Tactical Air Force so that when the great decisive three-dimensional battles of World War II were joined, his fighters and attack bombers were ready to sweep the skies of the enemy and deny him mobility on the surface. During the growth of the Air Arm, General Arnold constantly increased the effectiveness of its activities by imaginative conceptions concerning the application of air power to strategy and tactics and by the development of potent new weapons. By his personal leadership, his driving spirit, and his professional genius, General Arnold made a great contribution to our war effort.

HARRY S. TRUMAN