US Air Force General. He was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1957 to 1960, the first member of the US Air Force to serve in that role. He came from a family with a military background, many of which served in the US Army and Navy since the French and Indian War, prior to the American Revolution. His mother authored the book "Bird-Watching in the West." In 1913 he moved with his family to Oswego, Oregon, where he served in the Oregon National Guard from 1915 until 1917. In 1917 he received an appointment to the US Military Academy at West Point, New York. Because the program was shortened so as to produce more officers for World War I combat, he spent only two years at the academy and graduated in November 1918 with a commission as a second lieutenant, just a few days too late for service in World War I. He remained at the academy until July 1919, when he was sent to Europe and served in the infantry for the next three years. In 1926 he then transferred to the US Army Air Corps and over the next 15 years, he flew fighter aircraft in Texas, Louisiana, and Hawaii. When World War II broke out in Europe, he was initially assigned to the operations division on the US Army Air Staff in Washington DC. In 1942 he was sent to the South Pacific where he became chief of staff of the Allied Air Forces in that area. Promoted to the rank of major general in January 1943, he assumed command of the 13th Air Force. On February 1, 1943, the US Navy rescued him and 14 others near the New Hebrides Islands after they had ditched their B-17 bomber aircraft on the way from Guadalcanal to Espiritu Santo and spent six days in life rafts. In November 1943, he was transferred to the European Theater of Operations to take over the 15th Air Force in Italy from General Jimmy Doolittle. During his time in Europe, he also commanded the Mediterranean Allied Strategic Air Forces. When Germany surrendered in May 1945, he returned to the Pacific to command the B-29s of the 20th Air Force in the last push against Japan, but he was there only a short time when the US atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war. In October 1945 he led three B-29s in developing a new route from the Pacific island of Guam to Washington via India and Germany, completing the 13,167-mile-trip in 59 hours, 30 minutes. He returned to the US where he was named commander of the Air Materiel Command (now Air Force Material Command) at Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base), Ohio, and in 1947 he took over Alaskan Air Command (now inactivated), headquartered at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska. When US Air Force Vice Chief of Staff General Muir Fairchild died unexpectedly from a heart attack in 1950, he was selected to fill his position in Washington DC and was promoted to the rank of general. In 1953 he became the Air Force Chief of Staff, serving in that position until 1957. During his tenure, massive retaliation based on airpower became the national strategy. In 1957 President Eisenhower appointed him as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he retired in that position in 1960, with nearly 45 years of continuous military service in the US Army Air Service and US Air Force. He received numerous military decorations and awards, including the Army Distinguished Service Medal (with one oak leaf cluster), the Navy Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit (with one oak leaf cluster, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Bronze Star Medal, the Air Medal (with one oak leaf cluster), the Army Commendation Medal, the World War I Victory Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, the American Defense Service Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the Army of Occupation of Germany Medal, the Army of Occupation Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, as well as various foreign service medals. He was a rated Command Pilot and Aircraft Observer and in 1966 he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame. He died at the age of 82.