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Contact Info
Home Town Salem, Oregon
Last Address Orlando, Florida
Date of Passing Sep 07, 1961
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
Major General Leo A. Walton, one of the original members of the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps of 1916 and a veteran of World War II, assumed command of the 14th Air Force at Orlando, Fla., on May 27, 1946.
Graduating from West Point in the Class of 1915, General Walton's first assignment was with General Pershing in the Mexican campaign.
Returning to the United States in 1916, and like his pioneer friends Henry H. Arnold and Carl A. Spaatz, he turned his attention to aviation. He won his wings at Brooks Field, Texas, in August 1917, and returned to that base as the officer in charge of flying in March 1918.
On July 1, 1920, he transferred from the Field Artillery to the Air Service. He was assigned to Langley Field, Va., in November 1920 to the Field Officers' School. He completed his course in August 1921 and was called to Washington, D.C., for duty in the Office, Chief of the Air Service. In June 1923 General Walton was sent to McCook Field, Ohio, to attend the Air Service Engineering School. Later, in 1924, he was assistant chief of the engineering division at McCook Field.
In August 1925 the general was ordered to the Philippines and served as commanding officer of Kindley Field, Fort Mills, Corregidor, and later at Clark Field, where he was station commander and commanding officer of the 3rd Pursuit Squadron, serving in those capacities until May 1928. He then returned to the United States and was assigned to March Field, Calif., as assistant commandant of the Air Corps Primary Flying School.
In September 1937 General Walton attended the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. He was then assigned to Maxwell Field, Ala., at the Air Corps Tactical School.
In July 1940 he assumed command of the Air Corps Advanced Flying School at Stockton, Calif.
During the outset of World War II, he was assigned to the headquarters of the West Coast Training Center, Santa Ana, Calif., as chief of staff. In November 1944 he was designated as chief of staff of the 6th Air Force, which position he held until early in 1945. He then became chief of staff of the entire Caribbean Defense Command. In July 1945 he was called to China as air inspector of the Chinese theater. For his able and outstanding skill in this capacity he was awarded the Bronze Star.
During the early emergency when the Army needed pilots, General Walton, as chief of staff for Western Flying Training Command, planned and executed a streamlined training program. For his foresight and resourcefulness on this mission, he was awarded the Legion of Merit medal.
He also holds the Mexican Border Service Ribbon, Asiatic-Pacific Ribbon, Pre-Pearl Harbor Ribbon, American Defense Ribbon and the Victory Medal for World Wars I and II.
He is rated as a command pilot and combat observer.
Description The United States of America declared war on the German Empire on April 6, 1917. The U.S. was an independent power and did not officially join the Allies. It closely cooperated with them militarily but acted alone in diplomacy. The U.S. made its major contributions in terms of supplies, raw material and money, starting in 1917. American soldiers under General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), arrived in large numbers on the Western Front in the summer of 1918. They played a major role until victory was achieved on November 11, 1918. Before entering the war, the U.S had remained neutral, though it had been an important supplier to Great Britain and the other Allied powers. During the war, the U.S mobilized over 4 million military personnel and suffered 110,000 deaths, including 43,000 due to the influenza pandemic. The war saw a dramatic expansion of the United States government in an effort to harness the war effort and a significant increase in the size of the U.S. military. After a slow start in mobilising the economy and labour force, by spring 1918 the nation was poised to play a role in the conflict. Under the leadership of President Woodrow Wilson, the war represented the climax of the Progressive Era as it sought to bring reform and democracy to the world,[citation needed] although there was substantial public opposition to United States entry into the war.
Although the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, it did not initially declare war on the other Central Powers, a state of affairs that Woodrow Wilson described as an "embarrassing obstacle" in his State of the Union speech.[26] Congress declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire on December 17, 1917, but never made declarations of war against the other Central Powers, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire or the various Co-belligerents allied with the central powers, thus the United States remained uninvolved in the military campaigns in central, eastern and southern Europe, the Middle East, the Caucasus, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Pacific.
The United States as late as 1917 maintained only a small army, smaller than thirteen of the nations and empires already active in the war. After the passage of the Selective Service Act in 1917, it drafted 2.8 million men into military service. By the summer of 1918 about a million U.S. soldiers had arrived in France, about half of whom eventually saw front-line service; by the Armistice of November 11 approximately 10,000 fresh soldiers were arriving in France daily. In 1917 Congress gave U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans when they were drafted to participate in World War I, as part of the Jones Act. In the end Germany miscalculated the United States' influence on the outcome of the conflict, believing it would be many more months before U.S. troops would arrive and overestimating the effectiveness of U-boats in slowing the American buildup.
The United States Navy sent a battleship group to Scapa Flow to join with the British Grand Fleet, destroyers to Queenstown, Ireland and submarines to help guard convoys. Several regiments of Marines were also dispatched to France. The British and French wanted U.S. units used to reinforce their troops already on the battle lines and not to waste scarce shipping on bringing over supplies. The U.S. rejected the first proposition and accepted the second. General John J. Pershing, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) commander, refused to break up U.S. units to serve as mere reinforcements for British Empire and French units. As an exception, he did allow African-American combat regiments to fight in French divisions. The Harlem Hellfighters fought as part of the French 16th Division, earning a unit Croix de Guerre for their actions at Château-Thierry, Belleau Wood, and Séchault.
Impact of US forces on the war
On the battlefields of France in spring 1918, the war-weary Allied armies enthusiastically welcomed the fresh American troops. They arrived at the rate of 10,000 a day, at a time when the Germans were unable to replace their losses. After British Empire, French and Portuguese forces had defeated and turned back the powerful final German offensive (Spring Offensive of March to July, 1918), the Americans played a role in the Allied final offensive (Hundred Days Offensive of August to November). However, many American commanders used the same flawed tactics which the British, French, Germans and others had abandoned early in the war, and so many American offensives were not particularly effective. Pershing continued to commit troops to these full- frontal attacks, resulting in high casualties against experienced veteran German and Austrian-Hungarian units. Nevertheless, the infusion of new and fresh U.S. troops greatly strengthened the Allies' strategic position and boosted morale. The Allies achieved victory over Germany on November 11, 1918 after German morale had collapsed both at home and on the battlefield.
