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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 (China Defensive Campaign 4 July 1942 to 4 May 1945) The China Theater of Operations more resembled the Soviet-German war on the Eastern Front than the war in the Pacific or the war in Western Europe. On the Asian continent, as on the Eastern Front, an Allied partner, China, carried the brunt of the fighting. China had been at war with Japan since 1937 and continued the fight until the Japanese surrender in 1945. The United States advised and supported China's ground war, while basing only a few of its own units in China for operations against Japanese forces in the region and Japan itself. The primary American goal was to keep the Chinese actively in the Allied war camp, thereby tying down Japanese forces that otherwise might be deployed against the Allies fighting in the Pacific.
The United States confronted two fundamental challenges in the China theater. The first challenge was political. Despite facing a common foe in Japan, Chinese society was polarized. Some Chinese were supporters of the Nationalist Kuomintang government; some supported one of the numerous former warlords nominally loyal to the Nationalists; and some supported the Communists, who were engaged in a guerrilla war against the military and political forces of the Nationalists. Continuing tensions, which sometimes broke out into pitched battles, precluded development of a truly unified Chinese war effort against the Japanese.
The second challenge in the China theater was logistical. Fighting a two-front war of its own, simultaneously having to supply other Allies, and facing enormous distances involved in moving anything from the United States to China, the U.S. military could not sustain the logistics effort required to build a modern Chinese army. Without sufficient arms, ammunition, and equipment, let alone doctrine and leadership training, the Chinese Nationalist Army was incapable of driving out the Japanese invaders. A "Europe-first" U.S. policy automatically lowered the priority of China for U.S.-manufactured arms behind the needs of U.S. forces, of other European Allies, and of the Soviet Union. The China theater was also the most remote from the United States. American supplies and equipment had to endure long sea passages to India for transshipment to China, primarily by airlift. But transports bringing supplies to China had to fly over the Himalayas the so-called Hump, whose treacherous air currents and rugged
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mountains claimed the lives of many American air crews. Despite a backbreaking effort, only a fraction of the supplies necessary to successfully wage a war ever reached southern China.
Regardless of these handicaps, the United States and Nationalist China succeeded in forging a coalition that withstood the tests of time. Indeed, Chinese leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, the Allied Supreme Commander, China Theater, accepted, though reluctantly, U.S. Army generals as his chiefs of staff. This command relationship also endured differences in national war aims and cultures, as well as personalities, until the end of the war. The original policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall succeeded, China stayed in the war and prevented sizable numbers of Japanese troops from deploying to the Pacific.
