DOOLITTLE RAIDERS GROUP - GENERAL RICHARD KNOBLOCHDoolittle Raider group of Brigadier General Richard August " Knobby " Knobloch. Includes Distinguished Flying Cross bronze gilt, numbered "1034" on the edge of the bottom arm, original ribbon with slot brooch pinback; Air Force Distinguished Service Medal, bronze gilt with thirteen white enameled stars and blue glass centerpiece, engraved "RICHARD A KNOBLOCH" on the reverse, original ribbon with crimp brooch pinback and hook; Legion of Merit, Legionnaire Grade, bronze gilt with red, white, blue and green enamels, engraved "R.A. KNOBLOCH" on the reverse, oak leaf cluster on its original ribbon with slot brooch pinback and hook; Air Medal, bronze, original ribbon with wrap brooch pinback stamped 52; American Defense Service Medal, bronze, original ribbon with slot brooch pinback; American Campaign Medal, bronze, original ribbon with crimp brooch pinback; Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, bronze, original ribbon with crimp brooch pinback; World War II Victory Medal, bronze, original ribbon with crimp brooch pinback; National Defense Service Medal, bronze, oak leaf cluster on its original ribbon with crimp brooch pinback; Air Force For Military Merit Medal, bronze, original ribbon with crimp brooch pinback, Republic of Vietnam Service Medal, bronze, original ribbon with crimp brooch pinback, China (Republic): Army, Navy and Air Corps Medal, Class A, 1st Grade, three-piece construction, silver with red and blue enamels, numbered "3056" on the reverse on an original Class A, 1st Grade ribbon with hook and eye, ( bottom star point bent slightly back ); Italian (Republic): Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, 4th Class, Officer, 18K Gold with white, red and green enamels, marked "750" (18K Gold) on the ring, original ribbon, reverse missing its star on the cross ( obverse missing its red enamel highlight at the base of the crown ); Full size 3" Pilot wings by AE Co, Sterling clutch-back; Full size 3" Senior pilot wings, Sterling pinback by Gemsco; Full size Command Pilot wings & US officer collar insignias, silver bullion embroidered on blue twill; AAF patch, heavy bullion embroidered on felt; CBI pin and Officer collar wings; 8" x 10" Original hand signed picture of Brigadier General Knobloch; 8" x 10" Picture ( copy ) of the Doolittle Raider's crew #13.Accompanied by a Doolittle Raiders Crested Jacket Reunion Patch, gold - colored and silvered bullion wire, in various textures, with red, white, blue, black and yellow embroidery, red and black threading giving definition to five icons, illustrating a Mitchell B-25 Bomber in flight at the top, with five elements representing the crews who took part in the Tokyo Raid: a series of seven Maltese Crosses (which come from the standard of the 17th Bomber Group, from which three of the squadrons were selected), a Thunderbird (34th Squadron), a Kicking Mule (95th Squadron), a Tiger's Head (37th Squadron) and a Winged Helmet (89th Reconnaissance Squadron), black cloth backer, 3" x 4" , four push pins on the reverse. Richard August "Knobby" Knobloch (May 27, 1918 - August 13, 2001) was a Brigadier General in the United States Air Force. He was born on May 27, 1918 in West Allis, Wisconsin, near Milwaukee, the son of William M. Knobloch and Mary M. Shanks. He would later move to Milwaukee, and then to Lake Forest, Illinois, where he graduated from Lake Forest High School, before returning to Wisconsin, where he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1936, in order to be a veterinarian and joined the ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) program. Knobloch met the woman that would later become his wife at an ROTC spring formal, Rosemary Alma Rice. The couple would marry on August 1, 1943 and have two daughters, Sandra and Lynda. On November 25, 1940 at Randolph Field, Texas, Knobloch made the decision to join the Aviation Cadet Program with the United States Army Air Forces. Knobloch took his flight training at Randolph and Kelly Fields in Texas, receiving his pilot wings on July 12, 1941, and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. His first assignment was to the 37th Bombardment Squadron, Pendleton Field, Oregon, as Pilot and Assistant Operations Officer. The squadron's mission was submarine patrol of the U.S. West Coast, flying the B-25 Mitchell, until he volunteered and was selected for a secret mission, to be led by Lieutenant Colonel James "Jimmy" Doolittle, in February 1942. Two months after the Pearl Harbor attack, the United States Army Air Forces planned to retaliate by bombing Tokyo and four other Japanese cities, taking advantage of the fact that American aircraft carriers could approach near enough to the Japanese mainland to make such an attack feasible. Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle lead the mission, known officially as the 1st Special Aviation Project (later known as the Tokyo Raid and later nicknamed the Doolittle Raid). He assembled a volunteer force of aircrews, who began their top-secret training by learning a new technique, to make their North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers airborne in the short distance of 500 feet or less, to simulate taking off from the deck of an aircraft carrier. The future raiders had weeks of hazardous training at Eglin Field, Florida and the Naval Air Station at Alameda, California. Knobloch only had about sixty hours in the B-25 before April 1942, when the raid took place. Knobloch then left the San Francisco area aboard the U.S.S. Hornet. The Hornet (CV-8) was a Yorktown-class aircraft carrier of the United States Navy. In addition to launching the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, the Hornet would go on to participate in the Battle of Midway, the Buin-Faisi-Tonolai Raid, the capture and defense of Guadalcanal and the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, where she was irreparably damaged and sunk by enemy destroyers. The Hornet was in service for a year and six days and was the last U.S. fleet carrier ever sunk by enemy fire. The original plan was to fly at night, then bomb in the early morning, and recover in China during daylight. But the U.S.S. Hornet was spotted by the Japanese patrol boat No. 23 Nitto Maru, about 670 miles from Japan, on April 18, 1942, and it forced an earlier departure for the sixteen aircrews. Admiral William F. "Bull" Halsey, commanding the daring operation from the U.S.S. Enterprise, launched Doolittle's North American B-25 Mitchell's about 150 miles early, at the extreme of the aircraft's distance and fuel capabilities. Lieutenant Knobloch, co-pilot of Crew 13 (known as Lucky Thirteen and nicknamed "The Avenger"), 37th Bomber Squadron, was aboard a B-25B Mitchell aircraft, the 13th of 16 aircraft, that also included Lieutenant Edgar E. McElroy (Pilot, of Ennis, Texas), Lieutenant Clayton J. Campbell (Navigator, of St. Maries, Idaho), Sergeant Robert C. Bourgeois (Bombardier, of Lecompte, Louisiana) and Sergeant Adam Ray Williams (Engineer/Gunner, of Gastonia, North Carolina). The crew's target was the Yokosuka Naval Station, the only plane assigned to this location, with the other fifteen planes focusing on various targets: ten to Tokyo, two to Yokohama, two to Nagoya and one to Kobe. Knobloch was one of the eighty airmen who, under the leadership of Jimmy Doolittle, disembarked from the U.S.S. Hornet in the first bombing raid over Japan in World War II, which became known as the Doolittle Raid. Knobloch later described the flight and bombing: "We approached Japan about 1 o'clock, the sixteen airplanes having sixteen individual targets. Doolittle had all incendiaries on his aircraft because we had hoped to get off at dusk and hit Japan at night. Doolittle being first would set fires. If the city was blacked out, as we fully expected it to be, we would have been able to use the fires that he started with his incendiaries, to help us find our own individual targets. However, it was bright daylight and the weather constantly improved as we got closer to Japan. Most of us were, I won't say lost, because a pilot is never lost, but maybe, a little disoriented as we hit the coast of Japan. So it took a little flying around until we found some good check points and could make our runs. Our particular target was the naval base at the entrance of Tokyo Bay: Yokosaka. If you've ever been to a naval yard, I'm sure you're aware of how compact everything is and you can't miss with bombs. We had three 500 pound demolition and one 500 pound incendiary. It was an incendiary cluster of about 125 little individual bomblets. When the casing hit the air stream, it broke up into these 125 little bomblets and scatter­ed across the naval yard. You couldn't miss. The 300 bombs came down right on target. I was co-pilot. As all pilots know, a co-pilot doesn't really have much to do, just to get his hands slapped now and then and told to serve the coffee and that sort of thing. One thing I did do, I took some pictures over the target. They happen to be the only pictures that came out of the Tokyo raid. I took one out of the right side and one out of the left. We all had cameras in our aircraft but we lost all the aircraft so we lost all the cameras except mine, which I bailed out with. So any pictures you see taken over Japan, were mine. I guess that makes me the official photographer. So I was doing something over the target! Left Japan and headed back out to sea to confuse the Japanese, so they would think we were going to some secret base out in the ocean. All the time we were flying as low as we possibly could. In fact, we had to pull up to about a thousand feet to drop our bombs so the demolition wouldn't blow us out of the sky. When we lost sight of land, we headed back around the tip of Japan and across the Yellow Sea into China."After having bombed the Yokosuka Naval Station and the other bombers having made it to Japan and dropped their bombs, the squadron of aircraft turned southwest for China. All but one of the B-25s ran out of fuel before reaching their recovery airfields in China. As a result, their crews were forced to either bail out over China or crash-land along the coast. The remaining plane made its way to Vladivostok in the Soviet Union and was met with a very inhospitable welcome. Of the eighty airmen, three were Killed in Action (two off the coast of China, one on the Chinese mainland), eight were taken as Prisoners of War (three later executed, one dying in captivity, four later repatriated), while the other sixty-nine survived. Seven of the survivors (including all five members of Lawson's Crew 7) received injuries serious enough to require medical treatment. Knobloch's Crew 13 themselves were quickly running out of fuel, forcing them to put the aircraft on autopilot, followed by their bailing out at 22:45. They successfully parachuted, all five landing near Poyang, north of Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, China. Although fifteen of the sixteen raiders crash landed in China or were lost at sea, it was a tremendous boost for the United States, which had been stung by the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor. The raid caused negligible material damage to Japan, but it achieved its goal of raising American morale and casting doubt in Japan on the ability of its military leaders to defend their home islands. It also contributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's decision to attack Midway Island in the Central Pacific, an attack that turned into a decisive strategic defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) by the United States Navy in the Battle of Midway. Doolittle, who initially believed that the loss of all his aircraft would lead to his court-martial, instead received the Medal of Honor and was promoted two steps to Brigadier General. After the Doolittle raid, Knobloch remained in the China-Burma-India Theater, where he flew more than fifty combat/bombing missions with the 10th Air Force and later, the 491st Bomb Squadron, aboard B-25's and the Douglas C-47's (Gooney Bird), before returning home in July 1943. For his participation with the 1st Special Aviation Project (Doolittle Tokyo Raider Force), United States Army Air Forces, on April 18, 1942, Lieutenant Richard August "Knobby" Knobloch was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. In addition, for his additional service in the China-Burma-India Theater, he was awarded a Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster in lieu of a Second Award of the Distinguished Flying Cross for extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight, in action against the enemy during more than 50 bombing missions. Knobloch returned to the United States in July 1943 and by August, he had been re-assigned to the Air Proving Ground Command at Eglin Field, near Valparaiso, Florida, where he held successive positions as Assistant Engineering Officer, and later Engineering Officer, with the 27th Sub-Depot, until February 1944. This was followed by service as Chief of the Aircraft Maintenance Branch, Chief of the Ground Test Section, and finally as Chief of the Equipment Section with Air Proving Ground Command from March 1944 to August 1946. He saw service as a test pilot, flying many aircraft, including bombers and fighters. As Lieutenant Colonel, Knobloch began attending Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science (later re-named Kansas State University) at Manhattan, Kansas, beginning in September 1946. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture in June 1947. His next assignment was as Deputy Assistant Chief (Materiel) and then as Director of Maintenance with Headquarters, 12th Air Force at March Air Force Base, California, from August 1947 to January 1949. He was promoted to Colonel, and as a Staff Supply Officer, attended the Royal Air Force Flying College in London, England, as an exchange officer, from January 1949 to December 1950. Upon his return to the United States in December 1950, he was assigned to Headquarters, Ninth Air Force, Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina, as Assistant and later, Deputy for Materiel, from January 1951 to July 1953. This was followed by service as Vice Commander of the 363rd Tactical Reconnaissance Wing at Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina, from July 1953 to April 1955, flying the Martin B-57 Canberra, an American-built, twinjet tactical bomber and reconnaissance aircraft. Two years later, Colonel Knobloch was assigned to Washington, D.C., as a student in the Strategic Intelligence School and the Foreign Service Institute at Fort Myer, Virgina, in May 1955. He followed this with a stint as Air Attache at the American Embassy in Rome, Italy, from August 1956 to July 1960. He returned to Washington in August 1960, to study at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at Fort McNair, Washington, D.C., until June 1961, in preparation for duty at Headquarters USAF at the Pentagon. Upon completion of his studies, Knobloch was posted in July 1961 to Headquarters USAF, serving as Deputy Chief of Staff, Plans and then, as Chief, Officers Assignment Division, Deputy Chief of Staff, Personnel, until August 1963. He served as Deputy Commander of the United States Air Force Military Personnel Center at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, from August 1963 to June 1965. He then went to Hawaii, where he was Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, followed by Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans with Headquarters, Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) at Hickam Air Force Base in Pearl Harbor, from June 1965 to July 1968. It was during this period that he was awarded the Legion of Merit for actions during the Vietnam War. He remained in Hawaii until August 1968, when he would assume his final assignment, taking Command of the 1st Composite Wing, Headquarters Command, Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, near Washington, D.C. The 1st Air Base Wing was established as the 1st Composite Wing on May 9, 1969 and was activated on July 1, 1969, with Brigadier General Knobloch serving as its first commander, a position he would hold until January 31, 1970. Brigadier General Knobloch retired from service with the United States Air Force on February 1, 1970. He was subsequently awarded the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal. As a command pilot, he accrued more than 4,200 flying hours and was one of five Doolittle raiders who later became generals: the others are James Harold "Jimmy" Doolittle, John Allen Hilger, Everett Wayne "Brick" Holstrom and David Mudgett Jones. After serving thirty years in the Air Force, he joined United Technologies Corporation as Vice President and also served on the board of directors of Barclays Bank of New York, as Chairman of the Air Force Salute Foundation, as a Trustee of the College of Aeronautics, as a Member of the Advisory Committee of the Harmon International Trophy, as Chairman and President of the Wings Club of New York City (an organization of pilots and others active in the aviation industry), as Chairman of Doolittle Tokyo Raiders, and as Trustee of the Daedalian Foundation. He was also inducted into the Wisconsin Aviation Hall of Fame on October 25, 1997. Knobloch died on August 13, 2001, at the age of 83. His interment took place on August 16th, with Full Military Honors in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas. He is buried in Section 36, Grave 298, his grave marker inscribed "RICHARD A KNOBLOCH / BRIG GEN / US AIR FORCE / WORLD WAR II / KOREA VIETNAM / MAY 27 1918 / AUG 13 2001 / BELOVED HUSBAND / FATHER GRANDPA". His wife, Rosemary Alma Knobloch, died eight years later, on September 27, 2009 and was buried with him.Brigadier General Richard August "Knobby" Knobloch, United States Army Air Forces, United States Air Force service entailed thirty years, which included service with the U.S. Army (USAAC, USAAF), from 1940 to 1947 and the U.S. Air Force, from 1947 to 1970. Highlighted by the Second World War, from 1941 to 1945, the Cold War, from 1945 to 1970 and the Vietnam War in 1965. During his illustrious career, his awards included the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, Legionnaire Grade with bronze Oak Leaf Cluster, the Distinguished Flying Cross with bronze Oak Leaf Cluster, the Air Medal, the Air Force Commendation Medal, the Air Force Outstanding Unit Award, the American Defense Service Medal, the American Campaign Medal with bronze Star, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with three bronze Stars, the World War II Victory Medal, the National Defense Service Medal with bronze Star, the Vietnam Service Medal with bronze Star, the Air Force Longevity Service Award with silver and bronze Oak Leaf Clusters, the Air Force Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon, the China (Republic): Army, Navy and Air Corps Medal, Class A, 1st Grade, the Italy (Republic): Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, 4th Class, Officer, the Vietnam (Republic): Gallantry Cross Unit Citation with bronze palm, the Vietnam (Republic): South Vietnam Campaign Medal with 1960- clasp and the China (Republic); World War II Victory Commemorative Medal.