Brigadier General Richard Elmer Ellsworth
Brigadier General Richard Elmer Ellsworth
Richard Elmer Ellsworth was born on July 18th, 1911 the third of four children born to Elmer and Edna Ellsworth of Erie Pennsylvania. He grew up in Erie attending Erie Academy. After high school he joined the Pennsylvania National Guard from which he earned an appointment to the USMA West Point. He graduated with the class of 1935 as a cavalry officer but applied for pilot training becoming a rated pilot in 1936.
From 1936 to 1941 he was stationed at Mitchell field, Kelly field and the Sacramento Air Depot. In 1941 he earned a Master’s Degree in Meteorology from California Institute of Technology.
After a short tour as a transport pilot in Alaska, he was assigned to the South Pacific to coordinate weather matters for the Army Air Corps. In 1943 he attended Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. In July 1943 he was assigned to the China Burma India Theater or CBI.
Dick arrived in India in August 1943 and was designated as the Regional Control Officer for the 10th Weather Region and Commanding Officer of the 10th Weather Squadron. This assignment thrust him into the middle of many difficult problems that confronted the Army Air Corps in the Far East and gave him the opportunity to contribute greatly to the prodigious air supply operations over the “Hump” and into China. With China cut off from the outside world, except for the air route over the Hump, both General Chennault and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek were determined to use every pound of airlift capacity for desperately needed supplies and vigorously opposed Dick’s plan to ship weather forecasters and observers into China. His persistence resulted in the acceptance of his plan. Not only were weather stations established along the Hump route, but weathermen came to operate behind the Japanese lines, both in China and Southeast Asia.
As a squadron report for the period indicates: Most of the pushing, the planning and even the paperwork was done singlehandedly by the Colonel himself. This period saw the establishment of the India and China Weather Centrals, which provided long forecasts for the B-29 bombing missions.
While assigned to the CBI Theater, Dick flew 400 combat missions, most of them in a 10th Weather Squadron C-47. He helped pioneer the establishment of regular night flights over the Hump. For his achievements while serving in the CBI Theater, Dick was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with a bronze oak leaf cluster; the Legion of Merit; the Air Medal with two oak leaf clusters and the Commendation Ribbon.
In 1945, Dick was reassigned to Headquarters, Air Weather Service (AWS) in Washington, D.C. as Chief of Operations and Training Division. With the numerical strength and number of weather stations operated by AWS dropping rapidly, he was instrumental in maintaining the Weather Service at a high level of efficiency. In the words of the Weather Service Commander, Colonel Donald N. Yates, in a letter of commendation: “The continuing efficient functioning of the Weather Service could not have been possible except for the success of Colonel Ellsworth’s long-range plans and forecasts of future needs.”
In 1946, Dick left Headquarters AWS to activate the 308th Reconnaissance Group (Weather) at Morrison Field, West Palm Beach, Florida. In June 1947, the group moved to Fairfield-Suisun Air Base in California, and for the next two years, under Dick’s command, provided weather reconnaissance of the West Coast, trained new weather reconnaissance aircrews and units, and accomplished such special projects as the Ptarmigan weather reconnaissance flight over the North Pole.
Dick left the 308th in 1949 to attend the Air War College. On graduation, he was assigned to the Strategic Air Command, first as Chief of the Plans Division, at Headquarters Second Air Force, Barksdale AFB, Louisiana and then in 1950 to the 28th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, at Rapid City AFB, South Dakota. He served as Wing Commander and then as Commanding General of the Base. His promotion to Brigadier General came on September 5, 1952 at the age of 41.
On the morning of March 18, 1953, just after midnight, the B-36 on a low level mission from the Azores to Rapid City, testing our radar defenses, encountered a freak weather pattern causing the aircraft to reach landfall well before the estimate. The resulting crash near Nut Cove Newfoundland killed General Ellsworth and 20 other crew members.
The people of Rapid City petitioned the Congress to rename the base. It was dedicated as Ellsworth AFB in June 1953 by President Eisenhower. General Ellsworth was greatly loved and admired by all who served with him and under his command.