Credit: Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives
During World War II, the two top commanders of the Army Air Force were both Pennsylvanians. Head of the Air Corps from 1938 to 1946, General Henry "Hap" Arnold, from Gladwyne, developed the heavy bombers which won supremacy of the skies over Europe and the Pacific. General Carl Spaatz, a Pennsylvania Dutchman from Boyertown, was the No. 2 man in the Air Force. An advocate of daylight bombing, Spaatz in 1944 assumed command of all strategic bombing over Germany, and following VE Day took command of the aerial bombing of Japan in the last days of the war.
