Michigan Legion Media Room

Air Force Awards Distinguished Flying Cross to Michigan WWII Veteran On every mission, there were holes. Thirty-five times, nine men went out on a bomber so big they called it the Flying Fortress. Each and every time they came back in a plane peppered with bullet holes. Sometimes, many times, the guys flying in the plane next to them didn’t come back at all. On Monday, April 21, 2014 – more than 69 years after he flew his final mission – the U.S. Air Force presented former Technical Sgt. Alfred P. Murphy with a Distinguished Flying Cross after an official review determined that he earned the medal in World War II, while flying as a radio operator/mechanic/gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber in Europe. “It was only the skill and courage of the entire crew that allowed us to live through that,” said Murphy, now a few weeks shy of his 92nd birthday and living in retirement at an American House community in Rochester Hills, Mich. “No one man could have done that. You h...

August 09 Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki 1945  On this day in 1945, a second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally in Japan's unconditional surrender. The devastation wrought at Hiroshima was not sufficient to convince the Japanese War Council to accept the Potsdam Conference's demand for unconditional surrender. The American Legion Department of Michigan represents over 70,000 members in the State of Michigan. The American Legion was founded in 1919, based on “The Four Pillars”; veteran rehabilitation, Americanism, child welfare, and national security and continued above all its mission as a consumers’ advocate for veterans. For more information contact the Michigan Legion at 517-371-4720 ext 16, mark@michiganlegion.org, or visit our website at www.michiganlegion.org.