General and Flag Officers Killed in War
Editor’s Note: On Tuesday, reports began flowing out of Afghanistan that a U.S. Army general had been killed. He was later identified as Major General Harold Greene, deputy commander of the Combined Security Transition Command, the unit charged with overseeing training of Afghan security forces. He was killed in an attack, which also wounded more than a dozen other coalition soldiers, by a gunman believed to have been an Afghan soldier. Maj. Gen. Greene is the highest-ranking officer to have been killed in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Below is a list of American general officers and flag officers who have been killed in wartime since World War II.
World War II
Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd (U.S Navy)
Commander, Battleship Division One. Killed December 7, 1941 aboard USS ARIZONA (BB-39) during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions.
Rear Admiral Daniel J. Callaghan (U.S. Navy)
Commander, Task Group 67.4. Killed November 13, 1942 aboard USS SAN FRANCISCO (CA-38) at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions.
Rear Admiral Norman Scott (U.S. Navy)
Commander Task Group 67.2. Killed November 13, 1942 aboard USS ATLANTA (CL-51) at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions.
Brigadier General Guy O. Fort (U.S. Army)
Commanding General, 81st Philippine Division. Nothing more is known of Fort’s death, only that he was captured, tortured, and executed by the Japanese in 1942.
Lieutenant General Frank M. Andrews (U.S. Army)
Supreme Commander of all U.S. Forces in the ETO. Killed May 3, 1943 in a B-24 Liberator crash on Iceland.
Brigadier General Charles Henry Barth, Jr. (U.S. Army)
Chief of Staff U.S. Forces in the ETO. Killed May 3, 1943 in a B-24 Liberator crash on Iceland.
Brigadier General Charles L. Keerans, Jr. (U.S. Army)
Assistant Division Commander, 101st 82nd Airborne Division. MIA June 11, 1943, later declared dead, when his stick was shot down by friendly fire.
Major General William Peterkin Upshur (U.S. Marine Corps)
Commanding General, Department of the Pacific, U.S. Marine Corps. Killed July 21, 1943 in an aircraft crash near Sitka, Alaska, while on an inspection tour of his command. Awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions as a captain during the 1915 Haitian campaign.
Major General Charles Dodson Barrett (U.S. Marine Corps)
Commanding General, I Marine Amphibious Corps. Died October 8, 1943, following a fall from the second-floor porch of his quarters at Noumea, New Caledonia.
Brigadier General Don F. Pratt (U.S. Army)
Assistant Division Commander, 101st Airborne Division. Killed June 6, 1944 when he was crushed by cargo that had broken its moorings when the glider landed.
Major General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (U.S. Army)
Commanding General, 90th Division. Died June 12, 1944 of a heart attack the day of his appointment as CG 90th. As Deputy Commanding General, 4th Infantry, awarded the Medal of Honor for his leadership on Utah Beach.
Lieutenant General Leslie J. McNair (U.S. Army)
Commanding General, Army Ground Forces. Killed June 25, 1944 near St Lô, during a pre-attack bombardment by Eight Air Force strategic bombers.
Brigadier General James Edward Wharton (U.S. Army)
Commanding General, 28th Infantry Division. Killed August 12, 1944 by German Sniper while at a regimental command post near Sourdeval, Normandy, France, after being in command of the division for less than 24 hours.
Brigadier General Vicente Lim (U.S. Army)
Commanding General, 41st Philippine Division. Native Filipino, survived the Death March, released by the Japanese, joined the resistance, captured, tortured and executed by the Japanese.
Brigadier General James R. Anderson (U.S. Army)
Chief of Staff (Strategic Air Force, Pacific Ocean Area). MIA and presumed dead February 25, 1945 when his B-24 disappeared between Kwajalein Island and Hawaii.
Lieutenant General Millard Fillmore Harmon, Jr. (U.S. Army Air Force)
Commanding General, Task Force 93 (Strategic Air Force, Pacific Ocean Area). MIA and presumed dead February 25, 1945 when his B-24 disappeared between Kwajalein Island and Hawaii.
Major General Edwin Davies Patrick (U.S. Army)
Commanding General, 6th Infantry Division. Mortally wounded in action on March 14, 1945 by Japanese machine-gun fire while at a regimental forward command post on the island of Luzon, Philippine Islands.
Brigadier General Gustav J. Braun, Jr. (U.S. Army)
Assistant Division Commander, 34th Division. Killed March 17, 1945, shot down by enemy gunfire while flying in a light aircraft on reconnaissance.
Major General Maurice Rose (U.S. Army)
Commanding General, 3d Armored Division. Killed March 30, 1945 near Paderborn by a German tank commander while his jeep was attempting to pass through a German tank column.
Colonel William Orlando Darby (approved by Congress for promotion to Brigadier General before death) (U.S. Army)
Assistant Division Commander, 10th Mountain Division. Killed by artillery fire on April 30, 1945. Earlier he had led U.S. Army Rangers during combat operations in Sicily and Italy.
Brigadier General James Leo Dalton II (U.S. Army)
Assistant Division Commander, 25th Infantry Division. Killed by a Japanese sniper during the Battle of Balete Pass, Luzon, Philippine Islands on May 16, 1945.
Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. (U.S. Army)
Commanding General, Tenth Army. Killed June 18, 1945 by direct fire artillery while inspecting a forward observation post.
Brigadier General Claudius Miller Easley (U.S. Army)
Assistant Division Commander, 96th Infantry Division. Killed June 19, 1945 by a Japanese sniper on the Island of Leyte, Philippine Islands.
Korean War
Lieutenant General Walton Walker (U.S. Army)
Commanding General, Eighth Army. Killed December 23, 1950 when his command jeep collided with a civilian truck near Uijeongbu as he inspected positions north of Seoul.
Major General Bryant E. Moore (U.S. Army)
Commanding General, IX Corps. Died of a heart attack on February 24, 1951, after his helicopter had crashed into the Han River during Operation Killer.
Vietnam War
Brigadier General Alfred Judson Moody (U.S. Army)
Assistant Division Commander, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). March 19, 1967 died of a heart attack in Vietnam.
Major General William Joseph Crumm (U.S. Air Force)
Commanding General, 3rd Air Division, Strategic Air Command. Died on July 7, 1967 when two B52 aircraft collided in mid-air over the South China Sea during a combat mission. The aircraft were approximately 20 miles offshore at the point of Vinh Binh Province when the accident occurred.
Major General Bruno Arthur Hochmuth (U.S. Marine Corps)
Commanding General, 3rd Marine Division. Killed November 14, 1967 when the helicopter, in which he was riding, exploded in mid-air and crashed.
Brigadier General Edward Burke Burdett (U.S. Air Force)
Commanding General, 388th Tactical Fighter Wing, Korat Royal Thai Air Base. MIA November 18, 1967 when shot down while flying a F-105D on a strike mission over Phuc Yen Airfield, North Vietnam. Later declared a prisoner of war, he died in captivity on November 18, 1967.
Major General Robert Franklin Worley (U.S. Air Force)
Vice Commander, Seventh Air Force, Pacific Air Forces. Killed July 23, 1968, when the RF-4C he was piloting was hit by ground fire and crashed approximately 65 miles northwest of Da Nang Air Base.
Major General Keith Lincoln Ware (U.S. Army)
Commanding General, 1st Infantry Division. Killed September 13, 1968 over Loc Ninh near the Cambodian border, when his helicopter was shot down by heavy anti-aircraft fire. Awarded Medal of Honor in 1944.
Brigadier General Charles Jack Girard (U.S. Army)
Commanding General, Capital Military Assistance Command, Saigon, Vietnam. Died January 17, 1970 of illness or disease.
Brigadier General William Ross Bond (U.S. Army)
Commanding General, 199th Light Infantry Brigade. Killed in Action April 1, 1970 by small arms fire along the southeastern edge of war zone D, about 70 miles northeast of Saigon.
Brigadier General Carroll Edward Adams, Jr. (U.S. Army)
Commander, 13th Engineer Bde. Killed on May 12, 1970 when his helicopter was shot down in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.
Major General John Albert B. Dillard, Jr. (U.S. Army)
Chief of Army Engineers in Vietnam. Killed May 12, 1970 when his helicopter was shot down in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.
Major General George William Casey (U.S. Army)
Commanding General, 1st Cavalry Division. Killed July 7, 1970 in a helicopter crash in South Vietnam when his UH-1H hit a mountain due to poor weather near Bao Luc.
Rear Admiral Rembrandt C. Robinson (U.S. Navy)
Commander, Cruiser Destroyer Flotilla 11 and Commander, Cruiser Destroyer Group Vietnam, Seventh Fleet (CTF 75). Killed May 8, 1972 in a helicopter crash in the Gulf of Tonkin during a late night landing approach to his flagship, the guided missile light cruiser USS Providence (CLG-6) immediately preceding the cruiser-destroyer attack on the Don Son Peninsula and Haiphong, North Vietnam.
Brigadier General Richard J. Tallman (U.S. Army)
Deputy Commanding General, 3rd Regional Assistance Cmd, MACV. Mortally Wounded on July 9, 1972 at An Loc when his helicopter was struck by enemy artillery fire.
9/11
Lieutenant General Timothy L. Maude (U.S. Army)
Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel. Killed during the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the Pentagon.
Operation Enduring Freedom
Major General Harold Greene (U.S. Army)
Deputy Commanding General, Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan. Assassinated August 5, 2014, by an Afghan dressed in an Afghan soldier’s uniform at a training facility in Kabul.
Robert Sterling Rush, PhD, command sergeant major, USA, (retired) served at every organizational level from squad through army command sergeant major, including assignments in Ranger, light, and mechanized infantry units. Rush has been involved with the Army History Program since 2001 and deployed to Iraq as a historian in 2006 and again in 2009-10 as the I Corps / MNC-I Historian. He is a subject matter expert on unit rotation and individual replacement. His studies on these subjects have elicited great interest among principals in the Department of the Army.
Photo credit: U.S. Army Africa (adapted by WOTR)
