Kenneth N. Walker

Kenneth Newton Walker left the New Mexico Territory for the Air Service and spent two decades arguing that bombardment aviation had to be organized as a force of its own. By late 1942 he was a brigadier general commanding V Bomber Command under Fifth Air Force in New Guinea — the strike arm that kept hitting Japanese shipping and airfields while the Papuan campaign was still unfinished.

He did not stay at the desk. On January 5, 1943, against weather and timing advice that favored a night run, he ordered a noon daylight attack on Rabaul and flew as an observer on B-17F San Antonio Rose (41-24458) from Port Moresby. Other crews last saw the Fortress east of Vunakanau with fighters on it and an engine smoking. It never rejoined the formation. Two men who left the airplane later died in Japanese custody; Walker and the rest of the crew did not come back. Search efforts, including modern DPAA work in eastern New Britain, have not located the wreck.

He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for leading from the front through the New Guinea campaign and for that final mission. He is on the Tablets of the Missing at Manila American Cemetery. A finding of death closed a personnel file in 1945. It did not produce remains. This register lists him because the Wall of the Missing and the open Pacific case file still say a bomber commander is not home — not because Rabaul needed another famous name.