AWARDED DFC: 1
CONFLICT/SPACE FLIGHT/EVENT:  -
MODEL:  B-29

Citation:  1.) The President of the United States takes great pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Flying Cross to First Lieutenant Robert D. Gibson for extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight 19 January 1945. These individuals, as members of a combat crew on a B-29 type aircraft, skillfully performed their assigned duties to enable a maximum effort bombardment from their base in the Marianas Islands against the high priority Kawasaki aircraft engine factory at Akashi, Japan. They made an excellent assembly and approach to the target after a fifteen hundred mile, over-water flight to the mainland of Japan. The aiming point was the center of a machine shop of the aircraft factory. They released their bombs with great accuracy. Strike photographs confirmed that over seventy percent of the bombs hit within one thousand feet of the aiming point. This meticulous flying was accomplished in the face of aggressive enemy fighter attacks and intense and accurate anti-aircraft fire. The exceptional airmanship and heroic devotion to duty demonstrated by these crew members, who have completed over twenty-one combat missions, reflect great credit on themselves and the Army Air Forces.