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

Citation:  1.) The President of the United States takes great pleasure in presenting the award of the Distinguished Flying Cross to Sergeant Gerald W. Zdarsky, Air Corps, United States Army, as Gunner, 93rd Bombardment Squadron, 19th Bombardment Group, for extraordinary achievement in aerial flight 26 June 1945. Sergeant Zdarsky was a flyer and member of a combat crew of a B-29 aircraft on a mission against an airplane plant in Kakamigahara, Japan. Approaching the enemy’s homeland from his base in the Marianas Islands, he was attacked aggressively by numerous fighters, firing twenty-millimeter shells and dropping phosphorous bombs. Unable to locate his squadron in the thick haze, he joined the right wing of the second element and proceeded to the coast. From landfall to the initial point, interceptors attacked relentlessly in a desperate attempt to break up the unit. Two fighters charged the airplane of this crew in a coordinated head-on attack, but this crew beat them off, damaging one. Despite this fierce aerial battle, they went over the primary target, joining in an accurate bomb pattern which obliterated the aiming point. By Seargeant Zdarsky’s heroism, superior combat proficiency, and marked determination, he and all these individuals, veterans of more than twenty-one combat missions, upheld the highest traditions of the military service, thereby reflecting great credit on themselves and the Army Air Forces.