Ennis Whitehead
United States Army general (1895-1964)
Ennis Clement Whitehead (September 3, 1895 – October 12, 1964) was an early United States Army aviator and a United States Army Air Forces general during World War II. Whitehead joined the U. S. Army after the United States entered World War I in 1917. He trained as an aviator and served in France, where he was posted to the 3d Aviation Instruction Center and became a qualified test pilot. After the war, Whitehead returned to school at the University of Kansas. After he graduated, he was commissioned as a first lieutenant in 1920.
Over the following twenty years, Whitehead participated in Billy Mitchell's aerial bombing demonstration and served as commander of the 94th and 36th Pursuit Squadrons among other assignments. After the U.S. entered World War II, Whitehead was promoted to brigadier general and sent to the Southwest Pacific Area. In the course of the war, he earned a Distinguished Service Cross and was named an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire as he rose to command the Fifth Air Force.
After the war, he commanded the Far East Air Forces, the Continental Air Command, and the Air Defense Command. He retired in 1951 after he was passed over for Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force. Both his son, Ennis Whitehead Jr., and his grandson, Ennis Whitehead III, became generals as well, rising to major general and brigadier general respectively.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ennis Whitehead” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.