NC-4 Medal
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The NC-4 Medal is a military award of the United States Navy which was created by an act of the United States Congress on February 9, 1929. The medal was intended to recognize those members of Naval aviation which had performed the first transatlantic flight.
The NC-4 Medal was presented to six United States Navy members, and one Coast Guard officer, for flight duties performed in May 1919 while crossing the Atlantic in airplanes of the NC-4 Flying Boat Squadron. The medal was issued as a one time decoration and was never reactivated or awarded again. Thus, the only Navy recipients of the medal were the following personnel:
- Commander John H. Towers
- Lieutenant Commander Albert C. Read
- Lieutenant Walter Hinton
- Lieutenant James L. Breese
- Ensign Herbert C. Rodd
- Chief Machinist's Mate Eugene T. Rhoads (not Eugene S. Rhodes; this is a common misspelling. The "T" is for Taylor, and Rhoads' name was even misspelled on the medal!)
The only Coast Guard recipient of the NC-4 Medal was Lieutenant Elmer Stone.
The NC-4 Medal appeared as a gold medallion, suspended from a multi-colored ribbon. Upon the medallion was the image of a seagull, flying above ocean waves, with the words “FIRST TRANSATLANTIC FLIGHT UNITED STATES NAVY MAY 1919” inscribed along the outer edges of the medal. Due to the rarity of the NC-4 Medal, there are no known photographs of the full sized medal being worn on a military uniform. One original NC-4 Medal is maintained by the Navy Historical Center at the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C..
The ribbon for the NC-4 medal was approved for everyday wear on military uniforms and photographic evidence gives indication that the NC-4 medal recipients did display this ribbon while still serving in active military status. There are also some surviving NC-4 ribbons still in existence today, mainly found with the families of the original recipients.
After the creation of the NC-4 Medal, the decoration was approved as an official award of the United States Navy. Following the various retirements, deaths, and release from military service of the original recipients, the NC-4 Medal became regarded as a commemorative medal. In the modern United States Navy, the NC-4 Medal is considered obsolete and does not appear on any military award precedence charts.
