The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Legion of Merit to Lieutenant Commander Conrad S. Shinn, United States Navy, for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services to the Government of the United States as Plane Commander of the transport plane which successfully accomplished the first landing and take-off of an aircraft at the South Pole on 31 October 1956. Lieutenant Commander Shinn, who planned and executed this flight in a heavily loaded aircraft over extremely hazardous terrain, also succeeded in landing at the geographic South Pole on a dangerous snow surface approximately 10,000 feet above sea level where the air temperature was 58 degrees below zero.