The President of the United States of America takes pride in presenting the Distinguished Flying Cross (Posthumously) to Second Lieutenant Raymond P. Rutledge (MCSN: 0-4248), United States Marine Corps, for extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight as an airplane pilot attached to Aircraft Squadrons, Second Marine Brigade, operating in the Republic of Nicaragua. When the crew of a plane of these Squadrons was missing in the dense jungle of Eastern Nicaragua, Second Lieutenant Rutledge found the missing crew and for the next three days, until he was killed in an airplane accident on 24 August 1932, made many flights under extremely dangerous conditions to drop supplies to the stranded crew and to direct a ground patrol that was proceeding to its rescue. He was engaged in this work when his plane crashed in the jungle, killing him and his observer. While attached to these Squadrons, Lieutenant Rutledge had flown over four hundred hours in Nicaragua, frequently under very adverse conditions and over difficult terrain infested with hostile bandits. An aerial attack that he conducted on 23 May 1932, against a large and dangerous force of bandits threatening Neptune Mine was credited by the Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua as a decisive factor in the final dispersion of the bandit force from the mine area. Lieutenant Rutledge, during his service in Nicaragua, had repeatedly displayed a high order of determination, skill and courage. On many long patrol flights in the Eastern Area where flying conditions were particularly difficult and dangerous, he was most tenacious in going through with reconnaissance and other necessary flights, particularly when the vicinity of Puerto Cabezas was threatened by bandits.