The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Flying Cross to Corporal Hilmer N. Torner (MCSN: 138608), United States Marine Corps, for extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight when at about 1:35 P.M. on 22 March 1932, Staff Sergeant Orlo S. Hoffer, naval aviation pilot, took off from the field at the Naval Air Station, San Diego, California, in airplane N2CD-2 No. 8542 on a local routine test flight accompanied in the rear cockpit by Corporal Hilmer N. Torner, U.S.M.C., an operations clerk. Although Corporal Torner had ridden as a passenger on several flights in aircraft, he was not familiar with the controls or instruments of an airplane and previous to this time he had never touched the controls of a plane. At about 2 P.M. while flying at approximately 2,000 feet altitude in the vicinity of Camp Kearney, the pilot became ill and fell forward on the controls of the plane in a fainting condition. The plane, entirely out of control, fell toward the ground with a spinning motion. When Corporal Torner discovered the plane was out of control, with stick and rudder locked, he stood up to jump with his parachute. As he did so, he discovered the condition of the pilot and realized that to jump meant certain death for the other man. He seized the inert body of the pilot, pulled him from the controls and succeeded in righting the plane just before it would have crashed. He was able to climb the plane to a considerable altitude and after fifteen or twenty minutes experimenting he was able to get the plane headed toward North Island and made a very creditable landing on Rockwell Field. Upon landing he extracted the pilot from the plane, laid him out under the wing and was applying first aid when assistance arrived. By his actions on this occasion he displayed presence of mind, self-sacrificing heroism and extraordinary achievement in the face of great danger far beyond the call of duty.