Sterling D. Hammond was born on July 30, 1922 in Muskegon, Muskegon County, Michigan. He was the son of Charles Douglas Hammond and Edith A Stutzman Hammond.

Pvt Hammond, paratrooper and medic of the 501st PIR, took off from station 464 in Merryfield, UK in C-47 42-101025 to drop over DZ-D as part of Operation Albany during the Normandy invasion. Their target time was 0134. Their plane was the last of five waves to cross the Cotentin, over air defenses now on full alert. To complicate matters, there were heavy clouds at 1500 feet, gone unreported due to the strict radio silence. Some pilots decided to pull up and find their DZs with the Eureka-Rebecca system, others went low to obtain a visual of their DZs, and a rare few stayed the course through the cloud bank. While approaching their drop, the plane came under heavy flak fire. It exploded in mid-air at 0142.