About the cover: 

The cover design shows the significant historical eras of Maxwell 

Air Force Base. The top photograph is of the very early days of 

Maxwell Field, the center (superimposed) photograph is a class 

picture from the Air Corps Tactical School, and the bottom

photograph is from the period when Maxwell housed the Southest 

Air Corps Training Center. The propeller and wings image is from

the monument in front of Air University headquarters. This 

monument reflects the AU mission of carrying on the tradition of 

professional education of airmen.

ii 

Disclaimer 

Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied 

within are solely those of the author and do not necessary represent the 

views of Air University, the United States Air Force, the Department 

of Defense, or any other US government agency. Cleared for public 

release, distribution. 
iii 

DEICto 

the thousands who have served at Maxwell Air Force Base 

and 

to their families, who have also served 
v 

Page 

DISCLAIMER .................................................................... ii 

DEDICATION................................................................... iii 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR .................................................. vii 

PREFACE.......................................................................... ix 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................. xi 

Robert D. Knapp and J. A. Liner .........................................1 

Murry C. Woodbury and Bruce A. Tyndall.........................5 

William L. Stribling.............................................................9 

Walter R. Weaver...............................................................11 

John F. Curry .....................................................................15 

Frederick I. Eglin ...............................................................17 

John H. Williamson and William C. McDonald...............19 

Claire L. Chennault............................................................21 

Harold L. George ...............................................................25 

Kenneth N. Walker ............................................................29 

Haywood S. Hansell...........................................................31 

Laurence S. Kuter ..............................................................35 

Glenn Miller.......................................................................37 
vi 

Ira C. Eaker ........................................................................41 

Noel F. Parrish ...................................................................43 

George C. Kenney..............................................................45 

Paul W. Tibbets Jr..............................................................47 

Dale O. Smith.....................................................................49 

Hoyt S. Vandenberg...........................................................51 

Curtis E. LeMay.................................................................55 

Muir S. Fairchild................................................................59 

Earle E. Partridge...............................................................61 

Glenn O. Barcus.................................................................63 

Nathan F. Twining .............................................................65 

Thomas S. Power ...............................................................67 

John D. Lavelle ..................................................................69 

Khaled bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz .......................................71 

John A. Warden .................................................................73 

Henry H. Shelton ...............................................................77 
vii 

About the Author 

Jeffrey C. Benton, a retired Air Force colonel, has had 

connections with Maxwell Air Force Base since 1953-54 when he 

lived in Montgomery, Alabama, while his father attended Air 

Command and Staff College. He returned as a captain to attend 

the Academic Instructor Course in 1974 and as a major to attend 

Air Command and Staff College (1980-81). Two of his last three 

assignments were at Maxwell: the Airpower Research Institute 

(1987-90) and Air War College (1992-93). 

ix 

Preface 

The 30 essays that follow first appeared in the Montgomery 

Advertiser during September 1997. They contributed to the celebration 

of the fiftieth anniversary of the United States Air Force. 

Montgomery, Alabama, has been associated with the airplane 

almost since its conception. For two months in the spring of 1910, 

Orville and Wilbur Wright operated the world's first civilian flying 

school on the Kohn cotton plantation, the site that is today's Maxwell 

Air Force Base. Military aviation began in 1917 with the establishment 

of primary flying training at Taylor Field in the Pike Road community 

just east of Montgomery. 

Early the next year, the Army reopened the old "Wright Field" as an 

aircraft engine and repair depot. In 1929, because of the efforts of 

Mayor William Gunter, Montgomery was one of the first cities in the 

country to have a planned municipal airport-commercial passenger 

service began three years later. Today the site of the old municipal 

airport is Maxwell's Gunter Annex. During the late 1920s and 1930s, 

Maxwell Field became a permanent facility with major construction of 

military facilities and housing units. From 1931 when it relocated from 

Langley Field, Virginia, until it was closed in 1942, the Air Corps 

Tactical School (ACTS) developed airpower doctrine and educated 

many, if not most of the airmen who lead the Army Air Forces during 

World War II. Air University was established in 1946, fulfilling the 

vision of its first commandant, Gen Muir S. Fairchild. Air University 

has become the heart and the mind of the Air Force 

Thousands have served at Maxwell since World War I-men and 

women, service members and civilians, Americans and foreigners, 

aviation cadets and flying instructors, students and faculty, and support 

personnel and flyers. The 33 airmen featured here are not 

representative of all who have served at Maxwell. Rather, they are a 

few of those who have achieved a place in aviation or military history. 

In her wisdom, Maya Lin, the designer of the Vietnam Wall in 

Washington and the Civil Rights Monument in Montgomery, has 
x 

extraordinary things. So it is with those who have served at Maxwell. 

While we cannot recognize them in person, their contributions to 

the country are immeasurable, and so too are their contributions to 

Montgomery's religious, cultural, charitable, educational, fraternal, and 

social institutions. Selecting 33 of those who spent a part of their 

careers here in no way diminishes the contributions of the other 

thousands who passed through the base. One group, however, must be 

singled out: the families who also served. Without their unsung 

support, the work-and the lives-of those who served in official 

capacities would have been for naught.
xi 

Acknowledgments 

Jerome A. Ennels, director of the Office of History, Air 

University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama; Lt Col John H. 

Napier III, USAF, Retired; Wesley Phillips Newton, emeritus 

professor of history, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama; and 

Mrs. Smylie C. Stark were most helpful in gathering the 

information in these articles. The photographs used here are from 

the files of the Air University Office of History and the Air 

University Press.
Robert D. Knapp 

and J. A. Liner 

1 

After World War I, Brig Gen 

William "Billy" Mitchell advocated 

having the Army Air Service carry 

US mails as a means to maintain 

preparedness during peacetime. 

President and Mrs. Woodrow 

Wilson were present on 15 May 1918 

for the inaugural flight of the airmail 

service. The beginnings were 

inauspicious. The aircraft engine did 

not start the plane had not been 

refueled! Then the novice pilot, 

unaccustomed to the intended route 

from Washington to Philadelphia, flew south rather than north. He 

landed in southern Maryland. The mail finally arrived in 

Philadelphia by train. 

In April 1925, Maxwell Field was involved in expanding airmail service to the Deep South. The intent was to establish an 

airmail route from New Orleans to Chicago by way of Mobile, 

Montgomery, Birmingham, Nashville, and Indianapolis. The 

flight was to arrive in Chicago by late afternoon to connect with 

the regular east-west transcontinental airmail flights. 

Two Maxwell aviators, Lt Robert D. Knapp and his mechanic 

Sgt J. A. Liner, flew their de Havilland 4B to New Orleans where 

they were sworn in as mail carriers. The following morning, they 

departed with six bags of mail and arrived at Mobile just over an 

hour later. After picking up an additional five bags of mail they 

departed for Maxwell Field. Governor William Brandon, 

Congressman Lister Hill, and other dignitaries were on hand to 

greet them when they arrived an hour and one-half later. 

Montgomery had received its first official airmail. The de 

Havilland 4B flew at about 110 mph. The total time elapsed 

between New Orleans and Montgomery was three hours. 
circumnavigated Indianapolis because of driving rain, a weather 

condition that they could not fly through in their open-cockpit 

DH-4B. The mission was completed after a total elapsed time 

between New Orleans and Chicago of 11 hours. 

Maxwell not only supplied the aircrew of the New Orleans to 

Montgomery segment of the route and the aircraft for both the 

first and second segments, but Maxwell personnel also developed 

and executed most of the trial mission. 

Military aircraft stopped flying the US mail following 

enactment of the Contract Mail Act of 1925. By the following 

year, 16 airlines and 300 Aircraft were engaged in flying the mail. 

In 1934, because of the alleged corruption that had crept into 

2 
3 

the Air Corps to resume airmail service. The Air Corps ; only had 

10 days' notice to prepare for resumption of this mission. After 

five months, the Airmail Act of 1934 returned the responsibility 

of carrying airmail to contract civilian airlines. During this period, 

which included one month of severe winter weather, 10 Air Corps 

pilots lost their lives flying in inadequate equipment. The Air 

Corps's failure to carry the mail efficiently was attributed to 

Depression-era neglect of that branch of the Army. 

Knapp-who had taught Charles Lindbergh to fly in 1924-25 at 

Kelly Field, Texas-rose to the rank of brigadier general. He retired 

to Auburn, Alabama, his hometown. 
Murry C. Woodbury 

and Bruce A. Tyndall 

Lieutenants Murry C. Woodbury and Bruce A. Tyndall 

represent the aviation officer corps in its formative years. 

Both moved to Maxwell Field in 1929, joining the 22d 

Observation Squadron. The squadron, which had come to 

Montgomery from Oklahoma in late 1921, supported the coast 

artillery at Fort Barrancas, Pensacola, Florida, and the Infantry 

School at Fort Benning, Columbus, Georgia. 

In the pre-World War II Army, the duty day ended early 

leaving most of the afternoon free. Some officers, such as George 

C. Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, and George Patton, used the 

time for professional reading. The majority, however, engaged in 

a variety of recreational activities. Lieutenants Woodbury and 

Tyndall followed the latter course. 

5 
Maxwell received 16 remount 

horses, base personnel ' organized 

a polo team. Both Woodbury and 

Tyndall played for the Maxwell 

Field Reds. The Reds lost their 

first match-played for the benefit 

of the new Polo Club and the 

Montgomery Little Theater-to the 

Montgomery Blues before a crowd 

of more than a thousand. By the 

early 1930s, polo had replaced 

boxing as the most popular sport 

in the area. Crowds of up to three 

thousand watched the polo 

matches, which, because they had 

a social cachet, were not encumbered with the controversy that 

surrounded boxing. 

6 
7 

Woodbury set a time " 

record flying a Douglas 

02-H biplane. He also 

served as Maxwell's 

police and prison officerflying officers performed 

additional duties. 

When he arrived at 

Maxwell, Lt Murry 

Woodbury was already 

married. He and his 

family lived in one of the

13 one-storied bungalows 

on Hansell Street. (The 

quarters, completed in 

1928, are some of the 

oldest buildings on 

Maxwell.) The 

Woodburys left Maxwell in 1931 for a new assignment in Hawaii. 

Lieutenant Tyndall transferred to the staff of the Air Corps 

Tactical School after it relocated from Langley Field, Virginia, to 

Maxwell in the summer of 1931. 

The dashing young Lt Bruce Tyndall was an eligible bachelor 

when he arrived at Maxwell in 1929. That year he met and 

courted Eloise McKerrall, the daughter of a prominent 

Montgomery family. Their wedding in December 1930 was a 

social event. The young socialite helped bond the military 

community with the host civilian community. 

In 1931 Lieutenant Tyndall volunteered to fly one of his men 

home to Memphis for Christmas. Descending in dense fog, the 

two were killed as the A-3 Falcon biplane's right wings were torn 

off by trees. Tragically, Tyndall's older brother Frank had been 

killed the previous year in a plane crash en route to visit his 

brother at Maxwell. 
William L. Stribling 

In 1929 William L. "Young 

Bill" Stribling, the nationally 

famous heavyweight prizefighter, 

attended flight training at Maxwell Field. All Montgomery was 

excited when Jack Dempsey, the 

heavyweight champion of the 

world from 1919 to 1926, visited 

Lieutenant Stribling at Maxwell. 

Boxing was extremely popular 

at the airfield in the late 1920s. In 

1927 the Alabama Athletic 

Commission tried to end boxing 

at the base because Maxwell 

officials had no authority to 

conduct boxing matches. The 

Alabama attorney general 

supported the athletic commission's contention and declared one 

of the unauthorized fights a felony. 

The proceeds of these fights supplemented the recreation and 

athletic funds of Maxwell's enlisted men. So boxing continued, 

drawing large crowds of military personnel and civilians. In 1929 

Maxwell planes scattered free tickets over Montgomery. The 

evening of the fights, planes dropped para- chute flares over the 

airfield to attract spectators. At the end of the decade, boxing lost 

its place to polo as Maxwell's most popular sport. Stribling 

returned to professional fighting after leaving the Army. 

On 7 January 1931, "Young Bill" Stribling challenged Max 

Schmeling for the heavyweight championship. Before a crowd of 

more than 37,000 in Chicago, Schmeling beat the young 

challenger with a technical knockout in the 15th round when the 

referee stopped the fight with 14 seconds to go. Although 

9 
10 

receipts. 

At the height of his boxing career, Stribling was killed in a 

motorcycle accident. 
Walter R. Weaver 

Walter Reed Weaver (1885-1944) was born in Charleston, 

South Carolina, where his father, Maj Gen E. M. Weaver, served 

as commandant of The Citadel. The young Weaver, however, 

attended Virginia Military Institute (VMI) where George C. 

Marshall was his first captain. After three years at VMI, Weaver 

entered West Point, graduating as a lieutenant of infantry in 1908. 

He did not serve as an infantry captain in France in World War 

I as he had volunteered to do. Rather, he was transferred to the 

Signal Corps to command the flying cadets at Wright Field, Ohio. 

Anointed an aviation expert, Major Weaver earned some notoriety 

by opening an aviation mechanics' school in Saint Paul, 

Minnesota, within only a matter of days of taking command. 

After World War I, he earned his pilot's wings at March Field, 

California, and completed various other training and 

11 
School of Business Administration. 

From 1927 to 1931, Major Weaver served as commanding 

officer of Maxwell Field. During his tenure, Maxwell's golden age 

of construction began. While he was base commander, the 

Southeast was hard hit by floods in March 1929. Alabama was 

worst affected by the Great Flood of 1929. 

The record flood waters isolated scores of towns as they swept 

away telephone and telegraph lines, roads, and rail lines; 

thousands of people were marooned without food or shelter. 

Observation flights from Maxwell gathered information for civil 

and military authorities. Douglas C-l transports flew relief flights 

from Maxwell, air dropping-without para- chutes-needed supplies, 

including copies of the Montgomery Advertiser, which gave 

instructions on how to communicate with pilots. In the five-day 

relief effort, 40 planes flew 281 missions or more than 600 hours. 

Major Weaver's efforts were praised by authorities in 

Washington, but more so by thou- sands in southeast Alabama. 

12 
Air Corps Tactical School. From 1940 to 1941, Brigadier General 

Weaver commanded the Southeast Air Corps Training Center 

headquartered at Maxwell. 

His greatest service to the nation was as commander of the 

Army Air Forces Technical Training Command from 1942 to 

1943. In this position, Major General Weaver organized and 

commanded more than a hundred training stations that 

transformed a million civilians into airmen-the technicians who 

kept the planes flying. As he had been throughout his Army 

career, General Weaver was innovative and tireless, and made 

things happen. He opened his first training school less than one 

week after assuming command. Because he under- stood politics, 

as welt as leadership and aviation, he moved his headquarters out 

of Washington. Maintaining that since "the good Lord can run the 

whole universe on Ten Commandments," he cut the number of 

regulations for his command to eight. 

13 
14 

old marble marker was removed several years ago; it was replaced 

by a monument to the Reserve Officer Training Corps and 2d Lt 

William C. Maxwell. However, General Weaver needs no such 

monument of brick, stone, or bronze-the World War II record of 

the Army Air Forces maintenance personnel serves as his 

monument.
John F. Curry 

Maj John F. Curry served as assistant commandant at the Air 

Corps Tactical School at Langley Field, Virginia, before being 

selected as the first commander of the- school after it moved to 

Maxwell Field in 1931. He served as commandant until 1935. 

During his tenure, the school grew from about 30 students to 

65. More importantly, the school's faculty members began to 

shape airpower doctrine. Their historic influence was exerted

through the Air Corps Board, which was headed by Colonel 

Curry, and through the school's students, who were to become the 

World War II leaders of the Army Air Forces. 

During the same period, Colonel Curry served as installation 

commander. As Such he oversaw the culmination of the golden 

age of construction. Maxwell's impressive, French provincial 

senior officers' quarters date from this period. 

Colonel and Mrs. Curry played a key role in cementing the fine 

relationship between Maxwell and the city of Montgomery. Mrs. 

Curry, especially, devoted her time to binding the two 

15 
daughters were the first to live in the commandant's house, 

completed in the early 1930s. Since 1974 the quarters of the Air 

University commander have been known as Curry House. He 

went on to attain the rank of major general. 

16 
Frederick I. Eglin 

Frederick Irving Eglin 

(1891- 1937) began his 

military service in the Indiana 

Infantry. In 1917 he entered 

federal service, seeing action 

on the Mexican border. In that 

year, the second lieutenant 

was rated a junior military

aviator and then helped train 

flyers in California. 

In the early 1920s, Eglin 

served in a bomb squadron in 

the Philippines before being 

appointed the director off 

bombardment in the 

Advanced Flying School in 

Texas. 

He completed a two-year Lt Frederick I. Eglin course at the Air 

Corps Tactical School (ACTS), then at Langley Field. Virginia. 

After completing the Army Command and General Staff School at 

Fort Leavenworth. Kansas, he was assigned as an instructor at 

ACTS, which had been moved to Maxwell Field. During some of 

his time in Montgomery, he lived at 3183 Lancaster Road in the 

newly developed Cedars subdivision just south of Fairview 

Avenue. 

In 1936 Eglin was again assigned to Langley Field, which was 

then home to the General Headquarters. Air Force. On 1 January 

1937 Lieutenant Colonel Eglin died in an airplane crash while on 

a flight from Langley to Maxwell. Eglin Air Force Base, 

Valparaiso, Florida, is named in his memory. 

17 
John H. Williamson 

and William C. McDonald 

In 1934 Capt Claire L. Chennault organized the Men on the 

Flying Trapeze, the Air Corps's first nationally famous aerial 

demonstration team. He, 1st Lt Haywood S. "Possum" Hansell, 

and SSgt John H. "Luke" Williamson were the aerial acrobatics 

team's original pilots, with Sgt William C. McDonald as an 

alternate. 

The Flying Trapezers made their debut at Cleveland's national 

air races in September 1934. Their repertoire included 

Immelmanns, barrel rolls, spins, formation rolls, and loops. The 

team's most exciting maneuver was the dangerous formation spin. 

After the Cleveland performance and the January 

19 
20 

Trapezers became a national sensation. They were in demand 

throughout the country. Five companies made movies of their 

precision aerial show. Like professional athletes today, Trapezers 

were paid for commercial endorsements, including one for 

Wrigley's chewing gum. . 

Although both Sergeants Williamson and McDonald were first 

lieutenants in the Reserve and usually were billed as lieutenants 

for their aerial performances, they were denied regular 

commissions in the regular Army. In 1936 only 52 of the 470 

Reserve candidates were granted regular commissions. 

The Flying Trapezers broke up when Williamson and 

McDonald left the Air Corps. They became flying instructors at 

the Central Aviation School in Hangchow, China. In 1937, 

recently retired Claire Chennault joined Williamson and 

McDonald-whom he called "two of the finest pursuit pilots"-in 

China. 

With President Franklin D. Roosevelt's authorization, the three 

former Flying Trapezers formed the American Volunteer Group 

(AVG) in 1940-41. The covert group was manned by one hundred 

pilots and two hundred technicians who resigned from the US 

armed forces to serve in the AVG. As Chennault's Flying Tigers, 

the unit resisted Japanese expansion in Burma and China and was 

the only allied combat unit to have a winning record against the 

Japanese during 1941-42. 
21 

In 1917 Claire Lee Chennault (1893-1958) left his job in an 

Akron, Ohio, tire factory to enter the Officers Training School at 

Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana. Ninety-days later he emerged as 

a lieutenant in the infantry reserves. Lieutenant Chennault, 

however, wanted to fly, so he quickly transferred to the Aviation 

Section of the Signal Corps. 

In 1919 he overcame Army opposition to his entering flying 

training because of his age and because he was married with three 

children. In 1920 he earned his pilot's wings. Later that year, 

Chennault obtained a regular commission in the newly organized 

Air Service and commanded a pursuit or fighter squadron in 

Hawaii. 

His early career was controversial. In 1931 he graduated from 

the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) at Langley Field, Virginia, 

and remained on the school's faculty when it moved to Maxwell 

Field, Alabama. At odds with most other ACTS instructors, Major 

Chennault tried to promote his airpower theories with the 

unpublished, but influential, text "The Role of Defensive Pursuit" 

and with the Flying Trapezers, his aerial acrobatic team. His 

advocacy of fighters, air superiority, and an air defense warning 

net (before the development of radar) was not well received by his 

fellow ACTS instructors who were promoting strategic bombing 

theories. 

Claire and Nellie Chennault and their eight children lived in the 

Stone-Young mansion on Old Selma Road and later at 322 Center 

Drive, Maxwell. Legend has it that Chennault rode his horse into 

the old Montgomery Country Club. He supposedly performed 

other noted feats. When Chennault lived at the Stone-Young 

plantation, he flew his P-12C under the Highway 31 bridge and 

even allowed a son to fly the plane, solo. 

Broken in spirit and body from constant debate about how 

airpower should be used, Chennault retired at his permanent rank 

of captain in 1937. 
to organize and train the Chinese air forces. Quickly he found 

himself involved in the Sino-Japanese War. By 1940 he had 

secured American assistance and formed the American Volunteer 

Group (AVG) or Flying Tigers in August 1941. In the seven 

months following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the A VG 

was the most effective Allied fighter group in the Far East, 

shooting down hundreds of Japanese planes while sustaining 

almost insignificant losses. 

Chennault returned to US service in 1942 as commander of the 

China Air Task Force, which had to be supplied over the 

Himalayas from India. His acerbic personality and almost insubordinate advocacy of his airpower tactics and politico- military 

strategy led to estrangement with Gel) Joseph W. "Vinegar Joe" 

Stilwell, commander of the China-Bunna-India theater, and with 

Gen George C. Marshall, chief of staff of the Army. Major 

General Chennault retired just before Japan surrendered. 

Subsequently, Chennault formed a contract cargo carrier, Civil 

Air Transport (CAT), in the Far East. CAT provided Chennault, 

an outspoken anti-Communist and friend of Generalissimo Chiang 

22 
1948-49 during China's civil war. The Central Intelligence 

Agency took over CAT in 1950. 

Appropriately, the street that is home to ACTS's descendants 

the Air Force's professional military education schools at Maxwell 

Air Force Base, Alabama-is named Chennault Circle. 

23 
Harold L. George 

Harold Lee "Hal" George (1892-1986) began his Army career 

as a flying cadet in the Signal Corps. After earning his pilot's 

wings and commission in 1918, he flew bomber sorties during the 

47-day Meuse-Argonne Campaign, one of the greatest conflicts in 

US military history. 

In 1921 George participated in Brig Gen Billy Mitchell's 

bombing tests on warships that sank six naval vessels, four of 

which were battleships. Mitchell's intention was to prove that

battleships were highly vulnerable to air attack. Although these 

tests did not alter Navy or Army establishment thinking, they 

convinced George of the soundness of Mitchell's theories. 

George served on the faculty of the Air Corps Tactical School, 

first as chief of the Bombardment Section (1932-34) 

25 
26 

(1934-36). Maxwell was the center of innovative doctrinal 

thinking, and George was one of the leading proponents of 

precision daylight bombing for strategic operations. George 

helped develop the theories of strategic bombardment: He 

convinced a generation of Air Corps officers that strategic 

bombardment could be decisive in warfare. 

Unlike most theoretician~, Colonel George was able to go 

farther than the classroom environment. In the summer of 1941, 

he was appointed to head the Air War Plans Division (AWPD) in 

the newly formed Air Staff. 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt secretly instructed the Army 

and Navy to determine what industrial capacity and manpower 

resources would be necessary to defeat the Axis powers. As the 

Army and Navy staffs rushed to respond to the presidential 

tasking, Colonel George and a team of three former Air Corps 

Tactical School instructors (Hansell, Walker, and Kuter) took the 

opportunity to advance their theories about the use of airpower. 

The Air War Plans Division was ahead of the Army and Navy 

staffs because its officers had a military strategy (strategic 

bombardment) on which to base production and manpower 

requirements. ACTS had studied the industrial and economic 

vulnerabilities of both Germany and Japan. Finally, AWPD had 

an advantage in that Gen George C. Marshall, the Army chief of 

staff, had recently be- come more aware of the potential of 

strategic airpower. 

Colonel George's small staff had one week in August to 

produce a plan. Immediately they agreed that their main objective 

was to destroy Nazi Germany's industrial capability. This task, 

they believed, could be done in no less than six months of 

sustained attacks on Germany's electrical power and 

transportation systems, petroleum industry, and ground- and airbased interceptor defenses. The team determined that the plan of 

strategic, long-range air attacks to destroy Ger- many would 

require more than 135,000 aircrew members and 70,000 aircraft 

(almost 7,000 stationed in the European theater with 2,000 

required each month for replacements). 
27 

 

aircraft. However, it did state that ground forces might not be 

required after six months of strategic bombardment and that highaltitude bombers without fighter escorts should be able to 

penetrate German air defenses in daytime. The plan, in revised 

form, eventually provided the basis for the Combined Bomber 

Offensive, and has consequently been called the "air war plan that 

defeated Germany."*

Strategic bombardment zealots, when confronted with the 

charge that Nazi Germany was not defeated by strategic 

bombardment alone but required massive surface forces and the 

horrendous sacrifices of the Soviet Union, counter with the fact 

that the strategic bombardment theory was not truly tested 

because bombers were frequently diverted to tactical targets. 

Later in the war, Lieutenant General George headed the 

Ferrying Command, which he transformed into the Air Transport Command (ATC) with more than 3,000 aircraft and 300,000 

personnel. ATC had worldwide capabilities at the end of World 

War II. ATC was the predecessor of the Military Air Transport 

Service (MATS) and the Military Airlift Command (MAC), both 

antecedents of the current Air Mobility Command. 

Lt Gen Hal George retired in 1946. 

* Haywood Hansell authored a book by this title, which was published 

in 1972 by Higgins-McArthur/Longino & Porter and reprinted in 1975 

by the US Government Printing Office and the Office of Air Force 

History.
Kenneth N. Walker 

29 

Kenneth Newton "Ken" 

Walker (1898-1943) began 

flying at the University of 

California's School of Military 

Aeronautics. After earning his 

pilot's wings and Army commission in 1918, he served as 

a flying instructor for three 

years. Staff, command, and 

flying assignments in the 

Philip- pines and Virginia 

followed. 

In 1929 he graduated from 

the Air Corps Tactical School 

(ACTS) at Langley Field, 

Virginia, and then stayed on as 

a member of the school's 

faculty. He was with the school for its move to Montgomery in 

1931. Lieutenant Walker, a senior instructor in ACTS, stood with 

the zealous instructors who propounded the theories that strategic 

daylight bombardment could achieve success with- out fighter 

escort, ideas in conflict with the Army's concepts of how airpower 

should be used. Lieutenant Walker's debates with Maj Claire 

Chennault (who argued that bombers were not invincible from

fighter interception) became legendary. 

After graduating from the Army Command and General Staff 

School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1935, Walker was 

promoted to captain, and then two months later to major. He 

served in a variety of positions in intelligence and in bomber and 

pursuit operations until January 1941. 

In June 1941 Lt Col Hal George selected Major Walker, his 

former ACTS instructor, to join three other officers to form the 

Air War Plans Division. In August 1941 this team, which also 

included two other ACTS graduates, Maj Larry Kuter and Maj 
30 

document has been called "the air war plan that defeated 

Germany." During this time, he also worked to organize the secret 

American Volunteer Group in China, the American flying unit 

that became famous as Chennault's Flying Tigers. Three rapid 

promotions followed-lieutenant colonel in July 1941, colonel in 

March 1942, and brigadier general in June 1942. These 

promotions were merited by extraordinary staff work on the 

newly formed Air Staff in Washington. 

In July 1942, Brig Gen Ken Walker was sent to the AsiaticPacific theater. In the Southwest Pacific, he routinely flew B-24 

and B-25 bombing missions. Such missions allowed him, as 

commanding general of the V Bomber Command, to learn 

firsthand about combat conditions and to develop tactics to thwart 

Japanese fighters and antiaircraft fire. 

Ignoring orders to stop flying combat missions, General 

Walker continued to fly. He was shot down by enemy fighters on 

5 January 1943 while leading a daylight raid on Japanese shipping 

in the harbor at Rabaul, New Britain. He was awarded the 

congressional Medal of Honor for his leadership in combat and 

his personal valor. He was one of 38 Army Air Forces flying 

personnel awarded the Medal of Honor during World War II. 

Walker Hall on Maxwell's Chennault Circle is the home of the 

College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education. 
Haywood S. Hansell 

Haywood Shepherd "Possum" Hansell Jr. (1903-88) was born 

into the Army in the antebellum quarters at Fort Monroe, 

Virginia. He began to learn Chinese (his Army surgeon father was 

on duty in China during the Boxer Rebellion) and then Spanish in 

the Philippines before his mother, a former Atlanta belle, taught 

him English. 

At Sewanee Military Academy, Hansell acquired the nickname Possum that he bore for the rest of his life. Possum was, 

according to one story, said to resemble the animal. Another 

explanation is that as a student he slept in class, but claimed to 

merely be "playin' possum." The latter may be more accurate, for, 

as captain of the cadet corps, he was busted to private in his senior 

year because of declining grades. 

The scion of four generations of Army officers declined a West 

Point appointment in favor of studying mechanical engineering at 

the Georgia School of Technology. Following graduation in 1924, 

he worked as an engineer in California. 

31 
32 

Army and entered flight training. A year later he received his 

pilot's wings and commission as a second lieutenant. 

Lieutenant Hansell joined the staff of the-Air Corps Tactical 

School as an armament officer in 1930, and moved with the 

school to Montgomery the following year. In addition to his duties 

in the school's flying squadrons, Hansell. a good-and daring-pilot, 

flew as one of the Men on the Flying Trapeze, the Air Corps's first 

aerial demonstration team. He also ex- celled at polo, tennis, 

squash, and dancing, and was known as "the unofficial poet 

laureate of the Air Corps." 

Because of his understanding of how to use airpower, 

Lieutenant Hansell was selected to study tactics and strategy 

under Capt Hal George (1934-35). On promotion to first 

lieutenant in late 1934 (six years after commissioning, but not 

unusual during the Depression), he joined the ACTS faculty. At 

31, he was one of the youngest instructors in the school. During 

his three years on the faculty, he became a member of the school's 

"bomber mafia," the most zealous advocates of daylight strategic 

bombardment without fighter escort. 

During 1938-39, Captain Hansell attended the Army Command 

and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. 

In June 1941 Lt Col Harold "Hal" George selected Major 

Hansell to join the four-man team-made exclusively of former 

ACTS instructors-that would be instrumental in forming the Army 

Air Forces' airpower strategy for World War II. Having no 

existing plans to work with and having no research arm to use, Air 

War Plans Division officers had to be resourceful. Hansell got 

target information about German power-generating plants, 

including blueprints, from New York banks that had financed the 

German plants. 

As he rapidly rose in rank-lieutenant colonel (January 1942), 

colonel (March 1942), and brigadier general (August 1942), 

Hansell continued to perfect the Air War Plans Division plan 

produced in the summer of 1941. After the Japanese attack on 

Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he led the revision of the plan. 
33 

Nazi Germany and served as Gen Dwight D. Eisenhower's air 

plans officer. 

General Hansell then got himself transferred to a combat 

command. He commanded the 1st Bombardment Division in 

Europe and then the XXI Bomber Command in the Pacific. His 

high-altitude precision daylight B-29 raids on Japan were indecisive. Consequently, he was replaced by Gen Curtis LeMay, 

who began devastating low-level incendiary bombing of the home 

islands. 

General Hansell was retired for medical reasons in 1946 but 

during the Korean War returned to active duty as an advisor to the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1955 Major General Hansell retired for a 

second time. He authored the following books: The Air War Plan 

that Defeated Germany, The Strategic Air War against Japan, and 

The Strategic Air War against Germany and Japan: A Memoir. 
35 

Laurence S. Kuter 

Laurence Sherman "Larry" Kuter (1905-79) graduated from 

West Point in 1927. He served in the field artillery at the Presidio 

of San Francisco until he entered flying training. In 1930 he was 

assigned to a bomb squadron at Langley Field, Virginia, where he 

helped develop bombing techniques. He also headed the 

operational development of the B9 and its high-altitude bombing 

tactics. 

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the responsibility 

for airmail service to the Army in 1934, Lieutenant Kuter served 

in the Eastern Zone airmail operations. 

He graduated at the top of his Air Corps Tactical School class 

in 1935 and remained at Maxwell Field on the school's faculty. 

Captain Kuter's lectures on bombardment aviation and 

employment of airpower predicted a 10,000-plane air force; this 

was achieved during World War II. He challenged his students to 

understand military doctrine to the extent that they could disagree 

and successfully argue their points. 

In 1939 Army chief of staff Gen George C. Marshall had junior 

officers assigned to the General Staff. Capt Larry Kuter-one of the 

junior officers selected-planned for the basic employment of 

airpower. 

In August of 1941 Major Kuter joined the team of former 

ACTS faculty that was preparing the Air Staffs response to a 

presidential tasking for wartime industrial and manpower 

requirements. The famous Air War Plans Division document 1 

(AWPD-1) set forth not only the numbers of aircraft and 

personnel but also presented a strategic bombardment plan that 

the team claimed could defeat Nazi Germany. 

In November of 1941 Major Kuter was assigned as the 

assistant secretary of the War Department General Staff. Within 

months he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and, then skip ping 

colonel, became the deputy chief of the Air Staff as a brigadier 

general. 
36 

England, he directed B17 bombing of Germany. He then served in 

North Africa until Field Marshal Erwin Rommel surrendered. In 

North Africa he came to appreciate the necessity for air 

superiority and the use of airpower to support surface operations. 

Returning to Washington, Major General Kuter participated in 

high-level, politico-military conferences in Quebec, Cairo, 

London, Yalta, and" Malta. His Airman at Yalta, published in 

1955, gives an account of the Yalta conference. At the end of 

World War II, Kuter was serving in the Pacific. Just after the war, 

he represented the United States at major civil aviation 

conferences in Montreal, London, Cairo, Lima, and Rio de 

Janeiro. 

From 1953 to 1955, Lieutenant General Kuter commanded Air 

University at Maxwell Air Force Base. He raised the Air 

Command and Staff School to the college level. He expanded the 

doctrinal emphasis of Air University, hoping to make it the brains 

of the Air Force as the Air Corps Tactical School had been in the 

1930s. He believed that Air War College students particularly had 

the potential for long-range planning and doctrinal research. To 

disseminate their work, he founded Air University Press in 1953. 

In 1955, with a promotion to general, he commanded the Far 

East Air Forces in Tokyo and its successor, Pacific Air Forces in 

Honolulu. He became the first commander of the Military Airlift 

Command in 1958. 

From 1959 until his retirement in 1962, General Kuter 

commanded the North American Air Defense Command. He 

fought to prevent downgrading of interceptor defenses, which 

were then being neglected because of the increasing Soviet 

nuclear-armed missile threat. 
Glenn Miller 

In 1942, when he voluntarily joined the armed forces, Glenn 

Miller (1904-44) was one of the country's most famous big band 

leaders. He had achieved a national reputation in 1939 with radio 

broadcasts of his dance orchestra's performances of such numbers 

as Pennsylvania 6-5000 and Chattanooga Choo Chao. Two years 

later, he and his big band made two Hollywood movies. 

Miller's intention on joining the services was to bring big band 

music to those serving in the armed forces. He ran into' an official 

prejudice against big band swing music because of a preference 

for traditional martial and orchestral music. 

From 7 to 31 December 1942, Captain Miller was assigned to 

Maxwell Field as assistant special services officer for the Army 

Air Forces Southeast Training Center. In that capacity he took 

trips to Arkansas and Tennessee to conduct performances. 

In Montgomery, he conducted and played for the Rhythmaires. Miller played his trombone several times with this 15-

37 
38 

clubs and at the aviation cadet and enlisted recreation halls. Miller 

also participated in at least two radio broadcasts, one for WAPI of 

Birmingham and another for WSFA as part of a national series 

about home front activities, in this case civil service women 

aircraft mechanics employed at Maxwell and Gunter fields. 

Skirting Army opposition, Miller began a weekly radio 

broadcast from New York in June 1943. The national success of 

this program-especially its recruiting value-allowed Miller to take 

his 50-piece Army Air Forces band to England the following 

summer. There he gave eight hundred popular performances. 

In December 1914 Miller was killed. Some mystery 

surrounded his death. The official explanation was that his plane 

was lost over the English Channel as he was going to Paris to 

entertain troops at Christmas. Recently, surviving members of a 

Royal Air Force bomber crew have come forward stating that 

after an aborted mission they jettisoned their bomb load, which 

fell on what they later learned was Miller's plane. 

General Eisenhower proclaimed Miller's music second only to 

letters from home as the greatest morale booster for his GIs. 

Jimmy Stewart, another aviator who visited Maxwell, starred in 

the 1954 Glenn Miller Story. The Montgomery-Glenn Miller 

connection is maintained by the Command Band of the Air Force 

Reserves' annual Glenn Miller Big Band concert at the 

Montgomery Civic Center. 
Clark Gable 

Clark Gable (1901-60) was a leading Hollywood actor. In late 

1939 Gable-who starred as Rhett Butler in Gone with the Windand his third wife, Carole Lombard, stayed overnight at the 

Whitley Hotel on Montgomery Street. When word of their arrival 

reached the newspapers, reporters descended on the hotel. The 

night clerk, however, would not disclose which room the Gables 

were occupying. The couple slipped away the next morning 

without being detected. A few weeks later, in January 1940, Gone 

with the Wind had its Alabama premier next door to the Whitley 

at the Paramount Theater, now the Davis Theater for Performing 

Arts. 

In 1942, following the death of Carole Lombard, he enlisted in 

the Army Air Forces. After Officer Candidate School (OCS), 

39 
40 

OCS recruiting film. 

One day while stationed at Maxwell (to gain an under- standing 

of Army Air Forces training), Captain Gable stopped by 

Shinbaum's (then located at 9-11 Commerce Street next door to 

the Exchange Hotel) to buy a uniform hat. Marvin Wilson, 

assistant manager of the tailor and uniform shop, said that a 

policeman had to hold the door closed to keep out the public who 

wanted to see the matinee idol. Wilson remarked to the famous 

actor that he enjoyed the actor's films. Gable thanked him, but 

said that there were more important things now. Although the 

“King of Hollywood" was personable, he did have a large head. 

Mr. Wilson said he was able to stretch a hat for a temporary fit, 

while a size 7 7⁄8 was ordered. 

Gable was next used to recruit aerial gunners. He attended 

gunnery school, earning his wings in 1943. In that year, he was 

assigned to the Eighth Air Force in England. He flew five combat 

missions in as many months. German fighters attacked his bomber 

formation three times. The gunner recruiting film, Combat 

America, was released in 1943. 

At the end of the war, Major Gable resigned his commission. 

In 1948 Gable starred as an Eighth Air Force commander in 

Command Decision, a film that is still used for leadership training 

by Air University. 
Ira C. Eaker 

41 

Ira Clarence Eaker (1896- 1987) 

was commissioned a second 

lieutenant of infantry in 1917. 

Within six months he decided he 

wanted to fly. Lieu- tenant Eaker 

received his pi- lot's wings in 1918. 

During the interwar years, 

Captain Eaker helped defend Brig 

Gen William "Billy" Mitchell in his

court martial for insubordination in 

1925; piloted one of the planes on 

the 22,065-mile Pan American 

goodwill trip of 1926-27; flew with 

others, such as Majors Henry H. 

"Hap" Arnold and Carl A. "Tooey" 

Spaatz, in 1929 on the trimotored 

Fokker that set an in-flight 

refueling endurance record of 150 hours (11,000 miles and 43 

aerial re-fueling, allover Los Angeles); and flew the first 

transcontinental instrument flight in 1936. 

His flying included somewhat more routine work: commanding 

two pursuit squadrons, commanding the Western Zone routes 

when the Air Corps carried the airmail in 1934, and participating 

in the Pacific naval maneuvers in 1935. 

During the interwar years, Eaker also furthered his education. 

He studied at the University of the Philippines (1920-21), 

Columbia Law School (1922-23), and the University of Southern 

California (1932-33). He took a degree in journalism from the 

last. 

In 1935-37, Major Eaker attended the Air Corps Tactical 

School at Maxwell Field and the Army Command and General 

Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. 

While together at school, Eaker and Hap Arnold wrote This 

Flying Game (1936), the first of three books they would write 

together. Winged Warfare, which stressed the need for a separate 
42 

duties and rewards of being a pilot, was published in 1942. 

I Rapid wartime promotions followed-colonel in December 

1941, brigadier general in February 1942, major general in 

September 1942, and lieutenant general in September 1943. His 

fourth star did not come until 1985, almost 38 years after he 

retired. These promotions-and Ira Eaker's place in history- rest on 

his two World War II combat commands. 

From 1942 until the end of 1943, he commanded US bombing 

efforts from Great Britain. An advocate of high-altitude daylight 

precision bombing as taught at the Air Corps Tactical School, 

Eaker insisted that the B-17 Flying Fortresses fly combat missions 

over Europe .(S they had been trained to do. In August 1942 

Eaker himself flew one of the aircraft in the first American 

bombing raid over Nazi-occupied France. Subsequently he flew 

bombing raids over Germany. The absence of adequate fighter 

escorts resulted in crippling bomber losses, especially in the large 

raids against Schweinfurt and Regensburg. Eaker, as commander 

of the Eighth Air Force, bore much of the blame. 

From 1944 to April 1945, he commanded the Allied Air Forces 

in the Mediterranean theater. Flying first from North Africa and 

then from Italy, his air assets were involved in many missions. 

They helped keep the sea lanes open, air dropped supplies to antiNazi partisans in the Balkans, bombed southern Germany and the 

Romanian oil field at Ploesti, and provided air support for 

landings in southern Italy and southern France. In August 1944 he 

personally flew a fighter supporting the invasion in southern 

France. 

After assignments as deputy commander of the Army Air 

Forces and chief of the Air Staff, Lieutenant General Eaker retired 

in 1947. He continued to write about defense posture. For 18 

years he wrote a syndicated column for more than 180 

newspapers. 

An exhibit in Air University's Ira C. Eaker College for 

Professional Development on Chennault Circle houses Eaker 

memorabilia.
43 

Noel F. Parrish 

Noel F. Parrish (1909-87) began his career in the Army Air 

Corps in 1930. He flew attack and air transport aircraft during the 

1930s. - 

In the summer of 1941, Parrish was at Maxwell Field planning 

for operations at Tuskegee (Alabama) Army Air Field, now 

Moten Field. He commanded the Tuskegee Army Flying School 

for black pilots. The federal government had established the 

civilian pilot training program at Tuskegee Institute in 1939. This 

flying training program, taught by two Auburn University 

aeronautical engineering professors, was so successful that 

Tuskegee became the first college in the South to have all its 

students pass their initial standardized commercial pilot's test. 

The Army Air Corps, however, refused to accept black aviation 

cadets. In 1940, over the objection of the National Association for 

the Advancement of Colored People (which wanted integrated 

flying training) but with the support of Tuskegee Institute (which 

favored the Air Corps's approach), a black pilot training program 

was established. In March 1941 Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt 

visited the newly completed air field and flew in a trainer piloted 

by a black flight instructor. 

Although Tuskegee's 99th Pursuit Squadron was criticized 

(even by some black civil rights leaders, who called it "the Jim 

Crow air corps"), its pilots amassed a fine combat record against 

the Italians and Germans. Capt Benjamin O. Davis Jr. was the 

squadron's commander and later became the first black general in 

the Air Force. 

After World War II, Colonel Parrish entered the first class of 

the Air War College (1946-47). His thesis, "The Segregation of 

Negroes in the Army Air Force," was based on his experiences 

commanding the Tuskegee Army Flying School. 

Subsequent assignments included deputy secretary of the Air 

Staff (1948-51), air deputy of the NATO Defense College in Paris 
44 

of the US European Command in Paris (1956-58). 

From 1958 to 1962 Brigadier General Parrish was again 

assigned to the Air Staff where he researched nuclear targeting 

against the Soviet Union. He concluded that targeting Soviet cities 

should be abandoned. The "no-cities" policy, expanded as the 

counterforce strategy, advocated restricting nuclear strikes to 

Soviet military targets. 

In 1962 General Parrish returned to Maxwell as director of the 

Aerospace Studies Institute. He retired in 1964. After retiring 

Parrish served as a visiting professor of military history at the Air 

War College. 

He earned BA. MA, and PhD degrees from Rice University 

and then taught military history at Trinity University in Texas. 

Professor Parrish wrote extensively for professional journals, 

including Aerospace Historian and Air University Review. 
George C. Kenney 

Canadian-born George Churchill 

"Little George" Kenney (1889-1977) 

studied civil engineering at the 

Massachusetts Institute of

Technology for three years before 

leaving to take a job with a Canadian 

railroad. In four years he was 

president of an engineering 

company. 

Two months after the United 

States entered World War I, he 

enlisted as a flying cadet in the Army

Signal Corps. In 1918 he completed 

his flight training in France and was commissioned a first 

lieutenant. During the 16 months Lieutenant Kenney served on 

the Western Front, he flew 27 combat missions and downed two 

German aircraft. Captain Kenney ended the war as the 

commander of his squadron. 

In 1921 he graduated from the Army Air Service Engineering 

School. In the mid-1920s he completed the Air Corps Tactical 

School (ACTS), which was then at Langley Field, Virginia, and 

the Army Command and General Staff School at Fort 

Leavenworth, Kansas. From 1927 to 1929 he instructed at ACTS 

where he became an advocate of attack aviation-or close air 

support and interdiction. 

Two years after completing the Army War College in 1933, 

Captain Kenney translated a French version of the essential points 

of the airpower ideas of Italian air theoretician Giulio Douhet. 

These ideas were to influence Air Corps thinking and 

congressional understanding of airpower potential. 

Captain Kenney jumped the grade of major, becoming a 

lieutenant colonel. In 1939, as the chief of production at Wright 

Field, Ohio, he was promoted to colonel. 

45 
46 

convinced that the United States lagged the major European 

powers in aeronautical technology and production. Returning to 

the United States, he continued his rapid rise: brigadier general in 

January 1941, major general the following month, and lieutenant 

general in October 1942. 

George Kenney's promotions rested on his performance as an 

aggressive, hard-working, and innovative officer. Moreover, he 

was capable of combining technical expertise with leader- ship to 

make things happen. His innovations include the following: lowlevel air strikes, machine guns mounted on the wings rather than 

the cowling, bulletproof cockpit glass, power turrets on bombers, 

improved oxygen systems, para- chute bombs, and anti-ship skipbombing. 

From 1942 to the end of World War II, General Kenney held 

several major command positions in the Southwest Pacific theater. 

As Gen Douglas MacArthur's air commander, General Kenney 

made MacArthur's island hopping strategy possible. 

General MacArthur said of Little George, "Of all the brilliant 

air commanders of the war, none surpassed him in those three 

essentials of combat leadership: aggressive vision, mastery of air 

tactics and strategy, and the ability to exact the maximum in 

fighting qualities from both men and equipment." 

After World War II, the most distinguished air commander in 

the war against Japan commanded the Pacific Air Command, 

1945-46, and the Strategic Air Command (SAC), 1946-48. 

Because of additional responsibilities, such as nine month’s 

assignment as senior US representative to the United Nations 

Military Staff Committee, and placing too much trust in his vice 

commander, General Kenney neglected SAC combat crew 

training. Consequently, he was replaced by Gen Curtis LeMay. 

General Kenney ended his 34-year career commanding Air 

University (1948-51). During this period he wrote two books: A 

Personal History of the Pacific War (1949) and The MacArthur I 

Know (1951).
47 

Paul W. Tibbets Jr. 

Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr. graduated from Western Military 

Academy in Illinois in 1933. He enlisted as an Air Corps aviation 

cadet in 1937, and graduated a year later as a pilot and second 

lieutenant. 

Although Tibbets began his World War II service flying antisubmarine patrol, his most significant achievements were as a 

bomber pilot. In 1942 he flew 25 B-17 combat missions with the 

Eighth Air Force. These missions included leading the first 

daylight Flying Fortress attack against Nazi-occupied Europe and 

leading the first heavy-bomb mission to support the invasion of 

North Africa. He flew Generals Dwight Eisenhower and Mark 

Clark on special missions. 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was especially impressed with 

Lieutenant Colonel Tibbets's raid against the Nazi base at Biserte, 

Tunisia, on Christmas Day 1942. Hap Arnold, commanding 

general of the Army Air Forces, called Colonel Tibbets "the best 

damned pilot in the Air Force." But his unique role in history was 

yet to come. 

In 1943 Tibbets returned to the United States to lead the B-29 

crew training program. A year later he was assigned to the atomic 

bomb program to organize and train the 509th Composite Group. 

Working with B-29 crew members who had no combat experience 

and with Manhattan Project scientists such as J. Robert 

Oppenheimer, Colonel Tibbets planned and practiced the 

procedures necessary to deliver the atomic bomb. 

Crew members trained in Nevada and Cuba before moving to 

the western Pacific island of Tinian in the Northern Marianas. 

Early in the morning of 6 August 1945, the 10-man crew of the 

Enola Gay (the B-29 named for Tibbets's mother) took off for the 

six-hour flight to Japan. 

At 30,000 feet over Hiroshima at 8:15 A.M., Maj Tom 

Ferebee, bombardier of "Special Bombing Mission 13," released 

the first atomic bomb used in warfare. Following procedures that 
48 

Enola Gay away from the falling 9,000-pound "Little Boy." 

After detonation the aircraft flew over the devastated city. 

Crew members took photographs with hand-held cameras to 

record the results of an explosion equal to 60,000 tons of TNT. 

On 15 August, Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of the 

Empire of Japan. 

After World War II, Colonel Tibbets was-a student in the first 

class of the Air Command and Staff School (1946-47). He served 

as a project officer testing the B-47 in Florida, and then returned 

to Maxwell to attend the Air War College (1953-54). 

In the years after the war, independent Air Force professional 

military education was in its infancy. Few officers qualified as 

instructors of airpower. Consequently, a great deal of 

responsibility for instruction rested on the students them- selves.. 

Most were combat veterans. Certainly Colonel Tibbets was 

among the leaders in this endeavor. 

From 1954 to 1956 he served as chief of the War Plans 

Division, Headquarters NATO, Paris. Subsequently he served as a 

bomb wing commander, as an air division commander, and in 

several positions in the Pentagon. 

Brigadier General Tibbets retired in 1966. 
Dale O. Smith 

49 

Dale O. Smith graduated 

from West Point in 1934. After 

earning his pilot's wings, he 

flew bombers in California, 

Arizona, Hawaii, and Virginia. 

He helped develop a 

bombing technique for the 

secret Norden bombsight, 

which proved critical to highaltitude, precision strategic 

bombing in World War II. 

During' the war Smith 

commanded a squadron of 

submarine hunters before he 

was assigned to command a 

bomb group in England. In that 

position he flew 31 combat missions in B-17s. 

After the war, Colonel Smith attended the second class of the 

Air War College (1947-48). He remained at Maxwell on the 

faculty. His specialty was airpower doctrine, or what the Air 

Force thought was the best way to conduct war. He believed 

doctrine was derived from ideas and concepts that, when officially 

approved by the Air Force, should be taught in professional 

military education schools and practiced in the field. He 

recognized that basic doctrine is almost timeless, but that other 

aspects of doctrine, especially those dependent on technical 

changes, are dynamic. 

In the early 1950s Colonel Smith was officially involved in the 

development of Air Force doctrine. During this period some of the 

Air Force's most distinguished general officers-Tooey Spaatz, Ira 

Eaker, Harold George, Larry Kuter, and Possum Hansellencouraged Smith to write a history of American military 

doctrine. US Military Doctrine: A Study and Appraisal was 
50 

University text. The pioneering work was nonparochial; it 

asserted that wars could be won only with coordinated military, 

naval, and air forces. Brigadier General Smith ended his service at 

Air University as director of education. 

In 1954 he was assigned to Washington to help support the 

National Security Council and then Air Force plans. Not only did 

he negotiate with Saudi Arabia about using Dhahran Air- field but 

was assigned as commander of the USAF air division there. From 

1958 to 1960 he commanded the air division on Okinawa. 

In 1961 Major General Smith served as a special assistant to 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff for arms control. This assignment was 

followed in 1963 by appointment as Air Force member of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staffs Strategic Survey Council. In this position 

General Smith forcefully criticized the Air Force's failure to keep 

its doctrine current. He believed that the Air Force's thinking was 

static-stuck in the past. 

Smith, like so many generals who, in their formative years 

before World War II, had served on the faculty of the Air Corps 

Tactical School, believed that true professionalism rested on a 

body of knowledge expressed as doctrine. By the early 1960s, 

with the dominance of nuclear weapons, emphasis on doctrine 

gave way to emphasis on technology. The folly of this approach 

was played out in Vietnam. 
51 

Hoyt S. Vandenberg 

Hoyt Sanford Vandenberg (1899-1954) graduated from West 

Point in 1923. His graduating order of merit (240th of 261 cadets) 

belied his potential and future distinguished service. 

Following pilot training in Texas, Lieutenant Vandenberg was 

assigned to the 3d Attack Group, which was pioneering the 

development of attack aviation. As one of the Air Corps's best 

attack pilots, he then served as flight instructor and commander of 

attack and pursuit aircraft units in California, Hawaii, and Texas. 

During the 1930s Vandenberg attended three professional 

military education schools: Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) at 

Maxwell Field (1934-35); Army Command and General Staff 

School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas (1935-36); and Army War 

College in Washington (1938-39). 

From 1936 to 1938, between the staff school and the war 

college, Captain Vandenberg served on the ACTS faculty as an 

instructor of pursuit plane tactics. He acquired a reputation as a 

"brain," but he had an even more useful talent. He was adept at 

harmonizing conflicting views-a talent that served him well 

throughout his career. At ACTS, he promoted team- work among 

formerly hostile advocates of pursuit and bomber airpower 

theories. 

A Headquarters Air Corps staff assignment followed his 

graduation from the Army War College. Maj Tooey Spaatz, a 

friend and staff college classmate, secured the staff assignment for 

him. Working on plans to expand the Army Air Corps in 

anticipation of the country's entry into the war in Europe, Major 

Vandenberg came to the notice of Maj Gen Hap Arnold, chief of 

the Air Corps. Being in the right place at the right time would be 

repeated with Gen Ike Eisenhower and Gen George Marshall. 

Colonel Vandenberg volunteered to leave Washington staff 

work. In 1942 he became Gen Jimmy Doolittle's chief of staff 

(1942-43). His planning for the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, 

and Italy earned him Eisenhower's approval and promotion to 
from North Africa-as copilot, observer, or gunner-over Tunisia, 

Italy, Sardinia, and Sicily. 

In late 1943 he served as senior airman in the US military 

mission to the Soviet Union and then, in Washington, helped plan 

the Allied invasion of Europe. In 1944 Major General 

Vandenberg rejoined Eisenhower's staff serving as deputy to Air 

Vice Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, who was commanding 

the Allied organization to provide air support for the Normandy 

invasion. 

General Marshall selected Vandenberg to command the Ninth 

Air Force-with some 400,000 men, the largest Air Force during 

the war. He directed air support for Gen Omar Bradley and Gen 

George Patton in the drive across Europe. In 19 months, the Ninth 

flew almost 400,000 missions, lost fewer than 3,000 planes, and 

destroyed 4,000 German planes in the air and on the ground (plus 

an unconfirmed 3,000 more enemy aircraft). On Eisenhower's

recommendation, Vandenberg was promoted to lieutenant 

general. 

52 
53 

planner, and commander. After the war, he served in the Pentagon 

until 1946, when President Harry Trumau selected him as the 

second director of the Central Intelligence Group (later the 

Central Intelligence Agency). 

Vandenberg returned to the Air Force in 1947 and in 1948 

became the second chief of staff of the United States Air Force. 

General Vandenberg served as the architect and builder of the 

newly created Air Force. He served during the Berlin airlift and 

the Korean War. He was instrumental in forming the Strategic Air 

Command and promoting development of fusion nuclear 

weapons. 'He promoted the concept of deterrence by strugglingusing his gift for diplomacy-against Congress and the Army and 

Navy to build a strategic air force so strong that no country would 

dare attack the United States. He did not, however, neglect the 

importance of tactical aviation. 

When General Vandenberg retired in 1953, the Air Force had 

assumed a central place in national defense. 
55 

Curtis E. LeMay 

Curtis Emerson LeMay (1905-90) entered aviation cadet 

training in 1928 after having studied civil engineering at Ohio 

State University. He received his wings the following year. 

He was first assigned to pursuit aircraft. He also completed his 

university degree, worked with the Civilian Conservation Corps, 

and flew the airmail. Believing that bombers would have a greater 

wartime impact than fighters, Lieutenant Le- May switched to 

bombers in 1936. He was recognized as the best navigator in the 

Air Corps. In 1937 and 1938 he demonstrated that ships at sea 

were vulnerable to detection by air- craft. From 1937 to 1938 

LeMay served with a flight of B-17 Flying Fortresses during a 

goodwill tour of South America. 

His studies at Maxwell Field's Air Corps Tactical School 

(1938-39) convinced him all the more of the future importance of 

aerial bombardment. 

On the eve of World War II, LeMay explored potential aircraft ferrying routes to Africa and England. Wartime promotions 

came rapidly, and by mid-1942 he was a colonel. He trained a 

bomb group in California and commanded it in England. Not only 

did he lead many combat missions, but more importantly he 

greatly improved bombing accuracy by requiring target study and 

by proving that straight-in bomb runs were more accurate and as 

safe, if not safer, than evasive bomb runs. As a brigadier general 

he led the Regensburg raid in 1943, launching from England, 

bombing in Germany, and recovering in North Africa. 

Promotion to major general preceded reassignment in midsummer 1944 to the China-Burma-India theater and then in early 

1945 to Guam in the Mariana Islands, where he led the XX 

Bomber Command. Lieutenant General LeMay discarded the 

high-altitude daylight precision bombing procedure that had 

generally been followed since it was promoted by the prewar Air 

Corps Tactical School. He stripped his B-29s of armaments to 

facilitate low-level nighttime, fire-bomb strikes against Japan. In 
industrial capacity; this attack has been called the single most 

destructive aerial raid in military history. Two of LeMay's B-29s 

dropped atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945. Gen Tooey 

Spaatz, the first Air Force chief of staff, called LeMay the greatest 

air combat commander of the war. 

After several postwar assignments in the United States, 

General LeMay assumed command of US Air Forces in Europe in 

1947. He organized air operations for the Berlin airlift. 

From 1948 to 1957, General LeMay commanded the Strategic 

Air Command (SAC). In a period when the United States 

increasingly relied on its nuclear deterrent, LeMay was SAC. He 

built new bases and training programs. In its early years, the 

command had long-range bombers with escort fighters; later it 

lost the fighters and acquired aerial refueling tanker aircraft. 

LeMay understood the possibilities of intercontinental ballistic 

missiles and planned for their development. 

As vice chief of staff of the Air Force from 1957 until 1961, he

was able to direct the missile and military space program. General 

LeMay concluded his military career as the chief of staff of the 

56 
57 

disagreed with defense decisions of Secretary of Defense Robert 

McNamara and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen 

Maxwell Taylor, both Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon 

Johnson extended his initial two-year term as Air Force chief of 

staff. 

Because he was concerned about America's shift toward 

socialism and the course of events in Vietnam, LeMay ran as 

George Wallace's vice-presidential candidate in 1968. The 

American Independent Party candidates received 13 percent of the 

popular votes. 
Muir S. Fairchild 

Muir Stephen "Santy" 

Fairchild (1894-1950) began 

his military career in 1916 as a 

sergeant in the Washington 

National Guard. The following 

year he became a flying cadet 

in California, but finished his 

training in Europe where he 

was commissioned in 1918. He 

then flew bombers on the 

Western Front. 

After the war, he held 

several engineering 

assignments before 

participating in the Pan 

American goodwill tour to 

South America in 1926-27. President Calvin Coolidge awarded 

the eight pilots of this four-month tour the first Distinguished 

Flying Cross. This honor was one of the few times in a 

distinguished career that Fairchild received public notice or 

acclaim. 

In the 1930s he graduated from the Air Corps Tactical School 

(ACTS), Army Industrial College, and Army War College before 

returning to Maxwell Field as an instructor and later as director of 

air tactics and strategy at ACTS. In this position he became an 

expert in strategic studies. He was a well-read gentleman and 

relished including allusions to Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, and 

William Shakespeare in his conversation and teaching. 

The Maxwell assignment led naturally to the plans division in 

Washington and then to selection as secretary of the Air Staff in 

1941. This was followed by other highly influential Washington 

assignments. He was able to promote the air- power theories he 

had studied and helped form at Maxwell and protect airpower 

59 
potential role in warfare. 

In 1946 he became the first commandant of the newly formed 

Air University, an institution he planned to be both the mind and 

the heart of the Air Force. Two years later with his selection as

vice chief of staff of the Air Force, he achieved four-star rank. 

General Fairchild died on duty in Washington in 1950. 

In more than three decades of service, Santy Fairchild guarded

his privacy while he helped mold the Air Force. He is now 

appropriately recognized. The Air University Library, the main 

academic building at the Air Force Academy, and Fairchild Air 

Force Base, Spokane, Washington, are named in honor of General 

Fairchild. 

60 
Earle E. Partridge 

61 

Earle E. "Pat" Partridge 

(1900-90) served as an enlisted 

man in the Saint-Mihiel and 

Argonne offensives in 1918. 

After World War I, he was 

discharged and then studied for 

a year at Norwich University, 

Vermont. 

He graduated from West

Point in 1924 with a 

commission as a second 

lieutenant in the Air Service. 

After earning his pilot's wings, 

he remained at Kelly Field, Texas, as a flying instructor. 

Assignments teaching mathematics at West Point and flying in 

the Canal Zone and Michigan followed. By 1935 Captain 

Partridge was a test pilot at Wright Field, Ohio. He completed 

both the Air Corps Tactical School at Maxwell Field and the 

Army Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, 

Kansas, before World War II. 

In 1940 he was promoted to major, instructed student pilots at 

Maxwell, and helped establish flying schools at Barksdale Field, 

Louisiana, and Dothan, Alabama. He left Maxwell, how- ever, 

before the Air Corps Tactical School was closed in 1942 and the 

Army Air Forces Eastern Flying Training Command began 

training in earnest. (Maxwell trained 2,653 B-24 and 728 B-29 

crews, in addition to 100,000 aviation cadets.) 

From November 1941 until December 1942, Lieutenant 

Colonel and then Colonel Partridge worked in Washington at 

Army Air Forces headquarters followed by service on the War 

Department General Staff. From the spring of 1942 until January 

1944, Brigadier General Partridge held several positions in 

Northwest African Air Forces. Major General Partridge next 
62 

not only by his own country, but also by Britain, France, Belgium, 

and Poland. 

Following a postwar tour in the Pentagon, General Partridge 

went to Japan in 1948 as commander of the Fifth Air Force. He 

still held that command when the Korean War broke out in 1950. 

Partridge moved the Fifth to Korea in the summer. By December 

1950 the prewar border between North and South Korea had been 

reestablished near the 38th parallel. 

The following April he was promoted to lieutenant general and 

returned to the United States as commander of the Air Research 

and Development Command in Maryland. (On 11 April President 

Harry Truman relieved Gen Douglas MacArthur as the UN 

commander in Korea and replaced him with Gen Matthew B. 

Ridgway.) In 1954 Partridge was awarded his fourth star and 

returned to Japan as commander of the Far East Air Forces. 

From 1955 until his retirement in 1959, Gen Pat Partridge 

served as commander in chief of the Continental Air Defense 

Command in Colorado. 
63 

Glenn O. Barcus 

After graduating from the University of Illinois, Glenn Oscar 

Barcus began his Army career in the cavalry in 1925. Then he 

entered flying training and completed primary, and advanced 

flying training by 1927. His early career was in pursuit air- craft, 

interspersed with tours as a flying instructor and as an intelligence 

officer. In 1939 Barcus completed Air Corps Tactical School at 

Maxwell Field. 

At the beginning of World War II he commanded a fighter 

squadron, then helped form the Interceptor Command in Trinidad. 

This was followed quickly by promotion to colonel and 

assignment as deputy director of air defense for the Army Air 

Forces. In 1944 Brigadier General Barcus assumed command of a 

fighter wing in Italy and then a tactical air command in France. 

Following World War II he held several command positions 

including the Fifth Air Force in Korea during the Korean conflict. 

He was noted for his analysis of aerial operations and was highly 

decorated. He was also noted for taunting communist pilots with 

'This is Barcus; come and get me" as he flew just south of the 

Yalu River, the boundary that American pilots were forbidden to 

cross. 

He subsequently served as commander of the Air Training 

Command in Texas and as commander in chief of the North-east 

Air Command in Newfoundland. 

From 1957 to 1960, the final three years of his career, 

Lieutenant General Barcus served as chief of staff of the US 

European Command headquartered in Paris. 
Nathan F. Twining 

Although the son of a predominantly Navy family, 

Nathan Farragut Twining 

(1897-1982) served as a 

corporal and sergeant on the 

Mexican border until mid1917, when he entered West 

Point. The following year he 

graduated from an abbreviated 

war- time course. 

In the interwar period, he 

attended Infantry School at 

Fort Benning, Georgia. In 1924 he Gen Nathan S. Twining earned 

his pilot's wings and began to gain fighter and attack flying 

experience. In the mid-1930s, Captain Twining attended the Air 

Corps Tactical School at Maxwell Field and the Army Command 

and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. 

During World War II, outstanding officers had opportunities 

for promotion that are unknown during peacetime. Twining 

advanced from major at the beginning of the war to lieutenant

general at war's end. During this time he served in staff positions 

at air force headquarters and command positions in the South 

Pacific. Major General Twining's B-17 was shot down off the 

New Hebrides and he spent six days in a life raft before being 

rescued by the Navy. 

As commanding general of the Fifteenth Air Force in Italy, he

planned the 1943 bombing of the Nazi-held Balkans, including 

the oil refineries at Ploesti, Romania. At the end of the war in 

Europe, he was commander of Mediterranean Allied Strategic Air 

Forces. 

After World War II, Twining served as commander of the Air 

Materiel Command and the Alaskan Air Command. Following 

service as vice chief of staff of the Air Force, he was selected by 

65 
66 

W. Radford as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General 

Twining was the first Air Force officer to serve as chairman of the 

JCS. 

Because he and President Eisenhower agreed on the primary 

role of nuclear forces (John Foster Dulles' massive retaliation 

doctrine), General Twining was able to convert the Air Force to 

jet aircraft and develop ballistic missiles. 

General Twining, however, had views on the use of nuclear 

weapons that were incompatible with those who advocated 

tailoring the national politico-military response to the type of 

threat. For example, in 1954 few agreed with Twining, who 

advocated using nuclear weapons to relieve French troops 

besieged by the Vietnamese communists at Dien Bien Phu. 

Rather than compromise his opposition to Gen Maxwell 

Taylor's flexible response doctrine, which he anticipated would be 

adopted by the United States, he resigned as chairman in 

September 196Q-before John F. Kennedy won the presidential 

election and adopted a strategy of options. General Twining was 

one of the few American officers in American history to resign 

because he could not support government policies. 
Thomas S. Power 

Thomas S. Power (1905-

70) earned his pilot's wings 

and commission in 1929. 

Three years later he was a 

flight commander in a bomb

squadron at Langley Field, 

Virginia. 

He then administered the 

Civilian Conservation Corps 

in New Hampshire. In 1934 he 

flew the airmail when the task 

was temporarily assigned to 

the Air Corps. From 1935 

until 1938 Captain Power flew 

with a bomb squadron in the 

Philip- pines. In 1940 he 

completed the Air Corps 

Tactical School at Maxwell Field. 

Early in World War II, Power served as assistant operations 

officer for the Western Command Army Air Forces Training 

Center near San Francisco, inspector of the Flying Training 

Center at Fort Worth, commander of a bomb group in Kansas, and 

chief of operations for the Second Air Force at Colorado Springs. 

It was not until January 1944, when he began flying B-24 

Liberator combat missions in North Africa and Italy, that Colonel 

Power served in a theater of war. 

In August 1944 he returned to Colorado Springs to command 

the 314th Bomb Wing and relocate it to Guam in the Marianas. In 

1945 Brigadier General Power planned and led B-29 Superfortress raids on Japan. On 9 March, 334 B-29s dropped 

incendiary bombs on Tokyo. This raid, which has been called one 

of the single most devastating attacks in military history, was 

followed by raids on other Japanese industrial cities. General 

67 
68 

operations of the US Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific. 

In the summer of 1946, he participated in the atomic tests at 

Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Operation Cross- roadswhich involved 42,000 people, 251 ships, and 156 aircraft-was the 

first postwar atmospheric atomic test. Three bombs, one half of 

the country's stockpile, were detonated to collect scientific data on 

the effects of atomic weapons. The results were used to determine 

the effects of radiation and assist in designing surface weapons 

systems for a new age of warfare. 

After several other assignments, including air attaché to 

London in 1948, he was promoted to major general and be- came 

the vice commander of the Strategic Air Command, a position he 

held until 1954. From 1954 until 1957, Lieutenant General Power 

led the Air Research and Development Command. From 1957, 

when he succeeded Gen Curtis LeMay, until his retirement in 

1964, General Power served as commander in chief, Strategic Air 

Command. 
69 

John D. Lavelle 

Numerous graduates of Air University's professional military 

education schools attain star rank. The performance of a few, 

unfortunately, has not been consistently stellar. 

John Daniel Lavelle (1916-79) enlisted as an Army Air Corps 

aviation cadet in 1939, the year after his graduation from John 

Carroll University. In 1940 he received both his pilot wings and a 

commission as a second lieutenant. 

Before flying as a fighter pilot in the European theater, he 

served as a flying instructor, squadron commander, and director of 

flying in Texas. Like so many of his generation, he rose rapidlyfrom second lieutenant in 1940 to colonel in 1951. 

After World War II, Lavelle held a series of highly responsible 

positions in supply, including negotiations with the Army 

regarding division of assets when the Air Force was established in 

1947 and reorganization of the Far East supply sys- tem during 

the Korean War. After the Korean War, Colonel Lavelle's 

assignments were in the Military Air Transport Service, the 

command responsible for worldwide airlift of troops and supplies. 

He attended Air War College (AWC) in 1956-57. As with so 

many other AWC graduates, he was then assigned to Air Force 

headquarters in the Pentagon, serving there for five years. 

Following important assignments in Europe and again in 

Washington, in 1970 he was introduced to the war in South- east 

Asia as vice commander of Pacific Air Forces. 

In 1971 he assumed command of the Seventh Air Force in 

South Vietnam. Up to this point, Lavelle's star had been rising. A 

year later he was relieved of his command, forced to retire, and 

reduced in grade from general to major general. 

General Lavelle allegedly disobeyed orders regarding combat 

rules of engagement. Contrary to political limitations, he 

instructed his pilots to fire on the enemy before being fired uponand to falsify records to misrepresent the fact. Apparently, 
70 

aircrews, and aircraft. Like all commanders he faced the dilemma 

of balancing requirements of his troops and his mission. He chose 

his troops and unilaterally chose to change his mission and 

disregard the commands of his superiors. He failed to understand 

that in the final analysis, war is a political conflict, not a strictly 

military one. 

Shortly after General Lavelle was fired, the North Vietnamese 

attempted a conventional armored land invasion of South 

Vietnam. Political restrictions were removed, and pilots were 

ordered to use airpower as Lavelle had previously directed. 

General Lavelle's command decisions will continue to be studiedas they are in Maxwell's professional military education schoolsbut there is no question that in the United States, military 

authorities are subordinate to civil authority and the rule of law. 
71 

Khaled bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz 

Beginning with French and British Commonwealth airmen in 

the early 1940s, officers of allied countries have trained in 

Montgomery. Up to 250 international officers are students at 

Maxwell each year. Since 1988, 249 of these officers have 

achieved the highest position in their services. 

His Royal Highness Prince Khaled bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz 

(1949- ), nephew of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, attended the Air 

War College in 1979-80. 

He began his military training at the Royal Military Academy 

at Sandhurst, England, and completed that two-year course in 

1968. During his 25-year military career that followed Sandhurst, 

he devoted two and a half years to pursue professional military 

education in the United States. In 1979 he graduated from the 

Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, 

Kansas. This stint was followed al- most immediately by the Air 

War College (1979-80) and, in the fall of 1980, a three-month 

course on international defense management at the US Navy 

Postgraduate School at Monterey, California. 

While a student in the Air War College (AWC), Prince Khaled 

attended Auburn University at Montgomery (AUM) , earning a 

master's degree in political science in 1980. He has stated that 

attending AWC during the day and AUM in the evenings required 

him to work 15-17 hours a day. Completing both pro- grams did 

not prevent him from being named an AWC distinguished 

graduate. 

In 1988, Prince Khaled endowed an academic chair at AUM: 

the Khaled bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Eminent Scholar in Political 

Science and International Policy. 

General Khaled was appointed the commander of the Royal 

Saudi Air Defense Forces in 1986. Already Saudi Arabia's 

authority on missiles, he secretly traveled to China where he 

purchased surface-to-surface missiles that were to comprise the 

kingdom's strategic missile force. 
72 

military career as the commander of the Joint Arab Forces and the 

theater of operations during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War. His 

command paralleled that of Gen Norman H. Schwarzkopf, the 

American commander. 

Aware that Saudi contributions to the successful outcome of 

the Persian Gulf War were not well known in the West, Prince 

Khaled wrote Desert Warrior: A Personal View of the Gulf War 

by the Joint Forces Commander. 

Prince Khaled, born to a station that would have allowed him 

to live a life of luxury, chose to serve. He was guided by 

Sandhurst's motto, "Serve to lead," and by a line from an Arab 

poem, "He who dares not climb mountains will spend his life in 

the pits." 
John A. Warden 

John A. Warden III (1943- ) 

came to Maxwell at the end of 

his career. Within weeks of becoming commandant of the Air 

Command and Staff College, he 

revolutionized the school's 

approach to educating mid-career 

officers about warfare at the 

operational or theater level. 

John Warden's Air Force 

career began as a "doolie," an Air 

Force Academy freshman. In 

1965 he graduated with a BS in national security affairs and a 

commission as a second lieutenant. Like most Air Force Academy 

graduates of his generation, he then attended pilot training. 

After a two-year assignment flying F-4Ds in North Carolina, 

Lieutenant Warden was assigned to Vietnam where he flew OV10s as a forward air controller supporting Army operations. After 

266 combat missions in Vietnam and over the Ho Chi Minh Trail 

in Laos, he returned to F-4s-this time in Spain. 

In 1974-75 Warden earned a master's degree in political 

science from Texas Tech University. His first Pentagon 

assignment followed. Officers working in plans are generally 

some of the finest. Warden, in the Middle East and Africa 

Division of the Directorate of Plans, was involved in establishing 

the forerunner of the Central Command-the joint command 

responsible for the Middle East. Subsequently, he returned to the 

cockpit and to an operational role. 

As a National War College student (1985-86) Colonel Warden wrote The Air Campaign, a book that has enjoyed success 

inside and outside of the politico-military sphere. The book, 

which deals with forming theater campaign plans that conform to 

73 
74 

widely used in professional military education. 

The Air Campaign propounds theories similar to those of the 

strategic bombing advocates of the Air Corps Tactical School 

(ACTS) in the 1930s. Unlike his predecessors, however, Colo- nel 

Warden advocated attacking the will of the enemy's leader- ship, 

rather than the enemy's industrial infrastructure. Practically, 

however, the enemy's will is attacked by destroying his physical 

resources. 

An assignment as commander of a tactical fighter wing in 

Germany followed the war college and preceded an inevitable 

return to the Pentagon. In 1988 he was appointed as the Air 

Force's deputy director for strategy, doctrine, and plans. 

Like his ACTS predecessors, war/made it possible to put his 

airpower theories to the test. Colonel Warden and his staff built 

the foundation for the Allied air campaign in the Persian Gulf 

War. The campaign plan itself, and especially Warden's assertion 

that airpower dominates surface force, precipitated doctrinal 

debate within the politico-military community. Al- though the 

details of air tasking were accomplished in the theater of war, 

rather than by his plans group in the Pentagon, Colonel Warden's 

vision of a strategic air campaign prevailed. 

After the Persian Gulf War, Colonel Warden was selected to be 

a special assistant to Vice President Daniel Quayle. In this 

capacity he worked to improve American commercial 

competitiveness, to realize the communications potential of the 

electronic age, and to promote the concept of quality management 

inside and outside the government. 

In August 1992, Colonel Warden became the commandant of 

the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell. Within weeks he 

had devised a test program to radically alter the academic 

approach of that school. He introduced state-of-the- art computer 

programs and a very demanding professional reading requirement. 

Colonel Warden's legacy through ACSC students will certainly 

exceed even that of his contributions to victory in the Gulf War. 
75 

thousands of other military retirees, he has made his home in 

Montgomery. Not surprisingly, the management and education 

consulting firm he has founded focuses on quality and on using 

computer technology. 
Henry H. Shelton 

77 

Henry Hugh Shelton was 

commissioned a second lieutenant 

from North Carolina State 

University's Army Reserve 

Officer Training Corps program

in 1966. 

He served two tours in 

Vietnam: from 1966-67 as a 

Green Beret or Special Forces 

platoon leader and 1969-70 as an 

intelligence and operations 

officer. 

While attending Air Command 

and Staff College at Maxwell in 1972-73, Capt Hugh Shelton 

earned a master's degree in political science at Gen Henry 

Shelton, chairman, Joint Auburn University at Montgomery. He 

has said that "personal and professional achievements can only be 

attained when an individual acquires the proper tools for success. 

For me the tools have been a combination of education and 

dedication." 

During his career, General Shelton has served as an infantry 

staff officer in Hawaii, an infantry operations officer in 

Washington state, a deputy director for operations on the Joint 

Staff in the Pentagon, an infantry battalion commander in 

Washington state, and a brigade commander in the 82d Airborne 

Division. 

During the Persian Gulf War, as assistant division commander 

for operations with the 101st Airborne Division, he commanded 

helicopter forces. 

In 1994 Lieutenant General Shelton served as commander of 

the 82d Airborne Division before becoming the Joint Task Force 

Commander for Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti, Following 

that assignment he became commanding general of the United 
78 

47,000 Army, Navy, and Air Force special operations troops. 

On 1 October 1997, General Shelton became the chairman of 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the president's top military advisor. 

Selection of an officer with an unconventional back- groundspecial operations-is unusual. It does, however, reflect a radical 

reorientation in the world's politico-military affairs following the 

end of the cold war. 
They Served Here 

Thirty-Three Maxwell Men 

Air University Press Team 

Chief Editor 

Thomas C. Lobenstein 

Copy Editor 

Pat Richards 

Lula Barnes 

Book Design and Cover Art 

L. Susan Fair 

Composition and 

Prepress Production 

Linda C. Colson