Publisher's Synopsis
This volume is a unique and concise career compilation of the military and civilian leadership of the Headquarters USAF from its founding in 1947 to 2000. In addition to recording the individual career summaries of the secretaries and chiefs of staff of the United States Air Force, this work tracks the various issues that confronted the Headquarters leadership through its half-century of existence. Also included are the officially designated portraits of the secretaries and chiefs and brief biographies of the artists who created them. The leaders profiled here came from different backgrounds and diverse fields of training. Included within the secretariat professions are engineers, industrialists, financiers, lawyers, and scientists. The military chiefs came from all walks of life and from all sections of the country-the sons of doctors, teachers, and people in myriad other professions, and from families with and without traditions of military service. Over the decades these civilian and military leaders faced a number of recurring problems, particularly those involving budgetary, personnel, and weapons system acquisition matters. The secretaries and chiefs of staff of the Air Force were instrumental in developing policies to deal with the post-World War II retrenchment of personnel and equipment in the late 1940s; the post-Korean War spending cuts in the mid-1950s; the resurgence of defense spending following the launch of Sputnik and the start of the Vietnam War; the post-Vietnam War "Hollow Force" Air Force of the late 1970s; the crest of President Ronald Reagan's defense spending effort to terminate the Soviet "evil empire"; and the peace dividends of the late 1980s and early 1990s at the end of the Cold War. Although these issues are not resolved definitively here, the divergent solutions of the Headquarters USAF staff to these similar problems are tracked vividly. Aspiring future leaders of the Air Force would do well to peruse these pages to identify the character traits, youthful experience, and professional assignments that carried these people to the peaks of their professions.
