I have no idea what Creech liked about me. We were certainly never what I would call friends, or even had very much in common, other than a love for flying and the Air Force (Creech loved the joy of being a fighter pilot). So I avoided him as much as possible, and in the beginning, I even fought what he was trying to do. But when I realized he was actually showing us how to succeed and that is exactly what we wanted to do, I became one of his biggest advocates.

For his part, he was often very hard on me (which was good for me), and he was a giant pain in the ass (because he kept after details). Yet he gave me prime but challenging jobs, then made sure I worked my ass off. And in those jobs we did work hard to improve things—to have better-looking jets, cleaner facilities, and to take control of our own lives rather than ask for help without doing anything to make things better on our own hook. As the same time, I never tried to suck up to him and tried to be honest and admit mistakes to him I did not need to reveal. Though I think he liked that, I didn’t actually do it to impress him. That is just my way.

In the end, I think he judged me on the scorecard of our accomplishments, based on his awareness of what my NCOs thought of how I was doing. But I will never know.

★ By the time Horner and Creech met, Creech was starting to make his presence felt. One of Creech’s notable qualities was his ability to know virtually everything going on in his command. He was simply a powerful listener (“You’ve got to get your ear down at the other end of the pipe,” he liked to say); he was always on the phone, or taking trusted sergeants and officers aside to get the straight story. His network of such people was vast. Thus, he was well informed about the situation at the 58th Fighter Wing when Colonel Chuck Horner first arrived there.

The immediate challenge at the 58th was that the wing was so large, encompassing F-104s, F-4s, F-15s, and F-5s, that it had to be split in two. Horner was to be the commander of one of these new wings, which he assumed would be the one containing F-4s and F-104s. Meanwhile, he assumed that the existing wing commander, Pete Kemp, who was current in the F-15, would get the far more modern F-15/F-5 wing.

Since the F-4s and F-104s were far older than the F-5s and F15s and needed better maintenance leadership, Horner worked hard to find the best possible people for those aircraft. He wanted the best for his wing.