Word: quesada
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Notwithstanding his brash independence, Quesada ably fulfilled his jobs in the demanding years that followed. He was commanding general, Twelfth Fighter Command in Africa, deputy commander Northwest African Coastal Air Force, and before D-day took over the Ninth Fighter Command. On D-day plus one, Quesada landed his own P-38 fighter plane on the Normandy beach ("My first step was not on European soil-it was on a dead German...
...Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower piggyback in the cockpit of a P-51 and took him on a go-minute ride along the beachhead ("Eisenhower was very pleased, but we both caught hell from the Joint Chiefs of Staff"). During the great armored-tank drive across Europe, Quesada's Ninth Tactical Air Command, rather than troops, became Lieut. General George Patton's "right flank": he had put a fighter pilot in each of Patton's lead tanks "so that we would have quick communications with fighter pilots. I wanted somebody in those tanks who could talk fighter...
Regulating the Regulations. His no-nonsense attitude about the job was loudly evident from the start of Quesada's service with FAA. Right off, he told a black-tie dinner at the National Aviation Club in Washington about his plans for the Air Age and his awareness of the dangers. "There is a lot to learn in Washington about cannibals," he informed a big audience packed with Congressmen, Senators and blue-ribbon aviation-industry executives, "but I don't intend to be chewed . . . I don't intend to get caught in Washington like the girl with...
...Pete Quesada moved too fast to get caught. The biggest barrier to positive federal control of aviation, he found, was bureaucratic inertia, in which "the regulator was regulating to meet the needs of the regulated, and without due regard to the needs of the public." He solved that with a personnel shakedown and then began his massive attack. In quick time, Quesada...
...agreement from Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Curt LeMay that permits FAA civilian flight inspectors to take the Strategic Air Force's big-plane jet training at Castle AFB in California. Result: 14 have become qualified, a dozen more are in training. (Quesada himself has been checked out in the Air Force's KC-135, military version of the 707; on business flights, however, he usually pilots one of FAA's T-33 jets or borrows a fighter from the Air Force or the Navy...