The Brainchild

Most generals are handed their commands. Bob Burns more or less invented his. Frustrated by the way the Air Force trained its fighter pilots, he proposed a fix — and because the fix was his idea, he was given the new command it created. It is the clearest example in his whole career of getting promoted for thinking.

Haphazard Training

By the early 1960s Bob was assistant Deputy for Operations at the headquarters of Air Defense Command in Colorado Springs — where he also pinned on his first star, Brigadier General. From that desk he could see a problem clearly. Every time a fighter squadron got a new pilot, that squadron had to train him up to “combat ready” itself, for the F-101, F-102, and F-106 interceptors. Scattered across the country in wildly different weather, the results were uneven.

“With varying weather conditions around the country, training was a haphazard matter.”

Two Surplus Bases

His solution was a consolidation. Training Command wanted to be rid of two bases — Tyndall, on the Florida panhandle, and Perrin, in Texas. Bob proposed taking them over and centralizing all of it: F-101 and F-106 training at Tyndall, F-102 at Perrin. Standardized, and faster than any squadron could manage on its own.

“I proposed to my boss that we take over two bases from Training Command, Tyndall and Perrin… The idea was bought and since this had been my brainchild, I was given the command of the 73rd Air Division with my headquarters at Tyndall.”

Given the Command

That is the whole arc, in one sentence: he had the idea, the idea was bought, and he got to run it. The Air Force stood up the 73rd Air Division at Tyndall to do exactly what he’d sketched, and named him its commander — with Perrin’s F-102 operation under him as well. The job came with a personal aircraft he adored.

“Shortly after moving to Tyndall, I got a new T-39, a small twin jet six passenger airplane. I think that the T-39 was about as delightful an airplane as I ever flew.”

(The T-39 would carry him on the cross-country flight that is its own story.)

The Stage for Everything After

The command he built for himself became the platform for the rest of his career’s high points. It was as commander of the 73rd Air Division at Tyndall that he handled his base’s role in the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, and from Tyndall that he would rise to Major General before shipping out to Karachi. A reorganization he scribbled at a headquarters desk gave him a star’s worth of responsibility and the best little airplane he ever flew — and put him, by his own design, exactly where the next decade of his life would happen.