The Pentagon Job
After the Tennessee Air National Guard and a brief assignment in Norfolk, Bob arrived at the Pentagon around 1950 for his first major staff job. His old classmate Jim Gunn, who worked there, had found him a house next door to his own. The job that came with the posting was not what Bob had hoped for.
"I found that I was the chief of the Special Services branch of Air Force Personnel. This office had responsibility for such essentials as base libraries, hobby shops, and interservice sports contests such as golf and other meets. This was my introduction to a staff job, and had nothing in common with airplanes. As you may have guessed, I wasn't at all happy with the job."
Base libraries and hobby shops were a long way from group command in the Eighth Air Force. But the Special Services branch had one assignment that turned out to be anything but ordinary.
The Tour
"But it was while I was there, that I was able to put together the troupe of Grand Ole Opry people and took them on a Thanksgiving tour of bases in Europe. The tour was about three weeks long and, while interesting in many respects, was also a thorn in the side because of the intense rivalry between them for top billing. The prime example was the ill feeling between Roy Acuff and another big name that I forget. But I did get them back to Nashville with no bloodshed. The easiest of the group to get along with were Hank Williams and Rod Brassfield, a comic."
Roy Acuff was the King of Country Music — the dominant force in Nashville and the Grand Ole Opry since the late 1930s. Rod Brassfield was a country comedian, the kind of performer who kept the show moving between the headliners. And Hank Williams — who had just exploded into national fame with "Lovesick Blues" in 1949 and was at that moment one of the most popular performers in America — was, according to Bob, simply the easiest one to get along with.
Hank Williams in 1950 was at the peak of his powers: "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," "Cold, Cold Heart," "Hey Good Lookin'," and dozens of other songs were either already recorded or being written. He was 27 years old. He would be dead within three years, on January 1, 1953. Bob spent three weeks in Europe with him.
The Logistics
The tour meant moving a troupe of country music performers — with their instruments, their personalities, and their professional rivalries — from American base to American base across postwar Europe, in a C-54 Skymaster out of Andrews Air Force Base. Three weeks of performances at bases that had been putting Americans back together since the end of the war, now standing watch at the beginning of the Cold War.
Bob's summary — "I did get them back to Nashville with no bloodshed" — is a dry and very Bob line. The feud between Acuff and the unnamed other "big name" was evidently a running irritant through three weeks in close quarters, mitigated by Hank Williams and Rod Brassfield being good company.
What Came Next
A year in Special Services was enough. Bob learned that a job was opening up in the Requirements Division — the office that decided what aircraft the Air Force needed. The man leaving was Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay.
"I met him and he was glad to recommend me to the Division head and I got that job."
From base libraries and a Grand Ole Opry tour to strategic aircraft requirements: the Pentagon, for Bob, was at least varied.
From the Flight Records
From the recordsSometimes corroboration is an absence: his November 1950 page is nearly empty, consistent with three weeks shepherding Roy Acuff and Hank Williams around Europe in someone else’s airplane. (Form 5 scans for 1948–1959 are pending image extraction from the source PDFs.)
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