Entered Service: 1924

Elwood R. Quesada entered the Army Air Service as a flying cadet in 1924. In 1927, he received a Regular Army commission and reported to Bolling Field in Washington. The runways at Bolling Field were full of aircraft flown by some of the most innovative thinkers in the Army Air Corps. There Quesada joined Maj. Carl "Tooey" Spaatz and Capt. Ira Eaker in developing air-to-air refueling.

On Jan. 1, 1929, a three-engine Fokker C-2A rose into the air from Metropolitan Airport in Los Angeles. It did not land again until Jan. 6. Quesada, Spaatz and Eaker shared piloting duties aboard the plane, dubbed the "Question Mark." Throughout their five days aloft, the Fokker crew took in fuel from a Douglas C-1C that passed a hose in flight ' as well as oil, water and food. In all, the Fokker crew made 37 mid-air transfers and flew more than 11,000 nonstop miles. Today, air-to-air refueling is almost routine. The United States bases the B-2 bomber in Missouri, knowing that no spot on the globe is too far away thanks to inflight refueling. This started with the flight of the Question Mark.

But Quesada's larger contribution came during World War II. Even before the war, Quesada had been thinking of the importance of air power. But where others looked to strategic bombing, Quesada concentrated on the tactical application of air power. During classes at Maxwell Field, Ala., and at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., Quesada began to build the concept of close air support. He predicted the next war would require "all sorts of arrangements between the air and the ground, and the two will have to work closer than a lot of people think or want."

In October 1943, Quesada went to England and assumed command of the 9th Fighter Command and readied that unit for the Normandy invasion. During the build-up and breakout that followed the invasion, Quesada was at his best. He placed forward air observers with divisions on the ground, and they could call for air support. He mounted radios in tanks so ground commanders could contact pilots directly. He pioneered the use of radar to vector planes during attacks. This was particularly helpful during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, when bad weather hid many German targets.

The air-ground apparatus he put together was the best in the world. After the war, he was the first commander of TAC ' the Tactical Air Command. He moved the headquarters from Tampa, Fla., to Langley Air Force Base, Va., so he could be close to the headquarters of the Army Ground Forces. When the Air Force became a separate service in 1947, he went along as a lieutenant general.