This book explores the relationship between cities and their commercial airports. These vital transportation facilities are locally owned and managed and civic leaders and boosters have made them central to often expansive economic development dreams, including the construction of architecturally significant buildings. However, other metropolitan residents have paid a high price for the expansion of air transportation, as battles over jet aircraft noise resulted not only in quieter jet engine technologies, but profound changes in the metropolitan landscape with the clearance of both urban and suburban neighborhoods. And in the wake of 9/11, the US commercial airport has emerged as the place where Americans most fully experience the security regime introduced after those terrorist attacks.

This book explores the relationship between cities and their commercial airports. These vital transportation facilities are locally owned and managed and civic leaders and boosters have made them central to often expansive economic development dreams, including the construction of architecturally significant buildings. However, other metropolitan residents have paid a high price for the expansion of air transportation, as battles over jet aircraft noise resulted not only in quieter jet engine technologies, but profound changes in the metropolitan landscape with the clearance of both urban and suburban neighborhoods. And in the wake of 9/11, the US commercial airport has emerged as the place where Americans most fully experience the security regime introduced after those terrorist attacks.

In the mid 1990s, several individuals in the Office of the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force (OCMSAF) began working on biographical sketches of the former chief master sergeants of the Air Force (CMSAFs). Based primarily on published materials, these sketches traced the careers of each of the men who had served in the top enlisted post in the United States Air Force (USAF). In addition, the authors wrote essays dealing with various aspects of enlisted history, such as the role of the first sergeant, enlisted training and education, and the enlisted uniform. The manuscript also contained data on the number of active duty enlisted personnel, the names and tenures of the CMSAFs, and a list of people who had been awarded the Order of the Sword. The goal was to produce, in a single volume, a sense of the history and heritage of Air Force enlisted personnel.

This manuscript offers a vivid, candid and highly personal account of military life by four of the first five Chief Master Sergeants of the Air Force. Their recollections were captured in an interview at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C. and cover a period of over thirty years - from the early 1940's to the late 1970's. The position of chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force (held by only 10 individuals since its establishment in 1966) has given all enlisted service members a representative who has direct access to, and the ability to advise, the Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Air Force. It has also imparted to each of the interviewees broad and insightful perspectives of the issues discussed.

The Enlisted Experience: A Conversation with the Chief Master Sergeants of the Air Force offers a vivid, candid, and highly personal account of military life by four of the first five Chief Master Sergeants of the Air Force. Their recollections, captured in a 1989 interview at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., cover a period of over thirty years-from the early 1940s to the late 1970s. The position of Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, held by only ten individuals since its establishment in 1966, has given all enlisted service members a representative with direct access to and the ability to advise the Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Air Force. It has also imparted to each of the interviewees broad and insightful perspectives on the issues discussed. Their careers and the experiences that shaped them reveal that throughout its brief but eventful history the U.S. Air Force has been able to rely completely on the competence, dedication, and absolute professionalism of its enlisted force. This force has proved again and again up to the host of challenges that have confronted it at home and around the globe-tirelessly maintaining the aircraft and supporting the air crews in War II, Korea, and Vietnam, integrating the ranks and welcoming women as equals into the workplace, obtaining a better quality of life for themselves and their families, and pursuing increasingly demanding education and training programs in fast-changing social and technological service milieus. The stories of the Chief Master Sergeants of the Air Force point to an essential fact-that the service would be unable to carry out its missions successfully in a dangerous world without the genuinecooperation of a motivated enlisted corps. That the Air Force almost flawlessly achieved its objectives in Operation DESERT STORM is in no small measure the result of that corps' tradition of striving and excellence. Richard P. Hallion Air Force Historian