Published Airpower Journal -
Spring 1988
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Following is an excerpt from an official US Air Force oral history interview with General Rosencrans that was conducted in July 1984 by Dr James C. Hasdorff of the USAF Historical Research Center, Maxwell AFB, Alabama.*
General Rosencran's views on leadership and command should be carefully considered by officers aspiring to positions of high authority, as his common sense approach points up the need for serious thought about and commitment to this important aspect of an effective combat force. General Rosencrans concluded his interview with:
FINALLY, let me address the qualities that I think are necessary in order to be a good leader and a good commander. The first and most important is courage. If you don't have courage, you are never going to be a good commander whatever your other qualifications are. The courage must extend down as well as up. Courage should not be mislabeled loyalty. Although loyalty is a requirement, courage is even more of a requirement.
Second, you must be totally honest. Your integrity must be beyond question at any time of the day or night.
Third, you have to have the ability to see beyond tomorrow. I have met so many colonels who stayed and retired as colonels because they couldn't see anything but what they were looking for tomorrow.
Fourth, we hear a lot about motivation. It's a buzz word. It's kind of like readiness. No one has ever really defined readiness; no one has ever really defined motivation except to say it's the ability to get others to do as you wish them to do. What people forget is, you must change the attitude before you motivate. It's attitude that's the key; then motivation will follow.
Next, you must realize that no inanimate object ever had a problem; people have problems. Airplanes that are broken don't have problems; people have problems with broken airplanes. Mess halls that don't serve good meals don't have problems; people who work in those mess halls have problems serving good meals. You get everything done through people. This relates directly back to what I said about attitude: get the attitude right, and the problems will take care of themselves because the people are motivated.
Next, never lose control of yourself; never raise your voice; never let the situation control you. Even though it appears to be out of hand, you must always be doing something to change the situation if you don't like it. You must never resign yourself to "that is the situation" or "that is the system and that's how it works." That attitude of resignation will defeat you and defeat your people. You must always be attempting to influence the situation.
Next, you must have a working knowledge of what your people are doing. You are not expected to be an expert welder or an expert aircraft mechanic or an expert supply monitor or an expert cook or anything else, but you have got to know something about all those jobs so that you can discuss them intelligently. You have to discuss them on a personal basis: "What are you doing? Tell me what you are doing and how you are doing it." Let that individual speak to you. When he is speaking to you, that's when you want to have the photographer present, and that photographer takes the picture while that airman or junior officer is speaking to you so that he can send copies of those pictures to his girlfriend and his family and pin it up in the barracks and say, "I told the general." You have got to let him know you are interested in what he is doing. You have got to let him know you know a little bit about it but you want to know more because you are interested in it and it is contributing to the mission. And if possible, learn something about him. If you have worked with a group of people for six months and you don't know something personal about each individual, you are no leader, and you are no commander. It has to be a sincere interest.
Finally, and the most obvious, you must live what you say. If you preach honesty and morality and good conduct and whatever else you preach, such as getting the job done to the best of your ability and getting it done right the first time, that's the way you must live, because if you don't you won't get what you want from your subordinates. You have to be the shining example, and you must never fail. It is easy to be a leader and a commander from eight o'clock in the morning until five o'clock in the afternoon. From five in the afternoon until eight in the morning is when it is tough to be a commander. That's when you have to get out of bed and go get somebody out of jail. That's when the crises come up and you have to function like you have just had 24 hours of sleep and you are perfectly rested and perfectly in control of the situation. You have got to be a commander 24 hours a day. You can't be horsing around the officers club; you can't be making a spectacle of yourself out on the street. You have got to get along not only with your people but with your civilian counterparts with whom you associate.
I say this because I have tried to use these guidelines for being a commander. When I was 24 years old, before I went to Korea, I sat down and I decided at that time there were four things I would have to do so that the day I died I would consider myself successful. These are professional things, not the personal things such as being a good father and raising a family and things like that. In order to be successful, I would have to find out whether or not I was afraid to die. Would I turn and run when somebody shot at me? Would I conduct myself in combat in such a manner that it was obvious that I was afraid to die? I think with the record of 265 combat missions-most of which were ground support, armed reconnaissance, and missions of that nature--I have proven to myself that I will not turn and run when somebody shoots at me and that I am not afraid to die.
Second, I wanted to fly at least 37 combat missions. Where I got the number 37, I will never know, but I felt if I flew that many I would be successful. Obviously I made that goal.
The third thing was that if I stayed in the Air Force--and I wasn't sure at the age of 24 I was going to make it a career--I wanted to be at least a lieutenant general. Thanks to the work of many people, I became a lieutenant general.
Finally, I wanted to become a millionaire before I died. Obviously my first three objectives were counterproductive to my fourth, and I haven't reached it yet, but I am still working on it!
* USAF Oral History Interview No. K239.0594 with Lt Gen Evan W. Rosencrans, USAF, Retired, 26-27 July 1984, San Antonio, Texas, 146-48.
Lt Gen Evan W. RosencransUSAF, Retired (USMA; MBA, George Washington University), is director, Broadway Air Force National Bank, San Antonio, Texas. A command pilot with approximately 5,000 flying hours, he has been an operations staff officer with Headquarters Pacific Air Forces at Hickam AFB, Hawaii, and in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Operations; a flight commander, flying safety officer, and assistant operations officer at Westover AFB, Massachusetts; a commander of the 531st Tactical Fighter Squadron at Misawa AB, Japan, and of the 354th Tactical Fighter Wing at Myrtle Beach AFB, South Carolina; and had assignments at Ramstein AB, West Germany, and Seoul, South Korea. Before his retirement in 1981, General Rosencrans was a member of the General Purpose Forces Branch of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Special Study Group. During the Korean War, he served with the 80th Fighter-Bomber Squadron in South Korea and Japan. General Rosencrans is a graduate of Air Command and Staff College and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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