Making of Bill Creech - Project Gutenberg Consortia Center

CREECH BLUEwing’s operations deputy, Creech flew 177 F-100 combat missionsin 158 days before being transferred to the Seventh AirForce headquarters. 79 During that time, he earned the respect ofthose serving under him. General Fogleman recalled being a captainin the Misty fast forward air control (FAC) detachment assignedto Creech’s wing. Fogleman described one occasion inwhich, as the airborne FAC, he saw Creech call off a flight of hiswing’s aircraft attacking an extremely well defended cave in Laoswith little success. Creech directed his inexperienced wingmanto hold at a safe altitude and proceeded to fly a difficult and dangerousapproach to the cave, where he dropped a can of napalmdirectly into its mouth. Evidently containing large amounts ofsupplies and ammunition, the cave erupted in a huge explosion.Fogleman described the event as “an impressive piece of flying.” 80In the following years, Creech would demand a similar level ofmission involvement from his wing commanders.Several years later, while serving as a wing commander,Creech would put into place concepts he had learned as a Skyblazerand which he would later use on a much larger scale atTAC: organizing on a small level, creating many teams, and instillingpride and professionalism in his subordinates. Creechcommanded two wings successfully. The first, which was newlyestablished, was based at an abandoned airfield in Zweibrücken,Germany. In just under a year, Creech’s wing had passed aNATO inspection with the highest scores recorded in six years. 81Reassigned to a troubled wing at Torrejon, Spain, that had failedits two previous readiness inspections, Creech and his wingpassed the reinspection four months later with the highestscores on record in USAFE. 82 Creech credits his successes tobuilding teams and leaders from the bottom of the organizationto the top. 83 The general also instilled discipline in his units byinvolving subordinate commanders in the process. As the TACcommander talking to a group of his wing commanders, he describeda technique he used at Torrejon:One of the problems, it seemed like only half of the people on the basesaluted. Now, I wasn’t going to chase everyone who didn’t salute, sowhen I passed someone who didn’t salute, I’d say, “Come on, get in thecar.” “Where are you from? What’s your name?” Sometimes I’d getthree or four in my car and take them back to my office. Then I’d havehis squadron commander come and pick him up. And all I said to the22