Looking Back

The Air Force’s current top enlisted airman, CMSAF Rodney McKinley, chose to focus his latest “The Enlisted Perspective” on the service’s very first Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, CMSAF Paul Airey. McKinley writes, “Forty years later Chief Airey continues to serve the airmen he led so well.” He quotes Airey: “I have seen many changes as we progressed from simple airpower to today’s aerospace force. The enlisted corps has kept pace with that progress, for it is pride and dedication that keep enlisted men at their posts.” McKinley goes on: “The first CMSAF has always been a leader,” from his days as a World War II B-24 radio operator to his advocacy of such things as the service’s Senior NCO Academy and the Weighted Airmen Promotion System, still in use today, to working after his retirement on various boards, where he “continued his fight for the rights of our airmen.”