On May 21, 1982, four retired U.S. Air Force generals – James Ferguson, Robert M. Lee, William Momyer, and Pete Quesada – sat down at a table in the officers’ club at Bolling Air Force Base and took a hard look at the lessons they and the air service had learned in the course of their careers. Free of the constraints placed on serving general officers, the four have a far more frank discussion than they would have had while in uniform, and through this pdf book the reader gets to be a fly on the wall.

You can feel the ghosts in the room: Mitchell, Spaatz, LeMay, Chennault. A superb and fast read, and oral history at its best.