Quesada, Elwood Richard (“Pete”)

(b. 13 April 1904 in Washington, D.C.; d. 9 February 1993 in Jupiter, Florida), innovative commander of tactical aviation units during World War II and first administrator of the Federal Aviation Agency.

Quesada was one of three children of Lope Lopez Quesada, a Spanish-born consultant on currency engraving to the U.S. Treasury Department, and Helen A. McNamara, an executive secretary. He grew up in Washington, D.C., and attended Technical High School, where he excelled at sports and was named all-district football quarterback. After a brief period at the Wyoming Methodist Seminary in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, he transferred to the University of Maryland on a football scholarship. He subsequently matriculated to Georgetown University, although family lore holds that he never graduated.

Quesada enlisted as a cadet in 1924 in order to quarterback the Army Flying School’s football team at Brooks Field, Texas. Although a broken leg put an end to his gridiron career, he completed the aviation training program, won his wings, and was commissioned in 1925 as a second lieutenant in the Air Reserve.

Following a brief and unsuccessful attempt to play professional baseball and a stint as a government employee, Quesada went on active military duty in September 1927 as an engineering officer at Boiling Field, Washington, D.C. Nine months later he made the first of what would become a series of productive associations with senior officials when he became aide to Major General James Fechet, then chief of the Air Corps. Quesada gained widespread public attention when Fechet selected him to copilot the Question Mark, a Fokker trimotor that set an endurance record in January 1929 by staying aloft for 150 hours and forty minutes, thereby demonstrating the potential of aerial refueling.

Quesada served as an assistant military attaché in Cuba from October 1930 to April 1932, then returned to Boiling Field. The pattern of forming close relationships with influential officials continued and Quesada became aide (in turn) to Trubee Davidson, the assistant secretary of war for air; General Hugh Johnson, the head of the National Recovery Administration; and Secretary of War George Dern. His one significant operational assignment came between February and June 1934, when he served as chief pilot of the Newark-Cleveland route when the Army Air Corps briefly took over operation of the nation’s commercial air mail service.

The years from 1936 to 1940 brought academic and diplomatic duties for Quesada. He graduated from the Air Corps Tactical School and the Army Command and Staff College. For two and half years he served as technical adviser to the Argentine air force. Returning to Washington from Buenos Aires in October 1940 he became an intelligence analyst in the office of the chief of the air corps.

In July 1941 Quesada embarked on the first of what would become a series of operational assignments when he took over the Thirty-third Pursuit Group at Mitchel Field, New York. His overseas duty began early in 1943, with leadership of the Twelfth Fighter Command in North Africa. Over the next eight months Quesada became a strong advocate of tactical air power while participating in the Tunisian, Sicilian, Corsican, and Italian campaigns.

In October 1943 Quesada took over the Ninth Fighter Command in England and prepared for the invasion of Europe. His force of 1,500 P-38s, P-47s, and P-51s supported the D-Day landings in France in June 1944, then worked closely with General Omar Bradley’s First Army in a series of interdiction campaigns during the drive into Germany. During these months of heavy fighting, Quesada earned a reputation as a hard-driving, no-nonsense commander. “His friends liked to say he had a strong personality,” one former staffer commented; “his enemies said he was a son-of-a-bitch of the first order.” Certainly, Quesada’s army superiors valued his aggressive, innovative approach to tactical air support. A number of air force generals, wedded to strategic aviation, were less appreciative of his outspoken behavior.

Quesada returned to the United States in April 1945 to prepare for assignment to the Pacific theater. The war ended, however, before his scheduled departure, giving him time for his family. Quesada had married Kate Davis Pulitzer Putnam, granddaughter of the publisher Joseph Pulitzer, during the war; With Putnam he had two stepdaughters and two sons.

In 1948 Quesada was promoted to lieutenant general and given command of the Tactical Air Command in the newly independent United States Air Force. He soon clashed with General Hoyt Vandenberg, the air force chief of staff, over the low priority accorded tactical aviation. Bitterly disappointed, Quesada retired in October 1951.

Quesada spent 1951 to 1953 as vice president of Olin Industries, a defense contractor, then three years as vice president of the missile division of Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. In 1957 U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower selected him to chair the Airways Modernization Board, where he worked to integrate civilian and military aircraft into a modern air traffic control system. After helping to draft the law for a new Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), Quesada become the organization’s first administrator in November 1958.

Quesada brought to the FAA the same aggressive qualities that he had displayed during the war. Intent on enhancing aviation safety, he clashed with the Air Line Pilots Association over the mandatory retirement age for pilots (which he set at sixty), and with industry over a requirement for airborne radar. Quesada set the tone for a federal agency whose main task would be the vigorous enforcement of safety regulations in the jet age.

Quesada retired in January 1961. He went on to head a firm to develop L’Enfant Plaza in Washington, D.C., and to become co-owner of the Washington Senators baseball team. He died of heart failure in a Jupiter hospital. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

Quesada’s papers are in the Library of Congress and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library. His wartime service is detailed in Thomas Alexander Hughes, OVER LORD: General Pete Quesada and the Triumph of Tactical Air Power in World War II (1995). For his FAA years, see Stuart I. Rochester, Takeoff at Mid-Century: Federal Civil Aviation Policy in the Eisenhower Years, 1953-1961 (1976). An obituary is in the New York Times (10 Feb. 1993).

William M. Leary