Top Story>>General Lew Allen MXS award goes to base officer

By Senior Airman Nathan Allen
19th Airlift Wing Public Affairs

A Little Rock maintenance officer has been named the winner of the General Lew Allen Jr. Trophy for Air Mobility Command.

Capt. Jeffrey Fogle, 19th Aircraft Maintenance Unit officer in charge for the Red and Silver Aircraft Maintenance Units, received the honor in recognition of his outstanding performance involved in aircraft sortie generation.

Captain Fogle is responsible for approximately 420 maintenance personnel, 26 C-130 aircraft, scheduling maintenance personnel, meeting the flying schedules for four flying squadrons, and ensuring aircraft are available to support deployments to Balad Air Base, Iraq, and Southwest Asia.

“It’s a direct reflection on the performance of all the people in my AMU. I [alone] didn’t win the award. They did all the things that I was able to help take credit for. They’re the only active-duty H and J [model] maintainers who can do the things that they do,” he said.

Some of Captain Fogle’s accomplishments, which contributed to winning the award, were his team’s ability to meet the deployment requirements, their performance in the operational readiness inspection and their ability to keep the old 463rd, now the 19th Operations Group, flying and meeting its training lines. According to Captain Fogle the Red AMU earned a grade of excellent for leading the maintenance effort for the ORI in April 2008.

“Leadership is my favorite aspect of this job. On a day-to-day basis, I get to make decisions that directly impact 420 people. Operations have their requirements, but it’s always at the expense of the hours that it takes to generate an airplane and maintain an airplane, so the leadership aspect of making those decisions and seeing the benefits of that is what I get the greatest joy out of,” he said.

He explained that being a prior enlisted maintenance Airman gives him a better understanding of what the Airmen he’s responsible for are thinking, which allows him to more effectively accomplish the mission.

Captain Fogle came in the Air Force as an enlisted guidance control troop with one year of college. He finished his undergraduate degree in 2002 and applied for Officer Training School, to which he was accepted. After OTS, he performed five years as an aircraft maintainer and then retrained to become a flight engineer for six years, flying C-130s.

“That operational experience, that maintenance experience, is definitely what put me in the position to be able to win this award because I can see both sides of the fence,” he said. “I can see what the maintainer needs, I understand what the operator requirements are, and I can balance those two and make decisions as seamlessly as possible and as painlessly to both sides, even though sometimes it’s at the expense of one or the other.”

Captain Fogle emphasized that without the help of his team, he would have never been in a position to receive the award.

“It’s a direct reflection on how hard my guys work and their ability to get the job done. I just get to stand in front of 420 people and say: ‘We all did this together.”