Brigadier General Anthony Shtogren
also known as Gen. Shtogren; the meanest general in the Air Force
Brigadier General Anthony Shtogren is the most vivid Air Force character in Robert Earl Wildermuth’s 1989 memoir — the commanding general of the Far East communications operation under which Robert Earl ran the 1955th Communications Squadron at Itazuke Air Base in Japan from 1965 to 1968.
The portrait
In Robert Earl’s words:
“Brigadier General Anthony Shtogren was the highest-educated general in the Air Force (three undergrad degrees plus a Harvard and an MIT Masters), and also the meanest general in the Air Force and one of the foulest talking men on earth.”
The pairing of extraordinary academic credentials with an extraordinarily harsh command manner is the portrait. Two undergraduate degrees plus Harvard plus MIT places him among the most credentialed officers in the entire Air Force of his era; the “meanest general” and “foulest talking” framing places him among the most-feared commanders.
The breakfast in Japan
At a breakfast with Major Hamelin and Robert Earl in Japan — in the lead-up to a Shtogren inspection of the 1955th Communications Squadron, then ranked 29th out of 31 squadrons in the Far East — the general:
“…ranted and raved, cursed and threatened… [and] promised to fire everybody and ship us off to Viet Nam where we’d be stuck out so far in the jungles the ‘Gooks’ would be sure to get us. My glass of milk was curdled at the end of our meal.”
Within months Major Hamelin retired suddenly (Robert Earl notes he was an alcoholic) and Robert Earl became squadron commander. Under his “ask the people doing the job” leadership, the squadron rose from 29th to 8th in the first quarter, to 3rd in the next, and eventually to #1 in the Far East — the position it held for the rest of Robert Earl’s tour.
The Wheelus AFB secret promotion parties
General Shtogren held a tradition of flying his commanders to Wheelus AFB in Tripoli, Libya for end-of-quarter Commanders’ Conferences that he used as venues for his secret early-promotion announcements. At one such conference Robert Earl’s squadron adjutant called from Japan to tell him a message had come down from USAF Headquarters: he had been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel “below the zone of those normally eligible for promotion.” Robert Earl kept the secret through the rest of the day so as not to upstage the general’s planned announcement that night.
The Wheelus AFB years were the late 1960s, before the 1969 Libyan revolution that brought Muammar Gaddafi to power and led to the U.S. evacuation of the base in 1970.
Why Shtogren matters in this archive
He is the commander whose harsh inspection forced the leadership transition that gave Robert Earl the 1955th’s squadron command and the chance at the turnaround that defined his Air Force career — and the commander who later promoted him below the zone to Lieutenant Colonel for that work. The pairing is the kind of intense military-career relationship that runs through Robert Earl’s memoir’s Air Force years: harsh-but-recognizing, intimidating-but-just.
Source: Robert Earl Wildermuth’s 1989 memoir.