IN THE heart of California's Central Valley, ten miles northeast of the capital city of Sacramento, is McClellan Air Force Base, headquarters of the Sacramento Air Materiel Area. This base was constructed twenty years ago as the principal West Coast Air Force Depot for the repair of aircraft and equipment and the storage and distribution of materiel. As the nation's air power has grown, so has this installation. At its dedication in 1939, its employees were numbered in the hundreds. Today 20,000 people, three-fourths of them civilians, are at work on various Air Force missions. Most of them are assigned to the Sacramento Air Materiel Area which is part of the worldwide operation of the Air Materiel Command engaged in procurement, supply, and maintenance activities for the entire Air Force. The managerial responsibilities of the Sacramento Air Materiel Area, measured by normal business standards, are enormous. They include the management and control of an inventory of over $0.5 billion of materiel, the assurance of effective supply and maintenance support to nearly half the aircraft in the Air Force inventory, and the administration of contracts with major Air Force suppliers totaling in excess of $2 billion per year. Top management of the Sacramento Air Materiel Area includes Major General George E. Price, commander, Colonel H. H. Tellman, his deputy, and the senior Air Force commissioned officers who head the major departments and staff offices. These officers assume responsibility for results, provide policy direction, assure responsiveness of logistics to military operational requirements, and bring their extensive military tactical and logistical experience to the accomplishment of the Command mission. Each military department head has, assisting and advising him, a technical associate who is a member of the federal civil service. The technical associates are men with extensive experience in their particular fields. Most of them have risen up through the ranks of the Sacramento Air Materiel Area to their positions of responsibility. Thus they provide continuity in management and technical advice in their respective fields.