William Wallace Momyer (September 23, 1916 – August 10, 2012) was a general officer and fighter pilot in the United States Air Force (USAF).

During his tour in Southeast Asia, he was concurrently the deputy commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) for air operations and thus responsible for Operation Rolling Thunder, the air campaign against North Vietnam, which Momyer executed in the face of micromanagement from President Lyndon B. Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert S.

The controversy reached the highest levels of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), was widely reported in the American press, and resulted in an official study that exculpated the "Tuskegee Airmen".

[3] Early in 1942, during World War II at the age of 25, Momyer replaced Col. Elwood R. Quesada as commanding officer of the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk-equipped 33d Fighter Group.

Several aircraft were disabled in landing accidents and Momyer was awarded the Silver Star for personally extricating a trapped pilot from a P-40 that had flipped onto its back.

For his performance during several combat actions of the North African campaign, he received the Distinguished Service Cross and two oak leaf clusters to his Silver Star.

[6] During the initial campaign to evict the Axis forces from Tunisia in which the Luftwaffe had air superiority, the 33rd FG, in addition to supporting the push to the east, kept half of its operational strength in reserve in the Oran area to help the Twelfth Air Force guard the Strait of Gibraltar and other lines of communication from possible attack from Spain or Spanish Morocco.

[11] Thus despite cautions from Generals Jimmy Doolittle and Howard Craig to group commanders to conserve strength, Momyer was compelled to commit his aircraft to battle in small increments.

[18] The 33rd FG, operating from the recaptured Sbeitla Airfield, transitioned at the direction of Coningham to the role of fighter-bomber at the same time and increased its effectiveness while decreasing its losses.

The 33rd FG began fighter-bomber attacks on the island on 29 May, augmented by attachment to the group of the segregated 99th Fighter Squadron (known unofficially as the "Tuskegee Airmen"), which flew its first combat mission on 2 June.

"[22] One source claimed that Momyer had blamed the squadron for seeing little air-to-air combat while ignoring both their being awarded a Distinguished Unit Citation and that he had personally ordered them into a ground attack role.

[23][n 7] House forwarded his own memo with a similar recommendation to NAAF Deputy Commander Major General John K. Cannon based partly on Momyer's report, and within four days the memo went up the chain of command to Headquarters USAAF in Washington D.C.[24] Reports in the press that the USAAF was considering downgrading the combat role of the 99th FS, partly based on Momyer's assessment, were followed in October by a review conducted by the War Department's Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies, after House's report reached it, in which Colonel Benjamin O. Davis Jr. refuted the allegations and defended his former command.

[6] Momyer was director of plans, Headquarters TAC, Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, from July 1958 to October 1961.

[6] Of this period in his career, Boyne writes: "Characteristically, he continued to do as much work as possible himself, earning fame for his reading speed and total recall.

[6] During Momyer's tour in Southeast Asia and the Vietnam War, he was a vigorous exponent of an all-jet air force, believing that jet fighter-bombers could outperform the often more accurate but slower (and thus more vulnerable) propeller-driven strike aircraft such as A-1 Skyraiders and T-28 Trojans.

Brigadier General Chuck Yeager, in his autobiography, related that in early 1968 he had been assigned as prospective commander of the 35th Tactical Fighter Wing, a unit at Phan Rang Air Base in Vietnam.