Major General Elbert Helton is deputy chief of staff for materiel, Air Training Command, Randolph Air Force Base, Texas. He is responsible for maintenance engineering, transportation, supply and services and procurement and logistics plans programs for the command.
General Helton was born in Clifton, Texas, in 1915. He graduated from Clifton High School in 1932 and from Clifton Junior College in 1935. He entered pilot training at Randolph Field, Texas, in 1936 and graduated at Kelly Field, Texas as a pilot in February 1937. His first assignment as a flying cadet was at Barksdale Field, La., where he served as airplane commander in the 3d Attack Group. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant Reserve shortly thereafter.
In 1938 he was transferred to the 7th Bombardment Group and remained in tactical bombardment until the end of World War II. In December 1941 General Helton went to the Southwest Pacific Theater where he served as squadron commander and group commander of the 19th Bombardment Group. In 1943 he organized the 493d Bombardment Group, and as commander went with the group to the European Theater of Operations. He returned to the United States in 1945 and was assigned to Air Training Command.
From 1947 to 1949 General Helton attended the School of Business Administration of the University of Texas where he was awarded a bachelor and, later in 1958, a master of business administration degree. He then was assigned as chief of the Cost Analysis Division, Deputy Chief of Staff, Comptroller, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, and three years later was assigned as director of the Comptroller School at the Air University.
After graduation from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in 1956, General Helton was assigned as commander of the 49th Fighter Bomber Wing in Japan. Later he was made deputy commander of the 41st Air Division and then deputy chief of staff, materiel, Headquarters Fifth Air Force. He assumed duties as commander of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, in 1960.
General Helton was assigned as assistant comptroller of the Air Force in 1962 and assumed the responsibilities as director of data automation, Comptroller of the Air Force in July 1964. He was assigned in July 1965 to be director of the J-4 Directorate, Headquarters U.S. European Command, in Paris, France, and moved in the same position with the headquarters in March 1967 to its new location in Stuttgart, Germany.
He assumed duties as deputy chief of staff for materiel, Headquarters Air Training Command, in August 1968.
(Current as of Aug. 30, 1968)