No doubt the Pope guys had their shit together but I think the close proximity to Bragg didn’t hurt them being selected for a lot of missions.
Your comment on the “tail wagging the dog”. When I first got to Hurbie, which belonged to the Tactical Air Command, in 79 there was abso######inglutely no question on who ran the 1st SOW. The tail didn’t start wagging the dog here until the late 80s early 90s. MAC got a hold of us in 83, we (Ops) fought it as long as we could. We were asked one time if we could take off, do a closed pattern, then land and they would fix the plane, just so they could get an on-time take off.
That is but one sub-species. I’ve got the “Shoe clerk Stiff-arm”, you know, the “you/we can’t do that” from guys where I knew their job better than they did. One of the last examples of that I remember was just before I retired, a MSgt bringing me some 781s that he said I filled out wrong. I damn near quoted the Reg to him on how to fill out the suspect area and he still said I was wrong and that he wouldn’t input them until I changed them. Went to the Sq pubs file, pulled out the book and read it to him. “That’s not what it means”. Had to take him to the SqDO to get it done.