Eugene M. Zuckert, Secretary of the Air Force from 1961 to 1965, credits Rawlings with building a "mature, business-like" image for the newly established Air Force. Zuckert said Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington asked him in 1945 why he had to "send out a search party" whenever he needed Army Air Forces statistics, Zuckert remembered a Rawlings memo suggesting the creation of a comptroller position and passed the idea on to Symington. According to Zuckert, the methods developed by Rawlings constituted "a very important step in the development of a postwar Air Force."