Command and Control

LeMay’s greatest strength as a commander wasn’t a subtle grasp of the historical, political, or psychological aspects of an enemy. It was his focus on the interplay between men and machines — a vision of war designed by an engineer. He also cared deeply about the safety and morale of his men. Strategic bombing required a particular form of courage. Unlike fighter pilots, who flew alone, free to roam the skies in pursuit of targets, bomber crews had to work closely with one another, follow a designated route, and stay in formation. The seven minutes from the initial aiming point to the target could induce feelings of helplessness and sheer terror, as flak exploded around the plane and enemy fighters tried to shoot it down. The death rate among American bomber crews was extraordinarily high: more than half would be killed in action before completing their tour of duty.

Curtis LeMay was hardly warm and cuddly. He was gruff, blunt, sarcastic, socially awkward, a man of few words, with a permanent frown left by a case of Bell’s palsy and an unlit cigar perpetually stuck in his mouth. But he earned the deep loyalty of his men by refusing to tolerate incompetence and by doing everything possible to keep them alive. Instead of asking for bravery, he displayed it, flying the lead plane on some of the most dangerous missions of the war, like an old-fashioned cavalry officer leading the charge.

At the age of thirty-six, LeMay became the youngest general in the Army. During the summer of 1944, he was transferred from Europe to help fight Japan. Although incendiaries had been used on a small scale, it was LeMay who ordered the firebombing of Tokyo. “Japan would burn if we could get fire on it,” one of his deputies explained.

LeMay was involved in almost every detail of the plan, from selecting the mix of bombs — magnesium for high temperatures, napalm for splatter — to choosing a bomb pattern that could start a firestorm. He hoped that the firebombing would break the will of the Japanese people, avoid an American invasion, end the war quickly, and save American lives. The massive civilian casualties were unfortunate, LeMay thought, but prolonging the war would cause even more. The destruction of Japanese cities, one after another, fit perfectly with his philosophy on the use of military force. “I’ll tell you what war is about,” LeMay once said. “You’ve got to kill people and when you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.”

LeMay’s managerial and logistical skills made him an ideal candidate to head the Strategic Air Command. His most recent assignment had been to organize the Berlin airlift. But he also knew a lot about the atomic bomb. He’d been involved with the preparations to drop Little Boy and Fat Man, later served as a military adviser to the Manhattan Project, supervised the aircraft during the atomic test at the Bikini atoll — and, as deputy chief of staff for research and development at the Air Force, helped to formulate the atomic blitz. LeMay recognized the destructive power of nuclear weapons but didn’t feel the least bit intimidated by them. “We scorched and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo,” he later recalled, “than went up in vapor at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.” And he didn’t lose any sleep over the morality of Truman’s decision. Killing was killing, whether you did it with a rock, a rifle, or an atom bomb. LeMay’s appointment to run SAC sent a clear message to the Soviets: if necessary, the United States would not hesitate to fight a nuclear war.

After arriving at SAC headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, during the fall of 1948, LeMay was angered by what he found. Bomber crews had no idea what their targets would be, if war came. Navigators lacked up-to-date maps, and pilots rarely consulted checklists before takeoff. As an exercise, LeMay ordered every SAC crew in the country to stage a mock attack on Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, at night, from high altitude, under heavy cloud cover, conditions similar to those they might encounter over the Soviet Union. Many of the planes didn’t get anywhere near Ohio — and not a single one hit the target. The bombardiers who did simulate the dropping of an atomic bomb, aiming their radar at reflectors on the ground, missed Wright Field by an average of two miles. LeMay called it “about the darkest night in American military aviation history.”