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    LeMay: A Biography
    LeMay: A Biography
    LeMay: A Biography
    Ebook254 pages4 hours

    LeMay: A Biography

    By Barrett Tillman

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A close look at the controversial command and strategies of the Air Force Chief of Staff, Curtis LeMay--a terrifying, complex, and brilliant general.

    In World War II, LeMay ordered the firebombing of Tokyo and was in charge when Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was responsible for tens of thousands of civilian deaths--a fact he liked to celebrate by smoking Cuban cigars. But LeMay was also the man who single-handedly transformed the American air force from a ramshackle team of poorly trained and badly equipped pilots into one of the fiercest and most efficient weapons of the war. Over the last decades, most U.S. military missions were carried out entirely through the employment of the Air Force; this is part of LeMay's complicated legacy.

    Packed with breathtaking battles in the air and inspiring leadership tactics on the ground, LeMay will keep readers on their edge of their seats.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateOct 13, 2015
    ISBN9781250100863
    LeMay: A Biography
    Author

    Barrett Tillman

    Barrett Tillman is a professional author and speaker with more than 40 nonfiction books as well as novels to his credit. His first book, published in 1976, remains in print today as do most of his subsequent titles. He holds seven awards for history and literature including the 1996 Tailhook Association Lifetime Achievement Award and third place in the US Naval Institute Prize in 2009. Tillman has appeared in more than a dozen documentaries including The History Channel's Dogfights.

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    • 3/5
      "Whatever other names arise," Barrett Tillman writes in "LeMay: A Biography," General Curtis LeMay and Admiral Chester Nimitz "were the two commanders most responsible for defeating the Japanese Empire." Nimitz rebuilt the Navy after Pearl Harbor and at Midway delivered a blow to the Japanese carrier force from which it could never recover. Similarly, LeMay took the air battle to the Japanese homeland, perfecting the B29 on bombing missions that may well have won the war even without the atomic bomb.Not that LeMay opposed the bomb. He was certain it would shorten the war and minimize the huge losses an American invasion of the Japanese homeland would entail. Indeed, World War II confirmed LeMay's military doctrine of stipulating the use of maximum, overwhelming force to defeat an enemy. He deplored the gradual escalation of firepower in Korea and Vietnam, and as soon as he heard of plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion, he pronounced the invasion force doomed, especially when air cover was withdrawn, leaving the invaders easy targets for Castro's army.LeMay was the quintessential Cold Warrior who gave no quarter. He was called a Neanderthal because he favored a first strike against the Soviet Union. But to LeMay it made no sense to absorb the deaths of millions of Americans and then retaliate. LeMay never challenged civilian leaders in public, but when Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara asked LeMay's opinion, McNamara got a direct assessment of the worthlessness of his own notions of flexible response.As Mr. Tillman explains, LeMay did his public image no good by running for vice president on George Wallace's ticket in 1968. LeMay was never a racist — indeed he had served in an Army air force that had desegregated before Brown vs. Board mandated integration in schools. But LeMay distrusted Richard Nixon, who in the general's view had no viable plan (secret or otherwise) to end the Vietnam war. LeMay also spurned Hubert Humphrey, who was tainted by President Johnson's bollixed war strategy. Wallace at least spoke with a bluntness that LeMay admired, although Mr. Tillman does not explore the relationship between the two men (perhaps because there was not much of one to discuss).Mr. Tillman finds much to admire in LeMay, a general who led his own bomber missions and was more familiar with flying equipment than his own men. No one perfected the art of putting planes on their targets and bringing crews safely home better than he. LeMay listened to his airmen, openly inviting their criticism and suggestions. His crews were accountable to him, and were summarily dismissed for incompetence or failure. But LeMay also granted promotions on the spot for outstanding work. He was just as good at follow-up, revoking those promotions when men did not perform at the higher level required by their new ranks.LeMay the man remains something of a mystery. Mr. Tillman rarely mentions LeMay's wife or family. Discussing how the general felt about the firebombing of Tokyo, for example, Mr. Tillman is at a loss. The best he can say is that LeMay "compartmentalized" events and did not dwell on the thousands his bombs annihilated. That LeMay was not unfeeling is apparent in the many visits he paid to his wounded airmen, and in the number of decorations he awarded them.Although LeMay published books about his career, he never attempted to rehabilitate himself or rationalize his decisions. He despised politics, and only engaged in them when he needed planes and equipment. His record as the organizer of the Strategic Air Command, and his ability to acquire the resources it needed, were unparalleled. As a military man, he embraced and developed new technologies, welcoming, for example, guided missiles as integral to his bomber force.But LeMay's decision to run with Wallace suggests that for all his contempt for politics he wanted to make yet another contribution to American life. What was it? And why did he choose to ally himself with such an inflammatory figure? These questions Mr. Tillman hardly poses, let alone answers. I wish he had done more interviewing. His notes indicate he spoke and e-mailed with a handful of military men who knew LeMay well. Perhaps LeMay the man is as elusive as he seems in Mr. Tillman's book, but I'd like to see another writer take a crack at a full-blown biography.

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    Book preview

    LeMay - Barrett Tillman

    CHAPTER 1

    Wings

    The flier’s name was Lincoln Beachy, and he flew through the San Francisco sky in a machine called an aer-o-plane. The twenty-eight-year-old Ohioan was hailed as the flying fool, drawing thousands of spectators to the Panama-Pacific Exposition. The exposition was the equal of a world’s fair, attracting national and international participants of all kinds.

    In 1915, one of the witnesses to Beachy’s aerial antics was eight-year-old Curtis Emerson LeMay. He had seen an aer-o-plane only once before, but the sight was acid-etched in his memory. Since that defining day in his parents’ Ohio garden some five years before, young Curtis had been enthralled with the concept of flight. Seeing an aer-o-plane for the first time, he yearned for the drive and speed and energy of the creature.¹

    Beachy continued flying as what later generations called a stunt pilot. His usual aerial routine was memorable, but he ended his career in 1915 by plunging into San Francisco Bay, the victim of a structural failure in an untried airplane. An estimated 75,000 people witnessed his fall from 200 feet: at once the high and the low of the exposition. One of LeMay’s heroes was gone, but the inspiration gestated, sprouted, and cropped.

    *   *   *

    Curtis E. LeMay was born in Columbus, Ohio, on November 15, 1906, twelve months after Erving and Arizona Carpenter LeMay’s wedding. His given name was chosen by his mother, who just drew it out of thin air. Likewise, his middle name was chosen because she liked the sound of Emerson.²

    By his own reckoning, Curtis’s youth was nomadic. Erving was a steel worker and handyman who moved the family wherever employment beckoned: to Pennsylvania, Montana, California, and back to Ohio in 1919. In that time the family grew with the addition of two more boys and three girls: brothers Leonard and Lloyd, and sisters Methyl, Patricia, and Velma.

    Young Curtis displayed his ambition and willingness to work almost from the start. He took a variety of part-time jobs and odd chores, saving money for a bicycle. He recognized the monetary potential in a bike, as it would enable him to increase his earning power with a paper route. Even at that tender age, he was goal oriented and planned for the future.

    Among Curtis’s early pursuits was the Boy Scouts, in which he accumulated most of the merit badges required for Eagle, the highest scouting rank. However, time was an asset in shortage, and LeMay lacked sufficient opportunity to complete all the requirements. Raised with a serious work ethic, his paper route and other jobs limited the time he could devote to scouting. Consequently, his scouting career peaked at First Class, halfway up the ladder to Eagle.

    LeMay’s first full-time job was more pleasure than business: At the neighbors’ request he shot birds with his BB gun in order to feed their voraciously lazy cat. At a nickel a pop, young Curtis became a deadly marksman. Perhaps unknowingly, at a tender age he absorbed the Clauswitzian lesson of economy of force: maximum effect for minimum expenditure.

    Curtis LeMay was what later generations called a self-starter. He received little encouragement from his parents to pursue particular interests, so he developed his own. One was reading, beyond the confines of the classroom. He preferred historical fiction and biography, though travelogues also appealed to him. Wanderlust became a character trait, both personally and professionally.

    The boy’s social life was, by his own admission, minimal. Dating, what he called the girl stuff, cost money that could be applied to more immediate pursuits: guns and radios. He had a passion for all manner of machinery, especially engines and electronics. Always skilled with his hands, Curtis saved enough money to buy the components for a crystal radio set and before long he was listening to stations as far afield as Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. He much preferred hunting and mechanics to socializing, and proved an awkward date. Until relatively late in life the female half of the human race took second place to his happy little tinkerings.³

    The career of an army pilot held fascination for LeMay, and he was astute enough to realize that a regular commission offered something approaching job security. But the thought of competing for a West Point appointment was too daunting: In 1924 he took the road more traveled, opting for ROTC at Ohio State. He majored in civil engineering and worked night jobs. The two were incompatible. Cadet LeMay, at the top of his military studies, was frequently too tired for many other classes after working a shift in a steel mill to meet tuition. Five hours’ sleep per night simply could not sustain an academic lifestyle.

    The ROTC instructor was Lieutenant Chester Horn, who imparted a sense of objectivity and balance not always present in Scabbard and Blade organizations. In averting a tentative feud with campus pacifists, Horn reminded his charges that the world always turns, and eventually both cowards and warmongers could be proven right—and

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