Washington Rules_ America's Path to Permanent War - Andrew J. Bacevich [19]
LeMay’s greatest gift was for orchestration. The effective conduct of large-scale air operations involved a multiplicity of factors: airfields, aircraft, ordnance, trained crews, mechanics, spare parts, fuel and lubricants, accurate weather forecasts, effective communications, up-to-date intelligence, base support, replacements, and on and on. Success required the synchronization of all these disparate parts to produce a harmonious result today, tomorrow, and for as long as the mission required.
When LeMay took over Strategic Air Command in October 1948, that organization was floundering. Located in Roswell, New Mexico, SAC’s entire strike force consisted of some thirty modified World War II B-29s. A grand total of six air crews had completed the training needed to fly a mission. The entire U.S. nuclear arsenal numbered perhaps fifty Nagasaki-type bombs, each of which required elaborate preparation before employment. Assembling a single bomb took a team of thirty-nine technicians days to complete. Despite a widespread belief that the American nuclear monopoly had elevated the United States to a position of unquestioned military dominance, SAC’s ability to deliver even a single bomb against a single target in the Soviet Union was iffy at best.33
Shortly after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had brought Japan to its knees, LeMay told a Pentagon board: “Our only defense is a striking-power-in-being of such size that it is capable of delivering a stronger blow than any of our potential enemies.”34 He now set out to create just such a force.
A set of fortuitous circumstances helped. When the Soviets tested their own bomb in August 1949, they shattered Washington’s nuclear complacency. In June 1950, the North Korean invasion of South Korea removed the postwar cap on military spending. Defense dollars became available in abundance. At about the same time, the United States developed the capability to mass-produce nuclear weapons. As an age of nuclear scarcity gave way to an era of atomic plenty, the supply of bombs no longer constrained SAC’s development.
Dwight D. Eisenhower’s election to the presidency in 1952 proved a boon for LeMay and SAC. The concept of “massive retaliation” now emerged as the centerpiece of Cold War strategy. Elected in part because of popular dissatisfaction with a costly, inconclusive war in Korea, Ike had no intention of being drawn into anything even remotely similar. Massive retaliation promised that Soviet aggression anywhere would elicit an all-out nuclear response. Ensuring the “credibility” and responsiveness of the nuclear strike force therefore became the Pentagon’s highest priority.
Meanwhile, the rapid pace of innovation in aircraft and weapons design, jet engines, rocketry, and communications presented a dazzling array of ever-improving capabilities for LeMay to purchase. He wasted no time in exploiting these opportunities. His achievement was threefold.
First, he expanded SAC by several orders of magnitude, acquiring people, aircraft, weapons, and real estate at a prodigious rate. By the mid-1950s, LeMay’s command oversaw some 200,000 personnel operating from 55 bases. As one historian has put it, SAC became “an air force within an air force,” a personal fiefdom over which LeMay ruled as completely as Dulles ruled the CIA.35
Second, in place of the lackadaisical standards existing in 1948, LeMay imbued his command with a culture of maximum readiness. In effect, as Dulles did with the CIA, he put SAC on a war footing, converting it into a “cocked weapon.” The phrase was no mere metaphor.
Third, LeMay inaugurated a program of continuous modernization, illustrated by the fielding of successive new bombers, each built in large numbers: nearly four hundred Convair B-36s entering service in 1948; some two thousand Boeing B-47s, first fielded in 1951; and over seven