Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [126]
However, even some of LeMay’s admirers fault him for waiting six weeks to switch from daylight high-altitude to nighttime low-level attacks. But the successful conversion probably could not have occurred in much less time for at least three reasons.
First, LeMay had to settle into his new command, learning the players and their various strengths. Second, he needed a few missions to assess Hansell’s methods and evaluate their merits. Third, having decided to commit doctrinal heresy and wager a huge gamble, LeMay wanted to load the dice as much as possible. That required stockpiling enough incendiary bombs to sustain a ten-day blitz and giving mechanics time to raise the aircraft in-commission rate to a new high. LeMay’s streamlined maintenance procedures required some time to take effect. But his patience paid immense dividends, and he rode out the preparation period regardless of how it appeared in Washington.
It was typical of the man. LeMay was as vastly unconcerned with his public image as any figure in American history. Though he would turn the postwar Strategic Air Command from a four-engine flying club into a Cold War deterrent, he remains far better known for his Vietnam-era vilification as a “caveman in a bomber.”
LeMay’s reputation contrasts vividly with that of Admiral William Halsey, who oversaw Third Fleet operations against Japan in the final months of hostilities. As a professional airman Halsey could not begin to compete with LeMay—nor with Arnold, for that matter—and the Bull’s serious lapses attending Leyte plus the December 1944 and June 1945 typhoons only reinforced his failings as a four-star commander.
Yet neither of the fast carrier commanders came up to LeMay’s standards, though Marc Mitscher and John McCain both outranked him. They relied heavily upon their extremely able staffs whereas LeMay directed his commands based on an intimate knowledge of his equipment and his craft. The plain fact is that the Third and Fifth Fleet carriers likely would have performed just as well without their three-star commanders, whereas XX and XXI Bomber Command would have remained an unrealized possibility absent LeMay.
He was, in a word, indispensable.
The Mythology
After 1945 the contention arose that bombing did little or nothing to end the war, especially against Germany. Critics such as economist John Kenneth Galbraith claimed, sometimes based upon flimsy evidence, that the costs of the campaign exceeded the measurable benefits. But in truth, the D-Day landings could not have been attempted without Allied air superiority, which required reduction of Germany’s aircraft and oil industries. The fact remains that a combination of strategic and tactical airpower proved crucial in Europe.
Against Imperial Japan, the opponents of airpower have even less latitude for argument. As British historian Max Hastings has written, “The myth that the Japanese were ready to surrender anyway has been so completely discredited by modern research that it is astonishing some writers continue to give it credence.” Tokyo’s repeated rejection of the Potsdam Declaration, and the war cabinet’s pleas for Soviet assistance prior to the atomic bombings, should leave no doubt as to Tokyo’s mind-set. However belatedly, only the emperor’s personal intervention ended the war. And by his own admission (“a most cruel bomb”) the atomic bombs prompted him to override his warlords.
In dropping 161,000 tons of conventional bombs, Superfortresses burned out 40 percent of the built-up urban areas in sixty-six cities, resulting in destruction of nearly one-third of all Japanese houses. Japan’s six leading industrial cities had been marked for destruction: of their total 257 square miles, 113 had been targeted and 106 were destroyed, excluding Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The combination of reduced imports and B-29 bombing crippled Japanese industry. Aircraft production peaked at 2,550 in November 1944, then quickly declined. The total by all manufacturers never reached 2,000 after December, dropping to barely 1,500 the following July. (In