Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [28]
LeMay had won his commission through Army ROTC in 1929 and spent his early years as a fighter pilot. But he saw the budding potential of bombardment aviation and got the assignment meant for him: Langley Field, Virginia. When he arrived there in 1936 he was already an expert pilot and accomplished navigator, exactly the kind of talent that the 2nd Bombardment Group needed to bring the new B-17 into service. LeMay navigated the group’s silvery Boeings to headline status on record-setting flights to South America and pinpoint interceptions of ships hundreds of miles at sea. Along the way, he taught himself everything worth knowing about the Norden bombsight.
As a professional airman, LeMay had very few peers, if any. Possessing an intimate knowledge of his craft mated to an icy intelligence, he left his mark wherever he landed.
In early 1942, LeMay was a newly minted lieutenant colonel who found himself in command of a green-as-grass bomb group. He built the 305th literally from the ground up: trained it according to his own rigorous standards, took it to England, and rewrote the manual on bomber tactics. His innovations included straight and level bomb runs to improve accuracy, a box formation to maximize defensive firepower, and lead crews with navigators and bombardiers specializing in selected targets.
Promoted to wing commander, LeMay still flew “the rough ones,” including the epic August 1943 double strike against Regensburg and Schweinfurt. Losses were appalling—sixty bombers and 600 men written off in a day—but LeMay stood out. His reputation soared as his command achieved new heights: he pinned on his first star in September, and five months later, at thirty-seven, he became the youngest major general since Ulysses S. Grant. Beyond that, LeMay was five years younger than his nearest counterpart in any of the armed services.
To staff officers such as General Lauris Norstad, LeMay was the ultimate operator. Stocky, terse, and blunt, he spoke little and listened much. Inevitably he is described as “cigar-chomping” though he preferred a pipe (tobacco alleviated the effects of an infection contracted during a prewar posting in Panama). But beneath the hard-as-nails exterior, the foreboding edifice that would earn him the postwar epithet “caveman in a bomber,” Curtis Emerson LeMay wrestled his own demons. He had risen so far so fast that he realized he barely grasped the essentials of one job before tackling the next. Consequently, he maintained an open-door policy. He was receptive to any suggestion that seemed to increase efficiency, and therein lay the key to Curt LeMay: he was about results, and hang the regulations.
Upon LeMay’s return from England in 1944 there was only one place to send him: the China-Burma-India Theater. But he refused to go until he learned the Superfortress inside out. He said, “If I’m going to command a bunch of airplanes that are strange to me, I’m going to learn to fly one of them first.” Even for a fast study like LeMay, that took time.
When he arrived in India in August 1944, Curt LeMay was warmly received by Blondie Saunders, an old flying school classmate. But the new commander had barely stowed his bags at Kharagpur when Saunders disappeared on a farewell flight in the local area. The next day LeMay himself helped locate the crash and directed rescuers to the site; Saunders survived with the loss of a leg.
LeMay was appalled at what he found at Kharagpur. His sympathy for his predecessor only increased, as LeMay described the logistics as “utterly absurd” and declared that Wolfe “had been given an impossible task.”
LeMay chafed under the restriction imposed by 20th Air Force that prohibited him from flying missions. Finally he wangled permission for a one-time good deal, riding on a major strike against Anshan, Manchuria, on September 8. The perfectionist was not pleased with what he saw: incompletely