Family Weekly September 29, 1963
l t M -
Career highlights: from left, pistol-spooking Gen. LeMay at a World War 11
base; LeMay (chomping cigar) and Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg during the Berlin
Airlift; LeMay (in flight togs) while head of SAC; and LeMay and the Chiefl
of Staff of the Army, Navy, and Marines at recent test-ban-treaty hearings
PUFFING FURIOUSLY on his ever-pres-ent
cigar, General Curtis LeMay,
granite-jawed chief of the U. S. Air
Force, arrived at an air base to inspect
a new bomber. As he strode toward the
plane, a cautious officer warned, "Sir,
if you board her with that lighted ci
gar, she might blow up." The base com
mander, knowing his visitor, told
the other officer, "Don't worry. She
wouldn't dare."
Airmen call General LeMay "Old Iron Pants."
In Moscow and Peiping, they call him even less
complimentary names. "It was LeMay's drive
and prowess that for 10 years made the Strategic
Air Force the dominant chess piece on the board
of world power," says the highly respected news
man, Theodore H. White.
"And behind SAC's shield, McNamara (Sec
retary of Defense) and Taylor (Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs) have finally been able to redeploy
the strength of America," he adds.
LeMay's amazing results spring from many
sources. One is the ordeal known as "having tea
with LeMay." When a commander's performance
skids below perfection, LeMay summons him to
a closed-door meeting. Nobody knows what hap
pens, but witnesses swear they have seen star
spangled generals stagger out to the nearest ice
water cooler to apply cold compresses to their
temples. And thereafter, their performance al
ways seems to improve miraculously.
The LeMay presence is unique. He is neither
a "yes" man nor a "no" man. He is a grunter.
He does not smile, finding nothing in his office
sufficiently sunny. His gestures are flicks of both
hands upward and outward. Unbuttoned of
blouse, unyielding of eye, he disposes of prob
lems like a well-oiled machine and with the
same warmth. Subordinates regulate their in
terviews by the tilt of his cigar.
But the General is no one-sided misanthrope.
A woman associate says, "I've never heard him
laugh, but I think he's all mush inside." A friend
who accompanied him to memorial services at the
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier says, "I saw
tears running down his cheeks."
His wife recalls, "When he finally came home
after three years overseas during World War II,
he stood shivering on the front steps with our
daughter Janie all one wintry afternoon so she
could prove to the other kids in the block that
she really did have a father!"
When he installed hobby shops throughout
the Strategic Air Command, LeMay became a
part-time patron. One night, he and another gen
eral, wearing coveralls, were dismantling a motor
when an airman second class came along, pushing
his stalled jalopy. He called for help, but the
officers didn't hear him. The boy came closer
and yelled, "Fellows, for gosh sake, how about
giving me a hand?" Obediently, the "fellows"
put down their tools and pushed the car into the
shop. That airman still doesn't know that he was
giving orders to SAC's commander-in-chief.
Several homey facts should be added to his
portrait. LeMay goes on diets and falls off like
other mortals. Nevertheless, he has lost 14 pounds
in the last year. He and his wife exercise daily.
Off duty, he is an inveterate hobbyist. His
delight in speed is profound. He has owned three
Allard racers, and his best civilian friends in
clude two part-time jet pilots, tv star Arthur
Godfrey and Sen. Barry Gold water. When he got
a motor scooter recently, he put his wife on the
seat behind him and rocketed around the block,
grinning like a kid with a toy fire engine.
As an antidote to office pressure, he puts things
together, tears them apart, and learns new skills.
Trying to master an electric organ, he became
unhappy with his progress, so he cut the letters
A,B,C,D,E,F,G out of newspaper headlines and
glued them to the correct keys. "Now, a half-wit
can play it." He insists. "Even with my tin ear,
I can manage 'Old Black Joe,' 'Home on the
Range,' that sort of thing."
No Margin for Error Allowed
What is the essential quality that undergirds
LeMay's thoughts and actions? Probably it is
the habit of innovating to achieve perfection.
His wife became sharply aware of his strong
desire for perfection when he went overseas
during the war. Casually he promised to write
every day. And he did 365 days a year every
year while he was away!
His daughter recalls his reaction when she
showed him her grades from Stephens College,
all B's and B plusses. He stormed, "You should
have made straight A's."
When World War II found the country with
no combat-ready bomber squadrons, young Le
May, who was a specialist in navigation, was
hustled to a desert training command. His men
could fly like fools, but once off in the blue they
couldn't find their way home. He ordered con
stant practice, leading them through aching day
and night flights. On the ground, he held them in
their cockpits, simulating long-distance sorties,
"The first requirement for combat readiness is
a calloused butt," he said. By the time his B-17
squadron was ready for Europe, he bore the un
shakable name of "Old Iron Pants."
Over the German heartland, he learned thaU
Nazi planes could easily kill off the trailers in
his V-flight pattern. Flying experimental mis
sions with his 305th Bombardment Group, he
devised a novel diamond formation which dis
couraged attack.
How to Become a General
But it became clear that the war could not be
won with German fighters filling the sky. So
LeMay decided that the factories that built the
fighters must be knocked out. The trouble was
that the factory site was Regensberg, Bavaria,
a city so distant that B-17's could not carry
enough gasoline to fly there and back. LeMay
studied his maps, assembled his veterans, and led
them on an unprecedented flight. German ex
perts who followed his penetration concluded that
it was a suicide mission, and Goring sent up
every available fighter to deflect it.
Colonel LeMay fought his way through them
and dropped tons of high explosives on the Mes
serschmitt factories. Then, instead of flying back
to England, he flew straight south across Italy
to American bases in North Africa. He had lost
24 bombers but had knocked out 60 enemy planes
and the assembly plant at Regensberg was in
ruins. Thus, the technique of "shuttle bombing"
was born. Two weeks later he was a general.
Ordered to the Pacific to take command of B-29
fleets, he devised new tactics again. The result
was a stunning attack on Tokyo by 335 Super
fortresses. Of it, Gen. Thomas S. Powers says,
"The March 9, 1945, bomb raid was the greatest
single disaster in military history. It caused
damage greater than the combined destruction of
the atomic-bomb drops on Hiroshima and Naga
saki. There were more casualties than in an
other military action in the history of the world."
The end of the hot war brought new problems,
Soon after taking command of U.S. Air Forces j
in Europe, LeMay saw the Berlin situation ex-ij
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