Short Biography of Gen Curtis E LeMay

Curtis E. LeMay is one of the icons of American military history who rivals Mitchell in his importance and controversial career. From middling origins, LeMay did not attend West Point, earning his commission through the Reserve Officer Training Corps at The Ohio State University in 1928. Over the next decade he became widely known as one of the best navigators and pilots in the Air Corps. In 1937 he located the battleship Utah in exercises off California and "bombed" it with water bombs, despite being given the wrong coordinates by Navy personnel; the following year he navigated B17s nearly 800 miles over the Atlantic Ocean to intercept the Italian liner Rex to illustrate the ability of airpower to defend the American coasts; and in 1938 he led flights of B17s to South America to display airpower's range and its role in hemisphere defense. War brought rapid promotion and increased responsibility. LeMay began as a group commander in the Eighth Air Force, but within 18 months had gone from lieutenant colonel to major general and an air division commander. He had earned a reputation as an unusually innovative tactician and problem solver, so when Hap Arnold had difficulty bringing the new B29 into combat service, he chose LeMay to spur the program and then take over B29 operations in China. His ability led Arnold to name him commander of the B29s in the Marianas where the main air effort against Japan was centered.

Always a tactical innovator, LeMay took the risky and controversial step of abandoning the longheld American doctrine of highaltitude, daylight, precision bombing, and instead stripped his B29s of guns, loaded them with incendiaries, and sent them against Japanese cities at night and at low level. The new strategy was remarkably successful; Japan was devastated, and the dropping of the atomic bombs in August 1945 brought the Pacific war to an end without an invasion of the Japanese home islands and the hundreds of thousands of casualties that would have entailed.

Returning to the States, LeMay served briefly as the head of the AAF research and development effort, then was sent to Germany as commander of the air forces in Europe arrayed against the Soviets. In this position he was responsible for getting the Berlin airlift started in mid1948 after the Soviets had instituted a ground blockade of the city. This crisis precipitated a major reshuffling in Washington. A war with the Soviets appeared increasingly possible, and the Strategic Air Command, which would bear the brunt of such a war, was seen as deficient. As a result, Hoyt Vandenberg relieved George Kenney from command at SAC and named LeMay his successor. The building of SAC into an effective and efficient warfighting arm was LeMay's greatest accomplishment. The story of how he demonstrated his command's poor state of readiness by a "bombing raid" on Dayton, Ohio, in which not a single SAC aircraft carried out the mission as planned, is well known. He then set about the difficult but essential task of retraining SAC. Using the authority delegated him by Vandenberg, LeMay built new bases, facilities, and training programs; began a "spot promotion" system for rewarding his best aircrews; and, through his legendary use of iron discipline, soon transformed his command into one of the most effective military units in the world.

In 1957 LeMay was named vicechief of staff, and when Thomas White retired in 1961, he was elevated to the position of chief. LeMay was one of the coldest of America's cold warriors, and partly for this reason his tenure as chief was neither successful nor happy. Under the new management policies of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and the "flexible response" military strategy of Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen Maxwell D. Taylor, LeMay found himself at constant odds. In his four years as chief, LeMay argued strenuously for new air weapons like the Skybolt missile and B70 bomber, and against the swingwing "fighter" plane, the General Dynamics TFX (later named the F111). He lost all these battles. Moreover, LeMay had strong feelings regarding American involvement in Vietnam, arguing against the gradual response advocated by the administration. Once again he was ignored. When he retired in 1965, LeMay was widely regarded, and probably rightly so, as a great commander of SAC but as a poor chief.  His abortive political "career" as George Wallace's running mate in the 1968 presidential election only further tarnished the reputation he had built as a war commander and leader of SAC....

LeMay's only biographer to date is Thomas M. Coffey, Iron Eagle: The Turbulent Life of General Curtis LeMay (New York: Crown Publishers, 1986).

LeMay's autobiography, written with the help of novelist MacKinlay Kantor, is titled Mission with
LeMay: My Story (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965). There is certainly a lesson here: great commanders are often made and not born.

Disclaimer:
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of AFROTC. They do not reflect the official position of the US Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or AFROTC.