curtis lemay nickname

Curtis LeMay’s first contact with military service occurred in September 1924 when he enrolled as a student in the Army ROTC program at Ohio State University. He said that while the American people may have been afraid of nuclear war, he was not. [43], On March 13, 2010, LeMay was named the exemplar for the United States Air Force Academy class of 2013.[44]. [citation needed], On September 29, 1928, LeMay enlisted in the Army Air Corps as an aviation cadet. The Wallace-LeMay AIP ticket received 13.5 percent of the popular vote, higher than most third-party candidacies in the US, and carried five states for a total of 46 electoral votes. Furthermore, bombs dropped from the B-29s at high altitude (20,000+ feet) were often blown off of their trajectories by a consistently powerful jet stream over the Japanese home islands, which dramatically reduced the effectiveness of the high-altitude raids. LeMay implemented this unorthodox plan and the strike rate went up to eighty percent. Each of the armed forces had gradually jettisoned realistic appraisals of future conflicts in favor of developing its own separate nuclear and nonnuclear capabilities. LeMay received recognition for his work from thirteen countries, receiving twenty-two medals and decorations. Later McNamara, as Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson, would often clash with LeMay. [3] On June 9, 1934, he married Helen E. Maitland (died 1992), with whom he had one child, Patricia Jane LeMay Lodge, known as Janie. LeMay, Curtis; Yenne, William ‘Bill’ (1988). Read RT Privacy policy to find out more. Vice presidential candidate in 1968 on the ticket of the American Independent Party of presidential candidate and Alabama governor, Was the inspiration for warmongering Gen. Buck Turgidson in, Called the Cuban Missile Crisis the worst defeat the US had suffered in its entire history. ", A famous legend often used by SAC flight crews to illustrate LeMay's command style concerned his famous ever-present cigar. Robert McNamara described LeMay's character, in a discussion of a report into high abort rates in bomber missions during World War II: One of the commanders was Curtis LeMay—Colonel in command of a B-24 [sic] group. LeMay made a name for himself in helping to draw up Washington’s strategic bombing campaign in the Pacific theater during the Second World War. LeMay's dislike for tactical aircraft and training backfired in the low-intensity conflict of Vietnam, where existing Air Force fighter aircraft and standard attack profiles proved incapable of carrying out sustained tactical bombing campaigns in the face of hostile North Vietnamese antiaircraft defenses. The April 25, 1988, issue of The New Yorker carried an interview with retired Air Force Reserve Major General and former US Senator from Arizona Barry Goldwater, who said he repeatedly asked his friend General LeMay if he (Goldwater) might have access to the secret "Blue Room" at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, alleged by numerous Goldwater constituents to contain UFO evidence. His record of achievements there got him transferred to the Pacific Theater in 1944, where he was promoted to major general and given XXI Bomber Command. The massive bombing also hit a number of prisons and directly killed a number of Allied war prisoners. [13], Presidents Roosevelt and Truman justified these tactics by referring to an estimate of one million Allied casualties if Japan had to be invaded. This resulted in his being selected as the vice-presidential candidate of arch-segregationist former Alabama governor George Wallace during his presidential campaign of 1968. [25] When asked by the pilot to put the cigar out, LeMay demanded to know why. His enrollment in the ROTC program there resulted in his being made a second lieutenant when he joined the US Army Air Corps in 1930. Owing to his unrelenting opposition to the Johnson administration's Vietnam policy and what was widely perceived as his hostility to Secretary McNamara, LeMay was essentially forced into retirement in February 1965 and seemed headed for a political career. He is credited with designing and implementing an effective, but also controversial, systematic strategic bombing campaign in the Pacific theater of World War II. [8], In August 1944, LeMay transferred to the China-Burma-India theater and directed first the XX Bomber Command in China and then the XXI Bomber Command in the Pacific. LeMay's tenure was the longest over an American military command in nearly 100 years. "[38] Aircraft losses on tactical attack missions soared, and Air Force commanders soon realized that their large, missile-armed jet fighters were exceedingly vulnerable not only to antiaircraft shells and missiles but also to cannon-armed, maneuverable Soviet fighters. LeMay was later placed in charge of all strategic air operations against the Japanese home islands. In conjunction with Art Collins (W0CXX) of Collins Radio, he established SSB as the radio standard for SAC bombers in 1957.[34]. But before all this started lets get some of the basic info outta the day. |  This included the firebombing of Tokyo on the night of March 9–10, 1945, the most destructive bombing raid of the war. B00005WGR2. He was survived by his wife Helen, who died in 1992 and is buried next to the general. [18] After ordering a mock bombing exercise on Dayton, Ohio, LeMay was shocked to learn that most of the strategic bombers assigned to the mission missed their targets by one mile or more. K0GRL is still the call sign of the Strategic Air Command Memorial Amateur Radio Club. [36], The memorandum from LeMay, Chief of Staff, USAF, to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, January 4, 1964, illustrates LeMay's reasons for keeping bomber forces alongside ballistic missiles: "It is important to recognize, however, that ballistic missile forces represent both the U.S. and Soviet potential for strategic nuclear warfare at the highest, most indiscriminate level, and at a level least susceptible to control. Bombing limitations were imposed by President Lyndon Johnson for geopolitical reasons, as he surmised that bombing Soviet and Chinese ships in port and killing Soviet advisers would bring the Soviets and Chinese more directly into the war. "Superfortress: The Story of the B-29 and American Air Power". His belief in the efficacy of strategic air campaigns over tactical strikes and ground support operations became Air Force policy during his tenure as chief of staff. “It is their government and you are fighting a people … so it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders,” as he told author Michael Sherry in an interview for his 1989 book, The Rise of American Airpower. Of all these various schemes, only LeMay's command structure of SAC survived complete reorganization in the changing reality of Cold War-era conflicts. pp. [10] For this first attack, LeMay ordered the defensive guns removed from 325 B-29s, loaded each plane with Model M-47 incendiary clusters, magnesium bombs, white phosphorus bombs, and napalm, and ordered the bombers to fly in streams at 5,000 to 9,000 feet over Tokyo. In September 1928, LeMay was approached by the Ohio National Guard and asked to accept a state commission, also as a second lieutenant, which LeMay accepted. Thus, no serious effort was ever made to promote LeMay to the rank of General of the Air Force, and the matter was eventually dropped after his retirement from active service in 1965. In a three-hour period, the main bombing force dropped 1,665 tons of incendiary bombs, killing 100,000 civilians, destroying 250,000 buildings, and incinerating 16 square miles (41 km2) of the city. His saber rattling did not help the Wallace campaign. General LeMay was informed by a senior staff member, Colonel William P. Fisher, that bomber pilots were turning back from these low altitude bombing runs due to heavy anti-aircraft fire from Japanese defense forces. As chief of staff, LeMay clashed repeatedly with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Air Force Secretary Eugene Zuckert, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Maxwell Taylor. He opposed the naval blockade and, after the end of the crisis, suggested that Cuba be invaded anyway, even after the Russians agreed to withdraw.

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