Background

Ethnicity: Curtis LeMay was of English and distant French Huguenot heritage.

Curtis E. LeMay was born on November 15, 1906, in Columbus, Ohio, United States. He was a son of Erving Edwin LeMay and Arizona Dove (Carpenter) LeMay. His father was at times an ironworker and general handyman, but he never held a job longer than a few months. LeMay's family moved around the country as his father looked for work, going as far as Montana and California. Eventually, they returned to his native city of Columbus. LeMay also had a sister and a brother.

Education

Curtis LeMay graduated from Columbus South High School (now South High School) in 1924. Later LeMay studied engineering at the Ohio State University. In 1928, he was commissioned without completing his degree, which he completed later. In 1931, he was allowed approximately six months to finish his coursework. By late March 1932, Lieutenant LeMay held a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering. He also took flight training at Norton Field in Columbus.

Career

Curtis LeMay started his career as a second lieutenant in the Air Corps Reserve in 1929 and received a regular commission in the United States Army Air Corps the following year. In the 1930s, LeMay helped develop the ideas and equipment America used in World War II. In 1936, LeMay had moved from fighters to bombers because he saw the future of military aviation in bombers. In 1937, navigating a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress under pilot and commander Caleb V. Haynes, he helped locate the battleship Utah in misty conditions off California though provided with wrong coordinates by Navy personnel. In 1938, LeMay navigated three B-17s over 610 miles of the Atlantic Ocean to intercept the Italian liner Rex, showcasing the ability of land-based airpower to defend the American coasts.

When the United States entered World War II, Curtis LeMay became the commander of the B-17 Flying Fortress unit, the 305th Bomb Group, led it in combat until 1943, and helped develop the combat box formation. In 1943, he became the first commander of the newly-formed 3rd Air Division and in the Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission led 146 B-17s to Regensburg, Germany, beyond the range of escorting fighters, despite heavy losses. In 1944, he was transferred to the China-Burma-India Theater and directed Bomber Commands in China and the Pacific and was later placed in charge of all strategic air operations against the Japanese home islands. He directed Operation Starvation, an aerial mining operation against Japanese waterways and ports that disrupted Japanese shipping and food distribution assigning the entire 313th Bombardment Wing, consisting of about 160 airplanes, to the task. On March 2, 1944, LeMay was promoted to the rank of major general. On January 18, 1945, LeMay left India and moved to Guam to command B-296 operating from the Marianna Islands against Japan.

After the war, Curtis LeMay was transferred to the Pentagon but was sent back to Europe as the United States Air Force Europe commander and in 1948 he was appointed the second Commander-in-Chief of The Strategic Air Command and held his post until 1957. During the time he was in charge of The Strategic Air Command, he entrusted the task of transforming it into a force capable of conducting a nuclear war should the need arise. In 1957, LeMay became the fifth Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force and held the post until 1961. On June 30, 1961, he was made the fifth United States Air Force Chief of Staff. During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, he clashed with then-President John F. Kennedy and Defense Secretary McNamara and wanted authorization to bomb nuclear missile sites in Cuba and opposed the naval blockade. LeMay retired in 1965 and in 1968 became involved in radical right-wing politics and was selected as the vice-presidential candidate of archsegregationist former Alabama governor George Wallace during his presidential campaign. However, the following year he retired from public life. In his last years, LeMay kept out of the public eye. He wrote a book about his life and in 1988 published another book Superfortress: The Boeing B-29 and American Airpower in World War II. Curtis LeMay died at an air force hospital in California on October 1, 1990.

Achievements

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  Curtis E. LeMay was an American Air Force general who was known as one of the outstanding combat leaders of World War II. He served as a general for seventeen years – longer than any other man in the history of the United States military and eventually became the Air Force Chief of Staff. LeMay was instrumental in the Strategic Air Command's acquisition of a large fleet of new strategic bombers, the establishment of a vast aerial refueling system, development of a strategic ballistic missile force, and enhancing their readiness capability.
  
  Curtis E. LeMay received numerous awards, including the Air Medal, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the Silver Star, and the Order of Aeronautical Merit. He was the inspiration behind the comedy movie, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Peter Sellers. The headquarters building of the United States Strategic Command at Offutt AFB in Nebraska is named for Curtis E. LeMay.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Superfortress: The Boeing B-29 and American Airpower in World War II

    (Written by the man who led the B-29 into combat, Superfor...)

    1988
  • Mission with Lemay: My Story 1965

Religion

Curtis LeMay once said that he did not care about religion.

Politics

Curtis LeMay was not particularly interested in politics. However, after his military career ended LeMay supported former Republican Vice President Richard Nixon during the 1968 presidential election. Later he turned down two requests by former Alabama Governor George Wallace to join his newly formed American Independent Party. However, LeMay ran for Vice President of the United States with George Wallace. LeMay claimed that he had accepted Wallace's proposal to be his running mate to weaken the Democratic Party's chances of winning the presidency. LeMay's association with Wallace was controversial and the two were defeated at the polls. LeMay retired from public life and declined further calls to run for office.

Views

In a 1985 interview with the Omaha World-Herald, LeMay said that at the time he believed his firebombing had been so successful that Japan would probably have collapsed without the use of the bomb, but stated that he went along with President Truman's decision to do so because of the President's authority. Lemay did not see the use of atomic weapons instead of conventional weapons as a moral issue. For him, the moral issue was, and remained, how to win with the least possible American casualties. LeMay believed that the use of too little force would needlessly prolong the war and thus produce more casualties than would have been caused by overwhelming force initially.

LeMay advocated a sustained strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnamese cities, harbors, ports, shipping, and other strategic targets.

Quotations: "There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders."

"Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time. I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal. Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier."

"I'd like to see a more aggressive attitude on the part of the United States. That doesn't mean launching an immediate preventive war."

"As far as casualties were concerned I think there were more casualties in the first attack on Tokyo with incendiaries than there were with the first use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The fact that it's done instantaneously, maybe that's more humane than incendiary attacks if you can call any war act humane. I don't, particularly, so to me there wasn't much difference. A weapon is a weapon and it really doesn't make much difference how you kill a man. If you have to kill him, well, that's the evil to start with, and how you do it becomes pretty secondary. I think your choice should be which weapon is the most efficient and most likely to get the whole mess over with as early as possible."

"I'll tell you what war is about, you've got to kill people, and when you've killed enough they stop fighting."

"Apply whatever force it is necessary to employ, to stop things quickly. The main thing is to stop it. The quicker you stop it, the more lives you save."

"Actually, I think it's more immoral to use less force than necessary than it is to use more. If you use less force, you kill off more of humanity in the long run, because you are merely protracting the struggle."

Membership

Curtis LeMay was one of the directors and members of the National Geographic Society. While at Ohio State he was a member of the National Society of Pershing Rifles and the Professional Engineering Fraternity Theta Tau. LeMay was a member of the York Rite Freemasonry.

Personality

Those who knew Curtis LeMay said that he possessed a big personality and a creative mind for strategy. He was dedicated and extremely hard-working. LeMay was also a good family man and sincerely concerned about the welfare of his troops.

Hunting was one of LeMay's few indulgences that remained one of a small handful throughout his life. Another of his hobbies was building radios. General LeMay was also a sports car owner and enthusiast.

Quotes from others about the person

• Walter J. Boyne: "No other United States military force commander so imprinted his personality and ideals upon his organization as did LeMay. The Strategic Air Command became LeMay personified - but only after tremendous effort on his part. There were no criticisms of his intellect or industry, nor any suggestion of patronage, but the hard, and often seemingly cold, manner in which he drove the Strategic Air Command gave rise to many stories about him, most of them apocryphal."
  
  Barry Goldwater: "I used to receive a hundred calls a year from people who wanted me to get into the Green Room at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base because that's where the Air Force stored all the material gathered on UFOs. I once asked Curtis LeMay if I could get in that room, and he just gave me holy hell. He said, 'Not only can't you get into it but don't you ever mention it to me again."
  
  James F. Dunnigan: "An excellent pilot and officer equally capable in both combat and staff, LeMay was typical of the bomber-minded generals who emerged from World War II to dominate the Air Force during the Cold War."

Interests

• Hunting, sports cars

Connections

Curtis LeMay married Helen Estelle Maitland on June 9, 1934. The marriage produced a daughter, Patricia Jane LeMay Lodge.

Father:

Erving LeMay

(August 30, 1883 – October 18, 1966)

Mother:

Arizona Dove (Carpenter) LeMay

(June 13, 1887 – September 24, 1967)

Sister:

Velma Evelyn (LeMay) Scherr

(1911 – 1998)

Brother:

Leonard Ray LeMay

(1917 – 2002)

Wife:

Helen E. Maitland

(1908 – 1992)

Daughter:

Patricia Jane LeMay Lodge

References

• LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay The firebombing of Tokyo. Strategic Air Command. John F. Kennedy. Dr. Strangelove. George Wallace. All of these have one man in common – General Curtis Lemay, who remains as enigmatic and controversial as he was in life.
  2009
• LeMay Over the last decades, most United States military missions were carried out entirely through the employment of the Air Force; this is LeMay's legacy. Packed with breathtaking battles in the air and inspiring leadership tactics on the ground, LeMay will keep readers on the edge of their seats.
  2007