New Air Chief

Nominated last week as the next Air Force Chief of Staff, after years of public and Pentagon wondering if he would ever make the grade: General Curtis Emerson LeMay, 54, a bulky (5 ft. 10 1/2 in., 185 lbs.), cigar-smoking Ohio State graduate* whose brusque personality and bluntly voiced military philosophy have often stirred more public notice than have his real and remarkable abilities.

Curt LeMay is not much of a hand for chitchat. When his aides, in reporting, begin to stray from the subject at hand, Curt is certainly curt: "Stop, you're talking nonsense." Recently subjected to an interview by a Washington pundit who seemed more anxious to make speeches than to ask questions, LeMay interrupted: "If you know all the damned answers, then what are you doing here?" LeMay is as hard-boiled a disciplinarian as exists in the high command of the U.S. armed forces. But he is renowned for backing his men when they make understandable mistakes--so long as the same mistake is never made twice. Off duty, he carries long-range, single-side-band ham radio gear on trips, collects guns, drives a Mercedes 3005L and hunts big game.

Grabbing the Controls. LeMay's military record is distinguished. (Among his many medals: the D.S.C., Silver Star, D.F.C.) He was, and is, a big-bomber man. At 37 he was one of the youngest two-star generals in World War II. He executed new and now classic bombing tactics with the B-17 group he directed from England against German targets. A bit later, he moved into the Far Eastern theater, risked his career by ordering his B-29 pilots to strike from the Marianas against Japanese cities at previously unheard-of low altitudes for the huge planes. In the first such raid, on March 10, 1945, 300 planes burned out 256,010 Tokyo buildings. LeMay then helped plan the world's first atomic destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

After the shooting war, LeMay entered the cold war, supervising the Berlin airlift and frequently piloting cargo planes himself. (He still grabs the controls of a jet whenever he can.) In 1948 he returned to the U.S. to take command of the Strategic Air Command--the force of nuclear-armed intercontinental bombers that was, and in operational terms remains, the nation's most effective deterrent against all-out atomic war.

Breaking the Dishes? Four years ago--after a nearly ten-year command--LeMay left SAC, moved into the Pentagon as Air Force Vice Chief of Staff. There was a lot of conjecture about the move. LeMay, it was agreed, was a superb field commander. But within the confines of the Pentagon, he would surely break up a lot of policy dishes.

It did not work out that way. LeMay mostly kept his mouth shut in public. In private, he argued tirelessly against the U.S.'s cutting down too sharply on SAC in favor of missiles. In fact he sometimes sounded like the Air Force equivalent of a battleship admiral. He once told friends: "I have ten items on my priority list, and missiles are the tenth--and that's only because I can't think of anything else to put on my list." What he really meant, and proved by his actions and recommendations, was that missiles were dandy--but, as a weapon so far untested in war, they should not be accepted at the expense of manned bombers. His favorite theory of "counterforce"--the ability to have enough power left to win a war after an enemy's atomic aggression--calls for "a carefully prepared, maintained, modernized and controlled blend of strategic weapons.'' That includes both SAC's manned bombers and missiles as they become operational. Presumably, it was on that basis that President Kennedy selected Curt LeMay to succeed Air Force Staff Chief Thomas White come June 30.

*He will be the first Air Force Chief of Staff who did not graduate from West Point.

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