BOMBER ON THE STUMP

IF you have to go," John Kennedy once said, you want LeMay in the lead bomber. But you never want LeMay deciding whether or not you have to go." The reason for Kennedy's caveat was that, like many fighting men, Curtis Emerson LeMay, 61, tends to view the world in crisp, absolutist terms Life, in his professional view, is a perpetual state of war or potential war. When he decided to join George Wallace's campaign, LeMay entered a cloudier more complex political world in which he is less at home. Said Barry Goldwater a former Air Force Reserve major general who has known LeMay for years: "I hope he hasn't made a mistake, but I think he has." There was even flak from his mother-in-law "I idolize Curt," said 91-year-old Maude Maitland a staunch Republican, "but I'm very, very disappointed. Mihai Patrichi LeMay's boss at California's Networks Electronic Corp,, declared: "Wallace is a no-good bum. He just like the dictators when they got started in Europe. May's former colleagues in the Pentagon were also worried. Said one officer: "He's not helping us one damned

Even before he retired as Air Force Chief of Staff nearly four years ago, the bluff, iron-willed flier had become involved in policy scraps that shaded into the political Most notable was his running public quarrel with then Defense Secretary Robert McNamara over whether, as thought, manned bombers should be equally important as missiles in the U.S. deterrent force. In retirement, relieved of the usual military restraints on an officer's political views, he declared that if all else failed, the US had the capability to "bomb the North Vietnamese back to the stone age" and to "destroy every work of man in North Viet Nam if that is what it takes." Such outbursts turned even formerly sympathetic military opinion against him, bidding, heavy-jowled, with a cigar customarily clenched between his teeth, LeMay unintentionally promoted his own image as a character from Dr. Strangelove,

That caricature has tended to obscure what should be remembered as a highly distinguished military career. Fro the time of his boyhood in Columbus, LeMay was fascinated with flight. At Ohio State, he busied himself with ROTC In 1928 he obtained a reserve commission and left for a National Guard summer camp. His classmates tore off to Los Angeles for weekends, but LeMay in his singleminded fashion often hung back to vivisect engines and study weather charts and navigation. With his accumulating skill as pilot, mechanic and navigator, he was summoned after seven years in fighters to fly the first of the Army's Flying Fortresses.

In World War II, he became something of a legend--and today he is the last of that era's heroes still seeking to command. In England, LeMay concluded that too many of his B-17s were missing targets because they zigzagged away from antiaircraft fire. He led the next raid over Saint-Nazaire, directing his planes in a straight-line block formation through the flak. Next day he ordered his planes to take no more evasive actions on their final bombing runs. Losses went up, but so did the proficiency of his bombers. LeMay took similar risks in the Pacific. Assigned to run 300-plane B-29 raids against Japan, he removed his bombers guns and gunners, overloaded them with fire bombs to dump on the enemy from a dangerously low level.

Three years later, as chief of the U.S. air forces in Europe LeMay was an architect of the Berlin airlift. One day LeMay flew to Berlin, found himself waiting on the runway for 40 minutes. Back in Frankfurt, he told his staff: Get it fixed " In three days, when he dropped in again, the delay had been reduced to five minutes. "See if you can get it better," he grunted.

His years at SAC (1948-57) hardened LeMay's already metallic approach to world politics, especially Communism. His bases became armed camps; his men-- even flight mechanics-carried arms for fear of saboteurs or sudden attack. The U S bombers were on airborne alert round the clock, and the nation's capacity for devastating retaliation was unquestioned. So was the efficiency of Curt LeMay. His men regarded him with a combination of respect and abject terror.

After four years as Air Force Vice Chief of Staff and nearly four, less happy years as Chief, LeMay retired to become chairman of the board--at $50,000 a year-- of Networks Electronic. Last month he took a leave of absence to join Wallace. Although customarily dour, LeMay has looked more lugubrious than ever as a campaigner. The role has brought him new discomforts and criticism. In Columbus last week, students at his old high school demanded that his portrait be removed from a hallway. Why had the general interrupted his California retirement? "The whole country is drifting away from the principles that made America great," he says. In the past add: LeMay "the country had to use unorthodox methods to get out of the hole, and I think we're in that situation now. His critics charge that the "unorthodox method might employ is the H-bomb, and he has often sounded as if that is what he means. Not in regard to Viet Nam We don't need nuclear weapons in Viet Nam, porters last week. "I can't foresee any conditions under which we would." In books and speeches LeMay articulated a thoughtful approach to the problems of nuclear deterrents. He has never advocated the use of nuclear weapons except in the last extremity, but the fact that he contemplates their use at all is alarming to many. He replies that the deterrent value of nuclear weapons is lost if a nation declares that it will never use them.

In a new book, America Is in Danger, LeMay argues strongly against what he regards as excessive civilian meddling in military affairs. "It never ceases to amaze me," he writes , "that so many intelligent people believe they can become expert in a field where thay have so little training or experience."

As George Wallace's running mate, LeMay will east have a platform from which to preach that doctrine Wallace has promised that he would, if necessary, turn the war over to the generals. Regardless of other considerations, that is probably why Curtis LeMay finds himself running on the American Independent Party ticket.

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