Word: lemay
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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. 10½ 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...
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...
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...
Favored to succeed Air Force Chief Thomas White, 59, who is planning to retire this summer, is Vice Chief Curtis LeMay, 54, the brambly former SAC commander. LeMay, a military "conservative," molds his thinking around here-and-now weapons rather than futuristic ones on the drawing board. Thus Air Force research and development leaders are still bucking his appointment...