Word: lemay
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...after long, slow shakedown, it is now admiringly known as "the magnesium monster," and the SACmen are ready to battle anyone who says it isn't the best bomber in the world. When the Navy insisted a year ago that the B-36 could be shot down, Curt LeMay shot back a blunt answer...
...Curt LeMay, 43, runs his armada from a second-floor office at Offutt Base, a converted World War II aircraft plant set peacefully among the rolling cornfields just west of the Missouri River. He leaves his door wide open and is usually "at home" to any brasshat or buck private-somewhat as a lion is at home on meatless Tuesday. He sits immobile behind his polished walnut desk, black-maned, broad-shouldered and heavy-faced, his lips set as straight as the five rows of service ribbons on his tan uniform jacket...
...LeMay's capacity for anger has probably never been tested to its fullest: he runs himself as he flies an airplane; to spout smoke or to get off course would be inefficient. He can ignore an uncut lawn or an unpolished shoe, but will pick out an unkempt airplane across the field. "He is a single-minded 'why?' guy, an administrator of high ability, and above all a hard-shelled military realist," one of his staff said appraisingly. "And I'm damn glad he's not on Russia's side...
...comfortable armchair pulling at his ever-present pipe. His gregarious, twinkly eyed wife Helen, whom he met 19 years ago at a dance, is not afraid to chatter, or to stray as far from the point as she chooses. SAC's officers have unconcealed admiration for LeMay's eleven-year-old daughter Jane, who frequently tells...
...LeMay first landed on SAC in October 1948, relieving Sg-year-old General George Kenney, MacArthur's top airman in World War II. Kenney, a good commander, had neither LeMay's training as a long-range bomber specialist, his experience as a battle pilot, nor his hard-driving temperament. Kenney's bombers spent much of their time making easy training flights, "just boring holes in the air," as one of them recalls it. LeMay picked the outfit up by the neck, shook it in a way none of the oldtimers will soon forget, and flung it across...