School of War - Ep 46: James M. Scott on Curtis LeMay in World War II

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

James M. Scott, author of Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo and the Road to the Atomic Bomb, joins the show to talk about the World War II career of one of the most important and controversial American generals of the 20th Century, Curtis LeMay, and his leadership of the strategic bombing campaign in the Pacific.   ▪️ Times  • 02:00 Introduction • 03:02 Teaching In Japan • 06:27 Lemay, Tireless Worker • 09:47 Bomber Vs Fighter  • 11:43 Europe, B-17, and B-29  • 19:54 Hansel & O’Donnell • 30:00 LeMay Takes Over  • 32:37 From Dresden To Tokyo • 35:10 On His Own Authority • 40:26 “We’ll Be Tried As War Criminals” • 43:07 Firestorm • 49:06 What Brought Peace?

As 1944 turned to 45, with the U.S. and Commonwealth armies fighting across Germany's western frontier and the Red Army approaching inexorably from the east, the days of the Nazis were clearly numbered. In the Pacific, while the momentum was clearly with the Allies, and while it was clear that the Empire of Japan would ultimately lose the war, there was no foothold in Japan proper, and the prospect, the likely costs of securing one, filled planners with a sense of dread. The end game there was going to cost countless American lives. It was at this time that our country's final major strategic bombing campaign of the war began.

The effort to strike Japan with B-29s flying for the era incredible distances, first to conduct precision daylight bombing and later to conduct devastating nighttime area strikes that would turn Tokyo and other Japanese cities to ash. The architect of this campaign, operating at the limits of his authority and watching, Washington's approval was only getting started in his career. Let's talk about Curtis LeMay. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Hawaii. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamous. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stay on it.

We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. The people who are not these buildings down. We shall fight on the beaches. We'll fight on the landing grounds. fighting the fields and in the streets, which will never surrender. Hi, I'm Aaron McClain. Thanks for joining School of War. I'm delighted to be joined today by James M. Scott, who is the author most recently of Rampage and Target Tokyo, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina, and I was reading that bio wrote.

It's actually slightly inaccurately. He is most recently the author of what we were going to talk about today, Black Snow, Curtis Lame, the fire bombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb. James, thanks so much for joining the show. Aaron, thanks so much for having me on. So you're an author, but tell us a little bit about how you came to focus on the Second World War and the American military as your subject. Yeah, actually, so my first job out of college, actually, was as a public school English teacher in Japan. And so that's kind of what, you know, that was back in the late 90s.

And so it's kind of what really sparked me my interest in World War II and also, in part, my interest in the Pacific. because I was living there. There were, of course, a lot of veterans, civilians who had survival war and whatnot. I was actually teaching a class. I lived in this little tiny village in the main island of Hansu. And so they recruited me to teach this class at the community center at night. And so it was me in about eight of the villagers. And I remember one night, the discussion came up about the American fireball.

And yeah, they were talking about what that was like. And of course, you know, I was 22 years old. I didn't, you know, I studied Western Civ and whatnot. but you didn't get into the nitty gritty of it all. It's like, you know, what do you mean about that? Tell me about it. And so just kind of having that sort of firsthand exposure. And so I remember one of the sort of the key moments for me, though, was when I went down,

I visited Hiroshima. And so I was there, spent a weekend there. And then about two weeks later, I flew to Hawaii where I was meeting my parents who were going to be there on holiday. And I went and visited Pearl Harbor. So within the span of about two weeks, I kind of saw the bookends of America's experience in World War II. And it just clicked.

I mean, I was just fascinated. And so I started, you know, voraciously reading everything I could. I finished up teaching in Japan, ended up as a journalist work. So it's covered in contemporary military issues. And, you know, and it just kind of one thing's sort of led to the other. And, you know, here I am all these years later. And can I just ask back, you know, I'm not going to make any assumptions about your age here, but whatever year this was that you were talking with these Japanese students and others in the

community about the firebombing of Tokyo and the campaign more broadly. What were the attitudes then? What were they saying? Yeah, I mean, at that point, this is back in 97 to 98, this American teacher who's over there teaching kids in the senior high school. You know, everybody was delighted. You know, and it was just, it was very matter of fact, just describing what it was like. But they talked about the evacuation of cities, you know, which of course occurs in the wake of the big fire bombing on Tokyo and kind of what that was like. And, you know, of course, nobody was going to hold any of that against me.

You know, here I was this, you know, basically this puppy in my 20s, you know. Sure, sure. People were very gracious about it. But for me, I found it to be just such an interesting area that, you know, look, you know, covering your survey history courses, you don't get into a lot of that nitty-gritty. You don't get into the stuff that we are able to get into now. And so, of course, I found a lot of that same attitude when I went back working on Black Snow. You know, I spent a good bit of time in Tokyo interviewing survivors. And one of the themes I think I really took away from this.

And of course, you know, people, of course, are going to be gracious talking to an American historian. But, you know, a lot of the blame was leveled at their own government for having prolonged the war, for having allowed this to happen. for not having taking proactive steps to evacuate cities, to cut fire breaks, through dense areas, also for the fire report, and whatnot. But again, that also could have been them just being polite to Americans, so not wanting to keep all the blame ones on me and my nation. That's really interesting. So I'd like to spend the bulk of our time today talking about Curtis LeMay, who is, you know,

the central figure of your book, which, by the way, I'd like to commend you and, you know, recommend to listeners the book. I mean, it's, in addition to the obvious, it was a really interesting original research in these interviews. There are two things about it that really struck me. One was these really excellent sketches and sort of analyses of the leadership styles of LeMay, but also some of the other central figures, especially Americans, involved in this final year of the air war in the Pacific. So that's one. And then two was, for lack of a better way of putting it, the balanced moral attitude of the book, I thought you did of a really excellent job of seeing those events from different perspectives in a way that was not,

as it can sometimes be overbearing or obnoxious or sort of sitting in lordly judgment, but just really telling the story. And I thought it was very well done. Thank you for you here, I'm not. So. Curtis Lameh, fascinating figure. We should actually, this, I love, this should be part one, and there should be a part two episode one day when we talk about him after the war. But tell us about Curtis Lame, where he came from, how he grew up, what, what he was like in general. Yeah, I mean, LeMay is, you know, as you noted,

it's what happens after the war, really in the latter part of his career that I think stands out of the minds of so many people. But LeMay, it's, without a doubt, one of America's top combat commanders. And you don't have to take my work for it. I was going through his efficiency reports in his, in his, you know, 4,000-page personnel file.

And there were people like Jimmy Doolittle, you know, one of America's true air power pioneers, writing just that. That LeMay is without a doubt, one of the best commanders of, you know, General Spots, same thing. So he really was. Lame, and it's interesting that the road he travels to get there, because he is not the kind of figure you would normally find at 38 years old as a two-star general. I mean, quite frankly, he was born, life was stacked against it in so many ways. I mean, he grew up dirt poor. He's born in Ohio.

His father was a kind of a derelict from sort of one manual labor job to the next. You know, his mother was a house cleaner to sort of make ends meet. You know, I mean, really, LeMay, you know, had to learn at a very early age that if he was going to do anything in life and amounts anything, he had to depend completely upon himself. And that was something that he defined him in so many ways. You know, he's a kid. He worked steel mill to put himself through Ohio State. Literally, you know, I mean, you imagine that going to college all day, studying engineering, you know, this complex, you know, so much intellectual horsepower required for your subject matter. and then working all night in a stuttering steel mill.

But that's the kind of individual he was. I mean, he sacrificed tremendously of himself. I mean, there's one point he writes, you know, that he didn't have time for baseball, football, or dating, or clubs. That, you know, maybe as a youth, he laid in bed at night and, you know, thought of all the things he was missing out on, but most nights he was simply too tired of eat care. And that's indicative of who he was.

He was a tireless worker who wanted to get ahead. Like many of his generation, he was fascinated by aviation. He saw the army as a way to learn it and to master it. He jumped into it. It was a fighter pilot early on. Saw that strategic air power was going to be the future and bombardment switches over and becomes an incredible navigator. Quite frankly, he's one of America's most talented navigators while really in his 20s.

Here he is a lieutenant and he's leading these experimental trips across the Andes mountains. So he really works his way up. War breaks out. Goes to Europe. He's the combat commander. And again, applies that engineering background, that mindset, sort of tackle challenges, like how do you defeat German flack?

You know, how do we maximize, you know, stack our formations to maximize the defenses of the B-17? And of course, his, his hard work pays off. You know, he gets more bombs. He gets, you know, lesser attrition rate than some of his colleagues. leagues. And so years take notice. His airmen take notes. And so, you know, and so he really kind of rises up through the ranks through his own hard work, his creativity and his, you know, really in his tenaciousness. Let's go back to that pre-war period for a second. And you talk about the fighter versus bomber debate in the in the pre-war period. And you say how Lamee switched from one to the

other. I mean, what was the significance of that? What were, what were the stakes, both career-wise? strategically in this debate. I think there's a lot of young, fighter pilots were always kind of sort of sexy, so speak. You know, you think of the Red Baron coming out of World War I and Rick and Bacher and people like that. And so, you know, a lot of young airmen gravitated into that. But you also see that a lot of smart young airmen eventually see that the fighter

is largely a defensive weapon and that bombardment and strategic bombing is going to be the future. So it's not just LeMay who makes that. You guys like Jimmy make that. Heywood Hansel who make that move. They see that in the end of that, you know, the wood and fabric by planes that the of them have fallen in love at the end of the 1920s and whatnot.

They've now been replaced by B-17s and eventually the B-29, you have these muscular combat bombers that are able to oceans and turn entire nations into battlefields and that that is going to be the future. That is going to be an independent fighting weapon. I mean, it's the equivalent really to like the Navy's use of a submarine. during World War II, which was, you know,

that's one of the greatest things that Navy ever did is they divorced the submarine from its sort of marriage to fleet actions and said, you know what? This weapon is a better as an independent operator, you know, going into enemy arborers and sinking chips. And that's essentially what strategic bombardment was. Let's divorce, you know, aviation from the infantry and let's make it an independent weapon.

And that's what you see, that's where you see things going in World War II. War II. And it's guys like Doolittle Lame and people like that who saw that in the inner war period and said, hey, I'm going to get away from being a fighter pilot. I'm going to get into bombardment because that's going to be the future of aviation and military aviation. Let's talk for a minute about the war over Europe and the B-17 and then contrast that with the war in the Pacific and the B-29. I'm curious to know what the significance of the new technology of the B-29 was. I'm also very excited because I hope you are, I understand we're getting a new HBO mini-series

about the 8th Air Force in the War Over Europe, which in the spirit of Band of Brothers and the Pacific, which should be a lot of fun. I don't actually know when the Cullen probably knows when that's coming out, but I'm very much looking forward to it. It's delayed, yeah, and it's based on Masters of the Air, which is Don Miller's great book on the 8th Air Force. And it truly is a terrific book. I use as a source for this. It's just a joy to read.

It's fascinating. And Don's a great guy. Well, good for him. And I just hope, you know, maybe you can tell us, because I actually haven't, I've not read the book, but it breaks my heart. It actually breaks my heart as a Marine that between Band of Brothers and its sister series, the Pacific, Band of Brothers is so obviously the superior production artistically just because they choose that one company, right? And they stick with it, which is really how to tell a story. In the Pacific, where I, I mean, I'm a Marine, I was, like, I, I imbibed these stories of, of, you know,

John Best, all these guys. I know who all these guys are. I know all the stories. And even I'm sitting there, you know, in the middle of an episode, confused. You know, like, what island am I on right now? What regiment is this? You know, is that John Bazelone? You know, like, it was disoriented.

I know, exactly. I read all those books. And yet I was disoriented. So I can only imagine watching it if you actually don't have that basis. And I'm with you. And I still, you know, because they did have. And I'll tell you there, having watched Band of Brothers as many times as I have, you do see the struggle, the narrative struggle that they have.

Because even though they're working in this really tight timeline since nine months, you know, they do, I mean, like Dick Winters moves off. And so they have to kind of graft him back on in sort of this in various episodes to sort of keep him as a through figure throughout. Of course, the Pacific spans a much greater time period. But I will also say, I mean, if you read something like, you know, Sledge's memoir, I mean, that's probably one of the best combat books I've ever read. I mean, that's just, I agree.

you know, what he experienced and what he sees there. And so, but I do think there's a resurgence of interest in the Pacific. And maybe it's just people I follow on Twitter, but I do see more and more people saying, hey, the Pacific got short stripped. It's actually really, really good and whatnot. It's good. It's in a way, additionally, it has the, it's been done the disservice of being made as the companion to Band of Brothers.

So, you know, if I'd never seen Band of Brothers, I probably would not be able to mouth this criticism. Yeah. But the war in Europe, to be sorry, we got with that, that was my fault. We got down a narrative. The war in Europe, the B-17, and then what's different between all that and what's happening in the Pacific and the B-29? Yeah, a couple things. Number one, the B-17 is a much more stable plane than what we ultimately find with the B-29.

That has everything to do with the fact that the B-17 was, you know, came out in the mid-1930s. And so there was a lot of time to work out the kinks with any kind of new plane like that. So by the time it actually rolls into combat, it's a much more stable platform for these. That's not to say that they don't modify it, change out guns, things of that nature, as the war mandates. But it's engines to catch on fire, things like that that you saw at the B-29. But the air war in Europe is the distances, number one, are much, much shorter. So, of course, you know, American airmen are staging in England and they're flying over, you know, occupied in Europe, you know, targets against you have places like Belgium, France, and then eventually, of course, into Germany.

Even when they're flying to Berlin and back, the maximum distances you're really looking at are about half the distances in the Pacific, about 1,500 miles round trip from England to Berlin and back. It's 1,500 miles one-way to Tokyo from the Mariam Islands. So you're seeing much greater distances. The difference also is, of course, you know, in Europe, the 8th Air Force is not just the Americans.

I mean, the Americans are flying with the British. And, of course, they ultimately diverge in their tactics and how they go about doing it. you know, the British were doing high-ups two daylight precision bombing and then eventually make the decision switch over to fire raids. The Americans kind of hold firm and eventually they sort of partner up, you know, and sort of do the one-two punch that way. The Pacific is largely an all-American war when it comes to the air war. I mean, it is an all-American war. And so they, and you see the progression of tactics from high-altitude daylight precision bombing

to eventually move over to fire raids as weather and jet streams and things like that. that mandated. But, you know, there is also the bigger question, which I, which sort of hangs over the whole air war really in both campaigns, which is the, you know, precision bombing and strategic bombardment was sold as a quick and painless way to bring about the end to a war. And, you know, the idea that was developed in the interwar periods, you know, between these sort of these bomber advocates was that modern economies or like a house of cards. And so they're dependent upon an interconnected web of industries. And if you, you know, target the right industry, like oil refineries. It's like pulling the card out at the bottom

and the whole thing will collapse upon itself. And of course, the air war in Europe becomes much longer, much harder, much more violent than anybody imagines. And it becomes a slunk. In fact, more American airmen would ultimately die in the heavens over Europe than the Marine Corps would lose in the entire war. And so it becomes an attritional war. And the German economy is just far more resourceful than people, you know, thought about during that. They're able to disperse industries, they're able to grab raw materials from occupied countries, and the war just goes on and on and on. And of course, that then sets up the air war against Japan, which you have to remember, it doesn't start until 44. So all these lessons have been learned in Europe, these experiences have been

had, and quite frankly, the patience for a long, drawn-out air war is simply not there in by 1944 for America to have like this three, four-year campaign against the Japanese. So the pressure is all of those commanders in the Pacific to hurry up and break the Japanese to end the war and to prevent Americans from having to invade in what's promises to be an incredibly bloody confrontation between American and Japanese troops. Like what you saw in the Pacific, like what you saw in Okinawa or Iwojima or in the streets of Manila. Right, right.

That fact that more airmen die in the skies over Europe, or is it generally in the skies over Europe or is it with the 8th Air Force specifically? then the Marine Corps loses in the war, whichever it is. It's actually, yeah, I mean, they were all been pretty much in the Air Force. Which, whichever it is. Yeah. I mean, it's an incredible fact that I don't think most people know that just illustrates the savagery of this combat. To include in the Pacific where you have a series of vignettes, you know, you document in the book what it was like on these bombers when things go, when things go awry, right?

When people get wounded, the aircraft have trouble and just there's this one, this is one vignette you tell from, I can't remember what it is. maybe February of 45 of a bomber that's damaged over the target. You have an officer bleeding out on the aircraft as it's proceeding slowly across the thousands of miles on the way back to the to Guam or the vicinity of Guam escorted by another bomber. And it's, I mean, it's just, I'm not doing it justice. I mean, it's difficult to read and would have been life changing in a terrible way for everyone involved in the incident.

Absolutely. And again, that's what it's down to, you know, and the air war, I mean, you're, you know, the distances in Europe are so much sure. So if you did get bad flack damage or fighter damage, you know, you could be back to base much, much shorter. I mean, it's 1,500 miles. You're looking at seven or eight hours with an engine now, trying to make it all the way back while bleeding. You know, it's just, you know, that hung over those airmen every time they took off, how long. And, I mean, they would get out of these planes at the end of these missions and like their legs wouldn't work.

They'd been sitting so long that, you know, their knees were wobbly. So you talk about this precision versus aerial. or area, sorry, or incendiary bombing. And I want to get into that with you. And, you know, because there's an ethic, right, position is also sold as an ethical way, right, to prosecute the war as opposed to the sort of the murder of area bombing. And maybe a good way to get into this subject is Haywood Hansel,

who is another fascinating figure from the period and major character in your book. And is in quite, you know, quite the contrast to LeMay. Tell us about Hansel and his evangelism for precision bombing. Yeah. So, I mean, Hansel is everything. LeMay is not. You know, I mean, LeMay is just, you know, bulldog, stern, you know, bootstrapped kind of got whereas Hansel had really come up through sort of like the Army's aristocracy, you know, he had relatives who fought in every world, way back to the revolution.

He grew up a son of an Army surgeon, you know, it lived in the Philippines and China as he sort of followed his dad around, you know, he was an intellectual, highly educated, he was a thinker. Like LeMay, he had started out as a fighter pilot and eventually moved ever to bombardment. And he was one of the ones that really was for the principal architects behind the precisely pinpoint, you know, industry and knock a country out. It's like slitting the jugular versus beating somebody to death. So it's a faster, you know, ultimately more painless process for the larger population because you're just you're knocking them out without having to cause total city destruction, displacement of workers, et cetera, et cetera. And so he's a preacher of that. I mean, to him, it's the gospel.

And he fights in Europe with LeMay. In fact, he's actually LeMay's boss early on in Europe. And in LeMay's personnel file, I found a commendation letter that Hansel wrote for him. He actually helped advocate for LeMay's promotion, Brigadier General. And of course, he is the one who's initially selected to lead America's air war against Japan. And as you might imagine, this preacher of high-outes-to-day-percision bombing comes in, and he practices that against Japan in late 1944. and he finds that it's a huge struggle. And in a whole lot of reasons.

I mean, number one, we've just taken over these bases in the Mariana Islands. These are battered islands and you have to build the infrastructure, the runways, the hard stands. You've got to import all your fuel. You've got this sensitive new bomber that has engine fires. You know, your crews are sleeping intense. And on top of all that just these maintenance and logistics, Japan has horrific weather. cloud cover blankets desalination, you know, some months reducing visibility to just three days a month.

You know, if you've got such low visibility, not only is that difficult, but you have to be able to predict those few clear days that you are going to have. And then, of course, they just cover way up high in heavens that Japan has, these very violent jet streams that blow at 230 miles per hour. It's like the gales at batter Mount Everest. And of course, the weather and the jet streams just combined to wreck bomber advocacy. And so Hansel, he's struggling on all levels. And he's unable to adapt. He's unable to, you know, to figure out how to solve the problem. And it's just, you know, like that old saying they say about, you know, insanity is the same, doing the same thing over and ever again, expecting to birds. That's his approach. Right. And of course,

at this point, by late 1944, there's no patience. You know, America is developing invasion plans. You know, those are ultimately going to be, you know, approved in the Cushue invasion in June of 45, you know, there's all this pressure who's the head of the Army Air Forces is, you know, desperate to show that his airmen can own a share of the victory alongside the army and navy. He wants this bomber to do it. And he's not willing to cut Hansel a whole lot of slack. And eventually he fires him literally after 44 days of operations and replaces him with Lame. And so there you see this great contrast between these two leaders, you know, the Haywood Hansel, the planner, the academic, and then you have Curtis Lemae, who's the predator. And that's the difference between them. You know,

one is a planner, one is a predator. Hansel, even, remarks on this himself, right? You document this in the book. The guys back in Washington, I guess they got more of a planner than an execute or something like that. He had some self-knowledge. He gets that. No, he does get that. And then the guys that worked for him said that, you know, he wasn't, he wasn't one of the guys that was going to be accepted sort of amongst the bomber crews. You know, he was more of that lofty thinker. You know, he got excited, you know, enemy economics, things like that as opposed to, you know, bomber formations and tactics and stuff like that. So, I mean, he was in a lot of ways a fish out of water. Yeah. That said, when he was fired,

it was soul crushing for him. And as you might imagine, and it really starred him for the rest of his life. I mean, if you go through his personal papers, which are the Air Force Academy and the library out there, I mean, all the way up to the 1970s and he's writing letters to colleagues. And, I mean, it's still very clear that his termination is a big, is a, is a, is a star that will never heal. Your depiction of his, his 44 days in the seat and his relief, They actually kind of reminded me, a lot of movie references today, of 12 o'clock high. I mean, it's actually a very similar story. For anyone who hasn't seen that movie, you have Gregory Peck is the, he has to go relieve

his buddy who's running, I mean, this is at a lower level. I think it's at the group level in 12 o'clock high and then has a very, you know, stressful time at the end of which he is, he is without ruining too much of the movie, for those who haven't seen it, also expended in terms of his best efforts. And it's a very similar. He has troublesome personalities under him that the LeMay them, will they have to deal with, right? You have Rosie O'Donnell, kind of a... Rosie O'Donnell. Tell us about Rosie O'Donnell and some of the leadership challenges that

both Lomé and before him Hansel faced leading these, I mean, these crews of real people and real subordinate commanders who are factors here. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, Hansel runs what's called the 21st bomber command. And that's, that's the sort of the principal. And he's got underneath him, bring to your general, Rosie O'Donnell, who is his sort of lead wing commander of the 73rd. And it's, and it's a Adonnell, whose job it is is to lead these missions over Japan. I mean, it's his outfit that's going to be the ones flying. And O'Donnell is a, he's a big personality.

You know, he had fought early on in the war in the Philippines. He had gone to the Air Force Academy. He was a star athlete. He was a, his men loved him. I mean, he just, I mean, you read the oral histories of these guys and they just gush about O'Donnell and they'd give him his right arm if you asked for it. And so he had this tremendous loyalty. And he also had to hear of Hap Arnold because he'd worked his, uh, an advisor to Hap Arnold.

So he was able to bypass Hansel and make his complaints up the chain of command, which of course is only going to infuriate Hansel. But O'Donnell also saw that the struggles they were facing against Japan were not going to be fixable by Hansel continuing to fly with the missions he was flying without some sort of change. And of course, O'Donnell all along had advocated that America adopt the same tactics that the British were using in Europe and start fire bombing Japanese cities. And so he was very vocal about that. And he not only told Hansel that, he told Arnold that, he griped a lot in his diary, his personal diary about that. And so it just really creates this bad morale in the Mariana Islands because, you know, here they are. They're living in tents.

They're eating flight rations. You know, the Japanese are still doing raids. They're still Japanese, rogue Japanese troops. There's all these stresses. The missions aren't working. And then, of course, you've got this collision of personalities between Hansel and his top combat. commander. And of course, it's just a recipe for disaster. And of course, that's the situation LeMay walks into is January of 1945 when he's relieved Hansel's. He's got to come in and he's got

to fix all of these problems. Yeah. And of course, it's a pretty big job. Usually when commanding officers are relieved, you have a series of problems that face you on day one. And then there's this great encounter which you document between because O'Donnell, who, I don't know, he's obviously personally a hero, accomplished a tremendous amount. Personally, I found him somewhat aggravating and myself sympathetic to both Hansel and LeMay in their dealings with him. And there's this great encounter where he he pulls, he tries to pull the same stuff on LeMay. And I think what flies down to Guam to tell the, tell the story of how this came about. Because LeMay is playing games as well with his own planning process.

Yeah. So I mean, you know, Adonle, like I said, he's a big personality. And so he's he pushed his back a lot on Hansel. And I mean, he's a big personality. He's big physically. I mean, he's just a he's a boisterous guy. And of course, Lamey comes in and inherits this bad situation where morale is terrible and everything like that. And he immediately assesses this long list of problems he's got to fix. And of course, you know, one of them, he sets out that in order to get these guys conditioned to flying at a low altitude, you know, he basically says, you guys are going to fly this mission at like 50 feet, this test mission. It's just going to be to drop bombs on an unoccupied part of the Mariana Islands and, of course, a Donald box. And so he actually flies down from, because at this point, LeMay is based on Guam and in O'Donnell's

outfits on Saipan, so he flies all the way down there for this confrontation. And LeMay brings him in and sits him down and just stares him down. And it's a big difference between how Hansel handled. Because Ansel, you know, Hansel was as a planner, was used to leadership through consensus and through compromise, not through just brute ordering when you have to do it. And LeMay didn't, that's how Lamey roll. I mean, Lamey was a, you know, his world was one where it was top down control. I mean, bad decisions, got people killed. You know, you saw that at the breakfast table the day after a bad mission. And it was his way or the highway. And so he has a very different run. And so O'Donnell come down face to face and they just stared at each other across the table. And he's like,

we can't run this mission. And Lamea just looks at him. He's like, by God, you will run this mission. And there's just everybody. And of course, all these other officers are sitting here on the table just see him who eventually, you know, O'Donnell drops his eyes, says, yes, sir, gets up and leaves. And you know what? Falls into place, becomes this, you know, becomes this amazing tactic. And of course, Lamey and O'Donnell ends up having this great relationship. He brings O'Donnell back onto his team years later when he, in that post-war era and whatnot. But, you know, he just kind of come in and corral them and show everybody was boss. Yeah, that's what less experienced leaders or in Hansel's case, less gifted leaders don't realize

immediately. So that's what O'Donnell needs. People like O'Donnell need that. And without that, they actually, they're, they're less productive. Yeah. They need, they need the firm hand. So let's talk through. So Lemaise there, Hansel's guys were taking casualties without achieving a great deal.

Walk us through Lemae's thought process in the lead up to the bombing of Tokyo in March. So, you know, LeMay comes in and he has this sort of faithful encounter with Hansel. And, you know, they got our, their friends, they've worked together and all this. And so Hansel says to him before he departs, he says, look, you know, remember, you know, we in the end are going to be judged not by whether we win the war, but by how we win the war. And for Hansel, it's a it's a way to continue to try to push LeMay to keep doing my out to daylight precision bombing that Hansel was such a believer in. And LeMay to his credit says, look, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to do what you were doing. I'm going to follow that. That was the strategy.

That was the tactics that America was using at that point. I'm going to keep doing that until I can't, basically. And so LeMay, when he begins, you know, a lot of people make the inaccurate assumption that as soon as LeMay comes over, firebombing begins. And that's simply not true. LeMay has a period of several months, in fact, in which he's taking Hansel's efforts and he's tinkering with them. He's saying, you know what?

If 30,000 feet, we've got too much cloud cover and jet streams, what if we bring the bombers down to 25,000 people that get us in under the jet streams? if we're having a problem where we can't see what we're doing, let's start using radar more. And so he starts pushing his men to embrace radar. He sets up schools to train his pilots to be honors in the skies. And so he's tinkering all the time trying to figure out because he's an engineer. Remember, his background is how can I fix this equation? And it takes him several months, takes him, you know, January rolls into February, February rolls into March. And he eventually comes to the realization that the problem can't be solved using high-outstude, daylight,

Not if America is in a rush to defeat Japan before an invasion. It's going to take a radical rethinking of how we fight that. And that's when he makes that decision that we are going to switch from precision bombing to fire raids against Japan. And that, of course, takes place. That's the big fateful first mission against Tokyo in March of 1945 that decimates the Japanese capital. And meanwhile, you know, in Europe, you have the bombing of Dresden in February, which, as you document, you know, very, very similar in principle to what is going to happen to Tokyo the next month, and not just in principle in practice.

And it, if you'll forgive the expression, it just kind of ignite a firestorm back in the UK in terms of public opinion. And bomber Harris to this day, you know, is a, he's got a complex legacy in the UK that I think LeMay has in the United States too, but actually more for post-war stuff than the war itself. So what, talk like, how does what is happening in Europe create the context for what's about to happen in Japan? And that's a great, it's a quick question and great point because, you know, up until this, up until Dres, it takes place literally in February 45. It takes place right, very in the war right before the U.S. burns Tokyo. And it's really, it's not the most destructive raid that the British have flown, actually. I mean, Hamburg in July of 1943 kills almost twice as many people. I mean, it kills over 40,000 people.

Dresden, I think, is estimates range between 25 and 35,000 is how many people died. So Hamburg's actually a more violent, more destructive in terms of casualties than even Dresden. And it doesn't really create any kind of blip. But it's not until Dresden that you start seeing church leaders and people in parliament in the UK saying, wait a second, you know, like, hey, what are we doing here? You know, and in Churchill actually tries at that point to distance himself to some extent from it. And I remember early in the war, he embraces these things. He sends a letter in 1942 to Roosevelt being like,

we've got this great new way to attack the Germans, he's like, gleeful about it. And then suddenly by 45 when the war's coming to an end, and they recognize that, hey, there are going to be judgments passed down on how we fought. That people start saying, you know what, we've got to distance ourselves a little bit from this. Of course, LeMay really just doesn't care. I mean, he's just saying, that's kind of how LeMay rolls.

He is not one to obsess about public opinion. He's not one to fret about that. He is someone who's going to get a job done. And so he really kind of just, you know, doesn't engage on that. I mean, Dresden happens, you know, in literally several weeks before Tokyo, and it just doesn't even phase Lame. I mean, at that point, he's planning the operation. He's going through with it. Even after Tokyo, you know, people in Washington are concerned, is there going to be this kind of big pushback against America for the switching tactics and, you know, this killing of civilians.

And in LeMay, they cable guidance to LeMay from Washington saying, you know, hey, you got to leave the mind the press, make sure they're not saying we're intentionally killing civilians. And LeMay just says, you know, whatever, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing. Well, this is part of the story of the Tokyo Tech that actually I did not know about until until reading your book. It was fascinating to me was, we'll just say a less robust approval process for this operation than I am familiar with in my own time in the military or indeed, you know, just here in Washington in 2022, you know, you have, we have a world today where, you know, you have

29-year-olds on the National Security Council trying to move, you know, carrier strike groups from one grid square to another in the Pacific. But LeMay basically bakes and then serves this operation sort of on his own authority without what seems to be to be much in the way of oversight from, from anyone. You know, how is that even possible? And by the way, I love that expression, a less robust approval process. I've got to have to use that. That's a great way of describing. Understatement. It's helping me here and there in my career.

So, no, it's exactly. And that's one of the crazy things about the story is that, you know, Hap Arnold, when he develops the B-29, right? And it's this huge technological gamble, right? The U.S. spends more money on the B-29 than the atomic bomb. It's the single most expensive weapon system of the war to build this hemispheric bomber that can bridge the Pacific. So when this bomber is coming online,

Hap Arnold is saying, you know what, this thing is too powerful. machine to just let it be handed over to to Douglas MacArthur or to turn in its because it's just going to get absorbed into actions or it's going to be an accompaniment landings. And this thing is an independent fighter. Like we were talking about earlier with submarines, this thing is its own method. And so he comes up with this sort of unorthodox idea of like, well, how can we fight this thing? So he picks it to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he's going to create a basically a new independent Air Force, the 20th.

and he's going to put himself in charge. Happeral, okay, the head of the Army Air Force. This guy who long out of fly from Orville and Will, we're right, you know, in the early 1900s who now leads America's strike force. So he goes to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he says, we're going to create this independent Air Force. I'm going to be the leader of it. I'm going to still be in Washington.

I'll report directly to you guys. And people like LeMay and Hansel will be my direct subordinate that's out there. So they'll be leading the day-to-day operations. And the Joint Chiefs of Staff signs off on it. And so they effectively create. in the Pacific and independent Air Force that Hap Arnold controls in the armies. Now, Hap Arnold suffers this massive heart attack in January of 1945, and he's out. He's convalescing down in Florida, and so Lame is out there by himself, like, running this whole show.

And he was reporting back to Arnold's chief of staff at that point. A guy about it, Loris Norset, who's a regular general. So Lemae outranks him. LeMay doesn't really trust Norset either. If you read Lemae's comments after the war, oral histories. I mean, he really doesn't trust me. He thinks he's gunning for his job potentially. And so he's not going to tell Norsat all that much about what he's doing, but he does make this cryptic comment at one point because he's trying to feel him out for what Arnold's thoughts would be

about this massive change of tactics. And he says, is half Arnold a gambling man? And Norsad says, well, look, Arnold is in favor of anything that will end the war quickly. And Lamei interprets that as a green light. And he sets off to plan this entire operation. He doesn't really tell anybody. when he's doing, as you know, I mean, he doesn't tell Nimitz, you know, he's, he's there in the Marriottas, he doesn't tell MacArthur, he doesn't even send any cables back to Washington. He just gets his guys to plan this whole operation. And then he begins to as the operations coming together, he critically writes back to Nordstadt. And he says, you know, Northstab's supposed to come out in April and check on operations. And he writes to him, he says, you know what? I know

you're planning on coming out later. She should really come out now. There's some things we need to talk about that we don't write it. And it sounds like a week goes by and he doesn't hear back and he messages him again very cryptically. He's like, I'm going to remind you, you need to come out now. And so North Stack gets on this flame and it literally flies out there. He takes off on March 7. Of course, at this point, you got to remember it takes two days they go all the way out there. I mean, these are propeller driven planes and whatnot. Meanwhile, LeMay Greenlights the operation, all that. Norstad touches down on Guam, and it's March 9. It's the day the operations playing. They're like fueling bombers.

This thing is going. And in that point, LeMay sends his first detailed message back to Washington. And I'm paraphrasing, but for tonight's operation, I propose a radical change in our tactics. And that's the first message back to Washington. Of course, at this point, it's on. You know, there's no stopping this train. And so, so, yeah. So LeMay makes this huge, one of the most consequential decisions of World War II by himself.

38-year-old two-star general on Guam changes out everything. And it is incredible that is late as 1945 where, you know, communications technology is pretty robust, you know, you can in fact get from Washington to Guam at a couple days. You know, you're running out of excuses about why you haven't communicated clearly your intent. And you have this guy who, you know, I think you described at one point in the book as a kind of Lord of War at this point, who all, but unilaterally decides to eliminate the enemy capital. I mean, that is, that is his decision.

It's, it's quite incredible. And it's something to reflect on what it takes for an individual, not only to do it, right, to flatten the city full of, you know, civilians, but also, you know, in an organization that is an organization of careerists, and he is a careerist, to, to launch an operation that if it failed, he would be done, most likely, because he's so far out in the limb, everyone else is going to wash their hands of it. And that's, that's A, and then B, at a moral level, as he famously reflects, if we lose this war, we'll be tried as war criminals. People, everybody loves to talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and of course, those are massive undertakings as well. But this really sets the stage for that. And this really is, you know,

this is a decision that is not made by the commander-in-chief. That's not made by the joint cheeses staff that's not made by half Arnold that is completely made by Lemae. And part of that is on purpose. Lamey takes the approach like I think I say with my kids all the time. Like my kids love to beg forgiveness but not ask permission. Like I don't know what happened of those donuts. Was I not sorry. I did not get that memo. I did not get the memo that I was not supposed to bomb to destroy Tokyo without asking for permission first. And he kind of, that's kind of his attitude. And he says, look, you know, I wanted this thing to happen. I didn't want to tell Arnold.

He could blame me and he could salvage the B-29 program and I'd be the scapegoat. So, I mean, he really set himself off intentionally to be this potential fall guy. So I'm telling you, it's an incredibly gutsy move. Even Haywood Hansel, right, who's for the rest of his life is sour about losing this job, would later on reflect and say the decision that LeMay made is one of the most courageous decisions of World War II. You know, so whatever you think about it from a moral perspective, it's still one of the just the most gutsy decisions. Well, we'll talk about the consequences in a second, but let's actually talk about the operation itself.

So what happens the night of March 9th and 10th, 1945? So LeMay just totally changes everything. He says, we're not going to go in at 30,000 feet. We're going to go in as low as 5,000 feet. We're not going to go in in formations. We're going to go in singly. We're going to go. Since we are going to be so low to give our guys protection, we're going to go in at night.

So the Japanese, it'll be harder for them to see us. They don't have great night fighter capability. And we're also going to switch out our demolition bombs for incendiaries. And we're going to burn that city down. And of course, American, and it's important to note that even though LeMay makes this decision, American war planners had been moving in this direction previously. Because he didn't have to invent the wheel, so to speak, and figure out how to do this. I mean, America had invented a great new flame weapon.

We had actually tested that weapon on a mock Japanese village in the summer of 19, before. that we built in Utah. And our war planners had begun dissecting Japan cities based on incendiary zones. We're categorizing them on what parts of Japan were most full. And of course, the reason we did that Tokyo and New Yorkeroma had burned in 1923 after a big earthquake and subsequent fires that were ignited and burned it. And so we sort of used that as a blueprint for how we might attack Japan. I mean, that was the Achilles heel of Japan. These dense wooden cities, I mean, and by dense, I mean hyperdense. There's in one area of Tokyo with 135,000 people per square mile.

Well, May's target area was about a 12 square mile target area. The average population density was 103,000 people per square amount. That's about five times the level of density you would have found in Washington, D.C. At that time period. So you're imagining people living in dense, pack conditions. There's no real fire breaks. Japan has very few major parks. Its fire department is woefully inadequate.

They can't import any new equipment once the war breaks out or whatnot. So many of their firefighters have also been conscripted to the war efforts. So they really push the firefighting burden off to the population and themselves saying, you know what? When a fire breaks out, you guys go use bags of sand and brooms and try to get them out until the professionals arrive. So it's really a recipe for disaster. for the Japanese. And so tell us, tell us what it's like

from the perspective of the ground once the raid begins. Yeah, so it's March 1945. You can imagine it's just snowed a few days earlier. It's super cold. Life in Japan's pretty miserable at this point because Japan has been the subject of an American submarine blockade for years,

the results of which had really crystallized by that last year of the war and the fact that residents can't get medicines, they can't even get bandages. Food is super scarce. I mean, the average resident spending much of their day trying to find food and things like that. The Japanese government hasn't really given them any clue that how bad fire bombings could get. So most people have a best of primitive little bomb shelter, like a foxhole in their yard.

So they're just, they're woefully ill prepared for this. And so, and of course this raid happens in the middle of the night. So a lot of people, they've blackout regulations. They've already gone to bed. And of course, that's when LeMay's bomber started attacking. And what LeMay did is they sort of created. Inside this sort of, imagine a rectangle, 12 square mile rectangle. The quadrants, they'll eventually merge together and create a sort of just this massive inferno.

And that's precisely what happens. You know, LeMay, these early fires, they start burning. They meld together. They end up creating literally a tidal wave of fire that covers four city wards. And it just rolls across the city. It's three miles long. It's this tidal wave. It rolls like a wave across the city.

And so for those residents there, it's this terrifying. flying phenomenon. And of course, as this fire gets bigger and bigger, it eventually, much like Dresden, much like Hamburg, it becomes a firestorm. And a firestorm for folks who don't know is all the hot air is escaping vertically and it creates this at the base of the fire. And that vacuum, nature hates a vacuum that's pulling in cold, oxygenated air from the perimeter. And that air into the center of the fire is essentially a firestorm. And that rush of air can reach hurricane force winds. It's enough where it's like. like toppling trees and utility poles and things like that.

And so it really, in this fire, it becomes like the self-fulfilling prophecy. It just eats everything in its path. And so, and that's essentially what happens in Tokyo. The only reason the fire goes out, it's not because anybody puts it out. It's because it runs out of material. It just burns and burns itself out. So for those residents, it's terrifying. When I did interviews in Tokyo, I always ask people, what did it look like?

Would it smell like? Would it sound like? Give me that. And universally, everybody said it's incredibly loud. You know, it's like a freight train. And you imagine like a crackle of a campfire, you know, we'll magnify that 10,000 times over. And of course, in their pockets of superheated air throughout. I mean, there's no universal temperature throughout.

I mean, you've got to have one block. It's 1,800 degrees. And a block away, it's 500 degrees because depending on the pockets there, there are toxic gases. There's massive amounts of carbon monoxide. you know, people as the temperatures rise, people's clothing and their hair begins to spontaneously catch on fire. Breathing becomes incredibly difficult. People's eyelashes start to melt. The liquid, the asphalt turns into, and it softens into a goo that clings to your feet, almost like a quick sand, you know. And so, so people sought shelter, you know, and some of them shot shelter in these

little primitive foxholes, for the most part, all those people die. You just simply, there was no protection, that shallow of a bunker. So a lot of people then sought out like a handful of canals and the river or whatnot, but a lot of those people suffocated from lack of oxygen where they died of toxic gas, carbon dioxide poisoning and drowned. Last people ended up getting into the handful of concrete buildings at schools, train stations, places like that. And those initially provided safety until the glass and the windows began to melt. The heat incurred. doors and the windows now then just this you can imagine the snowstorm of of embers floods inside and that's when the hallways and the staircases of schools and places like that began to function like chimneys

funneling that superheated air and of course inside people were then trapped these concrete buildings became like ovens and people just whirched inside so it was really just a horrifically terrifying experience to be caught in so at that level of human costs and of course there are follow-up attacks using the same tactics that LeMay leads or directs, you know, does this shorten the war? And so it's sort of question A and closely related to question B. How does this tactic then lead into Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Like, how does this all work together to end the war without a grand invasion? And to be clear, I'm trying to drive out here and I'm not expressing myself clearly enough is obviously the atomic bombs are what kind of seal the deal in terms of war termination.

Did the fire bombing hasten or help at all? Yeah. First off, this attack on Tokyo stunned even LeMay. Like he was expecting and hoping for a big destruction, but the next morning, I mean, 16 square miles of Tokyo were gone. I mean, burned. 105,000 people killed. Literally one out of every four buildings of the capital was destroyed.

I mean, so LeMay was even stunned. I mean, when they looked at the photographs, you know, 24 hours later, the first recon planes over Tokyo, they were like, wow. And of course, what LeMay immediately realizes is, all right, we've got to keep striking Japan before they can adapt against this. And so he immediately flies missions in the next eight days against Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe, and in Nagoya again. And over the course of that, roughly eight, nine, ten days, Japan's principal cities. And that then ushers in a whole new form. of air warfare. In LeMay, over the next 159 days, literally just begins targeting. Initially, all of Japan's large, a half dozen, large industrial cities. By June, he's burned over 100

square miles of those cities. Then he moves on to secondary cities, you know, with populations 300,000, 250,000. And then by the end of the, by the end of the war, he's down to like these tertiary-sized cities, the populations of like 35,000 people. And really with no urban industrial capability and whatnot. I mean, just picking. them out based on the fact that they're large enough to burn. And so, and of course, America was very sensitive about what would the American public think of this. This is a huge change in tactics and whatnot, even though LeMay is not that sensitive, his superiors were. And universally, the media just they applauded these efforts. And I think the line I always fall back on, I mean, Time magazine actually

writes in the wake of this. They say, you know, properly kindled, Japanese cities will burn like autumn leaves. And that's just a green light for Lemae to kick off this whole campaign. And so, I mean, Tokyo in a lot of ways is a trial balloon for whether the American public, are they going to react like the British did in the wake of Dresden and be outraged and demand that their lawmakers put an end to this? Or are they going to go along with it? And of course, they get their answer through like that Time magazine, R comet. And Lame just moves on and on. And so it really, it sort of paves the way for the atomic attacks because the American public. have shown that they're that they're okay with this if it brings about an end of the war

Americans are tired of seeing their husbands and sons fighting on these faraway malarial islands and jungles and whatnot you know they're ready for this war to be over nobody wants this invasion and whatnot and so all that sort of just begins the march toward August 6 when you know what day arrives in skies over Hiroshima and another way of asking the same question is had let's say the atomic technology had not been developed would fire bombing have been sufficient to end the war without a ground invasion had had it been continued along the same course i know we're into counterfactuals here but they're always they're always hard but you know the reality is i think america was i mean general marshal was pretty stunned after tokyo the japanese

didn't quit i mean if i used that as a justification when he was asked by the atomic bomb after war is like look man that 100 000 people killed in tokyo 16 square miles you got to remember erosha after the atomic It's about 4.4 square miles in the city are destroyed. The bomb goes off and then it also creates a firestorm. One of the few like Tokyo that actually takes place in the Pacific War. Now, they have huge casualties. About 80,000 people initially died and of course many, many more in the weeks, months, and years ahead. But the property damage is far more vast in Tokyo.

And of course, human casualties are massive. But Marshall was stunned. You know, he said, who would have thought the Japanese would have kept fighting after Tokyo? And then you see what happens to, I mean, Lamey, by the time he gets to Hiroshima, he's already burned like 170 square miles of Japan cities. And yet they still fought on. I mean, Lamey was running out of targets. In fact, I mean, he's, I mean, the only wish of existed as a target, a city that size, in population of about 300,000 was because Lamead that ordered to hold back a handful of bigger targets for the atomic bomb. He's all burning towns of 35,000.

He's literally out of targets. And yet Japan kept fighting. So the atomic bombs really, particularly when you get into the political making of the emperor, the atomic bombs do play a very big political role in sort of breaking the deadlock and convincing the Japanese to accept unconditional surrender. So firebombing, like LeMay said, by the first of October, he was going to be out of targets. Yeah. I mean, it's important to remember to, you know, Tokyo, the one raid on Tokyo gets all the attention,

but LeMay ultimately flies six missions against Tokyo. those six missions burned 56 square miles in the capital. Now put that in perspective, Manhattan Island is 21 square miles. That's how much of Tokyo he destroyed. Well, we are more or less out of time here, which is a shame because I'd like to keep talking with you about Curtis Lame. Maybe we can do another discussion sometime about his post-war career, which is itself fascinating and central to the history of the Cold War, parodied and Dr. Strangelove. And then he ultimately has this kind of sad.

Dakota, which like a lot of folks who are not very politically sophisticated, get dragged into politics and ends up not going while as George Wallace's running mate in 68. But we'll save that conversation for another time. And I'm grateful for you for making the time today. James M. Scott, author of Black Snow, Curtis Lame, Firebombie to Tokyo on the road to the atomic bomb. It's a really interesting conversation. Aaron, thanks so much for having me on. It's been a pleasure.

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