someone we should pray we never see the likes of again:
Upon receiving his fourth star at age 44, LeMay became the youngest full general in American history since Ulysses S. Grant.
He had directed the gasoline-jelled fire bombing of Japan -- estimated to have killed "more persons in a six-hour period than at any time in the history of man." He said of war: "You've got to kill people, and when you've killed enough they stop fighting." He once said, "We killed off -- what -- twenty percent of the population of North Korea." More than two million civilians died in LeMay's campaign from napalm bombing and destruction of massive dams to flood waterways. Nearly half the built-up areas of sixty-four cities were destroyed, including much of Japan's war industry. These were cities ranging in size from NYC to Cleveland
LeMay referred to his nighttime incendiary attacks as "fire jobs." The Japanese nicknamed him "Demon LeMay".
In the 1950's, under Eisenhower, LeMay had the authority to order a nuclear strike without presidential authorization if the president could not be contacted. That option was extended down to General Thomas Powers, head of SAC, whom LeMay himself described as "not stable" and a "sadist." LeMay's proposal for a nuclear first strike and massive destruction of the Soviets was thwarted by Eisenhower, whom LeMay came to consider as indecisive. He was even more disgusted with Kennedy, whom LeMay believed to be a coward. LeMay talked openly about a preemptive attack in which one hundred million people would be killed.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, LeMay clashed again with President John F. Kennedy and Defense Secretary McNamara, arguing that he should be allowed to bomb nuclear sites in Cuba, even though he himself estimated that his planes could take out only about 90 percent of these sites (post-crisis analysis hypothesized that such attacks would have missed significantly more missiles than that). He opposed the naval blockade, and after the end of the crisis, suggested that Cuba be invaded anyway, even after the Russians agreed to withdraw.
Finally, I read somewhere that during th Cuban Missile Crisis he actually sent planes w nukes over the USSR . . . and the Russians knew they were there . . . and just held their breath. just like us.
