Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Curtis Emerson LeMay, who for the better part of twenty
Speaker 2: five years dominated the greatest fighting force the world had
Speaker 2: ever known, had three nicknames, Old Iron Pants, the Demon,
Speaker 2: and bombs Away LeMay. He was not that category of
Speaker 2: leader who led by force of wit, charm and charisma.
Speaker 2: Nor was he some great thinker, the kind of leader
Speaker 2: whose appeal lies with carefully thought out manifestos and elaborate ideologies.
Speaker 2: Le Maay never took his cigar out of his mouth
Speaker 2: long enough to say anything. He belonged to a different category,
Speaker 2: the one that gets overlooked.
Speaker 1: Curtis LeMay. In my view, he was the greatest air
Speaker 1: commander in history.
Speaker 2: I'm talking to the military historian Conrad Crane. No historian
Speaker 2: writes about the Second World War out considering the legacy
Speaker 2: of LeMay.
Speaker 1: Everything he touched he transformed. He was a dynamic leader.
Speaker 1: He shared the difficulties of his airman. He was the
Speaker 1: best navigator of the Air Force I had it, was
Speaker 1: a great pilot, He could do mechanics stuff. He was
Speaker 1: the Air Force's ultimate problem solver. But he was one
Speaker 1: of those guys that you would if you gave him
Speaker 1: a problem to fix, you didn't ask a whole lot
Speaker 1: of questions.
Speaker 2: Harry was going to do it bombs away. LeMay was
Speaker 2: known as someone you get the job done. My name
Speaker 2: is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast
Speaker 2: about things Overlooked and Misunderstood. This is part three of
Speaker 2: my four part series about Curtis le May and the
Speaker 2: events of March nineteen forty five. This episode is about
Speaker 2: the role of people like Curtis le May in times
Speaker 2: of crisis. In the normal course of events, we are
Speaker 2: led by people of ideas and people of arristhma. But
Speaker 2: when things start to go badly, those people get pushed
Speaker 2: aside and the problem solver takes center stage. Only the
Speaker 2: problem solver doesn't play by the same moral rules. Let
Speaker 2: me give you an example of what it means to
Speaker 2: approach the world the way someone like Curtis LeMay did.
Speaker 2: It's not one of the signature stories in the LeMay legend.
Speaker 2: It happened long before he was famous, years before the
Speaker 2: Second World War. He would mention it sometimes in passing
Speaker 2: in some of the interviews he gave in retirement, but
Speaker 2: it's one of those stories that made me stop and say, oh,
Speaker 2: I think I understand him now. In nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 2: with the threat of war in Europe growing, the Army's
Speaker 2: Air Corps wanted a chance to practice their bombing technique,
Speaker 2: real world practice, only with dummy bombs fifty pounders filled
Speaker 2: with water.
Speaker 3: I'mt me tell you the story of that. I mentioned
Speaker 3: that the Air Force has been battling to make a
Speaker 3: contribution to the fans of the country ever since I've
Speaker 3: done around, nobody paid much attention to it.
Speaker 2: This is an interview LeMay gave to the Air Force
Speaker 2: Academy in nineteen seventy one, a few years after leaving
Speaker 2: his post as Chief of Staff of the Air Force.
Speaker 2: When he was taking the post retirement victory lap, a
Speaker 2: famous generals take.
Speaker 3: We wanted an exercise, or we could drop bomb on
Speaker 3: a battleship.
Speaker 2: Find a battleship for the practice run. To work, the
Speaker 2: Air Corps needed the Navy to play along. Hide a
Speaker 2: battleship out on the seas, give out its coordinates at
Speaker 2: the last minute, and dare the bombers to find it.
Speaker 2: This was before sophisticated radar and navigation aids. To find
Speaker 2: a battleship, you had to see it with your eyes,
Speaker 2: then hit its narrow decks with a bomb from thousands
Speaker 2: of feet up, all the while flying at hundreds of
Speaker 2: miles an hour. The Navy was not enthusiastic.
Speaker 3: Finally, they agreed that they would have an exercise and
Speaker 3: it would be in August off the West coast. Now
Speaker 3: in August off the west coast, there's nothing but fog
Speaker 3: for a thousand miles out there, and they deliberately picked
Speaker 3: it for this time. I'm sure.
Speaker 2: How could you spot a battleship in one thousand miles
Speaker 2: of fog. To make matters worse, the Navy bent the rules.
Speaker 2: The agreement was to have the wargame run for twenty
Speaker 2: four hours from noon the first day until noon the next,
Speaker 2: but the Navy didn't give out the coordinates of its ship,
Speaker 2: the uss Utah, until late the first afternoon, and the
Speaker 2: cordinates they gave were wrong, off by sixty miles one
Speaker 2: thousand miles of fog. Late directions, fake directions a needle
Speaker 2: in a haystack would have been easier at ten minutes before.
Speaker 2: At the very last moment, le May found the ship
Speaker 2: and dropped his bombs. Now, of course he found the ship,
Speaker 2: there was nothing Li May could not do if he
Speaker 2: put his mind to it. That's not the point of
Speaker 2: the story. The point is what happened before he dropped
Speaker 2: his bombs. The Navy was certain they couldn't be found,
Speaker 2: so they took no precautions. The sailors were all over
Speaker 2: the decks going about their business. They were supposed to
Speaker 2: take cover in a bombing exercise. They didn't. So what
Speaker 2: did LeMay do? He bombed the Utah anyway, raining fifty
Speaker 2: pound water bombs down on the sailors.
Speaker 3: And the Navy was so sure that they weren't going
Speaker 3: to be found. I don't know if that bog die
Speaker 3: like it, but the men were all over the decks,
Speaker 3: everybody diving for the gang plank patches and way hard
Speaker 3: rumors that there are a few people part a little bit.
Speaker 2: Imagine how other types of leaders might have handled the
Speaker 2: decision to bomb after seeing sailors out in the deck.
Speaker 2: The thinker would have understood the moral dimensions of willingly
Speaker 2: harming one of your own in the course of a
Speaker 2: routine training exercise. The charismatic leader would have wondered, what
Speaker 2: will my own men think of me if they see
Speaker 2: that I am capable of such a casual act of brutality.
Speaker 2: But the problem solver. The problem was to find the
Speaker 2: Utah and bomb it, and so he bombs it.
Speaker 3: I'd rather have somebody who is real stupid. I did
Speaker 3: something and even it was wrong, alre he did something,
Speaker 3: and I have somebody who would vacilate and do nothing.
Speaker 2: You cannot do nothing in the world view of the
Speaker 2: problem solver, even if what you end up doing is horrifying.
Speaker 2: In his memoirs, LeMay says they were rumors for years
Speaker 2: that some sale got killed in the bombing exercise of
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty seven, and then he says, quote, I remember
Speaker 2: watching the first bomb, which smashed into the deck. It
Speaker 2: sent splintered pieces of wood flying in every direction. I
Speaker 2: hadn't realized that wood could frag like that. It was
Speaker 2: a learning opportunity. Who knew wood reacted that way? He
Speaker 2: files that fact away and goes on to the next problem.
Speaker 2: In the first years of the Second World War, the
Speaker 2: American fight against the Japanese was defined by a single fact.
Speaker 2: Japan was beyond the reach of the US Air Force.
Speaker 2: The American workhorse bomber was the B seventeen. It had
Speaker 2: a range of roughly two thousand miles. That's a thousand
Speaker 2: miles out and one thousand miles back. Now, look at
Speaker 2: a map of the world from say, January of nineteen
Speaker 2: forty four, and try and find an air base controlled
Speaker 2: by the Allies that is within one thousand miles of
Speaker 2: tow You can't. And if you can't reach Japan, how
Speaker 2: on earth are you going to defeat them? The solution
Speaker 2: comes in two parts.
Speaker 4: This is where it began, here in the exact geographic
Speaker 4: center of the United States, Grand Island, Nebraska.
Speaker 2: That voice sounds familiar, doesn't it. It's fron of Reagan.
Speaker 2: Long before he became president, Reagan narrated newsreels during the
Speaker 2: Second World War.
Speaker 4: The men were brought here from every corner of the
Speaker 4: country and a few corners outside the country.
Speaker 3: They were a.
Speaker 4: Hand picked American mixture of draftees and west pointers, of butchers,
Speaker 4: teachers and bankers, of your sons, husbands, and fathers.
Speaker 2: In the newsreel, we see soldiers arriving in barracks, handsome
Speaker 2: crisp uniforms, all gazing up at a magnificent and gleaming airplane.
Speaker 4: She was a B twenty nine, the superport designed to
Speaker 4: carry more destruction and carry it higher, faster, farther than
Speaker 4: any bomber ever built before. And to complete this mission,
Speaker 4: That's exactly what she was going to have to do.
Speaker 2: She The B twenty nine was one of the great
Speaker 2: achievements of the American war effort, an enormous bomber dedicated
Speaker 2: entirely to the fight against the Japanese. In the Wars
Speaker 2: specific theater, the B twenty nine's range fifty six hundred
Speaker 2: miles much better than its predecessor. So then came the
Speaker 2: second step. In the summer of nineteen forty four, in
Speaker 2: some of the most brutal fighting of the war, the
Speaker 2: Marines captured three tiny specks in the middle of the
Speaker 2: Western Pacific, the Mariana Islands, Guam, Saipan, and Tinian. Why
Speaker 2: were they captured because the Marianna is with thirteen hundred
Speaker 2: and forty two miles from Tokyo, straight shot across the ocean,
Speaker 2: put the B twenty nine together with the Marianas, and
Speaker 2: overnight the odds of beating Japan shifted.
Speaker 1: June of nineteen forty four is a arguably the most
Speaker 1: important month of the war. You have D Day and
Speaker 1: where we go ashore in northwest Europe, you have the
Speaker 1: invasion of the Marianas and the Pacific, the final breaking
Speaker 1: of the internal defense line of the Japanese, the fall
Speaker 1: of the Tojo government because of that. So all that
Speaker 1: stuff happens in that same month.
Speaker 2: Throughout the summer and fall of nineteen forty four, the
Speaker 2: Navy built massive bases on each of the captured islands
Speaker 2: of the Mariannas. The biggest base contained the largest airport
Speaker 2: in the world that was on tinian six runways, the
Speaker 2: equivalent of three Boulder dams with a concrete and when
Speaker 2: they were finished, the military again flying in brand new
Speaker 2: B twenty nine bombers, hundreds of them.
Speaker 4: Their final base was no longer a mystery. Four thousand
Speaker 4: miles farther west, with only one refueling stop on the way,
Speaker 4: lay the island of Saipan. Less than four months before,
Speaker 4: it had still been in the hands of the Japanese.
Speaker 2: To head up the newly created B twenty nine strike
Speaker 2: force known as the twenty first Bomber Command, the military
Speaker 2: brass brought in a high priest of the bomber mafia,
Speaker 2: a brilliant young general named Hayward Hansel. Hayward Hansel came
Speaker 2: from an aristocratic Southern military family. His great grandfather was
Speaker 2: a general in the Confederate Army, his grandfather a Confederate officer.
Speaker 2: Hansel's father had been an army surgeon who came to
Speaker 2: dinner in a white linen suit and a panama hat.
Speaker 2: Hansel himself was a skilled dancer, a poet, and an
Speaker 2: aficionado of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. His favorite book was
Speaker 2: Don Quixote. He felt a connection with the knight tilting
Speaker 2: at windmills. He put flying first, Polo second, and family
Speaker 2: a distant third. Once the story goes early in his marriage,
Speaker 2: he heard a baby cry and turned to his wife,
Speaker 2: what's that sound. That's your son, she said. He liked
Speaker 2: to carry a swagger stick, like the English army officers did.
Speaker 2: As a child, he was nicknamed Possum because of the
Speaker 2: narrowness of his face. The name stuck. On his final
Speaker 2: mission as a pilot, a bombing run over Belgium, Hensel
Speaker 2: entertained his exhausted crew with a rendition of the popular
Speaker 2: music hall song The Man on the Flying Trapeze. This
Speaker 2: is the most famous version. Eddie canters, Oh.
Speaker 5: He floats through the air with the greatest evise, this
Speaker 5: daring young man, and I'm the flying trabbe.
Speaker 4: His actions are.
Speaker 2: Graceful, old girls, He does please, and my love was
Speaker 2: soolen away. Of all the bombing fundamentalists to come out
Speaker 2: of the Air Corps tactical school, Heyward Hansel was the
Speaker 2: truest believer the idealist airpower, intelligently and surgically deployed could
Speaker 2: bring any enemy to its knees well.
Speaker 5: The first operation against Japam was called San Antonio one.
Speaker 5: It was coordinated with the Joint Cheese of Staff strategy,
Speaker 5: which made the timing extremely important. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 5: we were going. We were in some danger of standin
Speaker 5: of falling on this operation.
Speaker 2: When Possum Hansel takes over in the Mariannas in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty four, he says to himself, what is the critical
Speaker 2: vulnerability of the Japanese war economy? What can my newbe
Speaker 2: twenty nine's attack. The answer to him is obvious. The
Speaker 2: Japanese air craft manufacturing plants, which are almost entirely concentrated
Speaker 2: in a few factories in and around Tokyo, in particular
Speaker 2: the Nakajima Aircraft Company known as Subru. Today Nakajima made
Speaker 2: at least a third of all Japanese combat aircraft engines.
Speaker 2: Hansel said, let's hit Nakajima, and we'll cripple the Japanese
Speaker 2: fighting force. The newsreel Ronald Reagan narrated, is all about
Speaker 2: that first attack by Hansel on Nakajima.
Speaker 4: Six hours later, through the clouds, they saw it, Fujiyama.
Speaker 4: Here comes some modern symbols, phosphorus, bombs and flag.
Speaker 2: The B twenty nine s traveled fifteen hundred miles from
Speaker 2: the Marianas, skimming over the ocean at several thousand feet.
Speaker 2: As they approached Japan, they climbed twenty five or thirty
Speaker 2: thousand feet out of harm's way. They turned at Mount Fuji,
Speaker 2: then came in from the west over Tokyo. Here, speaking
Speaker 2: over aerial shots of the city, Reagan lays it on thick.
Speaker 4: Within a radius of fifteen miles of the Imperial Palace
Speaker 4: lived seven million Japanese, a people we used to think
Speaker 4: of as small, dainty, polite, concerning themselves only with floral
Speaker 4: arrangements and rock gardens and the cultivation of silkworms. But
Speaker 4: it isn't silkworms, and it isn't Imperial Palace. As these
Speaker 4: men are looking for in the suburbs of Tokyo is
Speaker 4: the huge Nakajima aircraft plant. Well, bud, what are you
Speaker 4: waiting for?
Speaker 2: Like I said? He dated on a little thick That
Speaker 2: first mission, San Antonio I was hugely symbolic proof that
Speaker 2: Japan could finally be reached. But was it a success
Speaker 2: as a military operation? After the war. Speaking to cadets
Speaker 2: at the Air Force Academy, Hansel tried to put a
Speaker 2: good face on things.
Speaker 5: The operation wasn't because had light by un permission help it.
Speaker 5: It did show that it could be done, and this
Speaker 5: was a very very Dunfeld issue.
Speaker 3: At the time.
Speaker 2: The operation wasn't as good as we would have liked,
Speaker 2: was to say the least, an understatement. None of the
Speaker 2: bombs dropped by Hansel's B twenty nine s actually hit
Speaker 2: the Nakajima plant, so Hansel tried again three days later,
Speaker 2: same thing. Hansel sent mission after mission. On one of
Speaker 2: his last attempts, he went back with seventy two B
Speaker 2: twenty nines. They missed the plant and hit a hospital. Heyward,
Speaker 2: Hansel couldn't solve the problem because the problem was much
Speaker 2: bigger than anyone at the time understood. Long after the war,
Speaker 2: one of Heywood Hansel's B twenty nine pilots, Lieutenant Ed Hyatt,
Speaker 2: was interviewed for a documentary by the BBC.
Speaker 6: After flying six hours, we climbed up to bombing altitude.
Speaker 6: We climbed up to thirty seven thousand feet and just
Speaker 6: as we broke out of the storm, there's Mount Fuji
Speaker 6: sitting right in front of us, and it's a gorgeous site.
Speaker 1: It really is.
Speaker 2: Hyatt tried to describe what went wrong on those first
Speaker 2: B twenty nine precision attacks on Tokyo. His bombardier, a
Speaker 2: man named Glenn, starts to make his calculations on their
Speaker 2: bomb site, lining up the Nakajima factory, but the telescope
Speaker 2: on the bomb site wouldn't line up.
Speaker 6: They turned around and he said, he said, I can't
Speaker 6: get this damn telescope on the target. And so we
Speaker 6: called a radar operator check our ground speed and see
Speaker 6: what our ground speed is. He came back and he says,
Speaker 6: we got one hundred and twenty five tailwind. He said,
Speaker 6: we're going about four hundred and eighty miles an hour.
Speaker 6: It's impossible, it can't be. There's no wins like that.
Speaker 2: No Air Force pilots had ever experienced what was now
Speaker 2: happening to the B twenty nine bombers over Japan. They
Speaker 2: expected winds a fraction of these speeds.
Speaker 6: We're going four hundred and eighty miles an hour when
Speaker 6: we should be going three hundred and forty miles an hour.
Speaker 6: I said, well, Glenn dropped the damn bombs. He dropped
Speaker 6: the bombs, and we were already twelve miles past the
Speaker 6: target because of that wind.
Speaker 2: They were bewildered, and back at base they couldn't explain
Speaker 2: what happened to their superiors from.
Speaker 6: The debriefed as they gave us a third degree, they said, no,
Speaker 6: there is no such thing. There can't be a win
Speaker 6: like that. You're a lion. You didn't make it over
Speaker 6: the target. You're just making this up.
Speaker 2: But one crew after another arrived back at the Marianas
Speaker 2: and told the exact same story.
Speaker 7: To tell you how powerful these winds were. A reconnaissance
Speaker 7: plane went up on time to take some pictures after
Speaker 7: a mission to see how effective they'd been, and the
Speaker 7: navigator called the pilot and told him they were going
Speaker 7: three miles an hour backwards. That was something you couldn't
Speaker 7: afford to do, because if you went from east to west,
Speaker 7: you were going to be a sitting duck for Japanese
Speaker 7: fighters or their flag.
Speaker 2: To solve that puzzle, Hensel turned to his team of meteorologists.
Speaker 2: They'd all been trained at the University of Chicago. Back then,
Speaker 2: in the days before a sophisticated radar, meteorologists were crucial
Speaker 2: to the success of bombing campaigns. If you were doing
Speaker 2: a daylight bombing run over a city, you had to
Speaker 2: see the target in order to line up the bomb site,
Speaker 2: and if the skies were too cloudy, that was impossible.
Speaker 2: So going or not going on a mission hinged on
Speaker 2: the weather forecast. But the tools available to meteorologists of
Speaker 2: that era were crude. The easiest thing to forget about
Speaker 2: the Second World War is that it was another technological era.
Speaker 2: It's half twentieth century and half nineteenth century. The chief
Speaker 2: tool of the meteorologists of that time were balloons weather
Speaker 2: balloons that would float up into the atmosphere, carrying little
Speaker 2: instrument kits that could record the wind, the temperature, and
Speaker 2: the humidity and transmit that information back to Earth. I
Speaker 2: asked John Lewis about those days he's a scientist at
Speaker 2: the Desert Research Institute in Nevada. He knew a number
Speaker 2: of the meteorologists who worked with the Air Force during
Speaker 2: the war. Are these balloons they can forgive me? It's
Speaker 2: a very naive question. Are they connected by a rope
Speaker 2: or are they just free floating?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: No, they're released.
Speaker 8: They eventually, as the pressure gets lower, as the balloon
Speaker 8: goes higher in the atmosphere, they expand, expand, expand. Kaboom,
Speaker 8: they explode and they fall to the ground with the
Speaker 8: instrument attached. And at that time they had a message
Speaker 8: on all the instrument packages, could you please return this
Speaker 8: to the University of Chicago in.
Speaker 2: The Pacific field of war. That technique wasn't going to work.
Speaker 2: So there they were, the meteorologists in the middle of
Speaker 2: the Pacific with one of the most important jobs in
Speaker 2: the whole outfit, figuring out when to send the bombers,
Speaker 2: and they're baffled. What's with these winds? On a theoretical level,
Speaker 2: Do they have a suspicion that there may be very
Speaker 2: very high winds at high altitudes at the Air Force?
Speaker 2: Or is it that they don't reach that conclusion until
Speaker 2: the pilots come back with their.
Speaker 8: They did not reach their conclusions until the pilots came back.
Speaker 2: What slowly became clear is that the pilots had stumbled
Speaker 2: on a previously unknown phenomenon in the upper atmosphere, what
Speaker 2: came to be known as the jet stream, a river
Speaker 2: of fast flowing air that circles the globe starting at
Speaker 2: around twenty thousand feet. Some scientists had theorized about the
Speaker 2: jet stream, but until the B twenty nine was built,
Speaker 2: almost no one had ever flown at altitudes high enough
Speaker 2: to experience those winds firsthand.
Speaker 8: This vast stream of air, very narrow, moves from north
Speaker 8: to south in both hemispheres. Basically, it is dividing the
Speaker 8: very cold air of the polar regions from the more
Speaker 8: warm mid latitude and equatorial air.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you say very narrow, how narrow.
Speaker 8: I would say typically two hundred kilometers across something on
Speaker 8: that order. So that's the narrowness of it.
Speaker 2: And did it entirely encircle the Earth?
Speaker 8: It does?
Speaker 2: So what is the problem facing the pilots gathered on
Speaker 2: the man that in the winter of nineteen forty four
Speaker 2: and the early spring of nineteen forty five, this narrow
Speaker 2: hurricane force band of air known as a jet stream,
Speaker 2: happens to be directly over Japan, and that makes it
Speaker 2: impossible for Hansel to do any of the precision bombing
Speaker 2: that he had planned to do. If they fly across it,
Speaker 2: the plane will get blown sideways. If they fly into it,
Speaker 2: they'll be fighting to stay aloft and be easy targets
Speaker 2: for the Japanese. And if they fly with it, they'll
Speaker 2: be racing too fast to take proper aim. In the
Speaker 2: service of a conviction that bombing could bring Japan to
Speaker 2: its knees, Thousands of Marines had been killed in the
Speaker 2: fight to capture the Marianas. The construction of the three
Speaker 2: island air bases had been one of the most intensive
Speaker 2: engineering feats of the war. The B twenty nine was
Speaker 2: a three billion dollar project that's forty three billion in
Speaker 2: today's money. All of that investment in the air war
Speaker 2: against the Japanese by December of nineteen forty four had
Speaker 2: come up empty. Hansel and all the other brass and
Speaker 2: the Marianas were bewildered. When a true believer discovers that
Speaker 2: his God cannot save him, what's left nothing Heyward Hansel
Speaker 2: was finished in January of nineteen forty five, Hansel was
Speaker 2: relieved of his post as head of the twenty first
Speaker 2: bomber command. In his place was put the man you
Speaker 2: bring in when all else has failed, Curtis le May.
Speaker 2: Even decades later, possum Hansel would bristle when asked about
Speaker 2: the circumstances of his departure and the person who replaced
Speaker 2: him in the Pacific. He had taught le May at
Speaker 2: the Air Court Tactical School and was his commanding officer
Speaker 2: in Europe. Here's Hansel again at the Air Force Academy
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty seven. He's just been asked a name
Speaker 2: who he felt were the finest officers of his generation.
Speaker 9: Among the people who I knew in my littleitary career,
Speaker 9: I would say the three hank standing ones, John Marshall,
Speaker 9: Joel Andrews and John Fradhn And they were outstanding for
Speaker 9: pretty much the same reason they were man okay, character,
Speaker 9: They were obviously intelligent man, but no a spersonal integrity
Speaker 9: and character.
Speaker 8: General O May was one of your group commanders.
Speaker 3: I not if you didn't put him in this.
Speaker 2: Last group, well exactly. Le May was not a patrician
Speaker 2: with a swagger stick. He did not read Savantes and
Speaker 2: sing musical theater to his crew at the end of
Speaker 2: long missions. He had no time for demonstrations of personal
Speaker 2: integrity and character. He had a problem to solve when
Speaker 2: he takes over the twenty first bombing command. When he
Speaker 2: first arrives in the Marianas, he does not have his
Speaker 2: eventual strategy worked out. His mind is still open.
Speaker 1: Yes, Zach, Yeah, that is correct.
Speaker 2: I'm talking again with the military historian Conrad Crane about
Speaker 2: Curtis the May after he takes over command from General
Speaker 2: Heyward Hansell in January of nineteen forty five. I'm really
Speaker 2: curious to sort of reconstruct his thought process, how he
Speaker 2: all the reasons why he arrives at the strategy finally
Speaker 2: arrives at So he begins by does he begin by
Speaker 2: doing exactly what Hansel had done?
Speaker 1: Well? He he walks in, and he looks around and
Speaker 1: sees the primitive nature of the facilities that said this
Speaker 1: won't do.
Speaker 2: Le May is not happy with the military's infrastructure on
Speaker 2: the Mariannas. It was all built by the Navy's construction Battalion,
Speaker 2: the Seabees. Le May has lost none of his disdain
Speaker 2: for the Navy, the people who cheated in the bombing
Speaker 2: exercise years before.
Speaker 1: He gets invited to have dinner with Admiral Nimtz, who
Speaker 1: also is headquartered in Marianna's And he goes over to
Speaker 1: Nimbus's place and he's in this ornate almost a palace,
Speaker 1: and he gets fed on the very formal naval style
Speaker 1: dinner with the tablecloths and being served and everything. So
Speaker 1: he invites the Admiral Nimmos to visit him for dinner
Speaker 1: in the next couple of days, and Admiral Nimmtz shows
Speaker 1: up for his dinner and they're sitting in a quancert
Speaker 1: hut on a couple of crates, eating sea rations. And
Speaker 1: at the end of the end of the meal, Nimmits
Speaker 1: looks at LeMay and says, I get your point. And
Speaker 1: then he started sending more construction materials to La May
Speaker 1: to help finish up the rest of the facilities.
Speaker 2: By the early spring of nineteen forty five, LeMay was ready.
Speaker 2: He starts out by trying his own version of the
Speaker 2: strategy taken by his predecessor. He decides to take out
Speaker 2: the Nakajima aircraft planned in Tokyo.
Speaker 1: His perception is is that he's still expected to do
Speaker 1: high altitude precision bombing, So he's going to do everything
Speaker 1: he can to make sure that I how Toude precision
Speaker 1: bombing is going to be more effective.
Speaker 2: Le May sends two missions against Nakajima in January, one
Speaker 2: in February another in early March. Hundreds of B twenty
Speaker 2: nine's making the long trek to Japan, and in the
Speaker 2: end the plant is still standing. He's run up against
Speaker 2: the same obstacle as Hensel did. How can I force
Speaker 2: a Japanese surrender from the air if I can't hit anything.
Speaker 1: But when he realizes he's fixed all those problems, there's
Speaker 1: nothing else he can tweak, you know, he says, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gott to try something different.
Speaker 2: Le May's first realization is that the jet stream is
Speaker 2: a powerful force. It can't be wished away, and it's
Speaker 2: making everything else impossible. The first principle of precision bombing
Speaker 2: doctrine is that the bomber should come in high, well
Speaker 2: above the range of enemy fire and anti aircraft guns.
Speaker 2: Le May throws it out the window. He decides to
Speaker 2: be twenty nine's will have to fly at lower altitudes
Speaker 2: under the jet.
Speaker 1: Stream and once he realizes he's going to have to
Speaker 1: go to lower altitude. Then that leads to a whole
Speaker 1: set of other conclusions from that.
Speaker 2: Next logical step. Precision bombing was supposed to be daylight bombing.
Speaker 2: You needed to see the target before you could line
Speaker 2: up the bomb site. But if le Maay's bombers came
Speaker 2: in low during the day, they would be sitting ducks
Speaker 2: for the Japanese air defenses. So he decides they have
Speaker 2: to come under cover of night.
Speaker 1: Once you realize you can't go to a high altitude anymore,
Speaker 1: it drives kind of the rest of his decision process.
Speaker 2: Jetstream means low, low means night, and the decision to
Speaker 2: switch to night raids means you can't do precision bombing anymore,
Speaker 2: because there's no way with the technology of the time
Speaker 2: that a bombing crew would be able to focus on
Speaker 2: any precise target if they couldn't see it. So just
Speaker 2: like that, Curtis le May doesn't about face. The man
Speaker 2: who came of age in the high church of precision
Speaker 2: bombing decides, at the most crucial juncture of his career
Speaker 2: to abandon his faith to bomb indiscriminately to become an
Speaker 2: area bomber and what weapon would he use for that task.
Speaker 2: He knew as well as anyone the reports from the
Speaker 2: Army testing grounds back in America, where perfect replicas of
Speaker 2: Japanese towns had been incinerated by Harvard's new wonder weapon.
Speaker 2: The whole plan is so radical that when le May
Speaker 2: sends a copy of it to Washington for the approval
Speaker 2: of his boss, General hap Arnold, he makes sure it
Speaker 2: arrives on a day when Arnold isn't in his office, so.
Speaker 1: He can get that initial raid off before Arnold really
Speaker 1: has a chance to look at it very much, because
Speaker 1: he realizes he's taken a risky es are very valuable.
Speaker 1: It's very risky. You're talking about going in at night,
Speaker 1: low altitude. He leaves most of the ammunition and gunners behind.
Speaker 2: Crucial fact, the only thing LeMay lets his pilots have
Speaker 2: to defend themselves is a tail gunner. All other guns
Speaker 2: are removed. He wants to save as much weight as
Speaker 2: possible for bombs. In the Air Force archives, it is
Speaker 2: possible to find interviews from long ago with pilots who
Speaker 2: remember the day when LeMay told them what was going
Speaker 2: to happen that night.
Speaker 10: And they were just a gasp in the audience because
Speaker 10: you never thought about doing anything high altitude flying.
Speaker 2: This is a B twenty nine navigator named David Braden.
Speaker 10: And you went out and the bottom of your aircraft
Speaker 10: have been painted black. So you do this is going
Speaker 10: to be a different thing. Most of the guys thought
Speaker 10: it was a susi admission.
Speaker 2: And Braden's commander, Curtis le May, know this was going
Speaker 2: to work. Of course he didn't, but remember his words,
Speaker 2: the credo of the man who gets things done. I'd
Speaker 2: rather have someone who was real stupid but did something
Speaker 2: than have someone who'd vacillate and do nothing. Curtis le
Speaker 2: May was going to do something. He was going to
Speaker 2: aery A Bob Tokyo under cover of night with napalm.
Speaker 3: I woke up one day and I'd been up there
Speaker 3: for about two months. I hadn't done anything much, yet
Speaker 3: I'd better do something.
Speaker 2: I wonder if this is why le May fascinated so
Speaker 2: many people in his day, because of his ability to
Speaker 2: make that sudden turn, to turn his back on who
Speaker 2: he was in the service of solving the problem. Curtis
Speaker 2: le May was a member of the Bombing Mafia, a
Speaker 2: graduate of the Air Corps Tactical School, a proponent of
Speaker 2: precision bombing progress unhindered by custom. Later in his career
Speaker 2: he would champion something called the B seventy bomber, an
Speaker 2: airplane so absurdly complicated, so ridiculously advanced, so preposterously expensive,
Speaker 2: and so deliciously and fantastically tricked out that the Air
Speaker 2: Force only built two prototypes, one of which crashed. The
Speaker 2: other has spent its entire life in the museum. Le
Speaker 2: May was in his heart always the little boy who
Speaker 2: ran after airplanes in the sky, and yet when he
Speaker 2: needed to, he could take all that, his entire identity,
Speaker 2: the modern, progressive, skilled war maker, and throw it out
Speaker 2: the window.
Speaker 1: May.
Speaker 10: Where did the idea for the low level fire attacks originate?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 4: Were?
Speaker 3: You had ideas flying back and forth a lot. It
Speaker 3: was my basic decision made it. Nobody said anything about
Speaker 3: night saintury vomit where he had to have some results
Speaker 3: and I had to produce him. If I didn't produce them,
Speaker 3: or made the long guess, get another.
Speaker 1: Commander in there.
Speaker 3: That's what happened to hansle You've got no results, I'd
Speaker 3: have them. That's the reason for it.
Speaker 2: On the night of March ninth, nineteen forty five, Curtis
Speaker 2: le May launched Operation Meetinghouse. He sent three hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty four B twenty nine's from the Marianas to Tokyo,
Speaker 2: loaded with as much napalm as they could carry. The
Speaker 2: target was not the Nakajima aircraft plant. That plan was over.
Speaker 2: The new target was a densely populated region of Tokyo
Speaker 2: straddling the Sumita River, a few miles east of the
Speaker 2: Imperial Palace Zone one. The first few bombers dropped flares,
Speaker 2: marking the target area for those that followed. Le Maay
Speaker 2: was sending in his bombers at five thousand feet incredibly low.
Speaker 2: That was so crazy that the Japanese were completely unprepared.
Speaker 2: The bombs fell from the B twenty nine in clusters.
Speaker 2: They were small steel pipes twenty inches long, weighing six pounds,
Speaker 2: packed with tnt in napalm, little baby bombs, each with
Speaker 2: a long silver gauze streamer at one end, so that
Speaker 2: if you looked in the sky that night in Tokyo,
Speaker 2: there would have been a moment of extraordinary beauty, thousands
Speaker 2: of these little silver daggers falling down to earth and
Speaker 2: then boom on impact. Thousands of small explosions, burning gloves
Speaker 2: of napalm thrown in every direction, All told by morning,
Speaker 2: one thousand, six hundred and sixty five tons of napalm
Speaker 2: dropped on Tokyo in one night. Circling high above Tokyo
Speaker 2: is the master bomber, LeMay's deputy, Tommy Power, choreographing the attack.
Speaker 2: Conrad Crane says that Power sat in his cockpit drawing
Speaker 2: pictures of everything he saw.
Speaker 1: He remarked, you know, the air was soul ful of
Speaker 1: and sented areas you could not have walked through them.
Speaker 1: By two thirty seven, the largest visual fire areas was
Speaker 1: about forty blocks long and fifteen wide. The smoke was
Speaker 1: up to twenty five thousand feet. When he draws his
Speaker 1: last sketch, which is about an hour after initial his
Speaker 1: first one, there's basically a score of separate areas from
Speaker 1: fifty to one thousand city blocks burning at the same time,
Speaker 1: and his last part last report says that the glow
Speaker 1: from the fires was visible one hundred and fifty miles away.
Speaker 2: The napom creates a firestorm, a conflagration hundreds of blocks long,
Speaker 2: a fire of such intensity and duration that it creates
Speaker 2: and sustains its own wind system. Everything burns sixteen square miles.
Speaker 2: Buildings burst into flame before the fire even reaches them.
Speaker 2: After the war, the US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded the following.
Speaker 2: Probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo
Speaker 2: in a six hour period than any time in the
Speaker 2: history of man. More than one hundred thousand people died
Speaker 2: that night.
Speaker 10: Frankly, when those cities were on fire, it looked like
Speaker 10: you're looking into the mouth of hell. I mean, you
Speaker 10: should not imagine a fire that big.
Speaker 2: Over the course of the spring and summer of nineteen
Speaker 2: forty five, LeMay went on to firebomb another sixty six
Speaker 2: Japanese cities. In the chaos of war. The dead were
Speaker 2: never counted. The final toll may be as high as
Speaker 2: half a million.
Speaker 1: They're about five thousand feet. They are pretty low. They
Speaker 1: are low enough that the ah, the smell of burning
Speaker 1: flesh permeates the aircraft. They actually have to fumigate the
Speaker 1: aircraft when they land back in the Marianas because the
Speaker 1: smell of burning flesh remains within the aircraft.
Speaker 2: Two cities were spared, Nagasaki and Hiroshima. They were left
Speaker 2: for another day and another Air Force command with a
Speaker 2: different idea of how to win a war.
Speaker 3: Thank you all.
Speaker 2: On August fifteenth, nineteen forty five, at twelve noon, the
Speaker 2: Emperor of Japan surrendered. The Air Force was asked to
Speaker 2: bring Japan to its knees from the air so that
Speaker 2: a ground invasion could be avoided. They succeeded. Next week
Speaker 2: The reckoning When you burn alive hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 2: civilians in the course of a military objective, What happens next?
Speaker 2: Revisionist History is produced by Mee La Belle and Lee Mingestou,
Speaker 2: with Jacob Smith, Eloise Linton and on An. I'm our
Speaker 2: editor is Julia Barton. Original scoring by Luis Garra, mastering
Speaker 2: by Flon Williams, fact checking by Beth Johnson. Special thanks
Speaker 2: to the Pushkin Crew, Hetephane Carly Migliore, Maya Knigg, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 2: Jason Gambrel and of course Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Blackwell.