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  • LeMay: A Biography
  • Dik Daso
LeMay: A Biography. By Barrett Tillman . Series Editor Wesley K. Clark . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. ISBN 1-4039-7135-8. Photographs. Notes. Index. Pp. x, 205. $21.95.

General Curtis E. LeMay created the U.S. Air Force's Strategic Air Command (SAC)—the most formidable military flying force ever assembled. He molded this force using his experiences as a demanding World War II bomber commander who had been responsible for thousands of airmen and planes during some of the harshest combat conditions ever faced in the skies. He demanded much, tolerated little less than perfection, and spared few words in explaining himself to others. LeMay had no peer as an operational air commander—he was the best the world has ever seen.

Barrett Tillman has attempted to tell the life story of this remarkable air general (in something less than 200 pages) as part of Palgrave Macmillan's "Great Generals Series." The stated guidelines for this series target military history "buffs" and general readers. For this purpose, the work succeeds on most counts.

General Wesley K. Clark (former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe turned book series editor) begins his foreword with the exclamation that, "No name is more associated with airpower" than LeMay. Certainly, he is an important figure in modern Air Force history, but names like Billy Mitchell, Hap Arnold, Jimmy Doolittle, and John Towers hold similar elite status among great airmen and airpower visionaries. It is perhaps rather in popular culture than in historical circles that LeMay is elevated to the top of this distinguished list.

The book's structure—an easy to read, easy to follow chronology—begins with a brief synopsis of LeMay's childhood in Columbus, Ohio, up to his entry into military aviation. Chapters two through five describe how he became an experienced bomber advocate and commander after his initial pilot assignment to pursuit aircraft in 1929. These wartime chapters are broken down by LeMay's duties in England, China, and the Marianas—each building upon lessons learned and experience gained in the assignment before. Tillman describes LeMay's influence on the development of the Strategic Air Command, his most important legacy as a great general, in the next three chapters. These are followed by a chapter that covers LeMay's lack-luster tours of duty in the Pentagon as vice chief and then chief of staff of the Air Force. A brief summary of LeMay's retirement years and his failed exploits in politics is followed by a summary evaluation and then an assessment of his legacy as a great general. The story is told almost exclusively with support of secondary reference material and LeMay's autobiography, providing little in the way of new revelations or interpretations of LeMay the man or LeMay the general. [End Page 965]

Tillman, primarily a naval historian and popular history writer, seemed an odd choice to sketch a biography of the one U.S. Air Force commander in history most responsible for today's continuing schism between the air force and the navy over military roles and missions. The author draws from his own historical perspective when he suggests navy admirals feared "that a new air force would seek to take roles and missions currently in their domain. They were right" (p. 80). Yet Tillman fails to point out that the Army Air Forces postwar leadership had warned fellow commanders and their civilian leadership that the navy would likely attempt to usurp strategic missions that had been flown exclusively by AAF bombers during World War II—and they were right. What Tillman needed was more shades of blue to chose from on his historical airpower palette. Tillman's bias is subtle but present. For example, the author uses nautical terms in his narrative which seem completely out of place like "drifting farther astern every year" (p. 170) and "LeMay saw the writing on the bulkhead" (p. 112). Why not use "tailspin" and "firewall" to embellish the story of a pilot and U.S. Air Force pioneer?

Part of the problem with writing compressed popular historical biographies is that research needed to expand and update previous storytelling is often...

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