Background For War: MAN IN THE FIRST PLANE

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The number of B-36s now in service is secret, but the U.S. has more atom bombs than B-36s. Of SAC's 14 striking groups, only three have the intercontinental bombers. The rest of SAC's groups are equipped with World War II-type heavy bombers, now known as mediums. There are eight groups of Boeing B-29s (which SAC pilots used to call "mouse-powered," and their 2,200-h.p. engines, "dollar alarm clocks"), and there are three groups of their beefed-up postwar cousins, the Boeing B-50s. The mediums can't fly from U.S. bases to Russia without elaborate aerial refueling,* but they could shuttle devastatingly between Britain, Russia and the Middle East.

The C.G. Curt LeMay, 43, runs his armada from a second-floor office at Offutt Base, a converted World War II aircraft plant set peacefully among the rolling cornfields just west of the Missouri River. He leaves his door wide open and is usually "at home" to any brasshat or buck private—somewhat as a lion is at home on meatless Tuesday. He sits immobile behind his polished walnut desk, black-maned, broad-shouldered and heavy-faced, his lips set as straight as the five rows of service ribbons on his tan uniform jacket.

"The Old Man doesn't say hello to you; he just looks up from his desk, nails you with a stare and listens," one SACman says. "You begin talking and you don't hear a reply—all you hear is your own voice. Then, when you are in mid-sentence he takes the pipe out of his mouth and says, 'Get to the point.' A minute or two later: 'You're straying from the point. Don't waste my time. Come back when you've got this thing in hand.' "

LeMay's capacity for anger has probably never been tested to its fullest: he runs himself as he flies an airplane; to spout smoke or to get off course would be inefficient. He can ignore an uncut lawn or an unpolished shoe, but will pick out an unkempt airplane across the field. "He is a single-minded 'why?' guy, an administrator of high ability, and above all a hard-shelled military realist," one of his staff said appraisingly. "And I'm damn glad he's not on Russia's side."

The only place where he is likely to unbend is in the privacy of the commanding general's red brick house, across from the green Offutt parade ground. There, in the evenings, he sits in a comfortable armchair pulling at his ever-present pipe. His gregarious, twinkly eyed wife Helen, whom he met 19 years ago at a dance, is not afraid to chatter, or to stray as far from the point as she chooses. SAC's officers have unconcealed admiration for LeMay's eleven-year-old daughter Jane, who frequently tells the Old Man, "No, I won't."

LeMay first landed on SAC in October 1948, relieving Sg-year-old General George Kenney, MacArthur's top airman in World War II. Kenney, a good commander, had neither LeMay's training as a long-range bomber specialist, his experience as a battle pilot, nor his hard-driving temperament. Kenney's bombers spent much of their time making easy training flights, "just boring holes in the air," as one of them recalls it. LeMay picked the outfit up by the neck, shook it in a way none of the oldtimers will soon forget, and flung it across the U.S. to get ready for its mission.