Background For War: MAN IN THE FIRST PLANE

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The Airlift. Less than three years after the peace, when everyone else was loosening up their military girdles, LeMay found himself running the Berlin airlift as chief of U.S. air forces in Europe. One day a C-54 pilot at Frankfurt felt a heavy hand on his shoulder, looked up into the Old Man's three stars. "Son, I'll take this load," said LeMay. "Go and tell your dispatcher—and if he lets the other end know I'm coming he'll get hell from me." LeMay flew into Berlin, unloaded, then took his place in the take-off waiting line for 40 minutes.

Back in Frankfurt he buzzed for his staff. Said he: "Get it fixed. I will expect airplanes to be taking off five minutes after they have unloaded—by day after tomorrow." Three days later he dropped in again. "O.K., it's fixed," he grunted. "See if you can better it."

When things eased up in Germany, he relaxed by hunting wild boar in the Black Forest and running his own "ham" radio transmitter at Wiesbaden. He invited his enlisted men to draw all the surplus radio equipment they needed to set up their own stations, often swapped midnight advice with his fellow hams. It was characteristic of his attitude towards his men: he never would step out of his way to make a public show of thoughtfulness, but was willing to rustle up radio gear on their behalf, be responsible for it and sit up late at night telling them how to use it. His reasoning: "I might want a lot of radio operators some day."

Flyaway Day. When SAC moved from a field outside Washington to Offutt, next-door Omaha was tingling with anticipation of the big armadas to come. "What will this mean to Omaha?" asked a reporter as LeMay arrived on the scene. "It doesn't mean a damn thing to Omaha, and it doesn't mean a damn thing to me," he growled.

Actually, Offutt was to become the nerve center: no war planes are based there; the armadas and their crews are safely dispersed around the world at the other end of private telephone lines and powerful short-wave radios.

On the morning of Korea, LeMay didn't wait for the Pentagon to stir. He got. on the wire with the commanders of his air forces: the Second, Eighth and Fifteenth. He ordered in Major General Emmett O'Donnell, boss of the Fifteenth at March Field. For two days, while SAC was in the dark on Washington's plans, the staff pored over their own top-secret intelligence on North Korean targets. "Rosie" O'Donnell's B-29s were loaded with flyaway kits, holding enough spare engines and parts to keep them flying for 30 days until normal supply lines could be set up wherever they might go.

Within four days and 23 hours after LeMay got his orders, Rosie's B-29s were bombing targets in Korea. LeMay almost worked up a pleased smile at this achievement,-then nearly bit through his pipestem when he heard that his high-bombers had been used, as they were never intended to be, in low, front-line support.

He recognized, of course, that in a tight spot, a commander had to use whatever he had wherever he could.