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Bombs-Away LeMay · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Curtis Emerson LeMay, who for the better part of twenty
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: five years dominated the greatest fighting force the world had
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: ever known, had three nicknames, Old Iron Pants, the Demon,
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: and bombs Away LeMay. He was not that category of
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: leader who led by force of wit, charm and charisma.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Nor was he some great thinker, the kind of leader
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: whose appeal lies with carefully thought out manifestos and elaborate ideologies.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Le Maay never took his cigar out of his mouth
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: long enough to say anything. He belonged to a different category,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: the one that gets overlooked.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Curtis LeMay. In my view, he was the greatest air
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: commander in history.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: I'm talking to the military historian Conrad Crane. No historian
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: writes about the Second World War out considering the legacy
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: of LeMay.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Everything he touched he transformed. He was a dynamic leader.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: He shared the difficulties of his airman. He was the
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: best navigator of the Air Force I had it, was
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: a great pilot, He could do mechanics stuff. He was
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: the Air Force's ultimate problem solver. But he was one
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: of those guys that you would if you gave him
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: a problem to fix, you didn't ask a whole lot
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: of questions.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Harry was going to do it bombs away. LeMay was
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: known as someone you get the job done. My name
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: about things Overlooked and Misunderstood. This is part three of
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: my four part series about Curtis le May and the
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: events of March nineteen forty five. This episode is about
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: the role of people like Curtis le May in times
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: of crisis. In the normal course of events, we are
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: led by people of ideas and people of arristhma. But
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: when things start to go badly, those people get pushed
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: aside and the problem solver takes center stage. Only the
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: problem solver doesn't play by the same moral rules. Let
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: me give you an example of what it means to
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: approach the world the way someone like Curtis LeMay did.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: It's not one of the signature stories in the LeMay legend.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: It happened long before he was famous, years before the
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Second World War. He would mention it sometimes in passing
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: in some of the interviews he gave in retirement, but
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: it's one of those stories that made me stop and say, oh,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: I think I understand him now. In nineteen thirty seven,
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: with the threat of war in Europe growing, the Army's
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Air Corps wanted a chance to practice their bombing technique,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: real world practice, only with dummy bombs fifty pounders filled
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: with water.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: I'mt me tell you the story of that. I mentioned
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: that the Air Force has been battling to make a
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: contribution to the fans of the country ever since I've
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: done around, nobody paid much attention to it.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: This is an interview LeMay gave to the Air Force
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Academy in nineteen seventy one, a few years after leaving
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: his post as Chief of Staff of the Air Force.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: When he was taking the post retirement victory lap, a
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: famous generals take.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: We wanted an exercise, or we could drop bomb on
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: a battleship.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Find a battleship for the practice run. To work, the
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Air Corps needed the Navy to play along. Hide a
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: battleship out on the seas, give out its coordinates at
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: the last minute, and dare the bombers to find it.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: This was before sophisticated radar and navigation aids. To find
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: a battleship, you had to see it with your eyes,
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: then hit its narrow decks with a bomb from thousands
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: of feet up, all the while flying at hundreds of
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: miles an hour. The Navy was not enthusiastic.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: Finally, they agreed that they would have an exercise and
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: it would be in August off the West coast. Now
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: in August off the west coast, there's nothing but fog
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: for a thousand miles out there, and they deliberately picked
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: it for this time. I'm sure.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: How could you spot a battleship in one thousand miles
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: of fog. To make matters worse, the Navy bent the rules.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: The agreement was to have the wargame run for twenty
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: four hours from noon the first day until noon the next,
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: but the Navy didn't give out the coordinates of its ship,
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: the uss Utah, until late the first afternoon, and the
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: cordinates they gave were wrong, off by sixty miles one
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: thousand miles of fog. Late directions, fake directions a needle
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: in a haystack would have been easier at ten minutes before.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: At the very last moment, le May found the ship
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: and dropped his bombs. Now, of course he found the ship,
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: there was nothing Li May could not do if he
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: put his mind to it. That's not the point of
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: the story. The point is what happened before he dropped
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: his bombs. The Navy was certain they couldn't be found,
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: so they took no precautions. The sailors were all over
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: the decks going about their business. They were supposed to
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: take cover in a bombing exercise. They didn't. So what
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: did LeMay do? He bombed the Utah anyway, raining fifty
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: pound water bombs down on the sailors.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: And the Navy was so sure that they weren't going
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: to be found. I don't know if that bog die
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: like it, but the men were all over the decks,
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: everybody diving for the gang plank patches and way hard
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: rumors that there are a few people part a little bit.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Imagine how other types of leaders might have handled the
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: decision to bomb after seeing sailors out in the deck.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: The thinker would have understood the moral dimensions of willingly
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: harming one of your own in the course of a
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: routine training exercise. The charismatic leader would have wondered, what
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: will my own men think of me if they see
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: that I am capable of such a casual act of brutality.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: But the problem solver. The problem was to find the
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Utah and bomb it, and so he bombs it.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: I'd rather have somebody who is real stupid. I did
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: something and even it was wrong, alre he did something,
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: and I have somebody who would vacilate and do nothing.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: You cannot do nothing in the world view of the
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: problem solver, even if what you end up doing is horrifying.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: In his memoirs, LeMay says they were rumors for years
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: that some sale got killed in the bombing exercise of
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: nineteen thirty seven, and then he says, quote, I remember
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: watching the first bomb, which smashed into the deck. It
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: sent splintered pieces of wood flying in every direction. I
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: hadn't realized that wood could frag like that. It was
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: a learning opportunity. Who knew wood reacted that way? He
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: files that fact away and goes on to the next problem.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: In the first years of the Second World War, the
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: American fight against the Japanese was defined by a single fact.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Japan was beyond the reach of the US Air Force.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: The American workhorse bomber was the B seventeen. It had
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: a range of roughly two thousand miles. That's a thousand
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: miles out and one thousand miles back. Now, look at
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: a map of the world from say, January of nineteen
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: forty four, and try and find an air base controlled
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: by the Allies that is within one thousand miles of
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: tow You can't. And if you can't reach Japan, how
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: on earth are you going to defeat them? The solution
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: comes in two parts.
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  Speaker 4: This is where it began, here in the exact geographic
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: center of the United States, Grand Island, Nebraska.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: That voice sounds familiar, doesn't it. It's fron of Reagan.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Long before he became president, Reagan narrated newsreels during the
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Second World War.
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: The men were brought here from every corner of the
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: country and a few corners outside the country.
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: They were a.
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  Speaker 4: Hand picked American mixture of draftees and west pointers, of butchers,
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  Speaker 4: teachers and bankers, of your sons, husbands, and fathers.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: In the newsreel, we see soldiers arriving in barracks, handsome
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: crisp uniforms, all gazing up at a magnificent and gleaming airplane.
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: She was a B twenty nine, the superport designed to
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: carry more destruction and carry it higher, faster, farther than
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: any bomber ever built before. And to complete this mission,
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: That's exactly what she was going to have to do.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: She The B twenty nine was one of the great
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: achievements of the American war effort, an enormous bomber dedicated
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: entirely to the fight against the Japanese. In the Wars
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: specific theater, the B twenty nine's range fifty six hundred
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: miles much better than its predecessor. So then came the
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: second step. In the summer of nineteen forty four, in
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: some of the most brutal fighting of the war, the
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Marines captured three tiny specks in the middle of the
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Western Pacific, the Mariana Islands, Guam, Saipan, and Tinian. Why
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: were they captured because the Marianna is with thirteen hundred
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: and forty two miles from Tokyo, straight shot across the ocean,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: put the B twenty nine together with the Marianas, and
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: overnight the odds of beating Japan shifted.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: June of nineteen forty four is a arguably the most
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: important month of the war. You have D Day and
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: where we go ashore in northwest Europe, you have the
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: invasion of the Marianas and the Pacific, the final breaking
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: of the internal defense line of the Japanese, the fall
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: of the Tojo government because of that. So all that
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: stuff happens in that same month.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Throughout the summer and fall of nineteen forty four, the
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Navy built massive bases on each of the captured islands
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: of the Mariannas. The biggest base contained the largest airport
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: in the world that was on tinian six runways, the
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: equivalent of three Boulder dams with a concrete and when
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: they were finished, the military again flying in brand new
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: B twenty nine bombers, hundreds of them.
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: Their final base was no longer a mystery. Four thousand
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: miles farther west, with only one refueling stop on the way,
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: lay the island of Saipan. Less than four months before,
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: it had still been in the hands of the Japanese.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: To head up the newly created B twenty nine strike
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: force known as the twenty first Bomber Command, the military
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: brass brought in a high priest of the bomber mafia,
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: a brilliant young general named Hayward Hansel. Hayward Hansel came
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: from an aristocratic Southern military family. His great grandfather was
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: a general in the Confederate Army, his grandfather a Confederate officer.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Hansel's father had been an army surgeon who came to
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: dinner in a white linen suit and a panama hat.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Hansel himself was a skilled dancer, a poet, and an
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: aficionado of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. His favorite book was
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Don Quixote. He felt a connection with the knight tilting
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: at windmills. He put flying first, Polo second, and family
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: a distant third. Once the story goes early in his marriage,
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: he heard a baby cry and turned to his wife,
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: what's that sound. That's your son, she said. He liked
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: to carry a swagger stick, like the English army officers did.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: As a child, he was nicknamed Possum because of the
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: narrowness of his face. The name stuck. On his final
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: mission as a pilot, a bombing run over Belgium, Hensel
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: entertained his exhausted crew with a rendition of the popular
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: music hall song The Man on the Flying Trapeze. This
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: is the most famous version. Eddie canters, Oh.
• 13:03
  Speaker 5: He floats through the air with the greatest evise, this
• 13:08
  Speaker 5: daring young man, and I'm the flying trabbe.
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: His actions are.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Graceful, old girls, He does please, and my love was
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: soolen away. Of all the bombing fundamentalists to come out
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: of the Air Corps tactical school, Heyward Hansel was the
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: truest believer the idealist airpower, intelligently and surgically deployed could
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: bring any enemy to its knees well.
• 13:36
  Speaker 5: The first operation against Japam was called San Antonio one.
• 13:41
  Speaker 5: It was coordinated with the Joint Cheese of Staff strategy,
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: which made the timing extremely important. As a matter of fact,
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: we were going. We were in some danger of standin
• 13:50
  Speaker 5: of falling on this operation.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: When Possum Hansel takes over in the Mariannas in nineteen
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: forty four, he says to himself, what is the critical
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: vulnerability of the Japanese war economy? What can my newbe
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: twenty nine's attack. The answer to him is obvious. The
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: Japanese air craft manufacturing plants, which are almost entirely concentrated
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: in a few factories in and around Tokyo, in particular
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: the Nakajima Aircraft Company known as Subru. Today Nakajima made
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: at least a third of all Japanese combat aircraft engines.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Hansel said, let's hit Nakajima, and we'll cripple the Japanese
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: fighting force. The newsreel Ronald Reagan narrated, is all about
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: that first attack by Hansel on Nakajima.
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: Six hours later, through the clouds, they saw it, Fujiyama.
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: Here comes some modern symbols, phosphorus, bombs and flag.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: The B twenty nine s traveled fifteen hundred miles from
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: the Marianas, skimming over the ocean at several thousand feet.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: As they approached Japan, they climbed twenty five or thirty
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: thousand feet out of harm's way. They turned at Mount Fuji,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: then came in from the west over Tokyo. Here, speaking
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: over aerial shots of the city, Reagan lays it on thick.
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: Within a radius of fifteen miles of the Imperial Palace
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: lived seven million Japanese, a people we used to think
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: of as small, dainty, polite, concerning themselves only with floral
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: arrangements and rock gardens and the cultivation of silkworms. But
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: it isn't silkworms, and it isn't Imperial Palace. As these
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: men are looking for in the suburbs of Tokyo is
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: the huge Nakajima aircraft plant. Well, bud, what are you
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: waiting for?
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Like I said? He dated on a little thick That
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: first mission, San Antonio I was hugely symbolic proof that
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: Japan could finally be reached. But was it a success
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: as a military operation? After the war. Speaking to cadets
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: at the Air Force Academy, Hansel tried to put a
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: good face on things.
• 16:16
  Speaker 5: The operation wasn't because had light by un permission help it.
• 16:21
  Speaker 5: It did show that it could be done, and this
• 16:24
  Speaker 5: was a very very Dunfeld issue.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: At the time.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: The operation wasn't as good as we would have liked,
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: was to say the least, an understatement. None of the
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: bombs dropped by Hansel's B twenty nine s actually hit
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: the Nakajima plant, so Hansel tried again three days later,
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: same thing. Hansel sent mission after mission. On one of
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: his last attempts, he went back with seventy two B
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: twenty nines. They missed the plant and hit a hospital. Heyward,
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Hansel couldn't solve the problem because the problem was much
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: bigger than anyone at the time understood. Long after the war,
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: one of Heywood Hansel's B twenty nine pilots, Lieutenant Ed Hyatt,
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: was interviewed for a documentary by the BBC.
• 17:27
  Speaker 6: After flying six hours, we climbed up to bombing altitude.
• 17:31
  Speaker 6: We climbed up to thirty seven thousand feet and just
• 17:34
  Speaker 6: as we broke out of the storm, there's Mount Fuji
• 17:36
  Speaker 6: sitting right in front of us, and it's a gorgeous site.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Hyatt tried to describe what went wrong on those first
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: B twenty nine precision attacks on Tokyo. His bombardier, a
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: man named Glenn, starts to make his calculations on their
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: bomb site, lining up the Nakajima factory, but the telescope
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: on the bomb site wouldn't line up.
• 17:58
  Speaker 6: They turned around and he said, he said, I can't
• 18:00
  Speaker 6: get this damn telescope on the target. And so we
• 18:06
  Speaker 6: called a radar operator check our ground speed and see
• 18:09
  Speaker 6: what our ground speed is. He came back and he says,
• 18:11
  Speaker 6: we got one hundred and twenty five tailwind. He said,
• 18:14
  Speaker 6: we're going about four hundred and eighty miles an hour.
• 18:16
  Speaker 6: It's impossible, it can't be. There's no wins like that.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: No Air Force pilots had ever experienced what was now
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: happening to the B twenty nine bombers over Japan. They
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: expected winds a fraction of these speeds.
• 18:32
  Speaker 6: We're going four hundred and eighty miles an hour when
• 18:34
  Speaker 6: we should be going three hundred and forty miles an hour.
• 18:38
  Speaker 6: I said, well, Glenn dropped the damn bombs. He dropped
• 18:42
  Speaker 6: the bombs, and we were already twelve miles past the
• 18:44
  Speaker 6: target because of that wind.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: They were bewildered, and back at base they couldn't explain
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: what happened to their superiors from.
• 18:54
  Speaker 6: The debriefed as they gave us a third degree, they said, no,
• 18:59
  Speaker 6: there is no such thing. There can't be a win
• 19:02
  Speaker 6: like that. You're a lion. You didn't make it over
• 19:05
  Speaker 6: the target. You're just making this up.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: But one crew after another arrived back at the Marianas
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: and told the exact same story.
• 19:12
  Speaker 7: To tell you how powerful these winds were. A reconnaissance
• 19:16
  Speaker 7: plane went up on time to take some pictures after
• 19:19
  Speaker 7: a mission to see how effective they'd been, and the
• 19:22
  Speaker 7: navigator called the pilot and told him they were going
• 19:25
  Speaker 7: three miles an hour backwards. That was something you couldn't
• 19:29
  Speaker 7: afford to do, because if you went from east to west,
• 19:32
  Speaker 7: you were going to be a sitting duck for Japanese
• 19:34
  Speaker 7: fighters or their flag.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: To solve that puzzle, Hensel turned to his team of meteorologists.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: They'd all been trained at the University of Chicago. Back then,
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: in the days before a sophisticated radar, meteorologists were crucial
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: to the success of bombing campaigns. If you were doing
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: a daylight bombing run over a city, you had to
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: see the target in order to line up the bomb site,
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: and if the skies were too cloudy, that was impossible.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: So going or not going on a mission hinged on
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: the weather forecast. But the tools available to meteorologists of
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: that era were crude. The easiest thing to forget about
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: the Second World War is that it was another technological era.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: It's half twentieth century and half nineteenth century. The chief
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: tool of the meteorologists of that time were balloons weather
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: balloons that would float up into the atmosphere, carrying little
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: instrument kits that could record the wind, the temperature, and
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: the humidity and transmit that information back to Earth. I
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: asked John Lewis about those days he's a scientist at
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: the Desert Research Institute in Nevada. He knew a number
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: of the meteorologists who worked with the Air Force during
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: the war. Are these balloons they can forgive me? It's
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: a very naive question. Are they connected by a rope
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: or are they just free floating?
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: Oh?
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: No, they're released.
• 20:56
  Speaker 8: They eventually, as the pressure gets lower, as the balloon
• 21:00
  Speaker 8: goes higher in the atmosphere, they expand, expand, expand. Kaboom,
• 21:04
  Speaker 8: they explode and they fall to the ground with the
• 21:07
  Speaker 8: instrument attached. And at that time they had a message
• 21:10
  Speaker 8: on all the instrument packages, could you please return this
• 21:13
  Speaker 8: to the University of Chicago in.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: The Pacific field of war. That technique wasn't going to work.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: So there they were, the meteorologists in the middle of
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: the Pacific with one of the most important jobs in
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: the whole outfit, figuring out when to send the bombers,
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: and they're baffled. What's with these winds? On a theoretical level,
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Do they have a suspicion that there may be very
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: very high winds at high altitudes at the Air Force?
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: Or is it that they don't reach that conclusion until
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: the pilots come back with their.
• 21:50
  Speaker 8: They did not reach their conclusions until the pilots came back.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: What slowly became clear is that the pilots had stumbled
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: on a previously unknown phenomenon in the upper atmosphere, what
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: came to be known as the jet stream, a river
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: of fast flowing air that circles the globe starting at
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: around twenty thousand feet. Some scientists had theorized about the
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: jet stream, but until the B twenty nine was built,
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: almost no one had ever flown at altitudes high enough
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: to experience those winds firsthand.
• 22:24
  Speaker 8: This vast stream of air, very narrow, moves from north
• 22:31
  Speaker 8: to south in both hemispheres. Basically, it is dividing the
• 22:37
  Speaker 8: very cold air of the polar regions from the more
• 22:41
  Speaker 8: warm mid latitude and equatorial air.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when you say very narrow, how narrow.
• 22:50
  Speaker 8: I would say typically two hundred kilometers across something on
• 22:55
  Speaker 8: that order. So that's the narrowness of it.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: And did it entirely encircle the Earth?
• 23:02
  Speaker 8: It does?
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: So what is the problem facing the pilots gathered on
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: the man that in the winter of nineteen forty four
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: and the early spring of nineteen forty five, this narrow
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: hurricane force band of air known as a jet stream,
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: happens to be directly over Japan, and that makes it
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: impossible for Hansel to do any of the precision bombing
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: that he had planned to do. If they fly across it,
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: the plane will get blown sideways. If they fly into it,
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: they'll be fighting to stay aloft and be easy targets
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: for the Japanese. And if they fly with it, they'll
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: be racing too fast to take proper aim. In the
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: service of a conviction that bombing could bring Japan to
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: its knees, Thousands of Marines had been killed in the
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: fight to capture the Marianas. The construction of the three
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: island air bases had been one of the most intensive
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: engineering feats of the war. The B twenty nine was
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: a three billion dollar project that's forty three billion in
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: today's money. All of that investment in the air war
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: against the Japanese by December of nineteen forty four had
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: come up empty. Hansel and all the other brass and
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: the Marianas were bewildered. When a true believer discovers that
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: his God cannot save him, what's left nothing Heyward Hansel
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: was finished in January of nineteen forty five, Hansel was
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: relieved of his post as head of the twenty first
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: bomber command. In his place was put the man you
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: bring in when all else has failed, Curtis le May.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: Even decades later, possum Hansel would bristle when asked about
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: the circumstances of his departure and the person who replaced
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: him in the Pacific. He had taught le May at
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: the Air Court Tactical School and was his commanding officer
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: in Europe. Here's Hansel again at the Air Force Academy
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty seven. He's just been asked a name
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: who he felt were the finest officers of his generation.
• 25:11
  Speaker 9: Among the people who I knew in my littleitary career,
• 25:16
  Speaker 9: I would say the three hank standing ones, John Marshall,
• 25:22
  Speaker 9: Joel Andrews and John Fradhn And they were outstanding for
• 25:27
  Speaker 9: pretty much the same reason they were man okay, character,
• 25:31
  Speaker 9: They were obviously intelligent man, but no a spersonal integrity
• 25:35
  Speaker 9: and character.
• 25:37
  Speaker 8: General O May was one of your group commanders.
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: I not if you didn't put him in this.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Last group, well exactly. Le May was not a patrician
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: with a swagger stick. He did not read Savantes and
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: sing musical theater to his crew at the end of
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: long missions. He had no time for demonstrations of personal
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: integrity and character. He had a problem to solve when
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: he takes over the twenty first bombing command. When he
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: first arrives in the Marianas, he does not have his
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: eventual strategy worked out. His mind is still open.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Yes, Zach, Yeah, that is correct.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: I'm talking again with the military historian Conrad Crane about
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: Curtis the May after he takes over command from General
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: Heyward Hansell in January of nineteen forty five. I'm really
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: curious to sort of reconstruct his thought process, how he
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: all the reasons why he arrives at the strategy finally
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: arrives at So he begins by does he begin by
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: doing exactly what Hansel had done?
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Well? He he walks in, and he looks around and
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: sees the primitive nature of the facilities that said this
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: won't do.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Le May is not happy with the military's infrastructure on
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: the Mariannas. It was all built by the Navy's construction Battalion,
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: the Seabees. Le May has lost none of his disdain
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: for the Navy, the people who cheated in the bombing
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: exercise years before.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: He gets invited to have dinner with Admiral Nimtz, who
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: also is headquartered in Marianna's And he goes over to
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Nimbus's place and he's in this ornate almost a palace,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: and he gets fed on the very formal naval style
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: dinner with the tablecloths and being served and everything. So
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: he invites the Admiral Nimmos to visit him for dinner
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: in the next couple of days, and Admiral Nimmtz shows
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: up for his dinner and they're sitting in a quancert
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: hut on a couple of crates, eating sea rations. And
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: at the end of the end of the meal, Nimmits
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: looks at LeMay and says, I get your point. And
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: then he started sending more construction materials to La May
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: to help finish up the rest of the facilities.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: By the early spring of nineteen forty five, LeMay was ready.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: He starts out by trying his own version of the
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: strategy taken by his predecessor. He decides to take out
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: the Nakajima aircraft planned in Tokyo.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: His perception is is that he's still expected to do
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: high altitude precision bombing, So he's going to do everything
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: he can to make sure that I how Toude precision
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: bombing is going to be more effective.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: Le May sends two missions against Nakajima in January, one
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: in February another in early March. Hundreds of B twenty
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: nine's making the long trek to Japan, and in the
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: end the plant is still standing. He's run up against
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: the same obstacle as Hensel did. How can I force
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: a Japanese surrender from the air if I can't hit anything.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: But when he realizes he's fixed all those problems, there's
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: nothing else he can tweak, you know, he says, Okay,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: I'm gott to try something different.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: Le May's first realization is that the jet stream is
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: a powerful force. It can't be wished away, and it's
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: making everything else impossible. The first principle of precision bombing
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: doctrine is that the bomber should come in high, well
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: above the range of enemy fire and anti aircraft guns.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: Le May throws it out the window. He decides to
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: be twenty nine's will have to fly at lower altitudes
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: under the jet.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Stream and once he realizes he's going to have to
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: go to lower altitude. Then that leads to a whole
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: set of other conclusions from that.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: Next logical step. Precision bombing was supposed to be daylight bombing.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: You needed to see the target before you could line
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: up the bomb site. But if le Maay's bombers came
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: in low during the day, they would be sitting ducks
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: for the Japanese air defenses. So he decides they have
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: to come under cover of night.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Once you realize you can't go to a high altitude anymore,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: it drives kind of the rest of his decision process.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: Jetstream means low, low means night, and the decision to
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: switch to night raids means you can't do precision bombing anymore,
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: because there's no way with the technology of the time
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: that a bombing crew would be able to focus on
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: any precise target if they couldn't see it. So just
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: like that, Curtis le May doesn't about face. The man
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: who came of age in the high church of precision
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: bombing decides, at the most crucial juncture of his career
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: to abandon his faith to bomb indiscriminately to become an
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: area bomber and what weapon would he use for that task.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: He knew as well as anyone the reports from the
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: Army testing grounds back in America, where perfect replicas of
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: Japanese towns had been incinerated by Harvard's new wonder weapon.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: The whole plan is so radical that when le May
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: sends a copy of it to Washington for the approval
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: of his boss, General hap Arnold, he makes sure it
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: arrives on a day when Arnold isn't in his office, so.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: He can get that initial raid off before Arnold really
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: has a chance to look at it very much, because
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: he realizes he's taken a risky es are very valuable.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: It's very risky. You're talking about going in at night,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: low altitude. He leaves most of the ammunition and gunners behind.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: Crucial fact, the only thing LeMay lets his pilots have
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: to defend themselves is a tail gunner. All other guns
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: are removed. He wants to save as much weight as
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: possible for bombs. In the Air Force archives, it is
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: possible to find interviews from long ago with pilots who
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: remember the day when LeMay told them what was going
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: to happen that night.
• 31:45
  Speaker 10: And they were just a gasp in the audience because
• 31:47
  Speaker 10: you never thought about doing anything high altitude flying.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: This is a B twenty nine navigator named David Braden.
• 31:55
  Speaker 10: And you went out and the bottom of your aircraft
• 32:00
  Speaker 10: have been painted black. So you do this is going
• 32:03
  Speaker 10: to be a different thing. Most of the guys thought
• 32:06
  Speaker 10: it was a susi admission.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: And Braden's commander, Curtis le May, know this was going
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: to work. Of course he didn't, but remember his words,
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: the credo of the man who gets things done. I'd
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: rather have someone who was real stupid but did something
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: than have someone who'd vacillate and do nothing. Curtis le
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: May was going to do something. He was going to
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: aery A Bob Tokyo under cover of night with napalm.
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: I woke up one day and I'd been up there
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: for about two months. I hadn't done anything much, yet
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: I'd better do something.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: I wonder if this is why le May fascinated so
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: many people in his day, because of his ability to
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: make that sudden turn, to turn his back on who
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: he was in the service of solving the problem. Curtis
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: le May was a member of the Bombing Mafia, a
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: graduate of the Air Corps Tactical School, a proponent of
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: precision bombing progress unhindered by custom. Later in his career
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: he would champion something called the B seventy bomber, an
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: airplane so absurdly complicated, so ridiculously advanced, so preposterously expensive,
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: and so deliciously and fantastically tricked out that the Air
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: Force only built two prototypes, one of which crashed. The
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: other has spent its entire life in the museum. Le
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: May was in his heart always the little boy who
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: ran after airplanes in the sky, and yet when he
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: needed to, he could take all that, his entire identity,
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: the modern, progressive, skilled war maker, and throw it out
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: the window.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: May.
• 33:52
  Speaker 10: Where did the idea for the low level fire attacks originate?
• 33:57
  Speaker 6: Oh?
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: Were?
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: You had ideas flying back and forth a lot. It
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: was my basic decision made it. Nobody said anything about
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: night saintury vomit where he had to have some results
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: and I had to produce him. If I didn't produce them,
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: or made the long guess, get another.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Commander in there.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: That's what happened to hansle You've got no results, I'd
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: have them. That's the reason for it.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: On the night of March ninth, nineteen forty five, Curtis
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: le May launched Operation Meetinghouse. He sent three hundred and
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: thirty four B twenty nine's from the Marianas to Tokyo,
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: loaded with as much napalm as they could carry. The
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: target was not the Nakajima aircraft plant. That plan was over.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: The new target was a densely populated region of Tokyo
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: straddling the Sumita River, a few miles east of the
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: Imperial Palace Zone one. The first few bombers dropped flares,
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: marking the target area for those that followed. Le Maay
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: was sending in his bombers at five thousand feet incredibly low.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: That was so crazy that the Japanese were completely unprepared.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: The bombs fell from the B twenty nine in clusters.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: They were small steel pipes twenty inches long, weighing six pounds,
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: packed with tnt in napalm, little baby bombs, each with
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: a long silver gauze streamer at one end, so that
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: if you looked in the sky that night in Tokyo,
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: there would have been a moment of extraordinary beauty, thousands
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: of these little silver daggers falling down to earth and
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: then boom on impact. Thousands of small explosions, burning gloves
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: of napalm thrown in every direction, All told by morning,
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: one thousand, six hundred and sixty five tons of napalm
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: dropped on Tokyo in one night. Circling high above Tokyo
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: is the master bomber, LeMay's deputy, Tommy Power, choreographing the attack.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: Conrad Crane says that Power sat in his cockpit drawing
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: pictures of everything he saw.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: He remarked, you know, the air was soul ful of
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: and sented areas you could not have walked through them.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: By two thirty seven, the largest visual fire areas was
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: about forty blocks long and fifteen wide. The smoke was
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: up to twenty five thousand feet. When he draws his
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: last sketch, which is about an hour after initial his
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: first one, there's basically a score of separate areas from
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: fifty to one thousand city blocks burning at the same time,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: and his last part last report says that the glow
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: from the fires was visible one hundred and fifty miles away.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: The napom creates a firestorm, a conflagration hundreds of blocks long,
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: a fire of such intensity and duration that it creates
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: and sustains its own wind system. Everything burns sixteen square miles.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: Buildings burst into flame before the fire even reaches them.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: After the war, the US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded the following.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: Probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: in a six hour period than any time in the
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: history of man. More than one hundred thousand people died
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: that night.
• 37:40
  Speaker 10: Frankly, when those cities were on fire, it looked like
• 37:43
  Speaker 10: you're looking into the mouth of hell. I mean, you
• 37:45
  Speaker 10: should not imagine a fire that big.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: Over the course of the spring and summer of nineteen
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: forty five, LeMay went on to firebomb another sixty six
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: Japanese cities. In the chaos of war. The dead were
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: never counted. The final toll may be as high as
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: half a million.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: They're about five thousand feet. They are pretty low. They
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: are low enough that the ah, the smell of burning
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: flesh permeates the aircraft. They actually have to fumigate the
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: aircraft when they land back in the Marianas because the
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: smell of burning flesh remains within the aircraft.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: Two cities were spared, Nagasaki and Hiroshima. They were left
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: for another day and another Air Force command with a
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: different idea of how to win a war.
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: Thank you all.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: On August fifteenth, nineteen forty five, at twelve noon, the
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: Emperor of Japan surrendered. The Air Force was asked to
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: bring Japan to its knees from the air so that
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: a ground invasion could be avoided. They succeeded. Next week
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: The reckoning When you burn alive hundreds of thousands of
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: civilians in the course of a military objective, What happens next?
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: Revisionist History is produced by Mee La Belle and Lee Mingestou,
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: with Jacob Smith, Eloise Linton and on An. I'm our
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: editor is Julia Barton. Original scoring by Luis Garra, mastering
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: by Flon Williams, fact checking by Beth Johnson. Special thanks
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: to the Pushkin Crew, Hetephane Carly Migliore, Maya Knigg, Maggie Taylor,
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: Jason Gambrel and of course Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Blackwell.