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The Bomber Mafia · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:20
Speaker 2: Everything about Curtis Emerson. Le May begins with his love
0:24
Speaker 2: of airplanes in his memoirs, which are otherwise written in plain,
0:30
Speaker 2: straight ahead prose. There's one moment of pure poetry. Suddenly
0:37
Speaker 2: in the air above me appeared a flying machine. It
0:42
Speaker 2: came from nowhere. There it was, and I wanted to
0:46
Speaker 2: catch it. It was nineteen ten. Le May was five.
0:51
Speaker 2: He was in the backyard of the struggling neighborhood where
0:53
Speaker 2: his family lived in Columbus, Ohio. He goes on, children
0:58
Speaker 2: can muster enormous strength in ideal and idea in all
1:02
Speaker 2: their effort to grasp the trophy they desire. And nobody
1:06
Speaker 2: was holding me back. No one was standing close to say, Look,
1:10
Speaker 2: you're just a little child. That airplane is away up
1:13
Speaker 2: there in the air, and no matter how fast you run,
1:16
Speaker 2: you can't keep up with it. You can't reach high
1:18
Speaker 2: enough to seize it. I just thought that I might
1:21
Speaker 2: be able to grab the airplane and have it for
1:24
Speaker 2: my own and possess it always. So I lit out
1:28
Speaker 2: after it. Little Curtis ran across neighbors, backyards, vacant lots,
1:36
Speaker 2: down sidewalks, then it was gone. It's wonderful sound and force,
1:44
Speaker 2: and the freakish illusion of the thing, a thing made
1:47
Speaker 2: of wood and metal, piercing the air. He went back
1:52
Speaker 2: home and he wept. Reading that made me think, oddly enough,
2:00
Speaker 2: of something I wrote years ago about Wayne Gretzky, the
2:02
Speaker 2: greatest hockey player of all time. His parents remember that
2:06
Speaker 2: when he was not yet two years old, long before
2:09
Speaker 2: he knew much about the game of hockey, Wayne would
2:12
Speaker 2: sit right in front of the television when a hockey
2:14
Speaker 2: game was on. He was enraptured, and then he would
2:22
Speaker 2: cry and cry uncontrollably when the match was over, because
2:27
Speaker 2: he could not understand how something so sublime should have
2:30
Speaker 2: to come to an end. That's Curtis le May running
2:34
Speaker 2: after the flying machine in the sky. Something about that
2:38
Speaker 2: particular object, that act of flying, perfectly fit the contours
2:42
Speaker 2: of his imagination, and from that point on, the airplane
2:48
Speaker 2: was everything. My name is Malcolm Glapwell. You're listening to
2:54
Speaker 2: Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. Over
3:00
Speaker 2: the next four episodes, I'm going to tell the story
3:03
Speaker 2: of Curtis le May and what he did on a
3:06
Speaker 2: cold night in March of nineteen forty five. This is
3:13
Speaker 2: a love story about what happens when someone falls head
3:17
Speaker 2: over heels for a magnificent piece of machinery and a
3:20
Speaker 2: brilliant bit of technology, and what happens when that love
3:25
Speaker 2: starts to cloud every other human consideration. The events I'm
3:33
Speaker 2: going to talk about all took place a lifetime ago,
3:36
Speaker 2: at the end of the Second World War, but everything
3:38
Speaker 2: about le May's story seems very modern to me, Mostly
3:42
Speaker 2: because everything about lem May seems very modern. I think
3:46
Speaker 2: that's why I've decided to devote so much of this
3:48
Speaker 2: season to him. It feels like he started something that
3:52
Speaker 2: we're still in the middle of. Le May was a bulldog,
3:59
Speaker 2: thick through the chest, oversized, square head, hair parted triumphantly,
4:03
Speaker 2: just a shade off the middle, A brilliant poker player,
4:07
Speaker 2: a crack shot. He was an innovator, utterly without fear,
4:12
Speaker 2: a mind that moved only forwards, never sideways, rational and imperturbable,
4:17
Speaker 2: and incapable of self doubt. Were he alive today, he
4:22
Speaker 2: would be in command of some high tech powerhouse, crushing
4:26
Speaker 2: all competition, seizing the future. I find myself sometimes falling
4:33
Speaker 2: for Curtis le May because of his many gifts, his
4:37
Speaker 2: logic and rigor and commitment and resolve in the face
4:40
Speaker 2: of the longest of odds seem like things we need
4:43
Speaker 2: more of right now, not less. There is a chance
4:48
Speaker 2: you will fall for him too. And all I can
4:51
Speaker 2: say is that if you do, try to remember the
4:54
Speaker 2: following fact. If you make a list of the people
4:58
Speaker 2: responsible for the most civilian deaths in the twentieth century,
5:01
Speaker 2: at the top are Stalin and Mao, and Paul Pott
5:05
Speaker 2: and Hitler. The familiar names not too far behind, uncomfortably
5:12
Speaker 2: close behind, is Curtis Emerson, lament.
5:21
Speaker 3: Or as a mini national business. And you want to
5:23
Speaker 3: kill a lot of people, no way of getting around it,
5:27
Speaker 3: I mean moral commander tries or minimize as sam possible.
5:33
Speaker 3: For me, the best way of minimizing as getting a
5:36
Speaker 3: war over as quite as possible.
5:39
Speaker 2: In its earliest days, the US Air Force was not
5:42
Speaker 2: a separate branch of the military. That wouldn't happen until
5:46
Speaker 2: after the Second World War. Back in the nineteen thirties,
5:49
Speaker 2: the Air Corps, as it was known, was a combat
5:52
Speaker 2: division of the army. It existed to serve the interests
5:55
Speaker 2: of the ground forces, to support assist a company. The
6:00
Speaker 2: legendary Army General John Blackjack Pershing, who commanded the American
6:04
Speaker 2: forces in World War One, once set of airpower that quote,
6:08
Speaker 2: it can of its own account, neither win a war
6:11
Speaker 2: at the present time, nor, as far as we can tell,
6:14
Speaker 2: at any time in the future. That's what the military
6:17
Speaker 2: establishment thought of airplanes. But in the years between the
6:21
Speaker 2: World Wars, a small group of airmen began to challenge
6:24
Speaker 2: the idea that airplanes were superfluous to winning a war.
6:28
Speaker 2: The group was centered at Maxwell Airfield in Montgomery, Alabama,
6:33
Speaker 2: at what was called the Air Corps Tactical School. Everyone
6:38
Speaker 2: in this group had once been that little boy who
6:40
Speaker 2: spotted a plane in the sky and ran after it blindly.
6:44
Speaker 2: They were in love with planes. They gave themselves a motto,
6:48
Speaker 2: proficamus morey irritanti, We make progress unhindered by custom. They
6:54
Speaker 2: thought that technological advances in aviation were about to revolutionize
6:59
Speaker 2: warfare forever. And they weren't talking about fighter planes, the
7:03
Speaker 2: romantic daredevil pilots who engaged in dog fights with the enemy.
7:07
Speaker 2: They had disdained for small planes. They were in love
7:10
Speaker 2: with bombers. They looked across the ocean at Europe and
7:13
Speaker 2: the threatening noises being made by Germany. And they said
7:16
Speaker 2: a fleet of long range, high flying bombers could do
7:19
Speaker 2: so much damage and would be so difficult to defend
7:22
Speaker 2: against that the Air Corps could win a war all
7:25
Speaker 2: by itself. The group of insurgent pilots at the Air
7:30
Speaker 2: Corps Tactical School were known as the Bomber Mafia.
7:35
Speaker 4: They were a group of individuals coming together to construct
7:38
Speaker 4: ideas about applying the technology of bombing at the day
7:44
Speaker 4: in order to win a war against Germany.
7:48
Speaker 2: That's the historian Robert Pape who wrote a book called
7:50
Speaker 2: Bombing to Win about the origins of many of the
7:53
Speaker 2: ideas taught at the Air Corps school. The Bomber Mafia
7:57
Speaker 2: gave lectures to select groups of officers arguing theorizing and.
8:01
Speaker 4: They are not really investigating the psychology of bombing. They're
8:05
Speaker 4: not investigating the sociology of bombing. They're not really even
8:08
Speaker 4: investigating the politics of the bombing, that is, the implications
8:12
Speaker 4: the bombing would have for population, societies and for governments.
8:17
Speaker 4: What they're really doing is focusing on what the technology
8:21
Speaker 4: of the bombing of the time, what target sets it
8:24
Speaker 4: would allow the bombers to hit.
8:27
Speaker 2: In one of the most famous Tactical School lectures. Major
8:30
Speaker 2: Muir Fairchild gave a two day presentation in April of
8:34
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty nine on what a single bombing attack on
8:37
Speaker 2: New York City could do to America's will to fight.
8:41
Speaker 2: Fairchild was a charter member of the Bomber Mafia. He
8:44
Speaker 2: would later rise to number two in the Air Force.
8:47
Speaker 2: He says, imagine that Germany and the United States are
8:51
Speaker 2: in the midst of a brutal land war in Europe.
8:54
Speaker 2: Germany decides to take out New York Could they do it?
8:57
Speaker 2: Fairchild says, easy. Wait, so they have a kind of
9:02
Speaker 2: hypothetical scenario, and do they imagine that a group of
9:05
Speaker 2: well equipped bombers could bring the United States, or at
9:08
Speaker 2: least New York City to its knees in an event
9:10
Speaker 2: of any kind of conflict.
9:12
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely. The bombing that they're focusing on are number one,
9:17
Speaker 4: the bridges. Number two, they have the bombing of the aqueducts.
9:22
Speaker 4: The bombing of the aqueducts is important because what they
9:25
Speaker 4: want to do is they want to cause massive thirst
9:27
Speaker 4: in the New York population. They basically want to create
9:31
Speaker 4: a situation where there's almost no potable water for the
9:34
Speaker 4: population to drink, and then number three, they target electric power.
9:40
Speaker 2: In his lecture, Major Fairchild argues that the aqueducts are
9:44
Speaker 2: the most obvious of targets. Then there's the power grid.
9:47
Speaker 2: Fairchild directs his students to a chart the aerial bomb
9:51
Speaker 2: versus traction electric power in the New York City area.
9:55
Speaker 1: Quote.
9:56
Speaker 2: We then see that seventeen bombs, if dropped on the
9:59
Speaker 2: right spots, will not only take out practically all of
10:02
Speaker 2: the electric power of the entire metropolitan area, but will
10:07
Speaker 2: prevent the distribution of outside power. Seventeen bombs could bring
10:13
Speaker 2: the most important city in the world to its knees.
10:16
Speaker 2: The old idea was that you would just bomb the
10:18
Speaker 2: whole city, reduce it to rubble with wave upon wave
10:21
Speaker 2: of costly and dangerous bombing attacks. Fairchild's point was, why
10:26
Speaker 2: would you do that. If you could use your intelligence
10:28
Speaker 2: and the best of modern technology to disable the city
10:32
Speaker 2: with a single surgical strike.
10:35
Speaker 4: You would put amazing stress on the quote will of
10:40
Speaker 4: the enemy, meaning the civilian population, which was already under stress.
10:45
Speaker 4: And then they just led to the conclusion that the
10:48
Speaker 4: civilians would crack and demand an end to the war.
10:54
Speaker 2: Are they really thinking of the air force? In this
10:57
Speaker 2: thinking and this teaching as the primary arm of the
11:01
Speaker 2: American military in this kind of conflict.
11:03
Speaker 4: They're certainly thinking that the bomber alone or airpower alone
11:06
Speaker 4: is going to win the war. And what they're thinking
11:09
Speaker 4: king is that it's going to win the war and
11:12
Speaker 4: prevent mass carnage like occurred in World War One, where
11:17
Speaker 4: the armies clashed together year after year after year, and
11:20
Speaker 4: millions and millions of people died in the meat grinder
11:23
Speaker 4: of the trenches in World War One.
11:26
Speaker 2: For thousands of years, wars had been about armies of
11:29
Speaker 2: men fighting more or less in hand to hand combat
11:32
Speaker 2: on fields of battle. The bomb ro mafia believe that
11:35
Speaker 2: bombs carried by airplanes were about to make the armies
11:39
Speaker 2: of men obsolete. The Air Corps Tactical School was never
11:43
Speaker 2: very large. In twenty years of existence, it produced just
11:47
Speaker 2: over one thousand graduates, but it was enormously influential. Of
11:52
Speaker 2: the three hundred and twenty Air Force generals on duty
11:55
Speaker 2: at the end of World War II, two hundred and
11:57
Speaker 2: sixty one came out of the Tactical School, and one
12:01
Speaker 2: of those graduates was Curtis Emerson LeMay. Only a handful
12:08
Speaker 2: of American military leaders in the twentieth century achieved real
12:11
Speaker 2: public stature Douglas MacArthur, of course, with his corn caught
12:16
Speaker 2: pipe and limitless charisma, Dwight Eisenhower because he commanded the
12:20
Speaker 2: Allied war effort in World War II, and in more
12:23
Speaker 2: recent times Colin Powell. In his day, le May's fame
12:27
Speaker 2: exceeded them all. People who couldn't name their congressman still knew.
12:31
Speaker 4: Who he was.
12:33
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty four alone, three movies came out with
12:36
Speaker 2: a character plainly based on le May. He's the model
12:40
Speaker 2: for the Air Force general in Sidney Lemett's thriller Failsafe.
12:43
Speaker 2: He's clearly Burt Lancaster's character, General Scott in Seven Days
12:48
Speaker 2: in May, where the President choose him out.
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Speaker 5: I am prepared to brand you for what you are, General,
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Speaker 5: a strutting egoist with a Napoleonic power complex and an
12:59
Speaker 5: out and out traitor.
13:02
Speaker 2: And as if that's not enough, in Stanley Kuprick's Doctor Strangelove,
13:06
Speaker 2: the LeMay character is General Jack Ripper, played by Sterling Hayden,
13:10
Speaker 2: chomping on a cigar.
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Speaker 6: Your commie has no regard for human life, not even
13:16
Speaker 6: his own. And for this reason, ma'am, I want to
13:20
Speaker 6: impress upon you the need for extreme watchfulness.
13:24
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty four, when Doctor Strangelof came out, Americans
13:28
Speaker 2: were exhausted from anxiety about nuclear destruction. It felt good
13:33
Speaker 2: to laugh at a Cold War fanatic like General Jack Ripper,
13:36
Speaker 2: But the actual General le Maay was a more complicated matter.
13:48
Speaker 2: Curtis le May put himself through the engineering program at
13:51
Speaker 2: Ohio State, going to school by day and working all
13:55
Speaker 2: night at a foundry on the other side of town.
13:58
Speaker 2: He joined the Air Corps right out of college. He
14:03
Speaker 2: was a captain by thirty three, then in short order,
14:07
Speaker 2: a major, then a colonel, a brigadier general, and by
14:11
Speaker 2: the age of thirty seven, a major general. After the
14:15
Speaker 2: Second World War, he ran the Strategic Air Command SACK,
14:19
Speaker 2: the arm of the Air Force that controlled the bulk
14:22
Speaker 2: of America's nuclear arsenal. Russell Dardy, who followed le Maay
14:26
Speaker 2: as head of SACK, loved to tell a story about
14:29
Speaker 2: the time le Maay was briefed about a new airplane
14:31
Speaker 2: called the F one to eleven B.
14:33
Speaker 1: The briefings lasted about two and a half days, sometimes
14:37
Speaker 1: one hour, sometimes two hours, and finally they wrapped up
14:41
Speaker 1: the briefing. Let me hadn't said a word the whole time.
14:46
Speaker 1: We're just sitting there. After he got all through, General
14:49
Speaker 1: Lomay says that itt yeah, sure, that's it. And he
14:53
Speaker 1: got up and he says it ain't big enough and
14:56
Speaker 1: walked out. That was his only comment.
14:59
Speaker 2: Curtis le May commanded by silence. He liked to have
15:03
Speaker 2: a cigar in his mouth at all times, and he
15:05
Speaker 2: really didn't like to remove it.
15:07
Speaker 1: There was another illustration. I head first person with le May.
15:11
Speaker 1: I went with him out to CIA to get the
15:14
Speaker 1: briefings on what later became known as the Bay of Pigs.
15:18
Speaker 2: This was nineteen sixty one. The Bay of Pigs is
15:21
Speaker 2: one of the signature crises of the Cold War, a
15:23
Speaker 2: clandestine invasion of Cuba by a group of Cuban exiles
15:27
Speaker 2: backed by the CIA.
15:29
Speaker 1: We spent about three hours out there, got the full
15:32
Speaker 1: entire briefing down in the CIA briefing group, and when
15:37
Speaker 1: it was over, they said, generally, have any comments. Joel
15:42
Speaker 1: Levy got up, head for the door, says it won't work.
15:47
Speaker 1: That was his only comment, It won't work, And boy
15:51
Speaker 1: he was dead right, it didn't work.
15:53
Speaker 2: Three words, that's it, and of course he was right.
16:00
Speaker 2: Le Maay made his reputation after the US entered the
16:03
Speaker 2: Second World War. He was put in charge of the
16:06
Speaker 2: three hundred and fifth Bombardment Group out of Schalveston Air
16:09
Speaker 2: Base in England. It was a desperate time. The Air
16:14
Speaker 2: Corps was losing hundreds of planes on his bombing runs
16:17
Speaker 2: over Germany to anti aircraft fire and German fighter planes.
16:21
Speaker 2: The airmen knew they were essentially flying suicide missions, and
16:25
Speaker 2: the problem got so bad that the Air Force calculated
16:29
Speaker 2: that twenty percent of their pilots were aborting before they
16:33
Speaker 2: reached their targets.
16:34
Speaker 7: One of the commanders was Curtis LeMay, colonel in command
16:38
Speaker 7: of a B twenty four group.
16:40
Speaker 2: That's Robert McNamara, who would later become Secretary Defense during
16:43
Speaker 2: the Vietnam War.
16:45
Speaker 7: He was the finest combat commander of any service I
16:48
Speaker 7: came across in the war, but he was extraordinarily bligering,
16:52
Speaker 7: many thought brutal.
16:54
Speaker 2: In World War II, McNamara was an analyst for the
16:57
Speaker 2: Air Force. Here he is in Errol Morris's brilliant documentary
17:01
Speaker 2: Fog of War, describing what LeMay did after he heard
17:04
Speaker 2: that so many pilots were turning tail.
17:06
Speaker 7: He issued an ardery. He said, I will be in
17:08
Speaker 7: the lead plane on every mission. Any plane that takes
17:12
Speaker 7: off will go over the target or the crew will
17:14
Speaker 7: be court marcialed. The abort rate dropped over night. Now
17:19
Speaker 7: that's the kind of a commander he was.
17:22
Speaker 2: But that was just the beginning, because the air war
17:25
Speaker 2: over Europe still faced huge problems. Years later, in an interview,
17:30
Speaker 2: the May talked about it.
17:32
Speaker 8: One of the things that was very apparent was that
17:35
Speaker 8: the bombing was not very good.
17:37
Speaker 2: Bombers have cameras that take pictures of where their bombs
17:41
Speaker 2: fall strike photos, and when le May looked at the
17:44
Speaker 2: strike photos after the cruise had come back to base,
17:47
Speaker 2: he could see that the bombs were landing everywhere but
17:49
Speaker 2: the target.
17:51
Speaker 8: Not only were the targets not being destroyed, but I
17:58
Speaker 8: didn't have any records of foremost of the bombs actually fell.
18:03
Speaker 8: They were taking strike photos, of course, but you could
18:07
Speaker 8: not locate over half the bombs that were hauled over
18:11
Speaker 8: the continent.
18:13
Speaker 2: The problem was that the pilots were not flying straight
18:16
Speaker 2: at the targets. They believed that would make them sitting
18:19
Speaker 2: ducks for anti aircraft fire. Because enemy artillerymen on the
18:23
Speaker 2: ground would simply estimate the plane's speed and altitude and
18:28
Speaker 2: aim accordingly. So the pilots were taking evasive action, not
18:33
Speaker 2: flying directly at the target until the last few seconds
18:36
Speaker 2: of their bombing run, which is why the bombs were
18:38
Speaker 2: falling wide. How could you hit your target if you
18:41
Speaker 2: were lined up over it only at the very last moment.
18:44
Speaker 8: So something had to be done to give the bomb
18:47
Speaker 8: and there a chance to hit the target. Les mount
18:51
Speaker 8: a longer bomb run. They're giving them ample time. They
18:54
Speaker 8: get the bombs at level and get the rate and
18:57
Speaker 8: drift killed. In order to do a good job.
19:01
Speaker 2: Le Maay saw only one solution. The pilots had to
19:05
Speaker 2: stop taking evasive action. They had to fly straight in
19:09
Speaker 2: over the target.
19:11
Speaker 8: All of the people at I talk too that have
19:13
Speaker 8: been in combat or of the opinion that if you
19:16
Speaker 8: did this, had aircraft guns that shoots you down.
19:20
Speaker 2: Key phrase of the opinion. LeMay was an empiricist. He
19:25
Speaker 2: went back and studied his old artillery manuals, did some
19:28
Speaker 2: calculations how many rounds from an anti aircraft gun would
19:32
Speaker 2: it take to bring down a B seventeen bomber.
19:34
Speaker 8: And it worked out it required I think three hundred
19:37
Speaker 8: and seventy some rounds to hit it. This didn't look
19:42
Speaker 8: too bad to me.
19:44
Speaker 2: Three hundred and seventy seven rounds is a lot of ammunition.
19:47
Speaker 2: So flying straight is a risk, but it's not a
19:50
Speaker 2: crazy risk. So LeMay says, let's try it. Let's fly
19:53
Speaker 2: in straight instead of a ten second run, Let's fly
19:57
Speaker 2: a seven minute long, straight and steady approach. And if
20:01
Speaker 2: that sounded suicidal, which it did to all of his pilots,
20:04
Speaker 2: he says, once again, I'm going to be the first
20:06
Speaker 2: to try it. So le May led the way November
20:11
Speaker 2: nineteen forty two over Santa's Air France. No evasive action,
20:17
Speaker 2: and what happened. His group put twice as many bombs
20:20
Speaker 2: on the target as any group had before and didn't
20:24
Speaker 2: lose a single bomber.
20:26
Speaker 8: So we did it and it worked out. I'll admit
20:31
Speaker 8: some uneasias on my part and some of the other
20:33
Speaker 8: people on the outset when they made that first straight
20:36
Speaker 8: in bomb run.
20:37
Speaker 2: But at work, I'll admit some uneasiness, he says. That's it,
20:46
Speaker 2: some uneasiness. After the war, in nineteen forty nine, there
20:52
Speaker 2: was a movie starring Gregory Peck called twelve o'clock High
20:55
Speaker 2: about that moment in the Air War, it won a
20:57
Speaker 2: couple of Oscars. The lead character General Frank Savage was
21:01
Speaker 2: based in part on le May, and in the movie,
21:04
Speaker 2: General Savage is under so much stress trying to keep
21:06
Speaker 2: his pilots flying on these impossible mission that he has
21:10
Speaker 2: a nervous breakdown. Screenwriters love the idea that beneath a
21:15
Speaker 2: stoic exterior is a hurricane of repressed emotion, But that's
21:19
Speaker 2: Hollywood's le May, not the actual Lea May. One of
21:24
Speaker 2: LeMay's pilots, later said that when he shared his fears
21:27
Speaker 2: about flying a combat mission, le Maay replied, Ralph, you're
21:31
Speaker 2: probably going to get killed, so it's best to accept it.
21:35
Speaker 2: You'll get along much better now. That's le May. He
21:42
Speaker 2: reserved his emotions for the thing he truly loved flying.
21:47
Speaker 2: Here he is years later rhapsodizing about a mission some
21:51
Speaker 2: of his bombers ran against an aircraft factory in occupied Poland.
21:56
Speaker 9: Well, well, you have done some very accurate bombing, and
22:00
Speaker 9: some of our jobs I remember Russ Wilson's group have,
22:06
Speaker 9: in my position, knowing, attacked on Marion Third over a
22:11
Speaker 9: pole on which is a nerve draft factory over there.
22:16
Speaker 9: He put down a beautiful pattern on this, saying, I
22:19
Speaker 9: don't think a single bomb thought fell outside defense.
22:22
Speaker 2: As a factory, he put down a beautiful pattern on
22:27
Speaker 2: that thing, meaning that when the May looked at the
22:29
Speaker 2: strike photos from the bombing run the next day back
22:32
Speaker 2: at base, the marks left by the bombs on the
22:35
Speaker 2: roof of the factory took on a shape that pleased
22:39
Speaker 2: his eye. In the early years of the Second World War, Curtis,
22:52
Speaker 2: the May and the bomber mafia were frustrated. They felt
22:56
Speaker 2: no one was listening to them.
22:57
Speaker 9: The air was just getting the back of the hand
22:59
Speaker 9: and out of the ways. I'll tell you what the
23:01
Speaker 9: very were.
23:02
Speaker 2: The air was just getting the back of the hand,
23:04
Speaker 2: LeMay says, meaning when the top brass sat down in
23:08
Speaker 2: Washington to play the course of the war, they didn't
23:11
Speaker 2: understand what the bomber could do, that it was capable
23:13
Speaker 2: of winning a war all by itself. Years later, LeMay
23:17
Speaker 2: still felt the sting of that attitude.
23:19
Speaker 9: Our own airport up and Washington was consisted of a
23:24
Speaker 9: bunch of dollars a year, characters, people who didn't know
23:28
Speaker 9: much about it, senting out stuff that I didn't much
23:33
Speaker 9: agree with, But orders were orders carried them out.
23:37
Speaker 2: The best could redemption when it finally came. What happened
23:41
Speaker 2: on the other side of the.
23:42
Speaker 10: World Vandal havoc root by the Japanese bombers. At the
23:47
Speaker 10: upper part of the screen. There you can see them.
23:50
Speaker 10: The people are bewildered by the blow without warning.
23:54
Speaker 2: With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December of
23:57
Speaker 2: nineteen forty one, the US was dragged into a hard
24:01
Speaker 2: and costly battle against the Japanese Empire in the Pacific,
24:06
Speaker 2: and as that war ground on, one thing slowly became clear.
24:11
Speaker 2: The only way to beat Japan was to take the
24:13
Speaker 2: fight to Japan directly. One option was a land invasion,
24:19
Speaker 2: but that was a terrifying prospect. It could easily end
24:22
Speaker 2: up being one of the deadliest and costliest campaigns of
24:25
Speaker 2: the whole war. The Second World War was supposed to
24:29
Speaker 2: be winding down. No one had any appetite for a
24:32
Speaker 2: land invasion, So was there a way to bring about
24:35
Speaker 2: Japan's surrender through the air. Yes, the bomber mafia said,
24:41
Speaker 2: we can do it.
24:43
Speaker 5: The story begins in nineteen thirty nine when the far
24:46
Speaker 5: sighted Army Air Forces said, we want a plane for
24:50
Speaker 5: our defense. That could fly a bomb load thousands of
24:53
Speaker 5: miles out to see and return.
24:57
Speaker 2: When the bombing Mafia first set up shop back in
25:00
Speaker 2: the early nineteen thirties, their theorizing was hypothetical. They imagined
25:05
Speaker 2: fleets of bombers flying deep into enemy territory, dropping bombs
25:09
Speaker 2: from the safety of high altitudes, but there was no
25:12
Speaker 2: airplane actually capable of doing that at the time. It
25:16
Speaker 2: was a bomber muffia fantasy until the arrival midway through
25:20
Speaker 2: the war of the B twenty nine bomber, the super Fortress,
25:27
Speaker 2: the most expensive project of the war forty three billion
25:31
Speaker 2: in today's dollars.
25:34
Speaker 5: When the workers reported for the first time, few of
25:37
Speaker 5: them guessed the exact nature of what they were building.
25:40
Speaker 5: They knew that the giant plane would result, but beyond
25:42
Speaker 5: that it was largely a conjecture.
25:44
Speaker 2: The War Department made newsreels about the super Fortress, Americans
25:49
Speaker 2: watched them in movie theaters around the country.
25:51
Speaker 5: But then the day came, inevitably when the pieces of
25:55
Speaker 5: their jigsaw began to fit together, the day when the
25:59
Speaker 5: mountains of material and the millions of man hours all
26:02
Speaker 5: combined to confirm the assembly line rumor. The washroom gossip
26:07
Speaker 5: and their honest to God curiosity. They were building the
26:12
Speaker 5: mightiest aircraft in history.
26:20
Speaker 2: The B twenty nine's predecessor, the B seventeen, was known
26:24
Speaker 2: as the Flying Fortress. It was the workhorse bomber of
26:27
Speaker 2: the early years of the war. The Flying Fortress is
26:30
Speaker 2: what bombed most of Germany. But the B seventeen had
26:33
Speaker 2: a great limitation range. It was good for just over
26:37
Speaker 2: thirty seven hundred miles. There's no way it could get
26:40
Speaker 2: across the Pacific to Japan. The B twenty nine changed that.
26:45
Speaker 2: It could carry twice as many bombs as the B seventeen,
26:48
Speaker 2: It could outrun fighter jets, it could fly higher than
26:51
Speaker 2: the B seventeen, upwards of thirty thousand feet, out of
26:55
Speaker 2: the reach of all but the most powerful of anti
26:57
Speaker 2: aircraft weapons, and it could fly more than fifty eight
27:00
Speaker 2: hundred miles in a single run.
27:04
Speaker 5: They were building the Boeing designed B twenty nine super Fortress,
27:11
Speaker 5: and this is how they build it.
27:13
Speaker 2: The newsreel just keeps going and going like this. It's
27:16
Speaker 2: like they're talking about the birth of a prophet.
27:19
Speaker 5: Identical miracles of modern machinery, nursed and tended and made
27:24
Speaker 5: productive by people who look and think like these people,
27:28
Speaker 5: the fair, the dog people with death hands and unblinking eyes.
27:35
Speaker 5: The old young, the young old, working together in intimate harmony.
27:43
Speaker 5: Their product death, their goal peace.
27:52
Speaker 2: The motto of the Barmber Mafia, remember, was profiicamus morey
27:55
Speaker 2: eratenti we make progress unhindered by custom. And they sold
28:00
Speaker 2: that vision to the American public technology. American technology could
28:05
Speaker 2: win the war. Their product death, their goal peace. For
28:12
Speaker 2: the true believers, the Bee twenty nine was gold, Frankencens,
28:15
Speaker 2: and Murr. If the Bomber Mafia were the three wise men,
28:19
Speaker 2: they would have brought the Bee twenty nine to the
28:21
Speaker 2: baby Jesus. There's a book I ran across years ago
28:27
Speaker 2: by a researcher at the Rand Corporation named Karl Builder.
28:31
Speaker 2: It's called The Masks of War, and it's a cultural
28:34
Speaker 2: explanation of the differences among the army, the Air Force,
28:38
Speaker 2: and the Navy. The Army, in Builder's view, is the
28:42
Speaker 2: servant of the people understated, secure in its position. The
28:46
Speaker 2: Navy is heir to a grand tradition. It measures itself
28:50
Speaker 2: by the number of its ships its reach. But what
28:53
Speaker 2: happens with the rise of the bomber mafia. Midway through
28:56
Speaker 2: the war, the pilots and airmen begin to chart a
29:00
Speaker 2: whole new course. Modern, disruptive, technologically focused. They're the only
29:05
Speaker 2: part of the military entirely born of the twentieth century.
29:09
Speaker 2: The air force, builder rights, sees itself as the embodiment
29:13
Speaker 2: of an idea, a concept of warfare, a strategy made
29:18
Speaker 2: possible and sustained by modern technology. And then Builder quotes
29:24
Speaker 2: this passage from a historian named Perry mc coy smith,
29:28
Speaker 2: which is worth repeating in full objectivity about this weapon.
29:33
Speaker 2: Meaning the airplane was absent within air corps circles for
29:36
Speaker 2: many reasons. Perhaps the foremost reason was the psychological attachment
29:41
Speaker 2: of the airmen to his machine. To him, the airplane
29:46
Speaker 2: was not just a new and exciting weapon. It was
29:49
Speaker 2: what carried him miles behind enemy lines and brought him back.
29:55
Speaker 2: It was a personal possession which was given a personal
29:59
Speaker 2: usually feminine name, kissed upon return from a mission, and
30:03
Speaker 2: painted with a symbol for each enemy plane shot down
30:06
Speaker 2: or bombing mission completed. The affinity of the pilot for
30:11
Speaker 2: his airplane has a parallel in the history of the
30:15
Speaker 2: cavalry soldier and his horse. The airmen liked the cavalrymen
30:20
Speaker 2: of the past, was not known for his modesty or
30:23
Speaker 2: his objectivity when it came to the employment of his
30:27
Speaker 2: chosen steed. The B twenty nine arrived and the bomber
30:33
Speaker 2: mafia said, we've got this. A few well placed bombs, boom,
30:39
Speaker 2: it's over.
30:49
Speaker 5: The tanks will have to be filled, the engines given
30:51
Speaker 5: a final check, the guns armed, the bombs said in
30:56
Speaker 5: the racks, and then briefing, and the assembled airmen will
31:03
Speaker 5: listen to words that a few years ago would have
31:05
Speaker 5: been fantastic but today will casually off of briefing officer's lips.
31:11
Speaker 5: It's the target, gentleman's Japan.
31:17
Speaker 2: If only I were that simple. Coming next week in
31:28
Speaker 2: Part two, Curtis the may has the bomber he wants
31:31
Speaker 2: and the challenge he wants, but not the weapon for
31:35
Speaker 2: that he needed a group of mad scientists at Harvard University.
31:47
Speaker 2: Revisionist History is produced by Mee La Belle and Lee Mingestu,
31:51
Speaker 2: with Jacob Smith, Eloise Linton and on An. I'm our
31:55
Speaker 2: editor is Julia Barton. Original scoring by Luis Gara, mastering
32:00
Speaker 2: by Flon Williams, fact checking by Beth Johnson. Special thanks
32:04
Speaker 2: to the Pushkin crew had a fine Carl Migliori, Maya Kinig,
32:09
Speaker 2: Maggie Taylor, Jason Gambrell, and of course Jacob Weisber. I'm
32:13
Speaker 2: Malcolm Baron