Army & Navy – COMMAND: New Boss

To boss its most important new pioneering job in air combat today, the U.S. Army Air Forces last week picked one of its youngest, yeastiest generals. Burly Major General Curtis Emerson LeMay, 37, crack Flying Fortressman, was detached from the European Theater and ordered to China to take command of the A.A.F.’s new B-29s.

Curtis LeMay had seen plenty of combat over Germany, but it was not entirely for bravery that he was picked for the new job. Almost from the day he entered the Air Corps as a flying cadet in 1928, Airman LeMay had been a bug on precise maintenance of military aircraft, had been equally pernickety about how they were flown.

This time he had a new kind of job on his hands. The B-29s have more tricks to be solved than any Flying Fortress pilot ever dreamed of — such as remote-control guns, cabin supercharging, a set of high-powered engines that can suck tanks dry long before their time if controls are not set just right.

Because they have a lot of tricks, they also call for a whole set of new tactics. Many an airforceman was ready to bet this week that General LeMay would write that book, too, just as he had developed a dazzling set of new formations for Flying Fortresses.

In China as in England, General LeMay will be insistent on hard precise work by pilots and mechanics, will set men back coldly and impersonally if they fail. In an attack on Germany months ago, LeMay’s ball-turret gunner called him on the inter phone to announce that his guns (which should have been readied on the ground) would not fire. Replied Pilot LeMay coolly from up front: “You’re going to look pretty silly when the 1905 start coming in.”