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Whether he liked it or not — and from dead-pan LeMay there was no sign — he had become a staff officer. One consolation was that at 38, LeMay, already the youngest major general in the U.S. Army in World War II, probably could look for ward to getting his third star. He is younger than any of his young wing commanders.
"Old Ironpants." A longtime friend of Curtis LeMay was once asked whether he had ever seen the General smile. The answer: "I think so, but I can't remember when." LeMay talks in such a low voice that his staff say they have bent ears, none of them can remember hearing him raise his voice. This relaxed calmness was well illustrated one day during an air raid over Germany when a B-17 side gunner shouted over the intercom to Pilot LeMay: "Colonel, my guns won't work!"
Said LeMay impersonally: "You're going to look pretty silly when the 190s start coming in."
After an Ohio boyhood (his father was an ironworker in Columbus) LeMay went to Ohio State University, was near to graduating when he quit to be a flying cadet in the Army. In due course he became a fighter pilot (later as an Army officer he went back to Ohio, got his degree). Once, when he was stationed at Self ridge Field, Mich., he almost quit the Air Corps to fly trimotored planes for Henry Ford. But he stuck and studied, and by 1937 he was recognized as one of the Corps's ablest celestial navigators. This led to his transfer to bombardment and the first B-17s. He navigated a flight 600 miles out to sea—a famous and daring feat in 1937—and came out of the overcast over his objective, the Italian liner Rex.
LeMay's fame as a combat leader began after he took the 305th Bombardment Group to England in 1942. In the early bombing of Europe, U.S. airmen were often less than successful and Colonel LeMay perceived the reason: the bombers were taking evasive action in the face of heavy German ack-ack and fighter interception; pilots would shirk from holding their course the five or six minutes necessary to make good, sound bombing runs. LeMay announced that he would bomb the Brest submarine yards himself, and that he would hit the target.
With cold courage LeMay held the course seven minutes, although planes around him were going down and his own plane was hit by flak. Upon landing he posted a new order, ruthless but necessary: no more evasive action over the targets. ("Having paid the price of admission to get over the target, we've got to get the benefits.") His men saw the casualty list go up, tagged the skipper "Old Ironpants." But LeMay got bombing results. He led many a flight himself, including the famed raid on the Messerschmitt plant at Regensburg in August 1943.
From London to Guam, LeMay's men have always understood two things: 1) an order is just that—the Old Man never checks up on an order, but disobedience brings dismissal; 2) the Old Man never orders anything he can't do himself. A favorite LeMay conference remark: "Now, does everybody understand this? If not, I'll show you how to do it myself."