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Where the LeMay career will lead depends on the kind of men the postwar air world will require. Many "old" Air Forces generals of 50 and above swear they are going to leave the A.A.F. to younger men at war's end. After his tour as Spaatz's chief of staff, and after his bosses have learned the mysteries of the Pacific and the biggest bombers, LeMay probably will join a selected group of younger generals being trained in staff duty in Washington for the postwar years —generals like Hoyt Vandenberg, Lauris Norstad, Elwood ("Pete") Quesada. Until then LeMay concentrates on Japan.
The Appalling Power. The air war was already going well. The Japs were reduced to drawing charms in the sand to frighten "evil spirits" away from the homeland (see cut). For weeks Japanese opposition had been dwindling—and LeMay's striking power had been increasing. Even as "The Cigar" moved his office, his bombers were returning from their biggest LeMay-conceived mission up to that time: 822 Superfortresses had gone out to lay a vast net of mines and to bomb four Japanese cities (pop. 66,000 to 127,000). Only one was lost. The big planes carried 6,632 tons of explosives—almost as much as U.S. and British airmen together had ever dropped on Europe in a single day.
Soon 1,000 B-29s carrying as much bomb weight as 3,000 B-17s, would be hitting Japan day after day, and the increased power of their atomic missiles would be astronomically out of proportion to the increase in weight. An observer used to the European pattern of heavy bombardment arrived on Guam and was moved to say: "It is an appalling power we Americans possess."
The fourth (Spaatz) stage of the B-29 operations had begun. In all stages, including the newest, Curtis LeMay was inextricably wrapped. More than any other combat airman, he had become the V.L.R. (Very Long Range) man of the war against Japan.
The Beginning. The first B-29 mission against Japan was flown June 15, 1944, when 68 planes from Chengtu, deep in China, bombed the Yawata Steel Works on Kyushu. The communiqué said hopefully that results were "effective." Four planes were lost on this pioneering mission. A total of 49 missions was flown from China, India and Burma bases, but B-29 men knew from the start that the invasion of the Marianas (begun at Saipan, also June 15) was far more important for their purposes. For in China every bomb, every gallon of gasoline had to be flown over the Hump from India; airfields had to be handmade by half a million coolie laborers; it was over 1,600 miles to Japanese soil, and the industrially rich Tokyo-Nagoya area was still out of range.
For experimental purposes the China-based B-29 raids were invaluable. But "it was a hell of a way to operate an air force," reflected Curtis LeMay, who arrived from Europe to take over the China-based operation two months after it had started.