Quote:
Originally Posted by vienna
I had a teacher back in junior high (middke school) who served on an airbase in the US. LeMay arrived at the base and took command of the facilities. My teacher was in charge of the parking of the planes on the airbase and he told us there were very specifc rules and regulations regarding how the planes were to be placed and the minutiae that attended such as the angle og the palne inrlataion to the runways and the positioning of turret guns, etc. Shortly after LeMay took command, my teacher said he got a call directly from Lemay, who was fit to be tied. It seems the reulation angling of the turret guns on the bombers was such as to have them aimed directly at LeMay's office; LeMay was not amused. He ordered the guns to be aimed elsewhere. When my teacher tried to explain he was following specific regulations and orders, LeMay threatend to to have him busted, brigged, court-martialed, and dishonorably discharged. THe guns were moved...,
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Could be true I suppose.I understand that he was stern but fair and he never raised his voice and yelled that was not his style he displayed his disappointment in other ways so maybe he did say that to your old teacher because he felt that was the most effective way to get the message across.e was not really the pompous type so I suspect there might have been some other reason that he wanted the guns moved or perhaps the reason was not understood.
Also you have regulations but if an officer or NCO who is in that field of expertise to which the regulations are concerned tells you to do something different assuming the new order is not cause a new hazard you have to obey it.If a staff level officer gives you an order even if it stupid you pretty much have to obey it (exuding an unlawful order).
From what I read he was a fairly reasonable commander most of the time.For example after a few months of B-29 operations when they switched to night time fire bombing the need for the full battery of turrets on the B-29s was gone so they removed most of the remote turrets and the gunners stayed behind.After a week or so of this some of the air crew asked Lemay if the gunners could fly anyway if they wanted to because it improved crew morale Lemay approved.
Earlier in the war when Lemay was in charge of a B-17 unit in Europe in late 1943 US Army statisticians discovered that the ratio of bombers turning back before reaching the mission area was too high.Lemay decided to lead by example and flew lead on the next mission.He said during the briefing that he was to going to turn back without a good reason.He flew many missions over Germany at a rank where it was not a requirement to do so which is good leadership if you are not willing to risk your life why should you command others to risk theirs?
LeMay kind of got "the hard ass" label partly because he never openly challenged it when articles written about him made untrue claims.The most harsh commander in the USAAF was bar far Hap Arnold he was real screamer and yeller.He once dressed down a staff officer so badly that the man had a heart attack
luckily the man did not die from it but still to be so intense that you make a person have a heart attack just by yelling at them.