VL-IV: Handoff
Michael Bailey
michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com
Sun Dec 14 15:56:03 CST 2008
yes, Lemay, which may bring to mind the name Curtis LeMay
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/lemay.html
fair usage excerpt:
LeMay's only biographer to date is Thomas M. Coffey, Iron Eagle: The
Turbulent Life of General Curtis LeMay (New York: Crown Publishers,
1986). ...Coffey is at his best in describing LeMay's personality: he
was unsophisticated, taciturn, dedicated, tactless to the point of
rudeness, more ambitious than he cared to admit, extremely hard
working, and he possessed unquestioned physical courage. In addition,
Coffey shows that LeMay was also a good family man and sincerely
concerned (sensitive would be too strong a term) about the welfare of
his troops-although the author implies this was more because happy
subordinates were productive ones rather than through any feeling of
innate humanitarianism.
This book fails, however, in revealing the details surrounding the
events in which LeMay participated. The decision to reverse three
decades of American airpower doctrine with incendiary attacks against
Japanese cities raises profound questions of morality and legality.
Coffey simply restates LeMay's rationale that all war is awful, and it
was better to kill the Japanese than it was to kill Americans. There
is something to be said for that point of view, but it is entirely too
facile. Are there no limits whatever in warfare?
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