Joke? Thoughtless hyperbole? Political ax to grind?
Come on.
This stuff is published now and terrifying.
LeMay was the architect of the firebombing of Japan and the North Korean population that killed as much as 20% of the population. Applying air power to kill until capitulation was the basis of strategy.
A common belief among the Air Force leadership was that nuclear weapons were a wasting asset that would be rendered moot once the Soviets were able to build out their arsenal. At the particular point in time, the US had an overwhelming superiority that was shrinking. There was a serious belief the preemptive war was critical while the window of superiority was open. That position was pushed strongly during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Pushback to President Eisenhower’s moves to control planning escalated to the point where Eisenhower demanded compliance or resignation from SAC leaders.
Was that all serious or just bluster to scare to Soviets? It could be - fear of an uncontrolled madman might discourage escalation. Fortunately, we didn’t find out.
"Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!"
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I was most acutely replying to the “no way he would…” framing. Top objection (besides the real, if pedestrian, point about certainty) is that, whatever a leader’s public messaging and/or bluster might include, the decision to kill millions as an organizational cover-up doesn’t seem like something one could easily project. Especially when retaliation risk would include the possibility of further detonations on home soil.
I’m not well versed in military history, but I understand LeMay’s story to be more complex than ‘bloodthirsty war criminal’ (and that’s including his own comments ~ “if we lost, I suppose I’d be a war criminal”). The Pacific theatre was nightmarish on all sides.
Some guy/gal wonders what would have happened, another guy/gal gives a concise clear answer. It's all good.
It's certainly an interesting counterfactual to consider how the US would react, and SAC in particular, to the exploding of a hydrogen bomb in the North Carolina.
Launching a full retaliatory response (and there was only one plan) certainly seems like something that might have happened - probably because they would genuinely believe it was an attack.
So I don’t see it as such a ridiculous idea that such an accident might not have been a convenient excuse to bomb the Soviets…
