Command and Control (13 page)

On August 29, 1949,
the Soviets detonated their first atomic device, RDS-1, at a test range in eastern Kazakhstan.
The yield was about 20 kilotons, roughly the same as that of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki—and for good reason. RDS-1 was a copy of the Mark 3 implosion bomb. While American policy makers worried and fretted and debated whether to share classified atomic information with the Soviet Union, a network of Communist spies infiltrated Manhattan Project laboratories and simply took it. Soviet physicists like Yuli Borisovich Khariton were brilliant and inventive, but their task was made easier by the technical knowledge gained through espionage at Los Alamos, Hanford, and Oak Ridge.

The United States also provided the Soviet Union with the means for delivering an atomic bomb. In 1944, three American B-29 bombers were forced to make emergency landings in Siberia after attacking Japanese forces in Manchuria. The planes were confiscated by the Soviets, and one of them, the
General H. H. Arnold Special
, was carefully disassembled.
Each of its roughly 105,000 parts was measured, photographed, and reverse engineered. Within two years the Soviet Union had its first long-range bomber, the Tupolev-4. The plane was almost identical to the captured B-29; it even had a metal patch where the
General Arnold
had been repaired.

News of the Soviet bomb arrived at an unfortunate moment. General Groves had assured the American people that the
Soviet Union wouldn't develop an atomic bomb until the late 1960s. The United States had just signed the North Atlantic Treaty, promising to defend Western Europe—and America's nuclear monopoly was the basis for that promise. China was on the verge of falling to Mao Tse-tung's Communist army. And now, for the first time since the War of 1812, a devastating attack on the continental United States seemed possible. The rapid demobilization after the Second World War had, for more than a year, left North America
without a single military radar to search for enemy planes. As late as 1949, the U.S. Air Defense Command had only
twenty-three radars to guard the northeastern United States, and they were largely obsolete units that couldn't detect Soviet bombers flying at low altitudes. In the event of war, the safety of American cities would depend on the Air Force's Ground Observer Corps: thousands of civilian volunteers who would search the sky with binoculars.

The news of the Soviet bomb was made all the more ominous by a sense of disarray at the Pentagon. Overwhelmed by stress, lack of sleep, and fears of international communism, Secretary of Defense Forrestal had recently suffered a nervous breakdown and leaped to his death from a sixteenth floor window at Bethesda Naval Hospital. When the new secretary of defense, Louis A. Johnson, canceled plans to build the
United States,
an enormous aircraft carrier, angry naval officers spread rumors that the Air Force's new long-range bomber, the B-36, was deeply flawed. What began as an interservice rivalry over military spending soon became
a bitter, public dispute about America's nuclear strategy, with top secret war plans
being leaked to newspapers and war heroes questioning one another's patriotism.

At congressional hearings in October 1949, one high-ranking admiral after another condemned the atomic blitz, arguing that the bombing of Soviet cities would be not only futile but immoral. They advocated “
precision” tactical bombing of Soviet troops and supply lines—using planes from American aircraft carriers. Admiral William F. Halsey compared the Air Force's new bomber to the siege weapons once used to destroy medieval castles and towns. “
I don't believe in mass killings of noncombatants,” Admiral Arthur W. Radford testified. “A war of annihilation might bring a pyrrhic military victory, but it would be politically and economically senseless.” The harshest criticism of the Air Force came from Rear Admiral Ralph A. Ofstie, who'd toured the burned-out cities of Japan after the war. He described the atomic blitz as “
random mass slaughter of men, women, and children.” The whole idea was “
ruthless and barbaric” and contrary to American values. “
We must insure that our military techniques do not strip us of self-respect,” Ofstie said.

The Navy's opposition to strategic bombing, soon known as “the revolt of the admirals,” infuriated the Truman administration. A conventional defense of Europe seemed impossible. Congress had failed to renew the draft, defense spending was being cut, and even the Army, lacking sufficient manpower, supported the Air Force's bombing plans. The Navy's moral arguments were undercut by the main justification for building a supercarrier like the
United States:
it would be large enough to launch planes carrying atomic bombs. The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Omar Bradley, finally ended the revolt with a dramatic appearance before Congress. Bradley had earned enormous respect during the Second World War for his soft-spoken, humane leadership of the Army, and his reputation for fairness made his testimony all the more powerful. Bradley accused the Navy of being in “
open rebellion” against the civilian leadership of the United States. The admirals were “
Fancy Dans” and “
aspiring martyrs” who just didn't like to take orders. As for the accusation that targeting cities was immoral, Bradley responded, “
As far as I am concerned, war itself is immoral.”

Although the Air Force and the Navy were willing to fight an ugly bureaucratic war over how atomic bombs should be used, the two services were in complete agreement about who should control them. David E. Lilienthal, the head of the Atomic Energy Commission, faced unrelenting pressure, from his first day in office, to hand over America's nuclear arsenal to the military. The Joint Chiefs of Staff repeatedly asserted that the nation's most powerful weapons should be kept securely in the custody of officers who might one day have to use them. At the height of the Berlin crisis, Secretary of Defense Forrestal asked President Truman to transfer the entire atomic stockpile to the Air Force, warning that a Soviet attack on AEC storage facilities could leave the United States defenseless. James Webb, one of Truman's advisers, wasn't persuaded by that argument and told Lilienthal: “
The idea of turning over custody of atomic bombs to these competing, jealous, insubordinate Services, fighting for position with each other, is a terrible prospect.” The president denied the military's request and publicly reaffirmed his support for civilian control of the atomic bomb. Privately, Truman explained that he didn't want “
to have some dashing lieutenant colonel decide when would be the proper time to drop one.”

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W
HITE
H
OUSE
APPROVAL
of the atomic blitz gave the Strategic Air Command a role of singular importance: SAC had the only planes that could drop atomic bombs. “
Destruction is just around the corner for any future aggressor against the United States,” an Air Force press release warned. “Quick retaliation will be our answer in the form of an aerial knock-out delivered by the Strategic Air Command.” A wide gulf existed, however, between the rhetoric and reality.
Demobilization had left SAC a hollow force, with a shortage of skilled pilots and mechanics. During one major exercise in 1948,
almost half of SAC's B-29s failed to get off the ground and reach their targets. The public controversy surrounding the atomic blitz obscured a crucial point: the United States couldn't launch one. The nation's emergency war plans called for a counterattack against the Soviet Union with more than one hundred atomic bombs—but
SAC had just twenty-six flight crews available to deliver them.
Perhaps half of
these crews would be shot down trying to reach their targets, while others would have to ditch their planes after running out of fuel. Although SAC's retaliation might still be devastating, it wouldn't be quick.
An estimated thirty-five to forty-five days of preparation would be necessary before an all-out nuclear attack could be launched.

The problems at the Strategic Air Command extended from its enlisted personnel to its leading officers. General George Kenney, the head of SAC, had little prior experience with bombers, and his deputy commander hadn't served in a combat unit since the late 1920s. During the spring of 1948, as tensions with the Soviets increased, Charles A. Lindbergh was asked to provide a secret evaluation of SAC's readiness for war.
Lindbergh found that morale was low, landings were rough, training was poor, equipment was badly maintained, and accidents were frequent. A month after Lindbergh's findings were submitted, General Kenney was relieved of command.

Kenney's replacement, General Curtis E. LeMay, was a bold, innovative officer who'd revolutionized bombing practices in both the European and Pacific campaigns of the Second World War. Admired, feared, honored as a war hero, considered a great patriot by his supporters and a mass murderer by his critics, LeMay soon transformed the Strategic Air Command into a model of lethal efficiency. He created a vast organization dedicated solely to nuclear combat and gave it a capacity for destruction unmatched in the history of warfare. The personality and toughness and worldview of Curtis LeMay not only molded an entirely new institutional culture at SAC, but also influenced American nuclear operations in ways that endure to the present day. And his nickname was “Iron Ass” for good reason.

Curtis LeMay was born in 1906 and raised mainly in Columbus, Ohio. His father was a laborer who held and then lost a long series of jobs, constantly moving the family to new neighborhoods in Ohio, to Montana, California, and Pennsylvania. His mother sometimes worked as a domestic servant. Again and again he was the new kid in school, shy, awkward, bullied. To counter the unsettled, anarchic quality of his family life, LeMay learned self-discipline and worked hard. At the age of nine, he got his first paying job: shooting sparrows for a nickel each to feed a neighbor's cat. He delivered newspapers and telegrams, excelled at academics but felt, in his
own words, “
cut off from normal life,” earning and saving money while other kids played sports and made friends. He graduated from high school without ever having been to a dance. He'd saved enough, however, to make the first tuition payment at Ohio State University. For the next four years, LeMay attended college during the day, then worked at a steel mill from early evening until two or three in the morning, went home, slept for a few hours, and returned to campus for his nine o'clock class.

After studying to become a civil engineer, LeMay joined the Army Air Corps in 1929. Flying became his favorite thing to do—followed, in order of preference, by hunting, driving sports cars, and fishing. Socializing was far down the list. While other officers yearned to become fighter pilots, like the air aces of the First World War, LeMay thought that long-range bombers would prove decisive in the future. He learned to fly them, became one of the nation's finest navigators, and showed that planes could find and destroy battleships at sea. When LeMay led a bomber group from the United States to England in 1942, he was the only pilot among them who'd ever flown across an ocean.

Within days of arriving in Great Britain, LeMay began to question the tactics being used in daylight bombing runs against the Nazis. American B-17s zigzagged to avoid the heavy antiaircraft fire; the conventional wisdom held that if you flew straight and level for more than ten seconds, you'd be shot down. But the evasive maneuvers caused bombs to miss their targets. After some late-night calculations about speed, distance, and rate of fire, LeMay came up with a radically new approach. Planes flying straight went much faster than planes that zigzagged, he realized—and therefore would spend less time exposed to enemy fire. He devised a “combat box,” a flight formation for eighteen to twenty-one bombers, that optimized their ability to drop bombs and defend against enemy fighters. When his men questioned the idea of heading straight into antiaircraft fire, LeMay told them that he'd fly the lead plane—the one most likely to be shot down.

On November 23, 1942, during the final approach to railway yards and submarine pens in Saint-Nazaire, France, the B-17s of LeMay's bombardment group flew straight and level for a full seven minutes. None was shot
down by antiaircraft fire. Bombing accuracy was greatly improved. And within weeks the tactics that LeMay had adopted for his first combat mission became the standard operating procedure for every American bomber crew in Europe.

LeMay's greatest strength as a commander wasn't a subtle grasp of the historical, political, or psychological aspects of an enemy. It was his focus on the interplay between men and machines—a vision of war designed by an engineer. He also cared deeply about the safety and morale of his men. Strategic bombing required
a particular form of courage. Unlike fighter pilots, who flew alone, free to roam the skies in pursuit of targets, bomber crews had to work closely with one another, follow a designated route, and stay in formation. The seven minutes from the initial aiming point to the target could induce feelings of helplessness and sheer terror, as flak exploded around the plane and enemy fighters tried to shoot it down. The death rate among American bomber crews was extraordinarily high:
more than half would be killed in action before completing their tour of duty.

Curtis LeMay was hardly warm and cuddly. He was gruff, blunt, sarcastic, socially awkward, a man of few words, with a permanent frown left by a case of Bell's palsy and an unlit cigar perpetually stuck in his mouth. But he earned the deep loyalty of his men by refusing to tolerate incompetence and by doing everything possible to keep them alive. Instead of asking for bravery, he displayed it, flying the lead plane on some of the most dangerous missions of the war, like an old-fashioned cavalry officer leading the charge.

At the age of thirty-six, LeMay became the youngest general in the Army. During the summer of 1944, he was transferred from Europe to help fight Japan. Although incendiaries had been used on a small scale, it was LeMay who ordered the firebombing of Tokyo. “
Japan would burn if we could get fire on it,” one of his deputies explained.