LeMay quote - fun or important

[JDK]

"Flying fighters is fun. Flying bombers is important." - General Curtiss LeMay, undated, quoted in website re- Vietnam*.

Discuss!

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay#cite_ref-36

Last edited by JDK on Mon Nov 19, 2012 10:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[TAdan]

JDK, thanks for bringing up LeMay. I hope you don't mind if I chime in but General LeMay came up in conversation with a coworker of mine the other day. He was in the USAF in the early 60's and mentioned that while stationed at Otis AFB in Massachusetts they received word that General LeMay was going to arrive for an inspection. He claimed he landed in an all black T-33. Has anyone heard of General LeMay flying a personalized T-Bird?

[WIXerGreg]

Hope I'm not straying too far off topic.

A friend of mine was also in the Air Force in that time period and had met LeMay twice. He said both conversations he had with him were the same - Yes, Sir!

One of the times someone made a comment about LeMay smoking his cigar next to the fueled aircraft, and the reply was Son, that airplane wouldn't dare blow up.








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[JohnB]

Has anyone heard of General LeMay flying a personalized T-Bird?

No, never haerd that. I don't know why or when he'd have a T-33.
It doesn't sound like his style. SAC during his period was a pretty "by the book" outfit, going against regs for a personalized plane does not sound like him.

Like WIXer Greg, I had a high school teacher who was a airman at Fairchild in the early 50s. He too met LeMay twice with pretty much the same conversation.

Finally...
My dad had a favorite quote he attributed to LeMay which he's use whenever something bad would happen...a broken whatever around the house he's say:
"You 've got to expect losses in a big operation like this".

[John Dupre]

I have heard that LeMay was asked once if we could have won in Vietnam. Supposedly his reply was "Yes, in any two week period you want to name."

[SaxMan]

That almost sounds like the older World War II adage: Fighter pilots make headlines. Bomber pilots make history.

[b29driver]

My personal favorite:

If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.