Editing Curtis LeMay (section)

== Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, 1961–1965 ==
[[File:President Kennedy visited SAC's Headquarters.jpg|thumb|[[Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force|Air Force Chief of Staff]]

General Curtis E. LeMay with [[President of the United States|U.S. President]] [[John F. Kennedy]] and [[List of commanders-in-chief of the Strategic Air Command|Strategic Air Command's Commander]] General [[Thomas S. Power]] at [[Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska]]. ]]
Following service as USAF Vice Chief of Staff (1957–1961), LeMay was made the fifth [[Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force|chief of staff of the United States Air Force]] on the retirement of Gen [[Thomas D. White|Thomas White]]. His belief in the efficacy of strategic air campaigns over tactical strikes and ground support operations became Air Force policy during his tenure as chief of staff.

As chief of staff, LeMay clashed repeatedly with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, [[Secretary of the Air Force|Air Force Secretary]] [[Eugene Zuckert]], and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army [[General (United States)|General]] [[Maxwell Taylor]]. At the time, budget constraints and successive [[nuclear war]] fighting strategies had left the armed forces in a state of flux. Each of the armed forces had gradually jettisoned realistic appraisals of future conflicts in favor of developing its own separate nuclear and nonnuclear capabilities. At the height of this struggle, the U.S. Army had even reorganized its combat divisions to fight land wars on irradiated nuclear battlefields, developing short-range [[atomic cannon]] and [[Mortar (weapon)|mortars]] in order to win [[Appropriation (law)|appropriations]]. The [[United States Navy]] in turn proposed delivering strategic [[nuclear weapon]]s from [[supercarrier]]s intended to sail into range of the Soviet air defense forces. Of all these various schemes, only LeMay's command structure of SAC survived complete reorganization in the changing reality of [[Cold War]]-era conflicts.

LeMay was not an enthusiast of the ICBM program, considering ballistic missiles to be little more than toys and no substitute for the strategic nuclear bomber force.

Though LeMay lost significant appropriation battles for the [[Skybolt ALBM]] and the proposed [[Boeing B-52 Stratofortress]] replacement, the [[North American XB-70 Valkyrie]], he was largely successful at expanding Air Force budgets. Despite LeMay's disdain for missiles, he did strongly support the use of military space programs to perform satellite reconnaissance and gather electronic intelligence. For comparison, the US Army and Navy frequently suffered budgetary cutbacks and program cancellations by Congress and Secretary McNamara.

=== Cuban Missile Crisis ===
[[File:LeMay Cuban Missile Crisis.jpg|thumb|General LeMay conversed with President Kennedy at the [[Oval Office]], [[White House]] in October 1962.|alt=]]

During the [[Cuban Missile Crisis]] in 1962, LeMay clashed again with U.S. President [[John F. Kennedy]] and Defense Secretary McNamara, arguing that he should be allowed to bomb nuclear missile sites in [[Cuba]]. He opposed the naval [[blockade]] and, after the end of the crisis, suggested that Cuba be invaded anyway, even after the Soviets agreed to withdraw their missiles. Kennedy refused LeMay's requests, and the naval blockade was successful.<ref name= Rhodes575>Rhodes, 1995</ref>

=== Strategic philosophy ===
The memorandum from LeMay, chief of staff, USAF, to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, January 4, 1964, illustrates LeMay's reasons for keeping bomber forces alongside ballistic missiles: "It is important to recognize, however, that ballistic missile forces represent both the U.S. and Soviet potential for strategic nuclear warfare at the highest, most indiscriminate level, and at a level least susceptible to control. The employment of these weapons in lower level conflict would be likely to escalate the situation, uncontrollably, to an intensity which could be vastly disproportionate to the original aggravation. The use of [[ICBM]]s and [[SLBM]]s is not, therefore, a rational or credible response to provocations which, although serious, are still less than an immediate threat to national survival. For this reason, among others, I consider that the national security will continue to require the flexibility, responsiveness, and discrimination of manned strategic weapon systems throughout the range of cold, limited, and general war".<ref>National Archives and Records Administration, RG 200, Defense Programs and Operations, LeMay's Memo to President and JCS Views, Box 83. Secret.</ref>

=== Vietnam War ===
LeMay's dislike for tactical aircraft and training foreshadowed events in the low-intensity conflict of [[Vietnam War|Vietnam]], where existing Air Force fighter aircraft and standard attack profiles proved incapable of carrying out sustained [[tactical bombing]] campaigns in the face of hostile [[North Vietnam]]ese antiaircraft defenses. LeMay said, "Flying fighters is fun. Flying bombers is important".<ref>Robert Coram, ''Boyd''. Back Bay Books/Little, Brown, and Company, 2002, p. 59.</ref> Aircraft losses on tactical attack missions soared, and Air Force commanders soon realized that their large, missile-armed jet fighters were exceedingly vulnerable not only to antiaircraft shells and missiles but also to cannon-armed, maneuverable Soviet fighters.

LeMay advocated a sustained strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnamese cities, harbors, ports, shipping, and other strategic targets. His advice was ignored. Instead, an incremental policy, [[Operation Rolling Thunder]], was implemented that focused on limited interdiction bombing of fluid enemy supply corridors in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. This limited campaign failed to destroy significant quantities of enemy war supplies or diminish enemy ambitions. Bombing limitations were imposed by President [[Lyndon Johnson]] for geopolitical reasons, as he surmised that bombing Soviet and Chinese ships in port and killing Soviet advisers would bring the Soviets and Chinese more directly into the war.

In his 1965 autobiography (co-written with [[MacKinlay Kantor]]), LeMay is quoted as saying his response to North Vietnam would be to demand that "they've got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression, or we're going to bomb them back into the [[Stone Age]]. And we would shove them back into the Stone Age with Air power or Naval power—not with ground forces".<ref name="mission">LeMay, Gen. Curtis Emerson, with MacKinley Kantor, ''Mission With LeMay: My Story'', (Doubleday, 1965) p.565, as quoted (quote #127) in ''Respectfully Quoted A Dictionary of Quotations'' by James H. Billington, Library of Congress, as reproduced online by [https://books.google.com/books?id=91IFAYFhtOMC&pg=PA28 Google Books (click here for quote)], and as reproduced online by [http://www.bartleby.com/73/127.html Bartleby.com (click here for quote)].</ref> 
LeMay subsequently rejected misquotes of the famous "Stone Age" quote.<ref name="bombthemback">Cullather, Nick (professor of history, Indiana University), [http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/30347 "Bomb them Back to the Stone Age: An Etymology"], ''History News Network'', October 6, 2006</ref> Later, in a ''Washington Post'' interview LeMay said that "I never said we should bomb them back to the Stone Age. I said we had the capability to do it. I want to save lives on both sides".<ref name="lemay_post">LeMay, Gen. Curtis Emerson, in ''Washington Post'' interview published October 4, 1968, as quoted (quote #127) in ''Respectfully Quoted A Dictionary of Quotations'' by James H. Billington, Library of Congress, as reproduced online by [https://books.google.com/books?id=91IFAYFhtOMC&pg=PA29 Google Books (click here for quote)], and as reproduced online by [http://www.bartleby.com/73/127.html Bartleby.com (click here for quote)].</ref> [[Etymology]]st Barry Popik cites multiple sources (including interviews with LeMay) for various versions of both quotes from LeMay.<ref name="age_popik">Popik, Barry (etymologist; contributor, ''Oxford English Dictionary''), [http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/bomb_into_the_stone_age_total_destruction "'Bomb into the Stone Age' (total destruction)"], ''The Big Apple'' blog.</ref> Nevertheless, the "should" quote remained part of the LeMay legend, and remains widely attributed to him ever after.<ref name="bombthemback" /><ref name="how_turner">Turner, Robert F., [http://www.virginia.edu/cnsl/pdf/Turner-how-political-warfare-caused-America.pdf Chapter 10: "How Political Warfare Caused America to Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory in Vietnam"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150419133825/http://www.virginia.edu/cnsl/pdf/Turner-how-political-warfare-caused-America.pdf |date=April 19, 2015 }}, from John Norton Moore and Robert F. Turner, editors, ''The ''Real'' Lessons of the Vietnam War: Reflections Twenty-Five Years After the Fall of Saigon'', 2002, Carolina Academic Press, Durham, N.Car.</ref>

Some military historians have argued that LeMay's theories were eventually proven correct. Near the war's end in December 1972, President [[Richard Nixon]] ordered [[Operation Linebacker II]], a high-intensity Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps aerial bombing campaign, which included hundreds of B-52 bombers that struck previously untouched North Vietnamese strategic targets, including heavy populated areas in Hanoi and Haiphong. Linebacker II was followed by renewed negotiations that led to the [[Paris Peace Accords|Paris Peace Agreement]], appearing to support the claim. However, consideration must be given to significant differences in terms of both military objectives and geopolitical realities between 1968 and 1972, including the impact of Nixon's recognition and exploitation of the [[Sino-Soviet split]] to gain a "free hand" in Vietnam and the shift of Communist opposition from an organic insurgency (the [[Viet Cong]]) to a conventional mechanized offensive that was by its nature more reliant on industrial output and traditional logistics.<ref>Stephan Budianksy, ''Air Power: The Men, Machines, and Ideas that Revolutionized War from Kitty Hawk to Iraq''. The Penguin Group, 2005, p. 382.</ref> In effect, Johnson and Nixon were waging two different wars.