Major General Curtis LeMay had enough of failed strategies. He had lost too many men. The “Bomber Mafia” idealism was costing the United States lives and victory against the Germans, and later the Japanese forces.

His nemesis, Major General Haywood S. Hansell labored years to convince leaders to try a precision bombing strategy using the Norden bombsite. But the technology was immature. Worse, Hansell lacked the discipline and careful planning needed to execute the strategy.

At the debut, the bombers under LeMay’s command cleared a path and served as decoys to lead German aerial defense forces away from the target site while Hansell’s force was supposed to follow and take out the strategic site. But Hansell had failed to have his team practice taking off in the frequent fog of England, so they were delayed. The attack made minimal impact on the targets. Worse, since the Germans were not called back to their base, they continued to pursue LeMay’s fighters, resulting in significant losses.

Somehow, Hansell convinced leaders to let him continue to prosecute the failed strategy in Europe and later in Japan. Time and again, LeMay saw unnecessary risk and loss, until finally the commander elevated him to Hansell’s place.

The main reason Hansell lost his post was that he refused to use napalm against Japanese towns. Napalm was designed to start fires that were difficult to quench. LeMay had no such qualm. His fleet rained down fire on the wood structures of countless Japanese towns and burned civilians alive, leaving an unbearable stench in the aircraft overhead. After the country had been burned by fire, he oversaw dropping the atomic bomb to finish the job. He acknowledged later that if he had lost the war, he would have been tried as a war criminal.

LeMay went on to serve as Air Force Chief of Staff under John F. Kennedy where he argued for bombing nuclear missile sites in Cuba. He even suggested invading Cuba after the Soviets agreed to withdraw their missiles.

Malcolm Gladwell writes in The Bomber Mafia that LeMay kept an oversized photo of the fleet he lost in the ill-fated flight. Like Absalom, he nursed a legitimate offense that led him to act out in violence. Like LeMay, Absalom burned with anger over the injustice done to someone he held dear. Like LeMay, he held them constantly in remembrance. And like LeMay, his anger led him to inflict destruction many times greater than the one that cause him the offense.

What can we take away?

  • Pay attention when people hold grudges because they bias actions.
  • Allow ourselves to grieve our losses — anger is sadness’s body guard. If we don’t, anger will take over and we risk creating even more victims.
  • Offense skews our judgment. Better to recuse ourselves until we can deal with our own issues before making difficult decisions.
Enola Gay bombardier Thomas Ferebee with the Norden Bombsight on Tinian after the dropping of Little Boy.
Ted H. Lambert, father of uploader was en:User:PaulLambert at en.wikipedia; altered by en:User:Pd THOR at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons