LeMay became a pursuit pilot and, while stationed in Hawaii, became one of the first members of the Air Corps to receive specialized training in aerial navigation.

Upon receiving his fourth star in 1951 at age 44, LeMay became the youngest four-star general in American history since Ulysses S. Grant and was the youngest four-star general in modern history as well as the longest serving in that rank.

LeMay became aware that the new single sideband ( SSB ) technology offered a big advantage over amplitude modulation ( AM ) for SAC aircraft operating long distances from their bases.

LeMay gradually became convinced that Nixon planned to pursue a conciliatory policy with the Soviets and accept nuclear parity rather than retain America's first-strike supremacy.

Consequently LeMay, while being fully aware of Wallace's segregationist platform, decided to throw his support to Wallace and eventually became Wallace's running mate.

During the 1968 campaign, LeMay became widely associated with the " Stone Age " comment, especially because he had suggested use of nuclear weapons as a strategy to quickly resolve a deeply protracted conventional war which eventually claimed over 50, 000 American and millions of Vietnamese lives.

On June 9, 1934, he married Helen E. Maitland ( died 1992 ), with whom he had one child, Patricia Jane LeMay Lodge, known as Janie.

LeMay was widely and fondly known among his troops as " Old Iron Pants " throughout his career.

In the first known published account of the story, Life Magazine reporter Ernest Havemann related that LeMay once took the co-pilot's seat of a SAC bomber to observe the mission, complete with lit cigar.

Despite his uncompromising attitude regarding performance of duty, LeMay was also known for his concern for the physical well-being and comfort of his men.

At this time, LeMay was best known to the American public as an enthusiastic proponent of the use of nuclear weapons in war.

Based upon biostratigraphy, the oldest known rocks found within the LeMay Group are Lower Jurassic and range up to late Lower Cretaceous.

She is perhaps best known for her portrayal of Beth Raines Spaulding LeMay Winslow Spaulding Bauer Spaulding on Guiding Light.

Then, when the U. S. Army Air Forces on the Marianas Islands ran out of conventional thermite incendiary bombs for its B-29 Superfortresses to drop on Japanese cities, its top commanders, such as General Curtis E. LeMay turned to napalm bombs to continue its fire raids on the large Japanese cities.

The situation began to change on 19 October 1948, when Lieutenant General Curtis LeMay assumed leadership of the Strategic Air Command, a position he held until June 1957, the longest tenure for any United States armed forces commander since Winfield Scott.

A key factor enabling the B-47 to become the mainstay of SAC ( and to fulfill LeMay ’ s desire for a long range bomber ) was the development of in-flight refueling.

While the Eisenhower administration approved of the strategy in general, LeMay continued to increase SAC ’ s independence by refusing to submit SAC war plans for review, believing that operational plans should be closely guarded, a view the Joint Chiefs of Staff eventually came to accept.

LeMay and SAC ’ s continuing efforts to assume greater control over nuclear strategy were vindicated on August 11, 1960, when Eisenhower approved a plan to create the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff ( dominated by SAC ) to prepare the National Strategic Target List and the Single Integrated Operation Plan ( SIOP ) for nuclear war.

LeMay loaned out facilities of Strategic Air Command bases for the SCCA's use ; the SCCA relied heavily on these venues during the early and mid 1950s during the transition from street racing to permanent circuits.

USAF General Curtis LeMay updated the concept for the nuclear age.

LeMay soon concluded that the techniques and tactics developed for use in Europe against the Luftwaffe were unsuitable against Japan.

Because Japanese air defenses made daytime bombing below jet stream-affected altitudes too perilous, LeMay finally switched to low-altitude nighttime incendiary attacks on Japanese targets, a tactic senior commanders had been advocating for some time.

LeMay was quite aware of the Japanese opinion of him: he once remarked that had the U. S. lost the war, he fully expected to be tried for war crimes, especially in view of Japanese executions of uniformed American flight crews during the 1942 Doolittle raid.

After World War II, LeMay was briefly transferred to The Pentagon as deputy chief of Air Staff for Research & Development.

LeMay initially started flying supplies into Berlin, but then decided that it was a job for a logistics expert and he found that person in Lt. General William H. Tunner, who took over the operational end of the Berlin Airlift.

LeMay insisted on rigorous training and very high standards of performance for all SAC personnel, be they officers, enlisted men, aircrews, mechanics, or administrative staff, and reportedly commented, " I have neither the time nor the inclination to differentiate between the incompetent and the merely unfortunate.

LeMay found ways to encourage morale, individual performance, and the reenlistment rate through a number of means: encouraging off-duty group recreational activities, instituting spot promotions based on performance, and authorizing special uniforms, training, equipment, and allowances for ground personnel as well as flight crews.

Though LeMay lost significant appropriation battles for the Skybolt ALBM and the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress replacement, the North American XB-70 Valkyrie, he was largely successful at expanding Air Force budgets.

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.

Owing to his unrelenting opposition to the Johnson administration's Vietnam policy and what was widely perceived as his hostility to Secretary McNamara, LeMay was essentially forced into retirement in February 1965 and seemed headed for a political career.

General LeMay was also a sports car owner and enthusiast ( he owned an Allard J2 ); as the " SAC era " began to wind down, LeMay loaned out facilities of SAC bases for use by the Sports Car Club of America, as the era of early street races began to die out.

On March 13, 2010, LeMay was named the exemplar for the United States Air Force Academy class of 2013.

LeMay commanded subsequent B-29 Superfortress combat operations against Japan, including massive incendiary attacks on 64 Japanese cities.

For this first attack, LeMay ordered the defensive guns removed from 325 B-29s, loaded each plane with Model E-46 incendiary clusters, magnesium bombs, white phosphorus bombs, and napalm, and ordered the bombers to fly in streams at 5, 000 to 9, 000 feet over Tokyo.

Changing their tactics to expand the coverage and increase the damage, Curtis LeMay ordered the bombers to fly lower ( 4, 500 – 8, 000 ft, 1, 400 – 2, 400 m ) and drop incendiary bombs to burn Japan's vulnerable wood-and-paper buildings.

Under Major General Curtis LeMay, the U. S. 20th Air Force, based in the Mariana Islands, undertook low-level incendiary bombing missions, results of which were soon measured in the number of square miles destroyed.

On December 18, LeMay launched the fire raid, sending eighty-four B – 29s in at medium altitude with five hundred tons of incendiary bombs.

By mid-June, most of the larger Japanese cities had been gutted, and LeMay ordered new incendiary raids against 58 smaller Japanese cities.

After six weeks of further attempts at precision bombing, LeMay acceded to command pressures for area bombing and switched in March to mass firebombing attacks by night from low level.

But SAC did more than just provide a nuclear option during the Korean War, It also deployed four B-29 bomber wings that were used in tactical operations against enemy forces and logistics All of this led LeMay to express concern that “ too many splinters were being whittled off the stick ”, preventing him from being able to carry out his primary mission of strategic deterrence.

LeMay was later placed in charge of all strategic air operations against the Japanese home islands.

Precise figures are not available, but the fire-bombing campaign against Japan, directed by LeMay between March 1945 and the Japanese surrender in August 1945, may have killed more than 500, 000 Japanese civilians and left five million homeless.

LeMay also oversaw Operation Starvation, an aerial mining operation against Japanese waterways and ports that disrupted Japanese shipping and food distribution.

LeMay advocated a sustained strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnamese cities, harbors, ports, shipping, and other strategic targets.

The sedimentary rocks of the Fossil Bluff Group unconformably overlie and are faulted against the LeMay Group.