"Precisely to compensate for an impression of inexperience after the events of the last few months, Kennedy just then named as chief of staff of the Air Force General Curtis LeMay, the man with the toughest militarist image in the armed services. This despite the fact that a number of observers, including Robert Kennedy, would report incidents when certain military men—LeMay above all—would give Kennedy the impression that they were essentially insane, madly reckless, or out of touch with reality. (These included, the next year, LeMay’s strongly worded advice on the Sunday morning in 1962 when Khrushchev announced he was dismantling his missiles in Cuba that the president should go ahead and attack Cuba anyway.) Yet it was Kennedy who had named LeMay as chief of staff of the Air Force on June 30, 1961, and kept him there."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Military leaders from the United StatesLegion of Honour recipientsSilver Star Medal recipientsAviators from the United StatesDistinguished Service Cross recipients
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions from a Nuclear War Planner (2017)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Curtis LeMay
Curtis LeMay (November 15, 1906 – October 3, 1990) was a general in the United States Air Force and the vice presidential running mate of American Independent Party candidate George Wallace in the 1968 presidential election. During World War II, he was known for planning and executing a massive bombing campaign against cities in Japan and a crippling minelaying campaign in Japan's internal waterways. After the war, he initiated the Berlin airlift, then reorganized the [[w:Strategic Air Command|S
41 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Curtis LeMay →
Related Quotes
"There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an…"
"Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried …"
"We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, someway or another…"
"If I see that the Russians are amassing their planes for an attack, I'm going to knock the shit out of them before th…"
"She America] escaped the ruin visited upon other nations because she was given time to prepare and because of distanc…"
"As far as casualties were concerned I think there were more casualties in the first attack on Tokyo with incendiaries…"
"I'll tell you what war is about, you've got to kill people, and when you've killed enough they stop fighting."
"General Curtis LeMay, commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command many years ago, used to insist that all his sub…"
"Again they thought of those pictures of the embers of Japan, the black stuff hanging around on bulletin boards. I gue…"
"Dear Rosy, In June Strategic Air Command had fourteen accidents. Eleven of the fourteen were in the Fifteenth Air For…"