Hot Mic

Omakase

Amazon Search
«  
  »

A Little Something for the LeMay Fans in the Crowd

By lex, on April 10th, 2009

Ecce: The B-36 “Peacemaker.”

Not for nothin’, but it doesn’t seem to me that taking that beast to an airshow gets you, em… companionship.

(H/T to occn’l reader Jeff for the link)

Share
April 10th, 2009 | Category: Flying

29 comments to A Little Something for the LeMay Fans in the Crowd

  • virgil xenophon
    April 10, 2009 at 2:59 pm

    Ah, simpler, pre-PC Trans-gender Tranny Times……When men were men, (as it were) and we knew who the bad guys were…And movie stars were WWII ex-bomber pilots and combat veterans. Dream on……

    Where is Mr. Peabody when we really need him?

  • Quartermaster
    April 10, 2009 at 4:05 pm

    Mr. Peabody? Are you THAT old VX?

  • AW1 Tim
    April 10, 2009 at 4:16 pm

    Well, it helps when you know how to use the “wayback” machine :)

    Afterward, we can review some “Fractured Fairy Tales”…….

    • virgil xenophon
      April 10, 2009 at 5:41 pm

      “Fractured Fairy Tails?” Ain’t that what we’re living through in the Obama era? :)

  • Quartermaster
    April 10, 2009 at 4:31 pm

    The storm is dying a bit so I was finally able to load the clip.

    I admired LeMay for his accomplishments and valor, but I also understand why he wasn’t beloved. My father positively hated the man and undertook a hard trip from Savannah to Asheville to get out of SAC.

    I liked that Jimmy Stewart movie. General Hawk was undoubtedly LeMay. I can barely remember seeing the B-36 in flight. It was an impressive machine.

    Strategic Air Command was made when Hollywood actually liked America. Too bad they don’t these days. It was a good movie to boot, even if it was AF propaganda.

    Incidentally, LeMay didn’t have anything to do with the initial design requirement for the B-36. It was actually begun during the war, although LeMay was SAC CG when it began to enter service having taken over from Kenney in 1948, as I recall. I think they had started to produce that monster for service by then as well. IIRC it was the largest bomber ever produced then and since. Too bad it was too expensive to restore or operate for the Confederate AF.

  • Wilko
    April 10, 2009 at 4:32 pm

    Yeesh-you guys are as old as I am.
    ….good collection of videos at that site.

  • sherlock
    April 10, 2009 at 4:49 pm

    In the opening scene of that movie you get to see something even rarer: a low pass by one of early the all-prop B-36A models. What a big round sound it makes!

    I have a dim memory of seeing one of these big boys in flight as a kid… waaaay up there.

  • Flugelman
    April 10, 2009 at 5:26 pm

    As a kid growing up near Carswell AFB I well remember those behemoths going overhead. Even at altitude they could rattle your fillings.

    • Guy
      April 10, 2009 at 7:16 pm

      Flugelman…Small world. I too lived near Carswell in the early to mid-fifties. Boy, do I ever remember the B-36. They would almost shake the dishes off the shelf when they took off. Most of our eighboors were Air Force. As a matter of fact, one one my parent’s friends was navigator aboard a 36 that was used in the filming the movie, Strategic Air Command.

    • Buck
      April 11, 2009 at 12:06 pm

      My father was stationed at Travis AFB back in the day before it became (solely) a MAC terminal/hub… and there was a wing of B-36s there (around 1953, or so). I was a child of a mere eight years and I STILL remember the ground shaking and the windows rattling in the housing area when one of those behemoths took to the air. It was also great fun to go out to the end of the perimeter road and watch ‘em run up and take off… and also somewhat hazardous to one’s hearing. But Dang! What a sight to see… There’s nothing even remotely like that today.

  • Rivetjoint
    April 10, 2009 at 6:50 pm

    And of course there was the (very) old joke that the B-36 only landed when it was time for the crew to reenlist.
    Used to fly RC-135 missions with LeMay’s nephew. It certainly turned heads at Offutt AFB when they saw that name attached to some enlisted fatigues. Nice guy but struggled as a linguist and the burden of that name in the SAC environment, despite his uncle being long retired.

    • MaxDamage
      April 10, 2009 at 11:01 pm

      Offutt? When? I grep up in that neighborhood!

      Trust me, if you go back now, you’ll not recognize the place.

      – Max

      • virgil xenophon
        April 11, 2009 at 12:37 am

        Max/

        An Intel officer I knew in the AF(was a six-degrees of separation thing-he was a Stanford grad fraternity brother from Spokane who grew up with a fraternity brother of mine at LSU also from Spokane who had gotten kicked out of Standford for having the porno concession for 16mm films–this was 1962 in the Cro-Magnon days– on fraternity row) who wore coke-bottle thick glasses and spoke fluent Japanese (later to be the State of Washington’s trade rep to Japan–was a helluva college base-ball player, too) was naturally made a photo-interpreter and sent to the bunker at Offutt to stare at U-2 and satellite photos thru stereoscopes with equally thick lenses in typical square-peg-in-round-hole military fashion. In order to get out of the bunker my friend “subtly” hung an anti-war poster over his desk showing a nuclear cloud with the Peace Sign imprinted on it. LOL!

        That got him out of the bunker all right–lucky it wasn’t straight to Levenworth! LOL–the AF eventually came to it’s senses and he ended up in Japan where his language skills could be finally utilized. And he had bucked the old saying: “Once you’re assigned to Offutt you can never get ‘Off-it.’ ” LOLsquared!

  • Peterk
    April 10, 2009 at 7:07 pm

    enjoyed seeing the B-36 they had on display at Amon Carter field for years. and as someone else noted this was back when Hollywood liked America

  • fliterman
    April 10, 2009 at 8:35 pm

    Ah yes, “Bombs Away LeMay,” the man who incredibly, nearly caused a devastating nuclear exchange with the Soviets… something he seemed eager for.

    Two characters in the 1964 film, Dr. Stranglove – widely acknowledged as the best political satire film ever – are modeled after the General.

    It is said by some insiders that that movie was not so much “satire” as it was, a “documentary.” And that is really scary! … if you have ever seen the great film.

    Air Force officers and men long suffered under his reign. In fact, it was LeMay’s residual influence that greatly contributed to the loss of 17 B-52s and crews in only 11 nights over North Vietnam.

  • Rivetjoint
    April 10, 2009 at 9:08 pm

    Fliterman, I’ve heard about some of that relating to Linebacker II BUFF losses. Help me out here – seems as though SAC planners were still thinking in terms of the one punch nuke attack and didn’t stop to consider changing ingress/egress routes, timing, offsets and ECM burn through issues over the course of a sustained (conventional) campaign. I think there was a near mutiny after heavy losses due to this rigidity, finally leading to some effective changes. God bless those BUFF crews.

  • oldskydog
    April 10, 2009 at 9:51 pm

    That was a great movie with some of the best aerial photography of airplanes we will never see fly again.
    I lived near Kelly AFB in San Antonio in 1951 and the B-36′s would take off over our house. it was the most incredible sound with all six 4360′s and 4 jets combined.The closest thing to that sound was the Lockheed C-133.

  • fliterman
    April 10, 2009 at 10:07 pm

    #12 Riverjoint,

    What you have heard is essentially what I remember. And it is a sad tale. Although Gen. LeMay had retired well before the Christmas raids of 1972, SAC still lumbered on under his overbearing legacy.

    In fact, even though Air Force leadership pushed for a massive strike against North Vietnam, SAC “dug in its heels to avoid getting into that conflict.” SAC leadership [much different the Air Force leadership] still believed that SAC’s sole mission was nuclear deterrence, and did not in any way want to get involved in SEA.

    Eventually, “SAC was dragged, kicking and screaming into SEA.” *

    The “mutiny” you refer to [that many who were there describe it as such] I believe occurred after the third and worst night of raids when, IIRC, after losing 3 B-52s each on the 1st and 2nd night of raids over Hanoi, 6 more B-52s were lost on the third night!

    The next day, the B-52 crews gathered at the Guam O’club, angry as hell and allegedly refusing to fly any more missions until the structured, stupid, and antiquated orders and tactics of SAC were modified to the conventional, tactical mission…. and not run from Offutt. Thankfully, some changes were finally made, but still not enough, and some losses regrettably still continued.

    This incident was never really publicized, but it marked a major change in the Air Force and SAC from that day forward.

    *The 11 Days of Christmas p. 12

    • Rivetjoint
      April 11, 2009 at 5:33 am

      Thankfully I never had to endure that side of SAC. We linguists were part of Security Service but naturally flew on SAC’s RC-135s. Those missions were tasked by NSA not SAC and were sometimes coordinated with a Habu. Very interesting listening real time to Ivan trying to catch the Habu at speed and altitude.
      Regarding Offutt, I got out just before Jimmah Carter took office. Now wasn’t THAT a happy time?

  • b2
    April 11, 2009 at 11:03 am

    Flit,

    In retrospect I ain’t any C. Lemay fan club member but the knocks you give him ain’t fair….Of course SAC was screwed. What big bureaucracy isn’t?

    Bottom-line: He was given a task- “defend this nation from the Soviets” and he did it. We grew up and aren’t hiding under desks anymore because of his and others like him.

    “Peace through strength”…Liberals will never understand that simple truth or even wrestle with what it means. It’s genetic- they have yellow corpuscles or something.

    b2

    • Quartermaster
      April 11, 2009 at 2:23 pm

      LeMay was an intelligent and inventive man who took things and ran with them. He took the B-29 force from Possum Hansell, who out ranked LeMay in the 8th, but was then out ranked by LeMay and found ways to make them work after Hansell failed. When Spaatz came from Europe to take the from LeMay, Spaatz basically kicked back and let LeMay keep running things the way he already had.

      After a sting as CG USAFE and the Berlin Airlift, he was given SAC which was to be the main nuke deterrent of the country when all it had was the B-29 and the maintenance on them left few flyable because of the demobilization. Kenney wasn’t able to make a go of it because of the country’s mood. LeMay staged an exercise to show how poorly SAC was prepared to do the job the country had tasked it with.

      LeMay went at the job with single minded determination. he became Vice Chief of Staff in 1956, but left an organization with his fingerprint deeply impressed.

      SAC became something else as time went on. It became just another bureaucracy and all that means.

      From descriptions I’ve been given, the first night of the Christmas raids they used a stream of bombers. Kind of hard on the hardware and crews because of losses, but from the guys who were guests at the Hanoi Hilton, the length of time over which the bombs fell had a serious psychological affect on the Hotel staff. One guy described them as being genuinely scared. They certainly returned to the Paris talks well chastened and got down to business instead of trying to win and extended propaganda battle.

      Peace through strength works. If only we’d had the Christmas raids earlier and been serious about really breaking their will, and broke the will of the leftists in Congress, Vietnam could have had a much brighter end. Several trials for teason are still in order over that mess.

  • Rivetjoint
    April 11, 2009 at 1:22 pm

    “Peace is our profession”…war is just a hobby.

  • virgil xenophon
    April 11, 2009 at 3:32 pm

    People forget that Curt “Bombs Away With Curt LeMay” ran SAC with such a “single-minded determination” (QM) that he had every SAC base under war-time lock-down alert/ground security conditions for almost his entire period of command. The deterrent msg this sent to the Soviets was unmistakable–meant more than all the verbal and/or written Presidential/diplomatic declarations combined.

    • Quartermaster
      April 11, 2009 at 8:02 pm

      Not to mention you could have an ORI at any moment. LeMay was known to show up at anytime, no warning and give the order to the Wing Commander to “execute your war plan” and you had better pass or it would be quite unpleasant for you and a number of your officers.

      Those conditions continued under Power (or was it Powers).

      It worked as Ivan pretty much left us, Europe and Japan alone until the SU collapsed.

  • Stan/Tx
    April 11, 2009 at 6:14 pm

    You have to admit that going to an airshow in a B-36 is one heck of an entrance.

    Showing up with six turning and four burning, 12 true men in back to party with and an aluminum overcast is much more impressive that a stealth entry by yourself in a F-18.

    At the Singapore Airshow, the Navy F-18 did a spectacular display and was noisier than an out of control rock concert, but the people came to see the Airbus 380. There is just something impressive about a big airplane.
eXTReMe Tracker

View My Stats