There are so many questions. There are so many ways to explain things. And lately I’ve been looking at our modern world by focusing on the remarkable life of a relatively unknown man — unknown to most people of recent vintage, at least. Indeed, he’s been dead for 19 years, and he died at a ripe old age. Yet his legacy is still with us. I refer, of course, to General Curtis Lemay of the U.S. Air Force.

“Cometh the hour, cometh the man,” I noted in the previous articles. And the U.S. endured many hard hours during the Second World War and the Cold War. In the worst hours of the most troubled times, Mars, the god of war, gave the U.S. Lemay, a knight of the sky. But knights need swords and steeds. In Roman mythology, Jupiter had Vulcan to forge mighty weapons. In mid-20th Century America, Lemay had a U.S. industrial base that could crank out big bombers.

In Lemay’s case, he had some very big bombers. With the big bombers of World War II, Lemay blasted Germany and burned Japan. With the bigger bombers of the Cold War, Lemay encircled the Soviet Union and kept the Red Army behind its own lines. Lemay’s Strategic Air Command (SAC) was critical to the Western doctrine of “containing” the Soviets. In the annals of American arms, Lemay was a mighty eagle with talons of hardened steel.

Pres. Johnson Chooses His Advice

But times change, and times changed in a big way after the death of Pres. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Vice Pres. Lyndon Johnson moved into the Oval Office.

One can ably argue that Johnson put his broad, Texas shoulders to history’s wheel, and set events in motion that created the modern world. Yet one can also capably argue that Johnson was rolled by history, like a drunk in the hands of a seasoned mugger.

One thing you cannot argue is that Johnson lacked choices and options. Because one of the privileges of the office of U.S. President was (and remains, of course) that the National Executive may choose his advisers. And when you choose your advisers, often as not you choose your advice.

Tough Advice from Lemay

From the Kennedy administration, Johnson inherited Lemay as Air Force Chief of Staff. As far as Johnson was concerned, the military man, Lemay, did not offer the kind of advice that the politician from Texas wanted to hear. In particular, Gen. Lemay gave Pres. Johnson politically tough advice about waging war in far distant Vietnam. Johnson, to be sure, needed a lot of advice on that subject.

That is, Vietnam was a complex place. Leaving aside most of the last thousand years of history, there was plenty of modern mischief in play. In the late 19th Century the French colonized Indochina and ran it until 1942. Then in World War II the Japanese Empire conquered the region and spoiled the party for the colonists. “Asia for the Asians,” said Japanese propaganda, expressing an idea — if not an ideal — that took deep roots despite the irony of Japanese lording it over Vietnamese.

Post-war, the French returned to rule. “Not so fast,” said many locals. Within a decade the French were defeated and driven out by Vietnamese nationalists and Communists. It was tough going. The main road through Vietnam was, in the words of professor Bernard Fall, a Street Without Joy.

The French defeat in 1953-1954 (or Hell in a Very Small Place, also by Bernard Fall) was followed by a north-south division and a festering civil war. The Communist North was slowly, but effectively, invading the South. There was much meddling by outside powers, to include the U.S. Indeed, the CIA — under orders from Pres. Kennedy — sponsored the murder of the president of South Vietnam. And that was just the start.

Lemay understood military power, but he also understood limits to power. Lemay told Johnson that it would be difficult and expensive to wage a defensive war in South Vietnam against Communist-armed insurgents, and regular troops from the North. Vietnam was at the tail end of U.S. logistical lines. It would take years for counter-insurgency operations to work – if they worked, and there was no assurance of that. Would the American people accept years of warfare in a distant land? Especially a land to which the U.S. had no longstanding historical attachments or vital national interests?

Bomb ‘Em? Well…

Sure, Lemay told Johnson – after Johnson asked – the U.S. could bomb Vietnam. But to be effective, the U.S. would have to “carry the war to the north, and really carry it there” (Lemay’s emphasis).

The way Lemay phrased it, if the U.S. decided to bomb Vietnam, “We must throw a punch that really hurts.” To Lemay’s way of thinking, this meant “Knock out all their (North Vietnamese) oil. … This immediately brings a lot of things to a halt.” This from the man whose bombers wrecked Germany’s liquid fuel production in World War II, thus grounding the Luftwaffe and stopping German tanks in their tracks.

Lemay also counseled Johnson to “(knock) out the harbor at Haiphong,” and mine the seacoast to halt weapons imports from the Soviet Union. This too was sound military advice from an experienced military man. Lemay’s historical parallel was what his B-29s had accomplished — and what had worked so well — in World War II against Japan.

Time Is No Ally in War

For all his gruff exterior, Lemay was an intelligent and serious man. He was a keen student of technology, and an even better judge of human ability. Lemay could (in fact, he did) hold his own in a discussion of the principles of radar with engineers from MIT. And the fact is that Lemay ensured the success of his own career, over 25 years in senior command positions, by selecting thousands of the right people and placing them into the toughest jobs in wars hot and cold.

Sure, Lemay had the outward, aggressive spirit of a bomber pilot. Heck, he WAS a bomber pilot. “I’ll tell you what war is about,” Lemay once said to Sam Cohen, the inventor of the neutron bomb. “You’ve got to kill people. And when you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.”

But as a military planner Lemay was deliberate. When it came to the business of fighting, Lemay the warrior believed in scrupulous training and exacting preparation, followed by speed and lethality in the execution.

It’s not just that Lemay was a zoom-zoom, go-fast airplane pilot. Silk scarf or no, in Lemay’s comments, writings and actions, he echoed military scholars from Sun Tzu to Carl von Clausewitz. Lemay understood that the essence of war was to prepare carefully and then act quickly and decisively to defeat an adversary. In warfare, time is no ally.

Clausewitz on War

Consider what Clausewitz wrote on the subject of war, for example. “In war more than anywhere else,” wrote the Prussian, “things do not turn out as we expect. Nearby they do not appear as they did from a distance.” Thus, per Clausewitz, it’s imperative to adapt to the enemy, hit hard, do your business and finish things rapidly. If not, then time degrades one’s ability to reach objectives. Don’t drag things out. “Everything in war is very simple,” said Clausewitz, “but the simplest thing is difficult.”

Damn right. Lemay could have told stories of how “simple” things become immensely complex in wartime. Like getting 500 bombers off the ground from multiple bases in England. Then rallying them over the North Sea. Then driving them in formation across hundreds of miles of defended airspace to bomb a target that’s obscured by clouds and smoke. Then bringing the aircraft home, through more flak and fighters, to land in a night-time fog. And accomplish it all within a drop-dead time-frame (literally) constrained by onboard fuel supplies. Simple, right?

Or if a skeptic fails to appreciate Clausewitz, perhaps the words of Clausewitz’s better-known opponent will work. “Ask me for anything,” Napoleon said to his subordinates during the Russian campaign. “Anything but time.” As he crossed the plains of Russia, Napoleon knew that there were time-imposed limits to weather, supplies, manpower and political will at home to support the expedition.

Thus it’s not difficult to understand the advice that Lemay offered to Johnson when the man in the Oval Office asked the Air Force chief for options. Lemay was blunt, as befits a scholar of warfare. “Apply whatever force it is necessary to employ,” he stated, “to stop things quickly. The main thing is to stop it (i.e., the North Vietnamese-backed insurgency). The quicker you stop it (Lemay’s emphasis), the more lives you save. … The quicker you complete the military action, the better for all concerned.”

Stating the Military Truth

Distilled to its essence, Lemay presented Johnson with a military campaign plan that also served as a strategy for confronting and defeating the North Vietnamese Communists. Lemay counseled that if the U.S. committed its armed forces to war — a presidential and Congressional decision, to be sure — then the troops should be authorized to move quickly and hit North Vietnam with everything, up front.

Lemay knew that the threat to South Vietnam was not a bunch of philosopher-farmers toiling out in the rice paddies, spouting Marxist drivel. The threat was not “agrarian reformers” who wore black pajamas.

No, the threat to South Vietnam was Soviet weaponry funneled into North Vietnam, and then shipped south to supply a well-trained invasion force. Thus Lemay’s war plan was to use U.S. air power to smash and strangle the logistical underpinnings of the slow Communist takeover of South Vietnam. Would it make the Soviets mad? Sure, but that was another issue — and it was what SAC was for.

In Lemay’s opinion, an air campaign against North Vietnamese harbors, and related mining campaign against the seacoast, would strike the North Vietnamese center of gravity.

Center of Gravity? Lemay offered Johnson a practical tutorial on pure Clausewitz, via overwhelming air power dropping steel rain on an adversary. It was the military truth, according to Lemay, and in this world very few people have the ability to state the military truth.

Looking for Different Advice

Unfortunately in this world, a lot of people don’t want to hear the truth, military or otherwise. Johnson was one of them. Johnson saw things differently. The U.S., of course, had immense military power at its disposal. But Johnson lacked the will to use it.

Johnson didn’t want to go all out against North Vietnam, and then have to explain to the voters why he was committing the nation to a large conventional war in a far off place. “I’m not going to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home,” said Johnson, “to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” No. Of course not.

Johnson saw his presidential legacy in a domestic political agenda. He was going to enact Medicare for senior citizens. He was going to build a “Great Society” at home. He was going to push for civil rights, and rebuild America’s cities from the inside out.

Johnson didn’t want to spend political capital waging a costly war in Asia. Sure, he was obliged to suck it up and confront Communism on the foreign front. There are some things that American presidents HAVE to do. But deep down, Johnson just wanted to cut a political deal with the North Vietnamese, not bomb them.

So Johnson needed different advice than what he was getting from Lemay. Johnson looked around and — it being Washington, D.C. — he found other advisers more to his liking.

Telling Johnson What He Wanted to Hear

The new counselors were no fools. Working for a U.S. President would be good for their careers. So they told Johnson that the U.S. didn’t have to make a rapid, costly, all-out bombing effort against North Vietnam. No need to bomb Haiphong, or mine the harbors, or seed the coastline with mines. Nope, not at all. Forget that center of gravity crap from Clausewitz. What the hell did Clausewitz know, anyhow?

No, said the new advisers to Johnson. There was another way. If Johnson would only pursue a strategy of turning the heat up gradually on North Vietnam, the Communists would change their ways. After all, weren’t the North Vietnamese rational people?

Moving step by step, said the new consiglieri, Johnson could escalate on the cheap until he found just the right level of force at which the Vietnamese opponent would bend to his Texas-sized will. Now THAT was the kind of advice Johnson wanted to hear.

In short, Johnson looked at the complexity of Vietnam. He had a difficult set of choices, and wanted to make it all easy. Johnson wanted to “do Vietnam,” but on the cheap. In one memorable use of his astonishing powers of rhetoric, Johnson referred to Vietnam as a “coonskin.” And he wanted to “nail it to the wall.”

Lemay, the old World War II bomber-general, just didn’t fit into Johnson’s inspired vision for confronting and defeating the North Vietnamese. Hit them hard, up front? Not when you could hit them less hard, and escalate gradually. To Johnson, at least, it made sense. Johnson heard what he wanted to hear. Johnson saw what he wanted to see. Thus in the ancient ways of Washington, Lemay’s clock ran out.

Ushered into Retirement

Johnson kept Lemay on the Air Force payroll through 1964, always with an eye on the upcoming election in November. Even before the nominating conventions, Johnson had a hunch that he would be running against Barry Goldwater. Johnson used the FBI and CIA to dig up dirt to use against Goldwater. Basically, Johnson was paranoid about the election, and he didn’t want Lemay to retire and campaign alongside the old Army pilot from Arizona.

But after the election, in early 1965, Johnson was long past listening to Lemay talk about massive bombing of North Vietnam. So Johnson told his war-bird to retire as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force.

Oh sure, it was Lemay’s time to go, everyone agreed. He’d had a long career. It was time for Lemay to hang up the uniform and, as the saying goes, “spend more time with his family.” Yes. Sure.

In true Washington fashion, there was a splendid farewell ceremony. Everyone smiled. The troops paraded. The brass shone. There were fine speeches. The Air Force Band played ruffles and flourishes. Thundering jets roared overhead. Pres. Johnson pinned a medal on Lemay’s chest – as if Lemay needed any more medals. Lemay’s “faithful, zealous and obedient service to America” was “gratefully acknowledged and deeply appreciated.”

And then Lemay passed to others the baton of war and peace. Lemay didn’t mind, or so he said. He had groomed many a capable successor within the ranks of the Air Force. It was time for Lemay to pack up and get out of Washington.

Lemay left town. He went west and took a job in Los Angeles. He settled into private life. Indeed, Gen. and Mrs. Lemay even bought a lovely home in upscale Bel Aire. (Bel Aire? An eyebrow rises at that one.) Things were going well, except for that issue about “gradual escalation” over in Vietnam.

We’ll never know about the advice “not taken.” But we can ponder the “what ifs.” In another article, I’ll discuss Lemay’s post-retirement life, including his 30-day candidacy for U.S. Vice President in 1968. Thanks for reading.

Until we meet again,
Byron King

October 12, 2009

The Life and Wars of General Curtis Lemay, Part IV: Vietnam and President Johnson was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder

When even the biographer begins on such a disparaging note, it’s not hard to understand why Lemay has been the subject of so few worthy accounts. One that comes to mind is Iron Eagle: The Turbulent Life of Gen. Curtis Lemay, by Thomas Coffey, 1987. But there are few others. So after 22 years we now have a new effort to tell the tale of one of America’s greatest warriors. Better late than never, I suppose.

The Neglected Military and Strategic Genius

Again and again, fine writers have told the stories of almost all U.S. military leaders of World War II and the Cold War. Library shelves strain beneath books detailing the military accomplishments of George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, Omar Bradley, Ernest King, Chester Nimitz and others of that mid-century era.

But Curtis Lemay? He’s a neglected captain, if not forgotten. Today, many Americans under age 50 scarcely know his name. To those with only a casual acquaintance of Lemay’s story, his life is summed-up in the disdainful quip – an irreverent dismissal, really — that he was “George Wallace’s running mate in the 1968 presidential election.” Oh, you don’t say. Well, yes he was. And that’s a nugget of truth that explains precisely nothing in the saga of war and peace in our time.

To those with more knowledge, Lemay supposedly said of North Vietnam that “we’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.” Actually, Lemay denied saying that. The words are those of a ghost-writer who took too much literary license.

Then there’s the insult of artful insults. It was Lemay who was caricatured as the loony Gen. Buck Turgidson (played by the actor George C. Scott) in Stanley Kubrick’s classic film, Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

No, Stanley. Not at all. Not even close. When it comes to portraying Lemay, Dr. Strangelove is literary license on steroids. Here’s the rebuttal. Dr. Strangelove is only a movie. As to Lemay, it’s neither accurate nor fair. Lemay was Lemay, of course, sui generis. But Lemay was no Buck Turgidson.

A Man of Many Great Battles and Campaigns

What a shame, then, that two (going on three) generations of Americans know so little about Curtis Lemay. He was more than just an effective wartime commander. He was one of the most brilliant military leaders and strategists that the U.S. has produced in its entire national existence. Thus it’s about time that the man receives the recognition he deserves in this new volume of straightforward biography.

First, some perspective. How many great battles and campaigns did George Washington plan or fight? Less than ten. For how many great battles did Ulysses Grant or Robert E. Lee set the stage? Under twenty. How about John J. Pershing, or Douglas MacArthur or George Patton? A couple of dozen, perhaps.

What about Curtis Lemay? As commander of the Eighth Air Force in Europe, and later the 20th Air Force in the Pacific, Lemay set the stage for literally hundreds of great aerial battles.

During those battles, Lemay flew many a combat mission. But he was no mere knight of the air. Lemay was directly responsible for inventing and refining many key concepts of aerial warfare, from heavy bombardment to precision strike. Lemay took the abstract ideas of airpower thinkers from Giulio Douhet to Billy Mitchell, and turned them into the steel rain of bomb-dropping reality.

By one macabre statistic, Lemay ordered and commanded actions that led to the deaths of more enemy combatants and civilians than any other military leader in U.S. history. So Gen. Sherman burned Atlanta? Well, Lemay out-Sherman’ed Gen. Sherman. Indeed, Lemay put the torch to Japan, as we’ll discuss below.

Cometh the Hour…

Burn Japan? Yes indeed. Lemay burned many cities — to the ground. That’s what Lemay did AFTER his bombers pounded large swaths of Germany into rubble. Lemay’s record for death and destruction is a strange honor, to be sure. It’s probably a dubious distinction these days, in the hindsight of contemporary morality and the trend towards judgmental, 20-20 hindsight.

But then again, recall the old saying that “cometh the hour, cometh the man.” Lemay lived and served in a time of many desperate hours. His hour came. In the context of his time, the dirtiest of dirty jobs fell to Lemay. He worked with exactly the tools that his nation handed him. It was left to Lemay to act.

Thus in both World War II and the following Cold War, Lemay accomplished what necessity demanded. By all accounts Lemay performed his work out of a sense of duty. History, if not the fates, offered him his hour and assigned him his mission. By all accounts Lemay didn’t relish the death and destruction he rained upon the enemy. But he accomplished what his nation asked him to do, and under the hardest circumstances.

For a while, Lemay even received high praise for his grisly work. Until, of course, some people forgot why they needed Lemay. Until, of course, a new generation came along that knew not of the desperation of those previous hours. But this gets ahead of the story.

Leading from the Front – from Inside a Plexiglas Dome

Unlike many generals – before his time, then or since — Lemay shared the risk. Many times he led his troops into battle over Germany, directing the fight from a cramped perch inside a Plexiglas dome atop a B-17. Lemay was often in the lead aircraft, at which German guns poured heavy volumes of fire.

Later, Lemay flew against Japan as well. He only flew a few missions and wouldd have flown more, except that eventually his knowledge of the Manhattan Project kept him out of the action. Under direct orders from Washington, Lemay could not risk getting shot down and captured.

Later, in 1948 Lemay organized the Berlin Airlift, and not long afterwards orchestrated the 1950 – 1953 air campaign against North Korea during the Korean War.

Throughout the 1950s Lemay built the Strategic Air Command (SAC) of the U.S. Air Force, and set it on a near-constant, wartime footing.

In 1962, as Air Force Chief of Staff, Lemay counseled Pres. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis while SAC and other Air Force capabilities gave Kennedy military options to play out against the moves of his Soviet counterparts.

A Story of a General, and of America at Mid-Century

In the life of any nation, it is for the fates to decide when the hard hours shall come. But whence cometh those men to meet those hours?

The question brings us to Kozak’s new biography of Lemay. It’s not just another book about another military man. Oh, Kozak tells that tale of course. But another theme that permeates the discussion is the story of the U.S. at war in the mid-20th Century.

Lemay’s early life sets the stage. Lemay was a child of an unsuccessful father. Most of the time, his family was destitute. And from such humble roots, Lemay rose to command great air armies, to control god-like nuclear powers, and to advise U.S. presidents – several of them, in fact.

Yet despite his early hardships, Lemay revered the Wright Brothers. He wanted to fly. Eventually it dawned on Lemay that he needed to pursue an education. Thus did Lemay work his way through college. And while in school, Lemay joined the Army Reserve because he figured it was about the only way he’d ever get off the ground.

At first, Lemay didn’t know where the Army would take him. But flying airplanes seemed like a good skill on which to build some sort of career. It’s not unlike the story of another college-man of his era, Ronald Reagan, who joined an Army unit to learn how to ride horses. You just never know where some skills will take you.

Work Hard, and the Army Will Buy the Gas

After college, Lemay passed flight school and took to the air, with the U.S. Army buying the gas. He achieved his success without the advantages of family, politics, good looks, charm or even all that much luck. It’s fairer to say that Lemay succeeded by dint of a phenomenal work ethic. He had guts, street-smarts and the uncanny ability to make good decisions. Later, he maintained his success by selecting other good people who could interpret his ideas and help him accomplish things.

Lemay started as an Army pilot in the 1930s, during the depths of the Great Depression. Funding was tight, although it also was a time of great advances in aviation. Lemay mastered the technical intricacies of every aircraft he flew. He was, in particular, a superb navigator – perhaps the best in the Army; perhaps the best in the country; perhaps one of the best in the world. It would come to matter, eventually.

And Lemay knew his aircraft weapons, too, from guns to arming wires to tail fins. In the process of mastering these systems, he developed a sense of the training and supervision he needed to impart to his subordinates.

Thus Lemay understood the “envelope” of performance in many different respects. That is, he understood what he could demand from both people and machines. Lemay also understood how the Army system worked, and he could out-bureaucrat even the best of bureaucrats.

Finally, Lemay thought broadly about big ideas, of how to employ technology and people within the system, to accomplish the job at hand. People, ideas, machines, systems. That’s what all the great ones understand. They can tie it all together and make something work.

Lemay Rewrites the Book of Bombing in Europe

So there was Lemay, working in the wings of the U.S. Army (pardon the pun) as World War II began in Europe in 1939. Initially, Lemay rose to squadron-level command posts during the U.S. aerial supply effort towards Britain. He learned a lot, and it would prove to be useful knowledge after the U.S. entered the war with Germany.

By 1942, and the early days of U.S. bombing effort against Germany, things were not going well. Targeting was poor. Accuracy was terrible. Losses were high. Into this mix, Lemay was assigned to command one of the first B-17 bomber groups in England.

Lemay immediately focused on crew-training and aircraft-maintenance. He flew with his crews, developing the “box formation” in which the defensive guns of each bomber provided protection not only to themselves, but to others in the group as well.

As the bombers approached the target, Lemay insisted on steady, accurate run-ins despite the murderous German antiaircraft fire. Lemay believed that there was no use taking the risks and losses of air assaults, if the bombs could not be placed accurately on targets.

Lemay’s tactics were successful. Bombing accuracy increased, and his units’ losses went down. Over time, the B-17 even became a fearsome killer of enemy aircraft, shooting down more German fighter airplanes than any other type of aircraft in World War II. Lemay was promoted, and his tactics became operational doctrine. Lemay’s concepts began to have a strategic impact on the war effort.

“A Lot to Learn in Combat”

But Lemay knew – and never forgot — that bombing was a brutal, unforgiving business. The Germans put up one hell of a fight, every time. “We had a lot to learn in combat,” Lemay wrote later. “Many people didn’t last long enough to learn much.”

On a typical mission, flak exploded all around, tossing thousands of pieces of supersonic shrapnel in every direction. Or the German Messerschmitt-109s fired cannon shells the size of milk bottles, filled with high explosive.

Blue Battlefields, Orange Balls

In 10,000 years of human history, there had never been a conflict like this. Up in the blue battlefield, massive airplanes were ripped to pieces in just fractions of a second. Death was random and made no distinction between good men or bad. Aircraft collided. Aircraft maneuvered so violently that their wings ripped off. Aircraft were hit, and exploded into orange balls that vaporized every soul. The lucky ones, at least, died before tumbling 26,000 feet to earth amidst a rain of scorched metal and parts.

In World War II, the Army Air Corps suffered more combat deaths than did the ground-pounding, beach-hitting Marines. Almost every day, for over three years, hundreds of aircraft full of young men took off from bases in England. Later in the day, chaplains stood by the end of the runways, counting the returning aircraft and checking off their tail numbers as they landed. Lemay, too – when he was not up-front and flying — was in the control towers or operations rooms, keeping vigil.

And of those aircraft that never returned? There were just so many, something like 5,000, filled with American aircrew. Later, as time permitted, the chaplains went through the personal effects of the missing. Then the Army sent a footlocker home to a grieving family. Lemay went through many a service record, personally writing thousands of condolence letters.

The Highest Praise Comes from the Opponent

After the war, the Strategic Bombing Survey second-guessed the results of Lemay’s efforts. Targeting was never all that good, the survey pointed out. Indeed, most bombs missed the targets entirely. Bombing did not truly cripple German industry, noted the survey. One key conclusion was that bombing used vast resources for limited results.

Then again, not everything is subject to “survey.” Indeed, Lemay’s European bombing campaign received high praise from the highest of all sources. It came from no less an expert than Albert Speer, the German Minister of Armaments. Speer would know, of course, because it was his industries on the receiving end of Lemay’s bombs.

In memoirs published in the 1970s, Speer noted that the increasingly effective U.S. bombardment required Germany to redeploy over 2.5 million troops, 150,000 high-velocity guns and 20,000 fighters and pilots across Western Europe to cover the “aerial front.” Speer commented wryly on the effect these troops and munitions could have had, if only they had been available to fight the Red Army on the Eastern Front.

Cometh Another Hour…

Thus did one man meet the call of a dark hour in Europe. But Mars, god of war, was not finished with Lemay. There was another trumpet blowing. There was another dark hour for the nation, and Lemay was summoned to Asia.

Thank you for reading Part I. Part II will follow.

Until we meet again,
Byron W. King

September 8, 2009

A Review of “Lemay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis Lemay” was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder

My dad always liked silver coins. I recall the late 1950s and early 1960s, when my dad kept a can of silver coins hidden I his bedroom closet. (Well, he couldn’t hide the can from me and my sisters.) My sisters and I used to crawl into Dad’s closet and play with the coins. We stacked them up and then knocked them over to hear that unique silver jingle. Back then, the U.S. had real money.

But by the early 1960s, the “real” silver money was competing with the nation’s paper currency. And as Gresham’s Law states, “Bad money drives out the good.”

Bad things were happening to the value of the U.S. dollar, although I was too young to appreciate the problem in the making. So in 1965, the U.S. stopped minting coins with silver. What a shame. I could tell that something was wrong. I remember my dad and other family members and friends just shaking their heads back and forth at the news. “Bad money is the sign of bad government,” said my grandmother, an Ohio schoolteacher.

It was sad when those silver coins went out of circulation. The country really lost something when in gave up silver money. And today we can appreciate the loss only in hindsight. Where would we all be now if the U.S. had kept both its industry and money strong?

Nowadays, you almost never encounter silver coins. They don’t normally circulate. But silver coins still hold exceptional value. The old dime contains over $1.40 worth of silver at today’s silver price. The old quarter is worth nearly $3.60. A 50-cent piece contained about $8 of silver. And a good old silver dollar is now worth more than 16 times its face value. And these are just the silver values of the coins. The coins themselves might be worth far more, depending on condition and rarity.

My dad always carried two old silver dollars in his pocket. Those silver dollars went everywhere with him. My dad said that the coins were the first silver dollars he ever earned, back during the depths of the Great Depression. So the silver dollars meant a lot to him. He never spent them. In fact, my dad flew with the coins in his pockets during World War II. He drove P-47 Thunderbolts on the European front. And those coins must have had some serious magic in them. My dad escorted bombers across Germany, dodging flak and Messerschmitt fighters. He flew over Normandy on D-Day, and later supported the U.S. armies that liberated France. Unlike a lot of his friends, my dad always brought the airplane home. It must have been those silver dollars.

After the war, those two silver coins stayed with my dad. There was no way he would part with them. They were his “lucky” coins. My dad even carried his silver dollars when he played golf. And my dad was a heck of a golfer. One time, he went head-to-head with Arnold Palmer in a Pro-Am event, and I won’t embarrass Arnie by saying who won.

By the time my dad died, in 2000, his silver dollars were pretty badly worn from all the jingling in his pocket over the years. They looked almost blank. But on close inspection, you could tell that they were U.S. currency from the 1920s. Those coins had been with my dad during his lifetime. So before we closed the casket, I put the coins into his hand, just in case my dad needed some silver to pay Charon for the last voyage across the River Styx. Really, you never know what is on the other side.

And this illustrates a point. In both life and death, it’s good to have some silver.

Until we meet again…
Byron W. King
May 16, 2008

Silver Currency was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder