<text id=00he1600><title>The UW Air Force In The 1960s: Introduction</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>The UW Air Force In The 1960s: Introduction</hdr><body>
<p>In the aftermath of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, control of the United States Air Force lay firmly in the hands of 'bomber generals'—men who had flown B-17s and B-29s in World War II, who had shaped strategic air power, and who saw the long-range bomber as salvation for the West in the face of the nuclear threat from the Soviet Union.
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<p>General Curtis E. LeMay served as chief of staff from 1961 to 1965 after an earlier stint as head of Strategic Air Command. LeMay was the driving personal force behind the manned bomber as the linchpin of American policy. He was argumentative and difficult. A man of modest size, he swaggered and smoked his trademark cigar while standing alongside a bomber on the flight line, proclaiming that the aircraft couldn't catch fire because "it wouldn't dare." No staff officer dared argue with, or bring bad tidings to, LeMay, who was the nemesis of any lieutenant colonel who wanted to promote fighters, or counter-insurgency, or airlift. When the prospect of fighting a non-nuclear war against rag-tag guerrillas was raised, LeMay was quoted (incorrectly, some claim) that the solution was to "bomb 'em back to the Stone Age." As one of his staff officers put it, LeMay felt the Air Force needed three things: "the bomber, the bomber and the bomber."
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<p>Far less visible was General Bernard A. Schriever, who quietly led a revolution to win the Air Force over to the coming intercontinental ballistic missile. In early years, the term ICBM was pronounced 'Ik-boom' by some officers, but the missile was derided by those who wanted more bombers. LeMay and Schriever had different styles and competing goals, but they shared a rivet-like focus on the danger of Soviet atomic warheads obliterating American cities.
