James Scott is the author Curtis Lamay is not satisfied and believes he will also be fired as Hansel was by Hap Arnold because his strategic bombing is not improving.

The B-29s are not in any way surprising the Japanese. The Japanese

are demonstrating that though they're blockaded, though they're losing,

they're going to fight to the last, they will not surrender. What is to be done?

LeMay, I picture him lying in his quants and hunt looking at the ceiling. Do we know exactly

what it was or is it him pondering Dresden and the news from

Dresden did that do it James?

You know actually, LeMay, it probably begins even earlier than that because LeMay had looked at the results of the

July 1943 firebombing of Hamburg which was actually more destructive than Dresden.

Everybody knows of Dresden today.

In February 45 was Dresden, so it's about this period.

Yes, Dresden is February 45.

Hamburg burns in the summer of 43.

And LeMay was in Europe then, he studied the after action results of that so he knew what

fire could do to a city.

And you're right, LeMay spent much of his time thinking at night.

He, in fact, if you read his personal letters home, he's always

writing about his lack of sleep because he's literally up all night thinking, trying to figure

out how to do this and said that's when he kind of comes to the realization that what

Hansel was doing high-altitude daylight precision bombing it's simply not

going to work and if he's going to attack, successfully attack Japanese cities, he's going to have to have a radical

rethinking of American strategy. And he ultimately settles on a plan that is, know it's so perilous it's so morally

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