RAGE OF THE USAAF MARCH-AUGUST 1945: 8/8: Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb by James M. Scott
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 16 October 2023
⏱️ 6 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Snow-Curtis-Firebombing-Atomic/dp/1324002999/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1X64JYW3Z1OT9&keywords=BLACK+SNOW+JAMES+SCOTT&qid=1674137497&s=books&sprefix=black+snow+james+scott%2Cstripbooks%2C61&sr=1-1
Seven minutes past midnight on March 10, 1945, nearly 300 American B-29s thundered into the skies over Tokyo. Their payloads of incendiaries ignited a firestorm that reached up to 2,800 degrees, liquefying asphalt and vaporizing thousands; sixteen square miles of the city were flattened and more than 100,000 men, women, and children were killed.
1927 NAGATO
Transcript
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| 0:34.0 | I'm John Dutch with James Scott, his new book is Black Snow, Curtis Lemay, |
| 0:38.0 | the fire bombing of Tokyo in the road to the atomic bomb. |
| 0:41.0 | The fire bombing of Tokyo in March is unique in human history. |
| 0:45.0 | The atomic bomb used over Hiroshima and Nagasaki unique in human history. |
| 0:50.0 | What after the war happens is we know the Cold War. |
| 0:54.0 | And Curtis Lemay rises in ranking because his younger man is 38-39 at the end of the war. |
| 1:01.0 | Rises through the 1950s. |
| 1:04.0 | He becomes, I don't know James, I didn't write this down. |
| 1:07.0 | Is he an early commander of SAC strategic air command? |
| 1:11.0 | Is he the first? |
| 1:12.0 | Yeah, and under an under Lemay, I mean you see strategic air command really become a much greater organization. |
| 1:18.0 | He moves it to Nebraska. He brings his war-winning team of guys over from World War II |
| 1:24.0 | and really gives it the gravitas and the, and what else. |
| 1:28.0 | And he has a lot of credit for the success of strategic air command. |
| 1:31.0 | Right, the big Boeing bombers, the B-36, the B-47, the B-52. |
| 1:37.0 | These are Lemays concepts. |
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