WHAT PEARL HARBOR WROUGHT 1192 DAYS LATER: 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
🗓️ 9 December 2024
⏱️ 5 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.
Black Snow is the story of this devastating operation, orchestrated by Major General Curtis LeMay, who famously remarked: “If we lose the war, we’ll be tried as war criminals.” James M. Scott reconstructs in granular detail that horrific night, and describes the development of the B-29, the capture of the Marianas for use as airfields, and the change in strategy from high-altitude daylight “precision” bombing to low-altitude nighttime incendiary bombing. Most importantly, the raid represented a significant moral shift for America, marking the first time commanders deliberately targeted civilians which helped pave the way for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki five months later.
Drawing on first-person interviews with American pilots and bombardiers and Japanese survivors, air force archives, and oral histories never before published in English, Scott delivers a harrowing and gripping account, and his most important and compelling work to date.
1946
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Once upon a time, Amazon Music met audiobooks and listeners everywhere rejoiced. |
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| 0:06.6 | Because now they could listen to one audiobook title a month from an enormous library of popular |
| 0:11.7 | audiobook titles, including Romantasy, autobiographies, true crime, and more. |
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| 0:22.6 | flight amazon music unlimited now includes audible no way download the amazon music app now to |
| 0:28.2 | start listening terms apply i'm john bachelors with james scott his new book is Black Snow, Curtis Lamey, the firebombing of Tokyo, |
| 0:40.2 | and the Road to the Atomic Bomb. The firebombing of Tokyo in March is unique in human history. |
| 0:45.8 | The atomic bomb used over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, unique in human history. What after the war happens is we know the Cold War and Curtis Lameh rises in ranking because |
| 0:59.1 | he's a younger man he's 38 39 at the end of the war rises through the 1950s he becomes |
| 1:05.7 | I don't know James I didn't write this down is he an early commander of SAC, strategic air command? |
| 1:11.4 | Is he the first? |
| 1:12.1 | Yeah, and under Lameh, I mean, you see strategic air command really become a much greater organization. |
| 1:19.3 | I mean, he moves it to Nebraska. |
| 1:20.9 | He brings his war-winning team of guys over from World War II and really gives it the gravitas and the, in, and what else. |
| 1:28.3 | And he deserves a lot of credit for the success of strategic air command. |
| 1:32.3 | Right. The big Boeing bombers, the B-36, the B-47, the B-52. |
| 1:37.3 | These are LeMay's concepts and the end of the world from LeMay's point of view. |
| 1:43.3 | He rises to be a chief of staff of the Air Force. |
| 1:46.5 | I remember a picture during the human missile crisis of John Kennedy in his rocking chair |
| 1:52.7 | and his joint chiefs of staff before him and there's the fat one, the chubby one, sitting |
| 1:58.3 | there staring back at Kennedy. |
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