General Curtis LeMay and UFOs: An Obsession that Led To a Showdown With JFK?
Liberation Times Opinion & Insight
Written by Geoff Cruickshank B.IT, M.IEEE - 19 October 2024
Even today, US Air Force General Curtis Emerson LeMay (November 15, 1906 – October 1, 1990) remains an extremely controversial figure.
He became the youngest person since the U.S. Civil War to attain the rank of 4-star general. And during World War Two, he personally piloted the lead aircraft in many of the combat missions he commanded.
During the war, LeMay rigorously trained the aircrews under his command every day, ensuring their actions in combat became second nature. He set a high standard, expecting his men to follow his example.
In discussing a report on the high abort rates of bomber missions during the war —rates that former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara suspected were due to pilot cowardice—McNamara, who served as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Air Force during the war, described LeMay's character:
“One of the commanders was Curtis LeMay—Colonel in command of a B-17 group. He was the finest combat commander of any service I came across in war.
“But he was extraordinarily belligerent, many thought brutal. He got the report. He issued an order.
“He said, “I will be in the lead plane on every mission. Any plane that takes off will go over the target, or the crew will be court-martialled.”
“The abort rate dropped overnight. Now that's the kind of commander he was.”
This raises an intriguing question: was LeMay’s gruff and belligerent personality shaped by his own encounters with Foo Fighters during combat missions, compelling him to personally pilot the lead aircraft to calm the fears of his subordinate aircrews about these mysterious phenomena?
Recently declassified flight logs from LeMay’s time as a Colonel, commanding a Bombardment Group over Germany in 1943, document the presence of UFOs - known at the time by airmen as Foo Fighters - during several raids in which he was directly involved.
Included is one incident where a B-17 Flying Fortress collided with several silver discs over the target.
After the war, LeMay’s obsession with retrofitting bombers with nuclear propulsion units—potentially fueled by discoveries from UFO crashes at Magenta, Cape Girardeau, and Roswell—put him on a direct collision course with both the CIA and two consecutive Commanders-in-Chief.
Foo Fighters Observed During Schweinfurt Raids
Reading through the Majestic Twelve Project 5th Annual Report document a few years ago, I came across this piece of data on page 14:
Intrigued by this information, I decided to delve into the historical records of the U.S. 8th Air Force raids on the SKF ball bearing factories in Schweinfurt and the Messerschmitt factories in Regensburg. The SKF factories were crucial to the Nazi war effort, supplying ball bearings essential for aircraft and military vehicles in the latter part of 1943.
By then, Curtis LeMay had risen to the rank of full Colonel, commanding the 305th Bombardment Group. He served as the air commander for the Regensburg raid on August 17, 1943 (Mission 84), a critical strike targeting the heart of Germany's aircraft production.
True to his word, LeMay flew the lead B-17 into battle.
The combined elements of the 8th Air Force launched from various airfields across Britain, splitting into two groups to strike Schweinfurt and Regensburg simultaneously.
After the raids, they continued over the Alps, eventually landing in Algiers, North Africa.
Before take-off, LeMay reminded his men to “prepare for sleeping on the ground for a day or two, no Savoy’s or Claridge’s [hotels] in the North African desert, you know.…”
This was an extraordinarily dangerous mission by any measure, requiring an aerial battle spanning roughly 1,000 miles and five miles above the ground.
In the unpressurized fuselage of the B-17 bombers, crews faced constant threats from sub-zero temperatures and a lack of oxygen. Hypoxia and frostbite were ever-present dangers as the bomber crews fought against the German Luftwaffe.
The raid achieved mixed results: German ball-bearing production fell from 140 tons in July to 69 tons in August and 50 tons in September. However, the 8th Air Force paid a heavy price, losing 36 B-17s and 370 airmen in the operation.
U.S. Army Air Force Chief of Staff, General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, was not satisfied with the outcome and made his displeasure known to LeMay.
Although the logs from the aircraft involved in the raids do not specifically mention sightings of Foo Fighters that day, by August 1943, these mysterious phenomena were well-known among Allied aircrews.
The absence of such reports might have been due to LeMay’s threat of court-martial, in line with McNamara’s first-hand account of LeMay's hard stance on what he perceived as pilot cowardice.
Above: General Hap Arnold dresses down Colonel Curtis LeMay in September 1943 over the high attrition rate of the Schweinfurt–Regensburg mission of August 17
After eleven gruelling hours of flight, the battered aircrews reached Algiers, North Africa, which had been liberated from the Vichy French during Operation Torch in November 1942.
Amidst general confusion and the absence of control towers, the bomber crews were forced to land wherever possible. The anticipated swarm of ground maintenance crews to repair and refurbish the aircraft for the return flight to England never materialized.
With minimal external support, the aircrews took matters into their own hands, servicing, repairing, or improvising fixes for their bombers using whatever materials were available.
They managed to cobble together approximately eighty airworthy bombers from various airframes, leaving dozens behind.
Over the next twenty days, they slowly made their way back to their home bases, with some even conducting a bomb run over the French airfield at Bordeaux along the way.
At the same time that the remnants of the first Schweinfurt raid were regrouping in Algiers, an unusual cable arrived in Washington, D.C.:
The 'D' mentioned in this document almost certainly refers to General William J. Donovan, the Commanding General of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA. According to other files, Donovan maintained constant communication with President Roosevelt and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The McGregor Project involved the successful exfiltration of an Italian admiral and a group of scientists who had developed a torpedo triggered by the electromagnetic field of a nearby ship.
This advanced weapon had been provided by the Italians to Nazi Germany.
However, they also developed an electromagnetic pistol that would neutralize the torpedo and the Americans spirited the pistol technology out of the southern part of Italy in late 1943.
Investigations are still ongoing into whether the same exfiltration routes through Algiers were used to secretly transfer potential non-human materials from the 1933 Magenta, Italy crash back to the United States.
Meanwhile, the limited impact on Nazi ball-bearing production from the Schweinfurt and Regensburg raids compelled 8th Air Force planners, including Lt. Col. Robert McNamara, to organize another assault on the SKF factory.
Mission 115 was scheduled for Thursday 14th October 1943, a day that would be remembered as ‘Black Thursday’ due to the devastating combat losses suffered by the 8th Air Force.
The air commander for this raid was Colonel Bud Peaslee, LeMay’s counterpart from the 384th Bombardment Group.
The raid put 257 B-17 bombers in the air, where they were met immediately by the Luftwaffe as soon as they crossed the Channel.
Amidst the fierce fighting, as they made their final approach to the target, something unusual caught the attention of the aircrews.
In the midst of the chaos, Colonel Peaslee made the following startling observation in Ghosts of the Air: True Stories of Aerial Hauntings by Martin Caidin:
The recently digitised and declassified S-1 intelligence report of the event clearly corroborates Peaslee’s eyewitness account, as seen below.
A second report was sent to Colonel Kingman Douglas, the 8th Air Force’s Intelligence Chief in London, who later became one of the founding figures of the CIA in 1947.
LeMay’s military records indicate that he was promoted to Brigadier General in September 1943, yet we know he closely examined the two intelligence reports from Mission 115.
This is evident from his participation on October 15, 1943, in a critique of the mission, during which he reviewed post-strike photos of the second Schweinfurt raid taken by Lieutenant Robert Hughes.
Post World War Two: Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft program (NEPA)
In November 1944, General ‘Hap’ Arnold turned to Dr. Theodore von Karman, widely regarded as the father of modern aerodynamics, to gain insights into the future of air warfare.
Arnold tasked von Karman with producing a series of reports to explore and forecast the advancements that would shape the future of military aviation.
Dr. von Karman assembled a team of leading American scientists from various fields of research, all of whom had expertise relevant to advancing air power.
The team examined key advancements in the basic sciences, both in the U.S. and internationally, and worked to assess how these breakthroughs could be applied to enhance air power.
A year later, von Karman and his team delivered the goods – a multi-volume set entitled Toward New Horizons.
Volume seven focused on aircraft fuels and propellants.
In Chapter Five, Dr. Hsue-Shen Tsien, a scientist from the California Institute of Technology and known as the father of China's intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program, wrote the following:
Take note of the mention of the water isotope deuterium (also known as heavy water) and the compound uranium fluoride—this combination will appear again soon in the Majestic documents, a set of alleged UFO-related government papers.
Does this suggest von Karman’s team already had exposure to technology from a UFO crash retrieval when they compiled the reports between 1944-45?
Dr. von Karman’s seminal work, which included his own personal contributions ‘Where We Stand and Science – the Key to Air Supremacy’ also found a willing sponsor in the U.S. Army Air Force’s Director of Research and Development, Major General Curtis LeMay.
By now, LeMay had made a name for himself by smashing the German and Japanese war machines, systematically destroying their supply chains.
If faced with technology that might be part of an adversary’s interplanetary or interstellar supply chains, he would certainly want to acquire it.
LeMay knew any nation that possessed such technology would immediately dominate the globe. Therefore, it became his personal quest to obtain a nuclear propulsion system for his long-range bombers at any costs.
LeMay set up shop at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to pursue the technology in 1946.
In his Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion: An Annotated Bibliography, which was prepared for the United States Air Force History and Museums program, Dr. Bernard J. Snyder makes the following reference on page 37:
Could the ‘agency now in control of this technology’ referenced above, in August 1945, actually be something other than the Manhattan Project?
Perhaps an agency that repatriated the propulsion units from the alleged Magenta, Cape Girardeau and Los Angeles UFO crashes and provided Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists working on the Manhattan Project with recovered technology to assist their project?
Was LeMay’s knowledge of these three crashes, combined with his own encounters with Foo Fighters over Western Europe, the true catalyst behind his obsession with nuclear propulsion for aircraft—years before the Roswell UFO crash of 1947?
Snyder documents several instances in the months leading up to Roswell that LeMay was pushing hard to wrest the nuclear secrets from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and get stand-alone U.S. Army Air Force programs underway without oversight from any other government agency.
1. LeMay, Curtiss, Maj. Gen. U.S. Army, Deputy Chief of Air Staff for R&D. Letter to Dr. Edward U. Condon, Director, National Bureau of Standards. March 4, 1947.
Major General LeMay responds to Dr. Condon’s recent discussions with Dr. R.P. Johnson from his office about the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics' (NACA) role in the nuclear aircraft project. LeMay explains that the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft (NEPA) Project is sponsored by the United States Army Air Force, possibly alongside the Naval Bureau of Aeronautics. He further clarifies that the NEPA Project was initiated with the approval of the Manhattan Project Engineer District (now the Atomic Energy Commission, or AEC), and because of this, the Army Air Force holds sole authority over research and development where classified AEC information or facilities are involved. LeMay goes on to describe the NEPA organization, listing NACA participants, and emphasizes that a separate NACA committee on nuclear energy is unnecessary due to their existing involvement in the project.
2. Condon, E.G., Director, NBS. Letter to Dr. Jerome Hunsaker, Chairman, NACA. April 16, 1947.
Dr. Condon responds to a request from NACA to consider Admiral Stevens' suggestion from January 10, 1947, to establish a committee focused on the application of nuclear power to aircraft. In his response, Dr. Condon summarizes the current state of nuclear aircraft propulsion as follows: the Atomic Energy Commission is facing uncertainties and has no planned work in this area; preliminary studies have been conducted by Dr. Harvey Hall (technical aid to Admiral Stevens, Navy Bureau of Aeronautics) and Dr. Arthur Ruark (Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab); NACA Cleveland has begun general studies on thermodynamics and heat transfer; and the U.S. Army Air Force has initiated the NEPA Project, with input from NACA Cleveland. Condon references a letter from Major General LeMay, dated March 4, 1947, and suggests that NACA establish a broader committee, chaired by NACA, that includes representatives from the War Department, Navy, Atomic Energy Commission, and academia. He also lists potential members for this committee.
Note the preponderance of names like Condon and Hunsaker in these reports that have become part of UFO folklore.
The Roswell Crash
There are numerous instances in the Majestic documents that reference specific components of the propulsion systems recovered from the two crash sites during the Roswell event in July 1947.
For instance, General Nathan Twining’s ‘White Hot’ report:
There are also indications that scientists made comparisons between the propulsion units recovered between 1941 and 1947 and concluded that they were all of an extraterrestrial origin.
Significantly, information in the Majestic documents appear to indicate Dr. Tsien’s chapter on atomic propulsion was informed by knowledge of the 1941 and 1942 recoveries, and that certain parts of the technologies were exploited for use in developing the atomic bomb:
In 1947, two weeks after returning from the Roswell crash site, on the 18th July General Twining reached out to LeMay, the head of Air Force Research and Development at the time, with an urgent request.
The two-page memo activates a new laboratory to conduct meteorological research and development and upper air research with the Electronics Subdivision of the Engineering Division of the Air Mobility Command.
It states in part, ‘in view of the close relationship and interdependence of research in meteorology and research in electromagnetic compressional wave propagation, action is being taken to reorganize the present Applied Propagation Laboratory of Watson laboratories in the Atmospheric Laboratory and expand its functions to include research and development in meteorology and related geophysical fields.’
On the 14th May 1948, Project RAND—an organization established right after World War II to bridge military planning with research and development—separated from the Douglas Aircraft Company of Santa Monica, California, and became an independent, non-profit organization.
Taking its name from a contraction of ‘research and development,’ the newly formed RAND organization was dedicated to advancing scientific, educational, and charitable efforts for the public welfare and national security of the United States. General Curtis LeMay was among its founders.
Other Majestic documents are littered with the names of scientists and military leaders involved in the NEPA program. The Majestic Twelve Project 1st Annual Report (1948) lists the following people:
LeMay’s name appears throughout the Majestic documents, particularly within the Majestic Twelve Project 5th Annual Report from 1953 and after the notorious Washington D.C. flyover of July 1952.
In this event, a fleet of UFOs on consecutive weekends demonstrated that the U.S. Military was unable to control their own highly protected airspace over the capital. A very obvious ‘show of force’ by the Visitors.
Interestingly, in 1952, a project at Los Alamos was declassified, where scientists attempted to recreate a special device involving deuterium and a plastic core. This project, named 'Perhapsatron S-4,' was designed to explore new ways to propel aircraft using magnetism and gas.
Could this machine, which used advanced magnetic technology, be the real reason why the secretive facility at Papoose Lake in Area 51 is known as S-4?
Above: The Perhapsatron S-4 device at Los Alamos
The Majestic Twelve Project 5th Annual Report also reveals the identity of ‘MAJCOM-1’ and several members of the special panel formed to help the U.S. government develop a psychological warfare policy concerning UFOs.
From the Presidential Diary of Harry S. Truman, we can pinpoint that the only person who met Truman in May 1950 and the 4th of April 1951 was the former Secretary of the Air Force and Chairman of the National Security Resources Board (NSRB), Stuart Symington.
During his time as Secretary of the Air Force, Symington had several public disputes with Secretary of Defense James Forrestal. He is also believed to be the source who leaked information about the Roswell crash to Congressman Jack Kennedy just days after the incident.
Fyfe Symington, the former Governor of Arizona and cousin of Stuart Symington, is notably remembered within the UFO community for his involvement in the phycological operations program.
As governor during the 1997 Phoenix Lights incident, he ridiculed the event by staging a press conference where he presented someone dressed as an alien, a move widely criticized for undermining the seriousness of the sightings.
The panel members who assisted Symington in convincing President Truman to establish the Psychological Strategy Board - enabling psychological operations related to the UFO subject - included Admiral Chester Nimitz, soon-to-be Supreme Court Judge John A. Danaher, and Admiral William D. Leahy, the highest-ranking U.S. military officer during World War Two.
Above: Arizona Governor Fife Symington at the 1997 Phoenix Lights Press Conference
Home Run, Project Palladium and Richard Bissell
Annie Jacobson’s book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base has the following to say about LeMay’s activities in the latter part of the 1950s, found on page 83:
‘Whilst the Soviets were concentrating efforts on advancing missile technology, the powerful General LeMay had convinced the Joint Chiefs of Staff that long-range bombers were a far better way for America to go to war. LeMay was not shy about expressing his disdain for missiles; he brazenly opposed them…The reason for LeMay’s opposition to the missile programs was obvious: if the Pentagon started pumping more money into missiles that could carry more warheads, LeMay’s bombers would lose importance. As it was, he was already losing money and men to the overhead reconnaissance nonsense being spearheaded by the CIA’s Richard Bissell over at Area 51.
‘In early 1956, the Air Force retaliated against Khrushchev’s war of words with the kind of response General Curtis LeMay knew best; threat, intimidation and force.
‘LeMay scrambled nearly a thousand B-47 bombers in a simulated attack on Russia using bomber planes that were capable of carrying nuclear bombs. Air Force pilots took off from air bases in Alaska and Greenland, charged over the Artic, and flew to the very edge of Soviet borders before U-turning and racing home…Further provoking them, on March 21, 1956, LeMay’s bomber pilots began flying top secret missions as part of Operation HOME RUN, classified until 2001. From Thule Air Force Base in Greenland, LeMay sent modified versions of America’s fastest bomber, the B-47, over the Arctic Circle and into Russia’s Tundra to spy.
‘The purpose was to probe for electronic intelligence, or ELINT, seeing how Soviet radar worked by forcing Soviet radars to turn on. Once the Soviets started tracking LeMay’s bombers, technicians gathered ELINT to decipher back home. Asked later about these dangerous provocations, LeMay remarked, “With a bit more luck, we could have started World War III.’
In Stealth, Countermeasures, and ELINT 1960-1975, Gene Poteat explains that the radar data gathered during Operation Home Run led to the development of airborne Power and Pattern Measurement Systems (PPMS).
This system allowed Poteat and his team to develop a method for electronically generating and injecting precisely calibrated false targets into Soviet radar systems, tricking them into detecting and tracking nonexistent UFOs. This deception strategy later became known as Project Palladium.
Although General LeMay recognized the value of the CIA's Palladium program for its ‘Foo Fighter’-like deception abilities, particularly in aiding the Single Integrated Operating Plan (which coordinated U.S. nuclear strikes to avoid target duplication), he refused to provide the CIA with essential Electronic Counter Measure (ECM) units for their U-2 and later A-12 reconnaissance missions.
That meant bad blood between LeMay and the CIA’s Deputy Director of Plans, Richard Bissell.
According to Jacobsen, the story went something like this:
‘There was a second serious problem facing Richard Bissell in the summer of 1956 and that was General LeMay. Impressed with the spy plane’s performance, LeMay was now angling for control of the airplane. Under a program called Project Dragon Lady, LeMay ordered a fleet of 31 U2 specifically for the Air Force.
‘To keep the program secret from Congress, the Air Force transferred the money to the CIA, which meant that while working to head off LeMay’s usurpation, Bissell simultaneously had to act as the go-between between the Air Force and Lockheed Martin for the slightly modified U2s.
‘With these new Air Force planes came the demand for more “drivers”, which meant the arrival of two new groups of pilots at Area 51 – those picked for CIA missions and those for Air Force ones.’
Alongside his newfound enthusiasm for the U-2, LeMay still harboured a deep attachment to his earlier passion, NEPA, the project focused on developing nuclear-powered aircraft.
His continued ambitions for NEPA would eventually put him at odds with consecutive Commanders-in-Chief.
Eisenhower, the Valkyrie and JFK
In his 2017 Politico article JFK’s Forgotten Constitutional Crisis, journalist and historian Gordon F. Sander states the following:
‘In January 1958, North American Aviation won a competition to design the Air Force’s next generation bomber. Designated the XB-70 Valkyrie, after the maidens of Norse myth who conducted heroic souls to Valhalla, the plane, it was hoped, would eventually replace the B-52 as Strategic Air Command’s main bomber and backbone of the nation’s defense.
‘And on paper, the B-70 looked great. Employing the little-known aerodynamic concept of “compression lift,” whereby six huge engines encased in a box structure beneath the fuselage would force compressed air away from the plane’s wide triangular wings, the new, nuclear-missile bearing aircraft would be able to fly at 2,200 miles per hour—more than three times the speed of sound—and attain a maximum cruising speed of over 80,000 feet, making it the fastest and highest flying bomber ever built.
‘One of the plane’s biggest advocates was LeMay, the former commander of the Strategic Air Command and current Air Force vice chief of staff. To LeMay, who was the model for the bomber-loving General “Bud” Turgidson character in Dr. Strangelove memorably played by George C. Scott, the Valkyrie represented the future of air power at a time when it was increasingly being overshadowed by the ballistic missile. He wanted 150 B-70s for his Air Force, so that the aircraft could form an aerial picket line around the Soviet Union. Armed with missile-launched nuclear warheads, the B-70 fleet LeMay envisioned would be in a position either to retaliate against the USSR with overwhelming annihilating force, as per the massive retaliation doctrine which then dominated American defense policy—or to launch a pre-emptive first strike of overwhelming annihilating force against the USSR at a moment’s notice.
‘One of those who wasn’t so taken with the pterodactyl-looking aircraft or the rhetoric of its backers was President Dwight D. Eisenhower. By the late 1950s, Ike had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the rigidity and provocativeness of the country’s massive retaliatory strategic posture, and the concomitant atrophying of the country’s other armed services and capability to contest the Communist bloc in limited or ‘brushfire’ wars. Aside from the Valkyrie’s questionable airworthiness, Ike and his advisers felt that pouring so much money into building more strategic bombers, designed as nuclear-strike weapons, put him into something of a straitjacket.
‘Consequently, in 1958, the Eisenhower administration decided to downgrade the B-70 project to an aerodynamic research project, limiting production to two prototypes, while maintaining the option of upgrading it to a full weapon production system to appease its backers. The following year, Ike went further, scaling back the program to one air frame and refusing to spend the additional monies which Congress allocated to buy more B-52 and B-58 bombers.’
Both nuclear and conventional designs were explored for the ambitious XB-70 Valkyrie, a strategic bomber intended to fly at high speeds and altitudes, making it nearly invulnerable to enemy defenses.
The nuclear-powered variant, designated ‘Weapon System 125A,’ was developed in parallel with the jet-powered version, ‘Weapon System 110A.’
These projects represented a push for next-generation bombers during the Cold War, aiming to secure U.S. air superiority with cutting-edge technology.
LeMay’s involvement in pushing for the nuclear propulsion option can be seen in reports from Synder’s historical biography of NEPA:
1. LeMay, Gen. Curtis E., USAF, Vice Chief of Staff. “SAB ANP Ad Hoc Committee Report, July 1960". Aug. 23, 1960. RG359, Box 4, Executive Office of the President, OSTP Folder-ANP 1960: National Archives II, Washington, D.C.
General LeMay provides feedback on the SAB (Scientific Advisory Board) report, focusing on three alternatives proposed by the committee. He dismisses two of the options, stating that only the plane aligned with current guidance—outlined by Dr. Herbert York, Director of Defense Research and Engineering, in his letter dated February 27, 1960—should be pursued. LeMay also critiques the committee's evaluation of the General Electric project, finding it overly pessimistic, while considering the assessment of Pratt & Whitney's work too optimistic. He believes both engine designs are capable of meeting the performance requirements specified by Dr. York. Additionally, LeMay agrees with the committee's recommendation that modifying an existing plane could prove to be a costly dead end.
2. LeMay, Gen. Curtis E., USAF, Vice Chief of Staff. Letter to Dr. George B. Kistiakowsky, Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology. July 29,1960. Enclosing a copy of the SAB ANP Ad Hoc Committee Report, July 1960. RG359, Box 4, Executive Office of the President, OSTP Folder-ANP 1960: National Archives II, Washington, D.C.
A copy of the SAB ANP (Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion) Ad Hoc Committee Report from July 1960 is provided, noting that it is preliminary and does not necessarily reflect the official views of the Air Force. To give context to the report, General LeMay presents an overview of the ANP Program by Brigadier General Irvin L. Branch, Assistant Deputy Chief for Nuclear Systems, who succeeded Donald Keirn. The SAB Ad Hoc Committee, chaired by Dr. Ernst H. Pleaset, explored three possible courses of action: the earliest possible nuclear flight with chemical assistance; the development of sustained high subsonic flight using only nuclear propulsion, meeting Department of Defense (DOD) requirements; and the advancement of nuclear aircraft technology with a significant improvement over DOD requirements, but with deferred flight. The committee recommended the General Electric direct cycle for the first option, while the Pratt & Whitney indirect cycle was seen as the best fit for the other two alternatives.
As Sander notes:
“Ike did not budge. No slouch on military matters himself, the former Allied supreme commander had a constitutional aversion to the sort of sabre-rattling White, LeMay and Spaatz engaged in. It was concerns such as these which moved the retiring president and commander in chief to dedicate his farewell address in January 1960 to warning the nation about the dangerous consequences of having such a large, self-perpetuating peacetime military establishment.”
After being sworn into office on January 20, 1961, and mindful of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower's warnings, President John F. Kennedy quickly moved to rein in the renegade General Curtis LeMay with a decisive ‘one-two’ punch.
In February 1961, Kennedy chose to phase out the ambitious XB-70 project.
While he asked Congress for funds to build the two prototypes that Eisenhower had approved, he ruled out expanding the bomber into a fully operational weapons system.
Then, on March 28, 1961, Kennedy cancelled the NEPA project, writing:
‘Nearly 15 years and about $1 billion have been devoted to the attempted development of a nuclear-powered aircraft; but the possibility of achieving a militarily useful aircraft in the foreseeable future is still very remote.’
In addition to Richard Bissell and the CIA, LeMay now had a new target in his bombsight—President John F. Kennedy. The battle-hardened bomber pilot only had to wait two weeks before he found himself locked onto his next target.
On page 160 of Jacobsen’s Area 51, she states the following:
‘By the end of the day, Richard Bissell’s world had begun to fall irreparably apart. The Bay of Pigs would be his downfall.
‘There was plenty of blame to go around, but almost all of it fell at the feet of the CIA. In the years since, it has become clear that equal blame should be imputed to the Department of Defense, the Department of State and President Kennedy. Shortly before he died, Richard Bissell blamed the mission’s failure on his old rival General Curtis LeMay.
‘Bissell lamented that if LeMay had provided adequate air cover as he had promised, the mission would most likely have been a success. The Pentagon has historically attributed LeMay’s failure to send B-26 bombers to the Bay of Pigs to a “time zone confusion”. Bissell saw the mix-up as personal, believing that LeMay had been motivated by revenge.’
In World War Two bombardier terms, LeMay had effectively ‘pickle-barrelled’ two targets with one bomb.
By denying air cover for the Bay of Pigs invasion, he not only eliminated his rival, Richard Bissell, but also severely damaged President Kennedy, just a few months into his presidency.
What neither LeMay nor Kennedy knew was that the true purpose of the Bay of Pigs invasion was as a diversion, intended to cover a plan to jailbreak the CIA’s UFO reverse engineering specialist, David Lamar Christ, from the nearby Isle of Pines prison.
Watergate burglar and Christ's understudy, James McCord, devised the plan in January 1961 after Christ and two other CIA operatives were arrested in Havana following a failed covert ‘ZR’ operation in September 1960.
Ironically, had LeMay provided the air cover, his dream of nuclear propulsion for aircraft might have been realized through Dave Christ.
Interestingly, it has also come to light that Richard Bissell once confided in Presidential Science Advisor Dr. Harald Malmgren, revealing that the U.S. government had indeed recovered crashed UFOs—perhaps this was Bissell’s own way of getting back at LeMay?
Sander relates the following in his Politico article:
‘In the meantime, Kennedy had developed something of an aversion to the cigar-chomping air general himself.
‘Roswell Gilpatric, the deputy secretary of defense, who had the job of escorting the Air Force chief to the White House for his infrequent conferences with the president, recalled what happened when Kennedy and LeMay met. “Every time the president had to see LeMay,” Gilpatric told the JFK Oral History Project, “He would end up in a fit.
‘I mean he would be frantic. LeMay would make what Kennedy considered outrageous proposals that bore no relation to the state of affairs in the 1960s. And [JFK] had to sit there. I saw the president right afterwards. He was choleric, just besides himself.’
The tension between President Kennedy and General LeMay is unmistakable in footage from the June 30th, 1961 ceremony, where JFK promotes LeMay to Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Kennedy pointedly reads the citation, stressing that it is LeMay’s duty "to take orders from the President and any future Presidents," while Vice President Lyndon Johnson observes impassively in the background.
This deliberate emphasis highlights the strained relationship between the two men.
A Constitutional Crisis
The XB-70 Valkyrie fight was far from over, according to Sander:
‘Like LeMay, (Carl) Vinson, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, was intent on rescuing the B-70. But while he was worried about the future of air power like LeMay, Vinson also had another motive in pursuing the B-70 fight. Dubbed “Swamp Fox” after wily American Revolution guerrilla and fellow southerner Francis Marion, the Georgian congressman saw the aircraft as an ideal way to reassert Congress’s role in determining the nation’s defense posture—especially now that a new, green president was in office.
‘Who had the ultimate power to shape the country’s defense posture, Congress or the White House? Vinson, then a feisty 78, was adamant that Congress—and he—had that power, and the pugnacious congressman, whose cunning had helped him win many a previous intergovernmental skirmish, was eager to fight the White House over it. Challenging Ike, the universally revered and respected former Supreme Allied Commander, on national security issues had been one thing. Ike was Ike. Who was John Kennedy in March 1962, though, but a former naval lieutenant whose qualifications as steward of the nation’s defense were still in doubt? Now, the Swamp Fox decreed, was the moment to strike a simultaneous blow both for air power and for Congress’s own piece of the geostrategic pie.
‘And so, on March 1, 1962, several days after LeMay’s frustrating encounter with the president, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), at Chairman Vinson’s direction, voted unanimously to “direct and require” the Kennedy administration to spend $491,000,000 more than the administration had requested to “proceed with production planning and long-lead time procurement for an RS-70 weapons system.” In the report accompanying the 1963 appropriations bill, the HASC repeatedly cited as the basis for its unprecedented action the nebulous clause in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution which gives the Congress the power to “raise and support” military forces.
‘Vinson’s report had escalated the B-70 fight into a constitutional showdown and reopened a quandary that had been dividing presidents, legislators and assorted thinkers ever since the days of the founding fathers: The president might be commander-in-chief, yet in order to exercise his powers, or even to subsist, he must have money, which the Congress alone can provide. So who’s really in charge?
‘Vinson made his position clear: If the combative language of the “directive” he fired at the White House on March 1 “constitutes a test as to whether Congress has the power to so mandate,” Vinson declared, “let the test be made and let this important weapons system be the field of trial.’
Suddenly, Kennedy found himself in a humiliating standoff with one of Washington's most revered and powerful congressmen, over an issue that directly challenged his authority and standing as commander-in-chief.
As Hanson Baldwin, military analyst of the New York Times wrote the following day, by acting as proxy for LeMay and the manned bomber lobby, Vinson had posed ‘an unprecedented challenge to the principle of the executive control of the military.’
Baldwin added, “this was more than just a fight over a bomber.”
Theodore Sorensen, JFK’s special counsel, later wrote in his memoir Kennedy, ‘Never before had Congress attempted to tie the president’s hands on a discretionary military matter in this way.’
According to Sander, the constitutional crisis was resolved solely by JFK’s charm on March 19, 1962, after he and Vinson took a walk in the Rose Garden to discuss the issue.
It comes as no surprise that Seven Days in May, a political thriller novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II, first published by Harper & Row in 1962, was mockingly referred to within the Kennedy Administration as ‘Seven Days of LeMay’.
In a clear case of art imitating life, the novel’s main plot revolves around a military-political cabal plotting to overthrow the U.S. government in response to the President's negotiation of a disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union.
When production began in 1963 on the film adaptation—starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Fredric March, and Ava Gardner—the Kennedy Administration granted the crew access to the White House. This move was perhaps a way to “return fire” and give the old bomber pilot, General LeMay, some “political flak” in full public view.
The eerily prophetic film was released in 1964.
The Cuban Missile Crisis
LeMay’s desire to conduct pre-emptive strikes in Cuba is well documented, and there’s little doubt that if the Soviet nuclear-tipped Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles had been operational at that time, some form of nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union would have occurred.
An important memo from Source S-1 (who I believe was actually James Angleton’s right-hand man, Newton ‘Scotty’ Miller) claims that LeMay was so furious with JFK’s handling of the crisis that he wanted to initiate the Single Integrated Operating Plan (SIOP), which he referred to as the ‘GRAND TOUR’—a series of strategic strikes deep into Soviet territory designed to neutralize their nuclear capabilities.
LeMay, known for constantly running drills with his troops, seemed poised to activate the ‘HOME RUN’ exercises that Strategic Air Command bombers had been practicing throughout the late 1950s.
Kennedy’s sudden outreach to Khrushchev after the October 1962 crisis may have been triggered by a UFO incident during the Bluegill Triple Prime nuclear test, which took place simultaneously with the Cuban events.
This incident, reportedly filmed by two independent U.S. aircraft, was partially declassified in 1998.
To LeMay’s frustration, the U.S. Navy recovered the remains of the craft and transferred custody to the Atomic Energy Commission’s Directorate of Military Applications at their Albuquerque Operations Office—placing it well beyond the reach of Air Force research and development at Wright-Patterson.
The decision by President Kennedy to work with the Soviets on ‘certain space matters’ signed into law under the National Security Action Memorandum 271 on 12th November 1963 sealed his fate in the eyes of the Military Industrial Complex, who wanted to exploit the new technologies discovered in this latest shootdown for themselves, rather than share them.
Where was LeMay on 22nd November 1963?
Doug Horne, former Chief Analyst for Military Records for the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), claimed in 2013 that General LeMay flew to Toronto, Canada on the day of President Kennedy’s assassination.
The JFK Facts blog by veteran researcher Jefferson Morley tells the story:
‘While General LeMay’s most recent biographer claims he was hunting in Michigan when the assassination occurred, he clearly was not. The 'Chuck Holmes' Air Force logbook from Andrews AFB obtained by the ARRB reveals that LeMay was in Toronto, in Canada, on the day of the assassination—not in Michigan. The logbook reveals that the flight dispatched to pick him up was originally sent to Toronto, not to any location in Michigan.’
Morley adds:
‘We don’t know what LeMay was doing in Canada, but he did not take his aide with him. Colonel Dorman’s surviving family members told Bill Kelly that this was the one and only trip when LeMay did not take his aide with him. Apparently, LeMay felt it necessary to lie to his family and associates about his whereabouts that day, otherwise his family and associates would not have fed the false information about a Michigan hunting trip to his biographer.’
More mystery follows:
‘Furthermore, LeMay’s aircraft landed at Washington’s National Airport, instead of at Andrews AFB as had been ordered by the Secretary of the Air Force. The Chuck Holmes logbook reveals that LeMay disobeyed orders that day, and we don’t know why. But we do know, from the logbook, that LeMay’s aircraft landed at DCA (National Airport) at 5:12 PM—more than one hour and fifteen minutes prior to the time JFK’s body arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital at 6:35 PM.’
Did LeMay attend JFK's autopsy? Morley writes:
‘Navy Petty Officer Paul K. O’Connor—a hospital corpsman whose job it was to assist the pathologists at the autopsy—recounted consistently over the years that when he was ordered by the chief pathologist at the autopsy to tell whoever was smoking in the morgue to put out their cigar, he walked over to the gallery and discovered that the offender was Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay. LeMay contemptuously blew cigar smoke in O’Connor’s face, and of course, refused to extinguish his cigar.
‘This is a good example of how a multidisciplinary approach to research bears great dividends. Neither the Clifton Air Force One tapes, nor the Andrews logbook, nor Paul O’Connor’s recollections, can tell us the complete story; but together, we can piece together a significant event on 11/22/63: Curtis LeMay was present at JFK’s autopsy to gloat over the death of his nemesis, and in going there, he disobeyed the orders of his nominal superior, the Secretary of the Air Force, Eugene Zuckert. "I am proud of the part the ARRB, and my Military Records Team, played in obtaining the Chuck Holmes logbook, for it is the heart of this story. The new dimension about the frustration of LeMay’s aide, Colonel Dorman, comes to us from the Clifton tapes. It certainly makes the basic story even more intriguing. And I believe Paul O’Connor. He told me that story himself back in 1998.’
General Curtis LeMay stood front and center at President John F. Kennedy’s funeral procession—a somber, yet symbolic display of the Military-Industrial Complex asserting its grip, determined to guard extraterrestrial secrets from the public eye.
A grip which remains to this day.
Geoff Cruickshank is a security consultant and researcher based in Darwin, in the Northern Territory of Australia. He is a former Mission Support Specialist / Installation & Integration Co-ordinator for Boeing Defence Australia and is a professional member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Australian Computer Society and a member of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies.
