Editor’s Note: I am stunned this morning. Not that the condition is either unexpected or unusual, but this morning features the weirdest ‘news’ and a special hour last night curled up with the most surreal farewell address I have ever witnessed. I don’t know which of the two was more disturbing. It is a comfort to duck back into Mac Shower’s account of life at the forward headquarters, and how he and a mad Air Corps General cooked up a private plan to destroy the wartime economy of Japan. Things used to be a lot simpler.

– Vic

Iron Pants And Cherry Pie

I took a sip of chardonnay. Peter was pouring a very nice vintage, a hint of fruit but dry, without anything that seemed syrupy like canned pears.

I looked over at the Admiral in wonder. He had just described the entire intelligence staff that went forward with Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. Captain Eddie Layton, Lieutenant Mac, four analysts from JICPOA, a Senior Chief Yeoman and First Class Petty Officer Harry Truman.

“So let me get this straight. You had a grand total of eight guys supporting a five-star staff that controlled a war effort of 2000 ships, 25,000 aircraft and 2.5 million men?”

The Admiral nodded. “Don’t forget, we had a secure telephone to talk to Jasper Holmes and his Estimates Section at FRUPAC.”

I was stunned that anything so complex could be accomplished without a battalion of analysts and flat-screen panels. I had seen a request for hundreds of bodies to go forward to support operations in Afghanistan the other day, not fighters, mind you, just thinkers of great thoughts.

They must have been giants then, or rather, ordinary men who rose to extraordinary heights because there was no alternative.

Mac did the daily brief to Chester Nimitz’s staff on CINCPAC Hill above the harbor at Agana, Guam. He pulled the neat trick of giving it at the unclassified level, which enabled Captain Layton to spin the message to the broadest possible audience. The unclassified message was fitted to the template of things that were known to be true from highly classified ULTRA sources and exploitation of the Navy andArmy tactical codes.

It was pretty slick, and I have done that myself to be able to share information with third-party allies in time of crisis and conflict. ‘Why’ you know something to be true or not is not the point; sources and methods do not need to be revealed if the information is correct.

I had learned the lesson just as clearly long ago. One evening in the Yellow Sea I had labored long through the night to plot the intriciacies of an excerise scenario that I had to present to the crews of the dawn launch from Midway Maru.

Two hours prior to commencement of flight operations I labored through the complexity of the scenario to the bleary men in green Nomex flight suits sipping coffee and puffing on their second or third cigarette of the morning. I got through it and Santa, a lanky Radar Intercept Officer (‘RIO’) from the Rock Rivers Phantom Squadron, snarled at me: “Just tell me where we are supposed to be and what we are supposed to do when we get there.”

I got it, suddenly and completely. Don’t explain how to build a watch when someone asks what time it is.

One guy who did not need to know about watch construction was Iron Pants Curtis Lemay. He was in the audience when Mac was briefing the staff at 0900 each day. Iron Pants commanded the XXth Air Force. It was the first such command not put under Theater command, under such as Eisenhower, McArthur or Nimitz. Instead General Curtis LeMay assumed direct command of the 20th Air Force. The mission of the 20th was to engage in the strategic destruction of Japan by air, with Iron Pants providing the direction under the guidance of Washington. Which wasn’t working for him. LeMay wanted to cut the legs out from under the Japanese economy, not just aircraft engine production.

Long afterward, that weasel Robert McNamara described LeMay’s approach to addressing the abort rate by bomber crews in the European theater. The crews were no fools, and they exercised a certain discretion on “down gripes” on their birds that might enable them to return to home base and keep them out of meatgrinders like the raid on Schweinfort.

MacNamara noted “he was extraordinarily belligerent, many thought brutal. He got the report about the aborts. 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-martialed.’ The abort rate dropped overnight. Now that’s the kind of commander he was.”

Iron Pants listened to what Mac said in the morning brief in Guam. Now commanding the 20th Air Force and hundreds of sleek Super Forts, he had been directed to improve the efficiency of the bombing campaign against the Japanese.

Eddie Layton and Mac knew that it was not the destruction of aircraft engines and ball bearings that would shut down the Japanese war machine. It would be a lack of oil and lubricants. The unclassified reports of distilling the roots of pines to make fuel were buttressed by highly classified intercepts of military communications. Eddie Layton and Mac knew the truth.

Iron Pants Lemay decided to ignore the idiots back in Washington, and gave an entire bomb group to the Navy to shut down the Inland Sea.

Mac agreed to tell me more about the 313th Bomb Wing, but I was busy. I was conducting an experiment in World War II cooking. I was attempting to deconstruct Mac’s description of the hated recipe for Canned Pear Pie a la Cookie last night. I could not make a crust work with the crackers that used to come with C-Rations, even with laden with lard and smoothed with canned milk.

It was like Mac told me: “Canned pears are notoriously flavorless, grainy, and colorless. UGGGHHH. Just unappetizing & tasteless. Now for cherry pie. . . with real crust and the sweet tangy goodness of the cherries. But we had to get home to experience that taste again.”

Copyright 2017 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com