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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCurtis LeMay (🔔 old timers) - Yes Trump went "Stone Age" last night.
LeMay has been the inspiration for several memorable movie characters. See below.During his prime-time address to the nation, Trump said, referring to Iran: We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks, were going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong.
Has the US made similar threats before?
The phrase bombing back to the stone ages is widely associated with US Air Force officer Curtis LeMay, in the context of US threats against North Vietnam in LeMays 1965 book, Mission with LeMay.
Were going to bomb them back into the Stone Age, he wrote. LeMay, who had played a central role in executing the World War II carpet bombing of Japanese cities in which between 240,000 and 900,000 people were killed, had by the time of the Vietnam War risen in rank to chief of Air Staff before he retired the year his book was published.
While he was no longer in office during some of the bloodiest US campaigns in Vietnam, American leaders appeared to follow through on Curtiss advice.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/2/bomb-back-to-the-stone-age-us-history-of-threats-and-carpet-bombing
According to Michael S. Sherry, "Few American military officers of this century have been more feared, reviled, and ridiculed than Curtis E. LeMay."[86] According to Fred Kaplan:
Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film about nuclear-war plans run amok, is widely heralded as one of the greatest satires in American political or movie history. ... It was no secretit would have been obvious to many viewers in 1964that General Ripper looked a lot like Curtis LeMay, the cigar-chomping, gruff-talking general."[87]
University of Notre Dame Professor Dan Lindley points out parallels between LeMay and the characters of Buck Turgidson and Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, including close paraphrasing of statements by LeMay.[88]
Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II, authors of the novel Seven Days in May (later to be a 1964 film starring Kirk Douglas), conducted interviews with LeMay who was angry with Kennedy for refusing to provide air support for the Cuban rebels in the Bay of Pigs Invasion.[89][90] The character of General James Mattoon Scott was believed to have been inspired by both LeMay and General Edwin Walker.[91]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay
PATRICK
(12,397 posts)In his autobiography written after decades in prison, Hitler's bright young guy in charge of war production was grilled by puzzled and chagrined American military experts as to how in holy hell German war production kept going up despite constant massive bombing raids. He told them how they played it, especially getting them to bomb useless targets, even ones that needed demolition so they could put new stuff up. That did not sit well at all with Curtis Le May, probably not the British war criminal who thought fire bombing Dresden was the thing, nor McNamara in charge of non-radioactive roasting of Japanese civilians before his glorious Vietnam days. Forget the failure. Double down on pure slaughter. Again and again...and apparently again because this is ALL about ego and stupid.
Of course, now we are actually running out of bombs and nakedly facing lethal toy airplanes.
I think Speer mainly was in Nuremberg on the slave labor charges.
underpants
(196,525 posts)The Allies bombed intensely but never hit the ball bearing factories. The Germans moved it outside of the city. We were told it was under a pistol range we used to go to.