MISSION WITH LEMAY, MY STORY

There are very few people who can say that if they had it all to do over, they would. But Curtis LeMay does. His autobiography makes it clear, without any tone of complaint, that his was never anybody's idea of an easy life. He had a rolling stone father, lots of brothers and sisters, and what he couldn't do for himself, was not likely to be done for him. He worked through his boyhood, through college and entered the Air Corps through an ROTC program. This do-it-yourself early training was evidently superior preparation for the man who would go from a lieutenancy in a very small Corps to top job in a very big Force. His run down on service conditions and flying in the '30's is seldom encountered in print. (Popular histories usually flash from WWI to WWII as though nothing had happened in between). The snafus caused by inter-service (especially Naval) rivalry get an acidulous airing -- they cost us time in WWII and still go on in terms of privileges guarded, he says. His B-17 bomber handling in WWII and his strong arguments for heavy retaliatory power and manned defense systems will be of particular interest to citizen strategists. It is a likeable man who emerges from the over-folksy touches of this as-told-to autobiography and the book could fly high in sales -- LeMay has always had the fascination of the unknown-man-in-charge.