Homework can be hard but squatting and a diner for internetwork is even harder. Thats why were providing lower income students access to affordable internet so homework can just be homework. Cox connects to compete. Cox, along with these Television Companies, supports cspan2 as a public service. I am represented mcdaniels and im professor of english and at Jackson State University and welcome to our panel entitled world war ii from the air. The sponsor for this panel is a university of southern mississippi bell center for the study of war and society, with representatives for our sponsor, please stand at this time. [applause] lets thank our sponsors. [applause] the moderator for this session is marshall ramsey. Todays editor at large, he is also host of a weekly statewide Radio Program and a Television Program on mississippi public broadcasting. And marshall is the author and marshall is the author of several books, a two him pulitzer finalist and named a top 100 employee of gannett. And a couple of housekeeping notes, if you dont turn off your phone, ill draw a cartoon about you. And also, tom was supposed to be with us today and he had a tragedy in his family and we want to send our prayers to he and his family and going through a tough time. Thats why theres two of us and im thrilled to have the panel we have today. Ive been a ill do the bio thing in a half second here, but ive gotten to know kevin here, too, and a treat today. The structure today, well do this chronologically. Were going 0 cover the air war from 1943, the summer over germany, over europe, and they are were going to move over to the pacific toward the end of the war. I think thats important because the nature of air warfare changed during that time and we went from the bomber mafia, a Pickle Barrel five miles up with the norden bomb site to lets burn the whole place down. Were going to go through that evolution a little bit and im excited, like i said, to have the guests. And kevin sitting next to me, an Award Winning journalist and massively successful no easy day the inside story of the bin laden road he cowrote with the navy seal, mark owen. And hes covered war and politics and general interest stories and published in gq, mens journal, roll stone and many other publications. And this latest book is damn lucky, one major, john lucky luckadoo and youre going to get to know about lucky in a minute, an incredible, incredible man. And james on the other side is a former neiman fellow at harvard the author of black snow, look i cant recommend both of these books anymore than im going to recommend them, but i think youll understand, its black snow , and you can get it here and you can get it signed when we do the signing in a little bit. The book about the fire bombing of tokyo, and the road to atomic bomb, and this book rampage chosen as finalist for the prestigious prize for military history for the historical society. Target tokyo, youve probably seen that. It was 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist and the war below and the attack here, hes got a wife and two children from south carolina, glad to have them in mississippi today because mississippi has a great tradition of aviation as well. Kevin, i guess well get started with you. Number one if you were a fiction writer and you created a character, lucky luckadoo and if you described lucky in your book, i wont believe it, but hes one of the most unbelievable men and whats great about it, he still is, still with us and still driving around dallas right now 100 years old. But tell everybody a little about lucky. Because lucky is the truly the hero of your book and you see the war through his eyes and its a powerful story. If you made it up in fiction, editor would have cut it out. A tall, lanky 100yearold man july of last year drove me around dallas for a weekend and i never felt like i was in danger and that says a lot. And the thing about lucky,s got a unique story in that he was, you know, his dad lost everything at the crash, his dad was a stockbroker and he sort of came from a family that was a little broken in tennessee, and he worked his way, he and his best friend sully, to understanding and wanting to be great pilots and i think this is really a story where i think were going to talk a lot about precision bombing and these aircrafts. What i was trying to do was damn lucky put a human in the story line. Some of the best aircraft. B17 is a cool plane. B29 is a cool plane. B29 and b17 have a legacy that i hope we get into, the war started and b17 is almost obsolete. And what we think about world war ii is the plane, and sit in the cockpit with lucky and the horror. The more i spent time with the man and the more i marvelled that he climbed into at that cockpit ever. Well start with 1943. So hes in england,s getting ready fly and hes literally doing the check because his life is depending on the aircraft. And hes facing mortality every time he steps into the plane and four Different Things he could have faced that could have met his demise. And every time they climbed into the aircraft, unpressured, negative 40 degrees up there. Fear, flak, freezing, getting into the aircraft was pa feat, bravery personified. Because the stats basically, if you climb into that aircraft theres a good chance after the 12th mission youre on borrowed time. If you can get to 12 missions, youre a really lucky guy. So, the attrition rate was ridiculous. So he faced that every time. They would go out with a room like this full of crews in the morning and come back to, you know, two or three crews. Every time they lost a b17 that was 10 men. So, you know, you lose you can do the math, right . And they would go up, you know, 2, 300 at a time and the come back with maybe five planes, okay. So, that alone, i dont know how he did it and we talk a lot about why did you get back into that plane, how can you get back into that plane. His thought i was there, its my job, im stuck and couldnt get out testify now and that became a motivating factor of doing it for his teammates and then once youre in the air, youre freezing, right . And i flew in yesterday looking out the window and every time i fly now i think what it would be like to fly at 20,000, 30,000 feet without a pressurized aircraft. Theyre in the elements, they need the oxygen. The sweat would freeze off their faces and when they needed to go to the bathroom, they would urinate into a condom and freeze until they got down. And on top of the fact that, you know, you were thousands of feet in the air. And so, youre fighting all of that as your getting to germany and face luftwaff and they were fighting for their homeland. They were a professional organization fighting against lucky. First mission i was talking about them. You didnt have any combat experience did you go around the base and talk to other crews what to expect, what to think about, tips to survive . He said no, who was i going to talk to, none of us had combat experience the First Mission and they had no idea what they were facing and learning it on the fly as they were losing men in droves. The fighters were very effective, but the flip side and i got this from a great german folk, and the germans were trying to figure out how to fight the giant formations of b17s, and werent sure how you attack that which is where you get twelve oclock high. And theres a movie, also and the way to attack the b17 until a modification attack headon. When they would fight each other, its a game of chicken and three seconds and fighters would scream past you, a quote by one of the german aces, the whole idea of attacking headon. When you fight against the russians or fight against the spite fires, the british, its kind of fun, but when you turn in on a formation of b17s all of your things are flashing in front of your eyes. This is tough. The war over europe at that point from fighters and bombers was a war of attrition and its well get to this i think, but eventually the reason why the americans win not because theyre more skilled or in any way, they just, we could make bombers and crews, train crews faster than germans could keep up. B17g and h, a gun to be able to shoot back at the fighters when they came at them. The b17 was the two guns in the front and the only reasons the guns are there to shoot the planes as they came in. The last to do with flak. And hitler was with the flak and the best guns and they would steal flak guns so they overran russia on the Eastern Front and drag the russian guns back and flak alone took down more bombers than the fighters. And that, what was jarring about that, there was at first they would try to dodge the flak, but realize statistically it was easier to fly through it which well get with your guys. And theyll fly through the maelstrom of shrapnel and in a plane that didnt have armor and rolling the dice to try to get through it. Got over the target for a guy like lucky who likes to fly the plane and hed turn over to the bombardier in flak, and hope they didnt get hit. Four big things every time he would climb into the airplane i would face. One of the things to me a stupid decision, when they were in the states they decided to switch out all the copilots with the crew, so you built this on with the crew and suddenly stuck in with a new crew and caused lucky a lot of problems, he was not wellreceived when he first came with his crew. Youre right. Lucky would agree with you. The 100th bomber they had a bit of a hiccup, a training expert before they were certified to go to england and got lost, i forgot exactly where they were supposed to fly, but ended up separated all over the country. And so they got stuck in going back to training and what the air force, the air force realized a lot of copilots that they had on the bomb group had as many hours as some of the lead pilots in other squadrons. So the air force said look, were going to take the experienced copilots and make them lead pilots and bring a class of copilots in and crews were upset about this because basically like you said, they had fought together and theyd trained together and it was sort of a jinx. A lot of the crews now youre its a jinx putting a new guy in. When lucky gets to the 100th bomb group and the crew hates his guts because they liked the copilot they had. And hes never known a b17 and the biggest plane was two engines and he learned when he got to england 40 hours or 30 hours of stick time, thats it. He learned on the fly the whole way. You know, obviously, damn lucky a lot of that damn luck was just dumb luck, right . I mean, you didnt know when a shell was going to go off or you didnt know when a shell from a, you know, a fighter is going to hit you. But lucky made his own luck, too. He was a very good pilot and a lot of things about him. Tell us about him as a person and as a pilot that helped create situations that allowed him to be able to survive, i mean, several of the missions. Well, look, its lawn, i was in savannah for memorial day and for those who have read the book or going to read the book, they dedicated a plaque to luckys best friend sully in savannah so i took my 10yearold son down there and he and he and lucky, theyve got a b17 in the gallery and lucky, 100 years old climbs into the cockpit and my 10yearold, nine at the time sits down in the copilot seat for an hour and change, they went through the whole thing to the point at one point my son said i think we can take off, put some fuels in this thing. But lauck spent two hours in this thing and watching him talk to my son and too much my son what the instruments did and how to fly the aircraft, he was meticulous, a professional of everything and i think he deep down loved to fly, but i think the luck he made. He was good at it and he was really dedicated to job he had to do and its a testament to his professionalism and bravery and service that he those attributes probably saved his crew more than you he would probably admit. He didnt seem to panic, focused on the job at hand and that did pay off several times and you mentioned sully, his best friend, and they both wanted to go off and go fight with the british and raf and so forth. And that part of it, its like a separate part of the story, but powerful because you get to see london through their eyes and you get to hear the story. And just tell a little about sully because there was some research that you were able to do at university of tennessee chattanooga that lucky got to be part of which i think had to be a gift to him. Sully and lucky, if i made it up, youd be like, come on, dude. Sully and lucky, fraternity, going to university of chattanooga and both had an idea at some point the u. S. Was going to get in the war and they wanted to be fighter pilots. So they applied to fly from the Royal Canadian air force. Their applications were accepted, except they had to get it signed off by their parents because they were under 18. Sully, an interesting guy, his father was wounded during world war i by a german attack and eventually dies after sully is born. So sully just has his mother. So lucky and sully go to sullys mom and sullys mom says if you feel like you need to do it ill sign it. And she signs it. Lucky says im in, were going to canada and we will be fighter pilots. He goes back to his house and his mother says i dont like the idea and if your father signs im fine. And his father is called the colonel, betting on horses, and he takes one look and says youre an idiot, and he didnt sign it. And sully goes and goes to the Royal Canadian air force and they lose touch midway through luckys tour in england and sully shows up in a spit fire and they rekindle their friendship, he flies with lucky in a bomber and mocks lucky for being a bus driver. Lucky then flies the spit fire and realizes hes going to die if he doesnt land fast and they end up going to london, but whats interesting about that whole story is, i heard about sully and i figured it was an interesting part of the beginning of the book. But i didnt think id use it later, and then doing some research around sully, i found his diary at the university of chattanooga and they had it in the archives and lucky never read it and i was able to give him insight into his best friend and the things that sully did, and met one lucky again. And ill leave you with the. Lucky was the straight man and sully is the hellion. Hes always trying to find booze and something and found the reports from his commanders who would write about and talk about him as a middling pilot whos decent and happy to have him, but hes not great. At the end of the day, its an important piece because again, when you think about the book, trying to put a soul into this thing and try to put humanity to the planes, i think that sully and luckys relationship does that. Thats what makes the book so good not just ive read several books about it, but youre viewing it through his eyes on that. A couple of questions, two parts on this, first of all, how did you get hooked up with lucky, how did you end up doing it . And the second part, describe the process of working with lucky versus working with the former Navy Seal Mark owen. Okay, so i saw a question and answer story that lucky did with the military times, and in it he talks a little about his career and i was kind of captivated by it. It was great because it was his verbatim, him telling the story verbatim, it wasnt filtered through a reporter and i thought that is a great story and i tracked down his phone number and called him out of the blue and said, hey, your story is amazing, id love to read the book you wrote about your career and your life and he said, i dont have a story, i dont have a book. And i said well, weve got to fix that. So i convinced him to let me write this book and got him to do it right before covid started and we were set to sart start in march of 2020 and coiffed hit and if i went down to the his Retirement Community in dallas i might kill him and everybody and thats not a good start to the book so we ended up doing it on the phone, the whole thing on the phone and i think it really, it helped me get through covid, ton honest, something i could look forward to every day at 4 00 we got on the phone for an hour and we were in world war ii and i think it helped him get through it, too, he was pretty ice isolated whats going on. And the guys ive talked to from world war ii, they have the same idea still fighting for one another, politics doesnt matter when youre in combat. The one thing ill take away, if you ask mark owen to tell a story, its going to be cinematic, hes a good story teller, its visual and viceral. Lucky doesnt tell stories like that, we flew to brennan and we bombed it, everybody died, but me and i survived. I cant use that and then hes frustrated with me and i say, what did that smell like, what was in your left pocket, viceral things, what does it feel like when you put your hand on the yoke when its going . He didnt understand until he read the book why i would ask those, and so i find a little bit of times ive interviewed with world war ii run into this, too, i dont know if they grew up with radio and we grew up with movies and tv, but thats the biggest difference i see with interviewing both. I was thinking if you had killed him it would have been damn lucky until i met kevin mauer, a great title for the book. Not publicity. Probably would not have sold you too many books. And i guess probably before we switch over to james. Let me ask, he obviously went through hell. I mean, reading your book, i mean, i have a whole new appreciation from what that generation went through and ive read a lot of world war ii stuff, but ill say this about it, he came out of it pretty beat up mentally. He was pretty and, but it seemed like when he met his wife, that that literally saved him. What do you i mean, do you think that thats truly what helped him get through this ptsd . No doubt. The nice part about this, you have a pretty good war story, a pretty good story about two friends, and that friendship and then you have a pretty good love story at the end where he finally meets his wife and i think thats the thing that lets him heal from the trauma and what he experienced in world war ii and i think shes the reason why we have this book because she is ate one that sort of urged had i am to did him to let it out and i give her the credit to be honest and shes probably the coauthor, without her i dont know if wed ever get the story. When i walked in a few months ago, john the owner handed me the book and buy this now and flipped it over and showed me the last couple of pages that lucky had wrote and kind of paraphrased the message that he left for us and made me sit up a little straighter and made me want to be a little better american. Hes frustrated with us. Hes frustrated with what were doing, he feels like he and his squadron put it all on the line and like to not see us fumble the ball, if you will. And i thought of him at the end of the book to give us the afterward. When you read the book its me until the end, and an afterward that he wrote and on the audio book, he voices and he wanted to read the whole thing. In the audio book, you have an interview with him. Nicely done. James, i met you i getting target tokyo and i met you on the radio and we got to know each other on twitter throughout the years and finally nice to be able to sit in the same room with you and get to know you a little bit. Im a big fan of your work, the thing that i think that kevin did so well, he told a story through luckys eyes. You told it from 360 degrees all the way around. And black snow is one of my favorites of yours and congratulations on getting it out and done, this is the transition that america makes from throwing precision bombing to literally just burning down the whole country. What inspired you to write this book after youve written the battle, about the battle of manila. About the doolittle raid . What makes you jump into black snow. Thank you for coming out and investing your time to learn about world war ii. I so appreciate it and thanks to kevin as well. Im a huge fan of kevins work and read all of his books and i loved damn lucky and i think youll absolutely love it as well. But, yeah, so i did a book on Jimmy Doolittle and his raid in april of 1942, to sort of revenge the attack on pearl harbor, to avenge it. So, i was interested in kind of coming back and revisiting that story and you know, with the fire bombing of tokyo and the sort of air war that kind of from the time we attacked tokyo in april of 1942, we dont really come back until 1944 so theres a huge gap there in which the japanese homeland is sort of spared from the kind of bombardment that you see that takes place all over europe and particularly germany. I was interested in coming back and looking at that story again. Of course, the air war in the pacific really leads through europe. So much of what when curtis lamay and hansel began their campaign against the japanese homeland, theyre bringing with them the experiences and Lessons Learned and whatfrom what lucky went through. And the americans, High Altitude precision bombing, that its like a house of cards. Independent industries, if you come in and you use precision bombing and you knock out oil refining and knock out industries then the modern economy will tumble down like a house of cards. Thats great in theory, but when the war breaks out we realize it doesnt really work. The German Economy is far more resourceful and creative, theyre able to disperse industries and able to bring in raw goods and things like that from occupied countries so were finding guys like lucky are flying over there over and over and over again and its becoming an slog. What we thought it would be a fast, painless path to victory becomes a brutal slog. The british say were done with precision becoming and flak and were going to burn german cities and you see that in hamburg and dresden and the americans say were not going to do that, we think its morally superior to spare civilian lives and take that attitude through europe and bring that with them to the war in the pacific. And of course, so there they run into a whole new host of other issues. Just like kevin said, you know, you had flak, you had fighters, and whatnot. In japan you suddenly have to add terrible weather, i mean, its cloudy over japan, you know, its pretty much so much you might get three days of clear weather to bomb. Of course, youre doing daylight bombing. You need to see what youre aiming at. Of course they didnt encounter the hellacious jet streams high in the heavens over japan. 200 Miles Per Hour thats completely wrecked accuracy, at the same time the missions are far, far larger, far longer than they were over europe. I mean, one way flight from england to berlin and back, round trip about 1500 miles. A oneway flight from the marinaa islands where we were based to tokyo 1500 miles and doubling the distances and flying over open water and youre doing it in a b29, at this point was a brand new airplane so the air crews are working on all the kinks. And of course, you know, a plane that has 55,000 parts, you know, anything can go wrong and if it does, you know, youre over ocean. And so, it really, it becomes a far more complex becoming scenario than we expected. So it really, you know, as marshall said, it really picks up. The air war in the europe and the air war in the pacific is symbiotic. You had a couple, three major characters, number one was the b29 like you said it was problematic and like i said, it was a huge improvement because they had pressurized comfortable cabins, they werent freezing to death like lucky was, but engines that liked to catch on fire and burn and you ended up going into the sea and lose crews that way and you also it two distinctive and different leaders of the 20th air force. One was hayward possum hansel. And i showed the picture to my wife and she said guess his nickname. She said possum. And he was crafty like a yard varmint and his wife said its everything to do with his looks. I found a picture online of a possums face and his and put them side by side for the power point and its a spitting image, they could be siblings. Wow, thats cold. [laughter]. It really is. You know, possum, as well go, but possum was a true believer, he was part of the bomber mafia and he truly believed, until the end and it cost him his job. And the second character of course is curtis lamay. Youd thought of curtis lamay as the character from dr. Strangelove and failed political, well disastrous political and later in life, but in world war ii, he was a hunter and he was an operator. He got things done and that was the big reason, and hap arnold his babe baby was a b29 and he he was afraid that macarthur was going to take it away from him as bomber. And possum wouldnt have fire bombed anything and doesnt believe in it, but lamay was like, yeah, give it a try. And Hayward Hansel is a true believer. When youre writing nonfiction, you dont have the luxury of tinkering with plot, you have to work with the facts youre given and in this case you couldnt have a better trifecta of personalities as youre trying to structure a book because those three individuals really almost represent different ideologies in a lot of way. Heywood hansel had come up with the Tactical School as a true believer. His father was a surgeon and he wanted to fight with a scalpel, and lamay came from a family that was sort of an army aristocracy and they trace back to the revolutionary war and grew up privileged. And curtis lamay without a doubt one of the most fascinating characters and linked up often with disasters later in life events, but the reality was he was one of the world war iis most successful combat commanders. When i was going through his file i found writeups from Jimmy Doolittle. And he grew up dirt poor, in ohio his mother went through the 8th grade and his father was bouncing the family all over the country looking for jobs. Lamay learned from an early age if he wanted to eat, he learned how to fish. If he wanted to put himself through school, he had to work all night in a steel mill, worked overnight and slept through his first class and to put himself through school. And he was an engineer. Studied engineering, he had an engineering mind and a dogged work ethic and a product of the air war in europe. He helps come up with the formations that the b17s are flying and analyze german flak to determine its not as accurate as we thought and that bombers could fly evaluate in their bomb runs farther. He gets a reputation for a tactical Problem Solver and eventually lands him in the pacific. Hansel cannot make it work and the bombers, hes having to return over and over again to the same target, its not working. Hap arnold is pressuring him, the head of the air force, weve got to beat japan by the air or have to put boots on the ground and its going to be an awful fight. Look what capped taraw an a. Manila and if we have to beat them by air. And the incredible pressure laid on the shoulders of hansel. And he cannot adapt and hes fired after a few weeks and lamay is brought in to trouble shoot, to problem solve, to figure out a way to break the japanese. Hed been originally assigned to china and that was like a nowin situation, and he tried everything he could to make that happen, but the i think the fact that he was trying those things ended up getting him the job. Yeah, lamay was one of those, too, a lot of people think he comes over to the pacific and begins burning down japan cities, he doesnt. You have to remember, he and possum were friendly. Possum had been his boss in europe. When i went through lamays personnel file i found a commendation letter that hansel had written thanking him for his out work and when he shows up at the pacific, he outranks him and there was a confrontation not confrontation, but a meeting and hansel says look, in the end were going to be judged not by whether we win this war, because were going to win it, were going to be judged by how we win it. And i want you to think about that and i want you to continue trying to fly these High Altitude precision bombing missions. And lamay says ill do that. And he begins doing that, tinkers with the altitude, bringing the planes down a bit thinking he can get under the bombing jet streams tinkers with the times and takeoff and improves training for the crews, again and again hes running into the same problems that hansel it, which he cannot get his bombs on target. And so, of course, all of that pressure to end this war, you know, to break the japanese was on top of him and realizes hes got to reengineer the entire plan for how americas going to attack japan and thats when he decides were going to burn their cities down. Yeah, the crews werent exactly thrilled to find out they were going to be coming in 5 to 7,000 feet over the cities either. No, exactly. What he comes up with a plan from going five miles up coming just a mile up and analyzes of course, japanese cities are made 98 of made of wood and paper. Weve got the brand new incendiaries, and napalm is new at this point. And we can start the fire and japanese industry is scattered throughout a lot of their neighborhoods and whatnot. About 50 all the production in japan was done through a cottage industry. And so by burning down their cities you actually could eliminate a lot of their industrial capacity as well. So hes bringing these bombers down and hes going to send them not in formation, with full protection and whatnot. Hes going to take the gunners out of them to carry more bomb loads and send them straight in a mile over one of the heavily guarded cities in the world. Youve managed to tell the story from every single like i mentioned and did it in a fairway and some of the early reviews have pretty much noted that. Its hard to tell it from the perspective of the americans and then from the japanese, but you did an excellent job and able to actually interview several of the survivors over in japan. Yeah. On that, too. Yes, right before covid hit and i think thats the benchmark in all of our professional lives, and you heard candidates earlier today and kevin, and i was fortunate and i went over and there was actually a private museum in tokyo thats all about the fire bombing of the city and that fateful mission, we have burned 16 square miles of tokyo and killed 100,000 civilians. Theres a private museum there and they have documents and artifacts and bring in survivors of that to talk to school kids and things like that. So i spent several weeks over there and interviewed survivors in order to be able to tell the story because i was curious, what is it like in the middle of one of the worst firestorms ever . What does it sound like . Just like kevin was saying, what does it smell like . You know, and when peoples eyelashes are burning off because of the heat, when concrete melts, and asphalt turns to goo, what was the experience like for these survivors who had to get out of the way of a tidal wave of fire that swept across the city. So that was what i was after. You did a great job and you set up the stage and pretty much showed what was going on in japan. At that time america was starting to come back to life. There were people that were actually going and gambling and things like that at the same time. Japan because of the submarines, they were whale ham and weird things and so forth. Because of the 23 earthquake and the fire from that, they had tried to make some improvements on fire safety and everything, but this fire bombing created Hurricane Force winds and the way you describe it, i told him when i met him when i got done with that chapter my clothes smelled like smoke, wrote it owe well. Thats interesting thing, when the city is burning, the temperature 2800 degrees as parts of tokyo, they found coins that had been in peoples pockets that melted together. And the fires, the soot is blowing up into the heavens and sort of high air rises and bubbling the paint on the bottoms of the b29s and soot when they got back to Mariana Islands there was soot and they could smell the flesh burning, its the dogs, horses and people and all of that sucked into the bombers. One of the great quotes and opening line is, only reporter to fly on the mission, he said i not only saw tokyo burning, but i smelled it. How viceral it was. The cruelty of that war, the pacific war, too, it just, it reminded me of the beginning of the civil war versus the end. It started with people going out in their nice clothes to battle and by the end sherman is burning everything down. World war i, too. There was evolution in american policy and also, too, i think that america as a whole wanted the war over with. There was a lot of war fatigue, tons of it and huge technical of the bomb, and the b29 bomber used the single most expensive weapons system in world war ii, it cost 3 billion to build that and we actually in order to manufacture it in high numbers, we built a city in kansas to house the workers, we had to build schools, bowling alleys and movie theaters, thats the level of technological investment we made in order to defeat the japanese. So we really need today see, we needed a return on that investment. Ill mention this, when he was over in japan and he was interviewing people, tell them where you interviewed people because i think this is the coolest. Karaoke booths. [laughter] you know, its amazing there, karaoke is a huge thing in japan and the booths are everywhere, you go in there and its like a living room and sound proved living room and youve got plush couches, table, food service and provides neutral grounds, so people dont have to invite a reporter in their house and what not. You can meet them there and spend several hours and its soundproof and you can have snacks. I mean, you know, like. [laughter] the things with james writing like i said you throw great details into it i never knew it took a danger car of fuel to fuel a b29 before a mission, a lot of gas. And theres little you have a line there one of survivors said i didnt know how to tell i killed my children and burned them to death. It was a gut butch. And its incredibly wellwritten. 1964 jip honored lamay with the highest award for the first native of merit grand court over the rising 1964. That was 20 years later and giving him an award. Exactly. And lamay had actually helped japan sort of organize its Civil Defense forces after the war and from their air component of it. And they decided to honor him and create add fight as you might imagine in the parliament because people were like, here we are, this is the man who burned our capital and oversaw the atomic attack in 56 cities and give him the honor, the Prime Minister at the time said and quoted in our media saying bygones are bygones. And any last thoughts where, obviously, where the book ended and went on to the atomic bomb dropping and so forth. One. Things that was interesting, there was a lot of concern in the u. S. What the change of tactics would mean for the American Public. The American Public had been sold on the idea that we were fighting this war using these sort of precise methods, in order to spare unnecessary civilian deaths. When lamay flies the First Mission in 1945, and theyre monitoring the air force is monitoring the editorial pages and Radio Broadcasts to see if theres pushback. And dresden happened a few weeks earlier and there was pushback in europe with that. And there was worry what the americans were going to say and Time Magazine said, properly kindled japanese cities will burn like autumn leaves. Lamay considers thats a green light and he burns 64 japanese city and it paves the way for what ultimately becomes the cue coup de grace on them. And a gift r from me to them, the number one, the books getting to know them. I did for i did for kevin and i did b29 painting of luckys planes going over through the flak field. And which of course is great if you see it from three miles away. And then of course james with the b29s flying over and that as well. So, were going to open up for audience questions and before you ask questions, i want you to ask each other a question quick and i gave you no preparation for you on this whatsoever and if theres anything kevins going to go first. All right. And a couple of things, one lucky flew the enola guy to the moth balls. He came back from air war in europe. 25 missions to go. He thought he was going to take a part in this i like the synergy and two, i read target tokyo before i wrote damn lucky and it gave me a benchmark so im a big fan of james. All right, a question. How when you set up to do a story like black snow and look at a Campaign Like that, how do you organize that . For me, im such a granular, one guy, and id love to hear your mindset. Im going to write this campaign and how does it become a narrative. I look at it like a novelist, a story arc, a single story line at that builds to climax, and when i wrote the war below on a submarine campaign, there isnt a single climax, and you need a single battle, a single campaign, where you can have your buildup in drama and what not. Characters are a big part of it. History is about people, i mean, its ordinary people and extraordinary situations. People like curtis lamay, he had the boot strapping kid from ohio that figures out how to defeat a nation. Thats what youre looking for, those kinds of components i think are what burning history alive. Now, kevin, everybody we have been talking about world war ii, man, how awesome was it to get to write that book on the takedown of Osama Bin Laden and whats that like . Thats a once in a lifetime, when you talk about one the guys of the raid is going to do a book and let you get the story before everybody else down to the nittygritty details, its one of those that you hope you dont screw it up. [laughter] and that was an amazing experience and amazing because i mean, mark owen is such a good, good guy and it was such an interesting story and his the reason why he wanted to do it was really to try to give us a chance to get a glimpse of what these guys are like on this team. So, using that as our north star, it was really a privilege to kind of get that story out of it and a chance to tell, cool, fun. How did you visualize what it was like in his house . You had a it was a novell and a kevin does an amazing job, youre there and you can feel it. How did you visualize it . Did he sketch it out . He sketched it and went over it a lot. Theresway a whole chapter where he gets dressed and tried to slow it down so were you there the whole time and we drew a lot of maps and pictures that i got. Remember, afterward, the press was there, the wreckage of the aircraft was there, so, i had actually set up a time i was going to pakistan to go up and actually try to see if i could see the house myself, but they just theyve destroyed the house, so i didnt get to go, but id been i traveled a lot, too, so i had a good idea of a little bit of what things look like and smell like in that part of the world, for him its drawing it and going over and over and over to make sure weve got the details. And youll follow up on what james said, you did that well in damn lucky and thats powerful when youre going over germany and flak is going around you and the wind is freezing and toes are falling off. And your turn, if you have a question, i dont know if we have microphones or however it is. Okay. Right, its right back there at the podium. Youve got to stand like youre giving a lecture and do that, no pressure. inaudible cspan cant pick you up. You do lucky loud, you do great. Oh, little guy, big voice. Lamay had expressed somewhere that he thought the abomb was pretty much redundant. That he had already won the air war and he had already defeated japan. Now, lamay, interesting to know, youre right. Lamay, by the time its important to remember, the only reason hiroshima was still intact, a city of that size with several hundred thousand people because lamay had previously been ordered to leave a few mid sized cities untouched so that we would have what amounted to a Practical Lab experiment to know what an atomic bomb would do to a city. By the time of august 6th, 1945, lamay is down to burning cities as small as 35,000 population. Hes out of targets. Hes burned out all the principal cities, and burned 56. 3 square miles out of the tokyo and burned nagoya, osaka, the six principal cities are gutted and moved onto secondary cities and now to tertiary cities and out of targets. And the atomic bombs, whats the point, ive done the hard work and professional jealousy there, no doubt about it. They recognize that the atomic bomb is a new weapon and takes the power of a sun and unleashes it on the city and sucks up energy and excitement and take away from the hard work hes done. And so, there is all of that combined. A lot of the guys in the air force that worked with lamay kind of thought the same thing, woo weve done the heavy lifting and its gratuitous. And when the emperor surrenders, he uses the atomic bomb out of a facesaving way out of the war. The americans have a new weapon and its going to eradicate our civilization and theres the atomic bomb for the japanese. Yeah, go ahead and in the book, too. Why dont you all come on up, hes going to do first, you second. I appreciate both of you being here and marshall, a great job, also. Do you think they made the connect decision to go from precision to burning cities . Yes, but i hate to be the arbiter of morality and so i will say that if lamay had not burned tokyo, someone else would have. The inertia was moving in that direction and you know, lamay gets the credit for being the one that actually decides to swap out our tactics and what not. But its important to remember the groundwork for his raid had begun when the war began. I mean, the development of the of napalm and the type of weapon that we used on tokyo actually began as soon as the war raid, and napalm was tested on a soccer field in harvard. You see the development of the weapon, you see the development of the b29 and we also see us testing that new incendiary on mock Japanese Village, on a mock Japanese Village in utah in 1943. Were accepting the flammability of japanese cities when lamay is still in europe. War planes are starting to analyze the japanese cities based on come busability and flammable. And which cities are more flammable than others and so, in providing him the blueprint that he ultimately uses. When lamay comes in, hes the one who ultimately puts the plan in operation. Its been building to that all along and hansel refusal to do so and had lamay not done it, he, too, would have been terminated, but it does speed the end to the war. And japans economy was crushed. With the submarine. The air war brings that brutality and horror of it into much sharper focus. That was the first crack in the japanese propaganda. Until then they thought they were broadcasting that japan was great victories and like 13 aircraft carriers, they were sunk and stuff like that. Yes, sir. Terrain of germany and the terrain of japanese as far as bombing, did it make any difference as to the effect of that or of do you understand my question . Youre says basically, what effect did bombing have on bringing down japanese and germany . Yes. I mean, with germany, for sure. You know, by the time you get to eday in 44 and the eventually fall of the third reich, u. S. Air force owns the skies. Without lucky in 43 throwing himself against the luftwaffe and continuing to battery the academy and the war of attrition, they dont own the skies and owning the skies, weve learned now, is like a key and the high ground. Young you can i dont think you can take the Bombing Campaign out of europe at all. To echo what kevin said, same with japan. The difference between japan being an island nation has suffered from the Great Success of the american submarine war and just in case youre interested theres a great book called the war below came out in 2013 that goes into greater detail. Yeah, japan is amazing, the lessons they didnt learn from world war i, what the germans did to the british, the island nation might appreciate the threat of a submarine war and they didnt. So the american submarine blockage starves them and thats its hard for people to think about hunger, but it levels everything and the industry and whatnot. One last question, oh, yes, maam. Well, its on television, so you need to be on the microphone. Oh. Over here. Thats okay, well sing a song or something while youre getting back there. Know the a big deal. Sorry about that. Doing great. Okay, now, im official, i guess, my question for kevin, in your book you talk about the magic number of 25 missions. My father was a b17 copilot, also stationed at thorpe abbott, but, yes, with the 100th bomb group and he got to england at the end of 44 and 45 so the 25 missions that you talked about was 1943 and my father flew 35 missions and im wondering what changed . Were they requiring more later or did he just choose to stay on and not get out after 25 do you think . They were requiring more later, as of war progressed, and the gentlemans question before, as the americans start today dominate the air that the number of missions went up. Jimmy doolittle when he shows up and takes over the 8th air force he changes the tactics, so the p51s used to fly with bombers in formation and try to defend the formation, when doolittle gets here he uses the bombers as bait and hell send them out and the luftwaffe, and as theyre effective as taking fighters out, the numbers for missions go up. Ill add one point to that Jimmy Doolittle, famous for his raid on tokyo actually says that his decision to change the way we use fighters during world war ii instead of accompanying the bombers they were to take the fight down to the german luftwaffe is the single most important decision he made in world war ii, it transformed the air war. It did. I was trying to think who id want to have dinner with from world war ii, i think that Jimmy Doolittle to be high on that list. He would be great. I think we are he about out of time. I want to say thank you for both kevin and james, lets give them a hand. [applause] if youre enjoying book tv then sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen. To receive the scheduled upcoming programs, author discussionses, book festival and more, book tv every sunday on cspan2 or anytime online at book tv. Org, television for serious readers. Be uptodate in the it laest in publishingith book tvs podcast about books. With current Nonfiction Book releases, plus, best seller lists, as well as Industry News and trend through insider interviews. Find out about books on cspan now, our free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. Middle and also students, its your time to shine. Youre invited to participate in this years cspan student cam documentary competition. In light of the midterm elections, picture yourself as a newly elected member of congress. We ask competitors, whats your top priority and why . 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