Curtis LeMay Biography 14: 르메이와 헨리 아놀드의 만남

*(presumably 1943) On September 2, at Elveden Hall, Lemay met for the first time Gen. Henry H. Arnold. (the Air Force chief of staff.)

 

A few years earlier, LeMay had once visited Arnold’s office, with several others, to receive a citation.

- citation: 표창장

 

He had some deep worries on his mind, and among the most serious of them was a new bomber he was shepherding through the early stages of production—the enormous B-29, a plane half again as big as the B-17.

 

And it wouldn’t be an easy job because the B-29 was an airplane beset by problems so serious they threatened Arnold’s reputation. He had virtually bet his career on the development of that plane, which, with its promised range and bomb load, offered the only hope of an effective air offensive against Japan. In the fall of 1943, it was beginning to look as if he had made a foolish bet. […] Boeing’s production of air frames was proceeding satisfactorily;  it was the delivery of the plane’s newly designed Wright twenty-two-hundred-horsepower Duplex Cyclone engine that had failed to keep pace. Only a hundred of them (enough for twenty-five planes) had yet been produced at a time when more than a thousand were due. Arnold’s staff had prepared an impatient memo to Robert Lovett, assistant secretary of war for air, pleading for correction of this situation, but the memo was not impatient enough for Arnold. He had scrawled across the top of the draft copy: “Poor presentation. What I want is a letter showing how our plans for B-29 units would be completed for early 1955 operation if it were not for lack of engines. H.H.A.”(96-97)

 

It wans’t Arnold’s way. Indeed, he hadn’t even seen fit as yet to promote LeMay, who was still a colonel, though he was doing a major general’s job. That was an oversight, incidentally, that LeMay did not appreciate. (97)

 

 

*르메이의 월급은 얼마였을까? 금액은 쓰여있지 않지만 아무튼 많이 받은 듯. 

“When I got to the Third Division,” he[LeMay] later recalled, “there was an inspector general’s report which said a commander of a unit not of the rank called for by the unit, if he was commanding ‘at the direction of the president,’ and if the unit had been commanded by an officer of the higher rank, and it was in combat, then that officer [[of the lower rank]] could draw the pay of the higher rank. There had been a brigadier general [[Fred Anderson]] commanding. I was commanding ‘at the direction of the president’ [[because]] there were a half dozen people [[eligible for the job]] who outranked me. [[Ordinarily if an officer is placed in command above others who outrank him, the president, as commander-in-chief, must approve it.]] So I was a colonel in a major general’s job and we were in combat. I called in my finance officer [[Capt. F. L. Greene]] and said ‘Look at this. Get me a major’s general’s pay.’ He couldn’t quite do that because the outfit was never commanded by a major general, but he got me a brigadier general’s pay.”

- brigadier general: colonel보다는 높고 major general보다는 낮은 계급, 아무튼 르메이는 계급은 colonel인데, 봉급은 brigadier general 정도로 받음.

 

Finally, on September 29, less than four weeks after Arnold’s visit to Elveden Hall, LeMay got the brigadier general’s star to match the pay. But he hadn’t forgotten or forgiven the unexplained delay in his promotion. “It was about time,” he said to several staff members when they congratulated him.

- “it’s about time”: 이제야 될 일이 되었네, 너무 오래 걸렸네, (진작 되었어야 할 걸 이제야 해주네)

“At Elveden Hall,” Kissner recalls, “he kept a batch of B-17 models on the ends of ramrod-stem stands of different heights, and …

- ramrod: 머스킷 총 따위에 쓰는 장전용 쇠막대

- ramrod-stem stands: 곧고 뻣뻣한 막대처럼 생긴 기둥이 있는 받침대

 

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“Harding mirthfully strummed a base fiddle, while fist fights were fought between his men and uninvited visitors from the 95th [[Group]].”

- mirthfully: 즐겁게

- strum: 현악기를 퉁기다, 퉁퉁 치다

- base fiddle: 더블베이스, 콘트라베이스, 베이스피들. 모두 같은 악기 뜻함. Fase fiddle은 구어체.

- fist fight: 주먹다짐

 

“We had been together at Selfridge Field [[in the early thirties]],” LeMay said recently, “He wasn’t doing very well [[with the One-hundredth]]. I knew I had to fire him but I just couldn’t. I thought he’d snap out of it. Anyway, I should’ve fired him but I didn’t Then fate stepped in. he had a gall bladder problem or something. […]” (100)

- snap out of it: (부정적인 감정, 상태 등에서) 갑자기 벗어나다

- “I thought he’d snap out of it” 그가 정신을 차릴 줄 알았어.

- gall bladder: 담낭, 쓸개

- gallstone: 담석

 

“They[Germans] are using four-engine planes and accurate reports state they are using a lot of obsolete stuff. This could be a sign of desperation—putting rocket guns on everything they can get their hands on. I think we will find when they put rocket guns on old planes they have nothing else . . . which means they are in bad shape.”

- rocket gun: 로켓포

- 그들이 닿을 수 있는 모든 것(모든 비행기)에 rocket gun을 달고 있다. (여기서 everything은 맥락 상 비행기를 의미)

- in bad shape: 제대로 된 최신 기체는 없고, 뭐라도 끌어다가 무장하는 형편

 

It is difficult to say, in retrospect, whether LeMay was as optimistic as he sounded, or whether he was simply trying to buoy the spirits of his men in the face of the ravages being visited upon them, day after day.

- ravage: (그들에게 가해지고 있는) 참혹한 피해들.

- day after day: 매일같이, 날마다 계속해서. (지긋지긋함이 전달되는 표현)

 

On the 15th, one day after the mission, it was a bit early for Arnold to know whether his “marksmen” had been that accurate (they were in act quite accurate though not devastatingly precise), but it wasn’t early for him to know that the Air Force might soon be under attack from Americans as well as Germans unless he acted quickly to forestall criticism.

- marksmen: 사격술이 뛰어난 사람

- forestall: 미리 막다, 방지하다, 선수치다

 

He even wrangled a few days free to spend with her and their daughter, Janie, in Cleveland, but not until after he spent some time talking to Hap Arnold and his staff about the pressing needs of the Eighth Air Force, and reassuring them of its eventual success in destroying German industry.

- wrangle: 심지어 아내, 딸과 며칠의 자유 시간을 가까스로 얻어내기까지 했다.

- wrangle: 언쟁하다는 뜻인데, 구어에서는 ‘어려운 과정을 통해 얻어내다, 애써서 쟁취하다’는 의미이다.

 

[…] the air war against Japan, which hadn’t yet begun, and wasn’t likely ever to do so unless he could get some movement out of the B-29.

*이 당시 Hap은 물론 르메이의 걱정—유럽 전선의 상황—에도 동의하는 바였지만 일본과의 공중전에 대해서도 근심중이었음. 아직 공군이 일본과의 전쟁에 들어간 건 아니었는데, B-29로 뭔가 해내지 않으면 아예 전쟁 못하게 될 판이었다.(시작도 못할 판)

 

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*B-29의 first test flight: Sep 21, 1942

*B-29의 second test plane, flown by its original test pilot, had crashed with an engine on fire. (cause: faulty cooling system)

*nine months later, B-29 engines still suffered from a faulty cooling system. & Automatic firing control system wasn’t yet working right. & other problems.

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The B-29, because of its size and many original features, suffered from so many bugs it had forced Arnold, on October 11, to write what was for him a humiliating memorandum to President Roosevelt:

 

*Hap은 B-29쪽으로 LeMay를 빼야하나 고민했는데, 아직 확정된 것이 없으므로 아무 말도 할 수 없었던 상태.

 

LeMay’s fame had spread so rapidly that he discovered he was now something of a hero at the Pentagon, but he didn’t create as much excitement there in November 1943, as did another hero—movie hero Clark Gable, who had also become, in the public mind, an Air Force hero.  (103)

 

Captain Gable, a gunner with five missions over Europe to his credit, had been sent back to the States, an Air Medal and fifty thousand feet of film in hand, to produce a training film. General LeMay won some smiles and admiring glances as he walked through the Pentagon corridors. But Captain Gable found secretaries lined up “six deep to watch him walk by,” and to gasp at how “marvelous” he was. Gable was also modest about his combat accomplishments. Had he hit any German planes? No. What did he think of his Eighth Air Force colleagues? “I don’t think I could put that in words. They’re a pretty good bunch.” (103-104)

- to his credit: 그의 공적으로

- fifty thousand feet of film in hand: 훈련용 영상 5만 피트 분량의 필름을 손에 가지고