Design for Survival

The man who had his finger on "The Button" for seven years— GENERAL THOMAS S. POWER

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General Power has spent 37 years in the Air Force—the last seven as Commander in Chief of the Strategic Air Command. Born in New York City, he lost his heart to flying the day he persuaded a stick-and-string flyer to take him up for a ten-dollar ride. Although he could not afford to attend college, Thomas Power passed the stringent AAF exam after months of solitary study in the New York Public Library. He was graduated from flight training in 1929. In 1944, Thomas Power was a flying colonel in North Africa. Within a year he was, at 39, a brigadier general commanding a bomber wing flying daylight high-altitude raids from Guam over Japan. It was General Power who developed the plan to use fire bombs over Japan, and it was General Power who personally led the mission that incinerated 16 square miles of Tokyo—history's most devastating air raid. After World War II, General Power was appointed vice-commander of SAC, and with General Curtis LeMay built it into a force of nuclear bombers and ICBMs that he believes to be the free world's most effective tool for peace. General Power was appointed Commander in Chief of SAC in 1957. In addition to his SAC command, he also served as Director of the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff, in which capacity he was responsible for the operational plan for initial U.S. retaliatory strikes in case of global war. He has twice been awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.

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“Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win.” ― Thomas S. Power