At first, the Army and the Navy tried to halt history too. In 1949, when the Defense Department cut the budget for ships in order to buy more bombers, the Navy’s top echelon of admirals staged an unprecedented revolt. Several of them condemned the A-bomb on moral grounds. At a congressional hearing, Rear Admiral Ralph Ofstie—who had served on the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, a postwar panel of officers and economists that downplayed the role of air power in the Allied victory—condemned Air Force–style city-bombing as “random mass slaughter,” “ruthless and barbaric,” and “contrary to our
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