 He would also become the longest serving person in that rank in American military history.In 1954 LeMay remarked to pilot Hal Austin, whose plane had been damaged by a MiG-17 while on a reconnaissance mission over the Soviet Union, "Well, maybe if we do this overflight right, we can get World War III started".Hal Austin assumed that LeMay was joking, but years later, after LeMay retired, Austin saw him again and "brought up the subject of the mission we had flown.