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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher |
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THE BOMBER MAFIA
A Dream, A Temptation, and The Longest Night of the Second World War
How a small team of utopian Air Force strategists attempted to win World War II through precision bombing - only to witness Curtis LeMay defeat Japan from the air, by burning nearly 70 of its cities to the ground. A tale of idealists, grim pragmatists, technologists, and the wages of war.
For most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II, the airplane was just a supplementary weapon, to be used in support of armies on the ground. But a small band of idealistic strategists, the Bomber Mafia, dreamed of revolutionizing war, making it far less lethal by sending jets into enemy territory, and bombing crucial choke points. If they could just take out some ball-bearing plants, an enemy's military would be crippled. The Mafia championed an ingenious invention: the Norden bombsight. It was said that a bombardier could drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet thanks to the Norden.
Their theories didn't work out against Germany, where they faced bad weather, enemy jet fighters, and human error - but the Mafia were true believers, and they moved on to the Pacific War. Again, they faileddue to jet-stream winds, challenging weather patterns, and yet more human error. Finally, they were replaced by the ultimate pragmatist: Curtis LeMay. He took the opposite approach. With another recent inventionnapalmand daring tacticsfly low, fly straight, and dump as many incendiary bombs as possible into city centersLeMay brought Japan to its knees. He targeted civilians, and he utterly destroyed over 60 Japanese cities even before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. LeMay spared the lives of hundreds of thousands of troops who never had to invade.
But at what cost?
The Bomber Mafia is a story of ideals, technology, and one of the greatest moral challenges in modern history.
Malcolm Gladwell is the author of six New York Times bestsellers: Talking to Strangers, David and Goliath, What the Dog Saw, Outliers, Blink, and The Tipping Point. He is also the cofounder of Pushkin Industries, which produces the podcasts Revisionist History, which reconsiders things both overlooked and misunderstood, and Broken Record, where he, Rick Rubin, and Bruce Headlam interview musicians across a wide range of genres. Gladwell has been included in the TIME 100 Most Influential People list and touted as one of Foreign Policy's Top Global Thinkers. His books have been translated in more than 20 languages.
Their theories didn't work out against Germany, where they faced bad weather, enemy jet fighters, and human error - but the Mafia were true believers, and they moved on to the Pacific War. Again, they faileddue to jet-stream winds, challenging weather patterns, and yet more human error. Finally, they were replaced by the ultimate pragmatist: Curtis LeMay. He took the opposite approach. With another recent inventionnapalmand daring tacticsfly low, fly straight, and dump as many incendiary bombs as possible into city centersLeMay brought Japan to its knees. He targeted civilians, and he utterly destroyed over 60 Japanese cities even before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. LeMay spared the lives of hundreds of thousands of troops who never had to invade.
But at what cost?
The Bomber Mafia is a story of ideals, technology, and one of the greatest moral challenges in modern history.
Malcolm Gladwell is the author of six New York Times bestsellers: Talking to Strangers, David and Goliath, What the Dog Saw, Outliers, Blink, and The Tipping Point. He is also the cofounder of Pushkin Industries, which produces the podcasts Revisionist History, which reconsiders things both overlooked and misunderstood, and Broken Record, where he, Rick Rubin, and Bruce Headlam interview musicians across a wide range of genres. Gladwell has been included in the TIME 100 Most Influential People list and touted as one of Foreign Policy's Top Global Thinkers. His books have been translated in more than 20 languages.
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Published 2021-04-27 by Little Brown |