The Bomber Mafia (by Malcolm Gladwell)
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Most military thinkers in the years leading up to the Second World War saw the airplane as an afterthought. In The Bomber Mafia, Canadian writer Malcolm Gladwell tells of a small band of idealistic strategists, the “Bomber Mafia,” who asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal?
In contrast, the bombing of Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives, but may have spared even more by averting a planned U.S. invasion. In The Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, “Was it worth it?”
Things might have gone differently had LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. Hansell believed in precision bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of The Second World War. The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.
257 pages with an index.
