Just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, “The Bomber Mafia”, and am sorely disappointed. It’s like Gladwell has expanded a short blog post into a 150 page book that’s big on storytelling but essentially a complete lightweight when it comes to content and conclusions.
The basic thesis of the book can be summed up in a few short sentences: During WW2, there was a group of air force officers led by Haywood Hansell called the Bomber Mafia who thought that they could bomb cities “more morally” through daytime precision bombing; they were hedging their bets on a revolutionary invention, the Norden bombsight, that allowed bombardiers to pinpoint targets from 15,000 feet. In reality, the philosophy failed miserably because the bombsight was less than perfect under real conditions, because even with the bombsight the bombs were not that precise, and most crucially because in Japan, the hitherto undiscovered jet stream which buffeted airplanes with 120 knot winds basically made it impossible for the B-29s to stabilize and successfully bomb their targets.
Enter Curtis LeMay, the ruthless air force general who took the B-29 down to 5000 feet to avoid the jet stream, ripped most of the guns out and instead of precision bombs, used incendiary bombs with napalm at night to burn down large built up civilian areas of Japanese with horrific casualties, the most famous incident of course being the March 1945 firebombing of Tokyo that killed over 100,000 people. The switch from precision bombing which failed to strategic or area bombing which presumably worked is the core message of the book.
Except that this is a great oversimplification of matters. The fact of the matter is that strategic bombing did very little damage to morale and production until very late in the war. And strategic bombing in Europe did not work until the bombers were accompanied by long-range P-51 Mustang fighters. It also did not work in later conflicts, most egregiously Vietnam and Cambodia. But Gladwell’s book is very slim on any of this, as it is on pretty much every other topic he discusses, from the Norden bombsight to the development of napalm. This is especially a pity since he is a good storyteller; in some sense it’s even worse because the storytelling actually obscures the facts.
There are very few references – he seems obsessed with quoting only two historians named Tami Biddle and Stephen McFarland for most of the discussion. The superficial discussion about this particular topic is extensively jarring because strategic bombing has been written about extensively during the last several decades by historians like Richard Overy and Paul Kennedy. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Patrick Blackett wrote about the mistaken assumptions about strategic bombing way back in the 1950s. But Gladwell quotes none of these sources, instead just focusing on Haywood Hansell and Curtis LeMay as if they and their thoughts on the matter were the only things that counted. Perhaps worst of all, the complex moral consequences of LeMay’s argument and strategic bombing in general are completely sidelined.
I really wish this book were better, given Gladwell’s storytelling skills. As it stands it’s slim pickings, a couple of anecdotes and stories compressed as a grand philosophical message in 150 pages that leaves the reader completely unsatisfied. If you are really interested in the topic of bombing during WW2, look at other sources
Source:
http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2021/04/malcolm-gladwells-bomber-mafia-weak-tea.html
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