The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War

In this brief Introduction of several pages, Gladwell sets the scene for the story he will tell. It revolves around the replacement of General Haywood Hansell by General Curtis LeMay as commander of a US bombing unit in the Mariana Islands toward the end of World War II. The United States had taken the islands from the Japanese in the summer of 1944. The new long-range bomber called the B-29 Superfortress could reach Japan from the islands, and Hansell led the attacks that fall and early winter.

During the first week of January 1945, General Lauris Norstad, Hansell’s commanding officer, paid a visit. It was not about strategy, it turned out, but rather to relieve Hansell of his command. Hansell was shocked and hurt, as LeMay was his opposite and, in a way, a rival. Later that month, LeMay arrived to take command. Gladwell explains, “[T]hat change of command reverberates to this day” (8), and it is the focus of the book. He tells the story of a new technology that, like so many, arrives with promise only to have unintended consequences.