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

The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War is a nonfiction book by Malcolm Gladwell, published in 2021. It’s a history of the dueling philosophies regarding bombing that existed in the US military during World War II. The book is adapted from a series of podcasts Gladwell created for his show Revisionist History. Gladwell is the author of several New York Times bestsellers, including The Tipping Point, Outliers, David and Goliath, and this book. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine for over 25 years and was named by Time magazine as one of its 100 Most Influential People. This guide is based on the hardcover first edition.

Content Warning: The source text contains historical quotations that use offensive terms for Japanese people.

Summary

Gladwell begins the story in the Introduction in January 1945, on the Mariana Islands. General Haywood Hansell is being relieved from overseeing the 21st Bomber Command, to be replaced by General Curtis LeMay. This change of command—and what it meant in terms of military strategy—is the crux of this book. In the first chapter, Gladwell introduces Carl Norden, inventor of the Norden bombsight, the first sight that allowed bombs to accurately hit their target. The next chapter details the pilots at the Air Corps Tactical School in Alabama who were known as the Bomber Mafia. In the late 1930s, they shared a philosophy that with the new Norden bombsight, bombing could be done more effectively, hitting the enemy’s vital military targets (called “choke points”). They believed that war could thus be waged more humanely because collateral damage, including civilian deaths, could be minimized and wars ended faster.

Chapter 3 is about the British and American bombing campaign against Germany in 1943. World War II had begun in Europe in 1939, and the United States entered in 1941, after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. The British strategy was known as area bombing, which amounted to creating as much damage as possible over a wide area. The American military leaders, however, convinced their allies to let them pursue precision bombing, based on the Bomber Mafia’s philosophy of taking out vital choke points. In Chapters 4 and 5, Gladwell provides background about Hansell and LeMay, and outlines the Americans’ bombing mission on Germany’s ball-bearing factories, led by Hansell with LeMay a participant. The mission failed for several reasons, including clouds that obscured the targets, which had to be seen to use the Norden bombsight. What’s more, the sight itself was less accurate in real-world conditions than during testing.

The rest of the book focuses on the Pacific Theater during the last two years of the war. Chapter 6 notes the development of the new B-29 bomber and how that extended the range of bombing the Americans could conduct against Japan. Two new bomber groups were formed in the Pacific: LeMay headed one in India and Hansell led another in the Marianas. Gladwell describes the challenges that both faced. Chapter 7 provides some background regarding the development at Harvard University of napalm, an incendiary substance that could be used in bombs to create an intense firestorm.

Chapter 8 resumes the narrative of the bombing campaign against Japan from the Marianas. LeMay has taken over from Hansell and used napalm, resulting in markedly more success but also much greater destruction and killing of civilians. The last chapter deals with the end of the war, as Gladwell examines the moral issues involved in LeMay’s actions and whether they were justified in the circumstances. The brief Conclusion looks at the bigger picture this story tells about the use of technology. It reviews the capabilities that today’s military has in terms of bombing and notes that the Bomber Mafia’s philosophy of precision bombing won out in the end.