Is aerial bombing a strategic weapon or an instrument of terror? Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, “The Bomber Mafia,” tells the story of how American military aviation thinking transformed from aiming to dismantle enemy industrial capability to delivering wholesale slaughter of civilians … and how the pendulum now has swung back.
Master storyteller that he is, Gladwell brings alive charismatic historical figures who played key roles in the transition, especially Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, who in later years earned opprobrium for suggesting that North Vietnam could be bombed “into the Stone Age.”
LeMay’s personal courage and pragmatism, as well as his dedication to excellence among the pilots and crews he led, somewhat redeem his reputation in Gladwell’s retelling.
Also depicted in depth is the more sympathetic character of Gen. Haywood Hansell, from whom LeMay took over command of bombing of Japan and who saw his more ethical strategy of targeting only military sites replaced by LeMay’s approach of mass destruction, culminating in atomic warfare.
The book does particularly well in limning the interpersonal dynamics of the mostly young, ambitious and competitive officers who formed the group to which the book’s title refers.
Gladwell makes a compelling case that LeMay was right and that proponents of precision bombing were wrong, at least in terms of bringing the war to an end.
The accuracy in proving-ground tests of the legendary Norden bombsight had led a cabal of American Army aviation leaders — there was no Air Force then — to believe that precision bombing could cripple the manufacture of strategically crucial ball bearings and synthetic fuels. Such bombing required daylight missions, exposing fliers and crews to accurate enemy artillery and fighter planes.
Many lives and aircraft later, it became apparent that, under combat conditions, very few bombs were actually hitting their targets, and the damage done was minimal compared to the human cost.
Night-time incendiary raids aimed at homes of factory workers (and their families), however, could halt production of materiel effectively.
Gladwell describes how cities such as Dresden in Germany and Tokyo in Japan were turned to furnaces and cinders as pilots and crews watched in dismay.
Gladwell also takes readers to today’s world, where lasers and computers make the precision attacks strategists once dreamed of a practical reality, even as nations retain vast arsenals of weapons of mass destruction.
As with all Gladwell’s books, I found “The Bomber Mafia” a compelling and vivid read, though not on a par with “The Tipping Point” or “David and Goliath.”
Partly to blame is that those books yielded surprising revelations, often counter-intuitive, where this story is much more straightforward and unremarkable.
But I also felt that Gladwell skimmed over much that could have enriched the book. Nowhere does he mention how German, Japanese, Italian and Russian bombing strategists rationalized their own decisions to intentionally strike civilian targets.
And Gladwell occasionally gets basic facts wrong: for example, he refers to a lack of a tailwind to help a heavily laden bomber take off, when a headwind is what aerodynamics demands.
There’s also a looseness, an informality at times, to his descriptions, as if he’s chatting with the reader, that can be jarring at times.
Overall, though, like the bombers he writes vividly about, Gladwell delivers the goods.
