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hanzer's review against another edition
5.0
An amazing audiobook. Both fascinating and horrific, but well worth the short listen.
talile's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoyed the audio first approach, the story was interesting and very well done. Great experience.
emilyrosebooks's review against another edition
informative
tense
fast-paced
5.0
I absolutely loved this, I was engrossed from the beginning, and I feel like I definitely learned a lot about WWII that public school seems to have left out. Very fast read, and I highly recommend the audiobook because there are clips from the actual conversations where quotes would be, and it makes for a more engaging and entertaining listen.
Content Warnings
Graphic: War
andrewk35's review against another edition
3.0
“All war is absurd. For thousands of years, human beings have chosen to settle their differences by obliterating one another. And when we are not obliterating one another, we spend an enormous amount of time and attention coming up with better ways to obliterate one another the next time around. It’s all a little strange, if you think about it.”
The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War
By Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell had been on my radar for a while. I’d heard some of his speeches and knew he was a widely published author and podcaster. After watching an interview, he did on Hot Ones where he explained that Bomber Mafia was first designed to be an audiobook due to the inclusion of cockpit audio and newsreel voice over, I thought it might be worth giving a listen to. Gladwell also narrates the book and is, in my opinion, pleasant to listen to.
The book describes an unfortunate flood in America that damaged a factory that happened to be the sole creator of certain springs for airplane rotors. The damage to the factory effectively halted airplane production across the entire United States. This lead early bomber pilot commanders to wonder if they would be capable of finding these crucial industries and similarly crippling them and thus the war effort should America find itself engaged in war again. The book focuses then for a time on the precision engineering required to create a bomb sight that would in theory, allow a single bomb to hit a pickle barrel from 30,000 feet.
While the exacting engineering was interesting, the narrative stuck with the curious Norden for quite awhile to divulge his work habits and interpersonal skills. It wasn’t necessarily uninteresting, but it felt like it may have been padding the length of the book to a degree. As World War 2 begins the idea of high-altitude daylight precision bombing is adopted in the Western Theater with limited effectiveness and the loss of lives both civilian and bomber crew. The book spends some time discussing these ambitious bombing missions and I thought that the book might become very Eurocentric as tends to be the case in a great deal of World War 2 media and history. Especially as the “longest night” title made me believe that the book would primarily be about the firebombing of Tokyo.
As it turns out, a few short chapters later, I was right. But this is also I think where the book lost me to a degree. Gladwell paints the philosophy of the proven ineffective high altitude bombing as the epitome of a just approach to war. One of the proponents, Major General Haywood Hansell dons the vestments of an unbloodied saint. On the other end, enter General Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay. LeMay is a character I have read of before with some interest. He’s certainly not without his controversies and I was worried that Gladwell would simply cast LeMay as his villain. To my surprise he was not, although he clearly had fortune of hindsight when discussing the philosophies of these two characters. Hansell is relieved after his attempt at strategic bombing in the jet stream above Japan proves ineffective. LeMay’s approach is different. Fly under 10,000 feet where his bombs can be effective, particularly a new type of incendiary bomb, napalm. LeMay also personally lead many bombing missions in the position of the first plane. He demanded a lot from his aviators and crews but didn’t manage his role from an office despite his rank.
The resulting low altitude incendiary bombing of 67 Japanese cities, including tightly compacted and mostly wooden Tokyo, resulted in staggering losses. The firebombing of Tokyo was the deadliest bombing mission in World War 2 and is often overshadowed by the later use of atomic weapons. In this short book, it ends up being the ultimate and titular event. LeMay would later say that if he had shortened the war by a day, he felt that this approach (and the later use of nuclear weapons) ultimately saved lives. The postwar government of Japan seems to have agreed and awarded him their highest honor, the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun (1st class)
“LeMay always said that the atomic bombs were superfluous. The real work had already been done.”
Gladwell ends up concluding that later use of (functional) precision bombing and guided munitions is somehow proof positive that Hansell and his ideas were more correct. I found this position somewhat difficult to process as Gladwell mentioned the relative ineffectiveness of the application of strategic bombing during the war.
It was an interesting and short listen (or read) although I found the moral lens of the work a little too constricting at times and would generally recommend deeper reading on any of the subject matter presented.
The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War
By Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell had been on my radar for a while. I’d heard some of his speeches and knew he was a widely published author and podcaster. After watching an interview, he did on Hot Ones where he explained that Bomber Mafia was first designed to be an audiobook due to the inclusion of cockpit audio and newsreel voice over, I thought it might be worth giving a listen to. Gladwell also narrates the book and is, in my opinion, pleasant to listen to.
The book describes an unfortunate flood in America that damaged a factory that happened to be the sole creator of certain springs for airplane rotors. The damage to the factory effectively halted airplane production across the entire United States. This lead early bomber pilot commanders to wonder if they would be capable of finding these crucial industries and similarly crippling them and thus the war effort should America find itself engaged in war again. The book focuses then for a time on the precision engineering required to create a bomb sight that would in theory, allow a single bomb to hit a pickle barrel from 30,000 feet.
While the exacting engineering was interesting, the narrative stuck with the curious Norden for quite awhile to divulge his work habits and interpersonal skills. It wasn’t necessarily uninteresting, but it felt like it may have been padding the length of the book to a degree. As World War 2 begins the idea of high-altitude daylight precision bombing is adopted in the Western Theater with limited effectiveness and the loss of lives both civilian and bomber crew. The book spends some time discussing these ambitious bombing missions and I thought that the book might become very Eurocentric as tends to be the case in a great deal of World War 2 media and history. Especially as the “longest night” title made me believe that the book would primarily be about the firebombing of Tokyo.
As it turns out, a few short chapters later, I was right. But this is also I think where the book lost me to a degree. Gladwell paints the philosophy of the proven ineffective high altitude bombing as the epitome of a just approach to war. One of the proponents, Major General Haywood Hansell dons the vestments of an unbloodied saint. On the other end, enter General Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay. LeMay is a character I have read of before with some interest. He’s certainly not without his controversies and I was worried that Gladwell would simply cast LeMay as his villain. To my surprise he was not, although he clearly had fortune of hindsight when discussing the philosophies of these two characters. Hansell is relieved after his attempt at strategic bombing in the jet stream above Japan proves ineffective. LeMay’s approach is different. Fly under 10,000 feet where his bombs can be effective, particularly a new type of incendiary bomb, napalm. LeMay also personally lead many bombing missions in the position of the first plane. He demanded a lot from his aviators and crews but didn’t manage his role from an office despite his rank.
The resulting low altitude incendiary bombing of 67 Japanese cities, including tightly compacted and mostly wooden Tokyo, resulted in staggering losses. The firebombing of Tokyo was the deadliest bombing mission in World War 2 and is often overshadowed by the later use of atomic weapons. In this short book, it ends up being the ultimate and titular event. LeMay would later say that if he had shortened the war by a day, he felt that this approach (and the later use of nuclear weapons) ultimately saved lives. The postwar government of Japan seems to have agreed and awarded him their highest honor, the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun (1st class)
“LeMay always said that the atomic bombs were superfluous. The real work had already been done.”
Gladwell ends up concluding that later use of (functional) precision bombing and guided munitions is somehow proof positive that Hansell and his ideas were more correct. I found this position somewhat difficult to process as Gladwell mentioned the relative ineffectiveness of the application of strategic bombing during the war.
It was an interesting and short listen (or read) although I found the moral lens of the work a little too constricting at times and would generally recommend deeper reading on any of the subject matter presented.