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A review by dlsmall
The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War by Malcolm Gladwell
4.0
Interesting topic to catch Gladwell’s attention. I don’t know why I had this fantasy regarding The whole concept of the Norden bombsight and high altitude precision bombing? I guess war movies and histories and documentaries made too close to the war. In actuality, it was a concept ahead of its time and technology.
In the parallel concepts of British night bombing campaigns and American daylight raids, I always found the whole British philosophy horrifying, but then the cost for any of our successes was high, with a very low return on that investment…on a mission by mission basis.
Then turn to Japan, where the lack of precision success, given the demands and distances, quickly turned to night, low-level, mass raids, with incendiaries…which I guess I should not be surprised to no learn were fundamentally sticks of a gel that twenty-five years later would just be called napalm. Brutal. Necessary? Even the Japanese government and historians later felt that such tactics speeded the wars end and prevented Soviet and American invasions, that would have ended with Japan w]being treated much like Germany. Not in the book, but I would guess with way less humanity.
Other than opening a Pandora’s Box, and radiation, I am left wondering…were the nuclear bombs that much worse than the many incendiary raids, both in Japan and in Europe?
In the parallel concepts of British night bombing campaigns and American daylight raids, I always found the whole British philosophy horrifying, but then the cost for any of our successes was high, with a very low return on that investment…on a mission by mission basis.
Then turn to Japan, where the lack of precision success, given the demands and distances, quickly turned to night, low-level, mass raids, with incendiaries…which I guess I should not be surprised to no learn were fundamentally sticks of a gel that twenty-five years later would just be called napalm. Brutal. Necessary? Even the Japanese government and historians later felt that such tactics speeded the wars end and prevented Soviet and American invasions, that would have ended with Japan w]being treated much like Germany. Not in the book, but I would guess with way less humanity.
Other than opening a Pandora’s Box, and radiation, I am left wondering…were the nuclear bombs that much worse than the many incendiary raids, both in Japan and in Europe?