A review by mjfmjfmjf
The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War by Malcolm Gladwell

3.0

Not your typical book by this author. And this is what it means to follow an author, because it is very unlikely I would have read this otherwise. It was readable and short. So the idea is simple, in the 1930's a bunch of pre us air force thought that technology had reached the point of precision bombing - that you could take out an enemies ability to wage war without targeting civilians. And apparently they were mostly wrong. And then we invented napalm and really probably could have gotten close to doing that. And instead Japan was burned to the ground targeting civilians. And in the end years later the technology for precision targeted bombing to the point of using it for assassination exists. And napalm is outlawed.

This is an ugly story but worth knowing. And it could have been told a number of different ways.

It starts up like it is really going to be a story of the bomb sight and then takes a turn.