Review of BOMBER MAFIA: A Story Set in War
A "story of war" and much, much more ...
You will read about many arresting, disturbing things in this anecdotal and lively narrative. You will learn about the very respectable origins of napalm. You will revisit the issue of strategic bombing both in Europe and the Pacific. The book will eventually focus on the incendiary bombing of 67 Japanese cities in the final stage of the war. Before Gladwell’s arresting portrayal of Curtis LeMay, you will read about Churchill’s controversial, possibly psychopathic sidekick, Frederick Lindemann. All the profiles are compelling and together tell a story unlike one told in a traditional military history narrative. Disguised or digested by his breezy style, a style that originated with a popular Podcast, is the horror of total war. A war that intentionally targets civilians, millions of whom will be killed with indiscriminate disregard by Allied bombers – particularly by the victor, the United States. Why did Gladwell pick this subject?
It is a gripping story in all its horror. The fate of the B-17 bombers flying daylight raids over Germany. The B-29s flying to the edge of their range getting swatted away by the then undiscovered “jet stream” that curled around Mt. Fuji. Napalm being tested on the soccer fields of Harvard University. The unforgettable description of the deadliest day in the long human history of war when hundreds of American B-29s flew in over a windy, wooden Tokyo at 5000 feet and intentionally created a firestorm that would destroy all their targets and 100,000 people before the sun rose. In the end, the “firestorms” unleashed by LeMay and his B-29s would make the atomic bombs pale in comparison bringing up the question whether it was those bombs or LeMay who forced the Japanese to surrender.
This is all at the surface, however. Gladwell’s “war story” frames perfectly the eternal question that surrounds so many of man’s actions – do the “ends” justify the “means”? Are those who execute the “means” to their extreme conclusion like Curtis LeMay accountable and, if so, to whom and to what? Where does this accountability begin and end?
The book is a perfect plane read … ironically.
The Bomber Mafia: A Story Set in War
Malcolm Gladwell (2020)
236 pages