The Bomber Mafia
A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War
A circle of airmen believed precision bombing could make war humane. Tokyo, March 1945, answered them.
Between the wars a circle of American airmen became convinced that a good enough bombsight could make war precise, and therefore more humane. Gladwell follows that conviction from a flying school in Alabama to the firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945, the deadliest night of the entire war. It is a short book about a technological dream, and about the commander who quietly set it aside once it stopped delivering.
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