Key Insights:

1. A change of generals in the Pacific theater had incalculable repercussions for World War II and modern warfare strategy.
2. The bombsight is the most important 20th century invention you have never heard of.
3. A group of pilots at an obscure military academy in Alabama developed a revolutionary approach to warfare aimed at eliminating casualties.
4. The British balked at precision bombing, but the Bomber Mafia had an opportunity to prove them wrong in the European theater.
5. Precision bombing in Japan proved not just difficult, but impossible.
6. The push for indiscriminate napalm bombing in Japan was the temptation that would have marked the end of Bomber Mafia dreams.
7. General LeMay’s firebombing of Tokyo “got it done,” but the cost in damage and loss of life was catastrophic.
8. We have to grapple with the tension between the moral earnestness of precision bombing and the efficient pragmatism of morale bombing.