The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War

What you'll learn

Key insights

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