Copyright 2023 Free Audiobooks. ", "Warden and the Air Corps Tactical School", "Malcolm Gladwell's Fantasy of War From the Air", "Malcolm Gladwell's The Bomber Mafia is misleading history-lite", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bomber_Mafia&oldid=1093347884, 1960s disestablishments in the United States, Organizations disestablished in the 1960s, 20th-century history of the United States Air Force, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. Malcolm Gladwell The Bomber Mafia Audiobook Online. And because we dont know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. [27] Ricks calls LeMay an "unexpected hero" of the story,[22] while McConnachie cites Hansell as Gladwell's hero. The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effects predicts sociologists and sports psychologists would say the same for his . Because of a review from one of the Goodread friends, I decided to take on the audiobook, instead of the print/e-book version. Thank you for purchasing The Bomber Mafia, an audiobook by Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm Gladwell's new book and audiobook "The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation and the Longest Night of the Second World War" digs deep into one of the lesser-known rivalries of the war,. With thousands of Veterans Day military discounts to choose from, how do you find the best ones? The American militarys precise new way of information-based warfare so far has been tested only in relatively small and short bombing campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans, the gunboat wars of our time. When he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II. Curtis Lemay as well as Haywood Hansell are opposite ends of a range in the high adrenaline battle Flying force. The State of Journalism on World Press Freedom Day. The Bomber Mafia began as an audiobook, and later transitioned into a print book. After difficulties in applying the Bomber Mafia's theoretical strategy, Major General Hansell was replaced by Major General Curtis LeMay, who utilized tactical changes such as attacking Japanese population centers with napalm to ensure a Japanese surrender. [17] In The Wall Street Journal, Yale professor Paul Kennedy praised the audiobook version of The Bomber Mafia as "remarkable" and a "work of art"; similarly, in The Times, reviewer Gerard DeGroot said "The Bomber Mafia remind[ed] [him] of a really good podcast a fascinating story is appealingly delivered", and historian Diana Preston of The Washington Post called the audiobook "innovative" for its inclusion of archival clips, music, and sound effects. They believed that bombing strategic targets made sense, and bombing population centers didn't. The mission failed for several reasons, including clouds that obscured the targets, which had to be seen to use the Norden bombsight. Relevance; Rating; Price (Ascending) Most Recent; View: Filter. Did the podcast effect the way you approached the book, or understood it? [23], A reviewer in Kirkus Reviews stated Gladwell "[delivered] a fairly flattering portrait of LeMay". The mushroom cloud of atomic bombs minimizes the function of air campaign which annihilated the cities with a view to damage the morale of the forces. Gladwell raises two fascinating points. You can listen in your preferred podcast app (See below for a complete list of supported apps). Take capers these are certainly not peas. Por Vs. Para Mafia Game. This guide is based on the hardcover first edition. There was never going to be a land invasion of Japan, I know that that possibility was used to justify nuking them, but I also know that president Truman was not going to be the CIC that sent hundreds of thousands to die for something that patience and strategy could preclude. [1], The term "Bomber Mafia" came from the sometimes bitter debates between United States Army staff and Air Corps men who observed, and argued with, the insistence by instructors and students of the ACTS that heavy bombers were the new primary weapon of war, and that a separate air arm was required to command them. His interview with Fareed Zakaria was interesting, spanning everything from auto-pilot vehicles to U.S. university rankings to a critique of The Little Mermaid (which, thankfully, I have never seen). The Bomber Mafia, through a "failure of imagination" in not expanding the doctrine to include establishing air superiority as a prerequisite for success,[16] would not accept either of these conceptsthey believed the heavy bomber fleet could protect itself, and thus they contributed to the delay in the development of a long-range escort fighter until two years into the war. Guide because backdrop is a story of optimism. After the undeniable horrors of the Great War, a group of Army Air Corps generals spent much of the 1930s brainstorming ways to use airpower to make war bombing more strategic while keeping casualties to a minimum. Scientists at Harvard repurposed a failed Dupont Chemical product and refined it into napalm, the most brutal bombing tool devised before the atomic bomb and one particularly suited to cause maximum damage to the wood-and-paper houses of Japan. By stream As long as youre comfortable with the numbers of people who were killed during the air attacks described throughout the book. LeMays solution was to saturate Tokyo with napalm bombs, killing as many as 100,000 people in about six hours, and then to go on and firebomb dozens of other Japanese cities, killing thousands upon thousands, sometimes when the target cities were of little or no military value. Many historians posit that the primary reason for Japanese surrender was not the use of the atom bomb. T H E B O M B E R M A FI A. l i ste n er's g u i de ma lc o l m g l a d w e l l Thank you for purchasing Malcolm Gladwell's The Bomber Mafia.. The nascent, emerging and the ambitious force that . In that sense, Gladwell wrote that Hansell "won the war."[21][22]. NOW PLAYING. Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. Block buster films have actually made World War II seem even more actual and technically skilled in all things armed forces yet this book was needed for me to grasp the relevance of war in the 1940s. The Sound features songs, audio effects, spoken archival interviews, even one by Ronald Reagan and also Gladwells voice was best for the narrative. Regardless, it was estimated that there would have been 2 MILLION American casualties had there been an invasion. The additional we obtain from these events the less we appear to appreciate it was a various time and lacking much of the technology we currently take for given. Once Japan became secluded on their mainland why not just create a complete blockade of the whole nation? [25] Professors Fedman and Karacas stated that errors "pile up to the point where it becomes clear that a book that has received so much attention ought to have received more fact-checking". After the war, LeMay was given a high medal by the Japanese government. The setting is Second World War. It's true: The audiobook breaks conventional audiobook standards, as this is a well-produced audio experience. 4.9 . Malcolm Gladwell and "The Bomber Mafia". They also complete an image analysis section and create two propaganda posters from different . [6] Though unproven, the major attraction of this sort of strategic bombing doctrine was that a war was expected to be won relatively quickly, with minimal casualties, and that grinding, static trench warfare as seen in World War I could be avoided. As an expert in the use of air units to aid artillery and infantry, Gordon P. Saville held to the concept of tactical air power through his time as ACTS instructor from 1934 to 1936. The most compelling account is the clash of ideas and the practical options sought to fight on a distant enemy. He basically reported that he hired hackers to pull the criteria for university rankings. tags:Second world war, World War. This page was last edited on 16 June 2022, at 01:38. [2] In November 1932 when British Lord President of the Council Stanley Baldwin said "the bomber will always get through", he was talking about the terror bombing of cities. This is history brought to life through the power of audio. Chapter 8 resumes the narrative of the bombing campaign against Japan from the Marianas. He was hardly a theorist, and especially not someone out to make war more humane. For the first few years, the strongest voice at ACTS against the bomber doctrine was Captain (later General) George C. Kenney who called for the use of air power to attack enemy fighting units on the ground. When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. It reviews the capabilities that todays military has in terms of bombing and notes that the Bomber Mafias philosophy of precision bombing won out in the end. As a compromise first step, the General Headquarters (GHQ) Air Force was established within the Army Air Corps in 1935, commanded by General Frank M. Andrews, a strategic bombing advocate. Perfect tinder for firebombing. Thank you for purchasing The Bomber Mafia, an audiobook by Malcolm Gladwell. What of the infinitely long nights of millions of concentration camp prisoners? He was and is wrong, killing the elderly, women, and children is not an object of war, its evil and destructive. Bomber Mafia Questions 2,700,000+ results. If you have actually ever attempted to toss a can from a moving automobile into a whip can you would understand the math/physics behind it. The print has its merits of being able to take your time to know the history of the "bomber mafia." It was decided primarily by General Curtis LeMay to carpet bomb Tokyo, using napalm. As a work of history, it borders on reckless". The strategic bombing concept, however, was a major factor in the eventual victory and became the first core doctrine of the independent United States Air Force. The United States had already completely cut off Japans oil supplies and pipelines by the middle of 1944/beginning of 1945, and decimated their navy. InThe Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War, Malcolm Gladwell, author ofNew York Timesbestsellers includingTalking to Strangersand host of the podcastRevisionist History, uses original interviews, archival footage and his trademark insight to weave together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard. This notion that killing someones family and friends will lead them to surrender is bunk, all it does is motivate people to hate you forever And the Japanese Government of the post war era was a puppet of our military, the notion that a proud people would hail a man who rained fiery death indiscriminately from the sky because they figured maybe less died this way is specious drivel in my opinion. Andrews staffed the command with like-minded officers such as Henry H. "Hap" Arnold. The Listeners Guide features additional commentary from, Suggestions, Fan Mail, Bones to Pick, and All Other Queries, For Speaking Engagements With Malcolm Gladwell, Hasta la Vista, America: Trumps Farewell Address, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Weve all be taught that it was the two atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki that caused the Japanese to surrender. People growing up on animations and motion pictures see planes going down bombs/shooting targets as if done through cross hairs. We have updated our Privacy Policy Emergency workers and local residents battled to clear debris and extinguish fires in the Ukrainian city of Uman after Two U.S. army helicopters collided and crashed Thursday in Alaska while returning from a training flight, killing three soldiers 89-year-old Max Hancock was an U.S. airman stationed outside of Oxford, England, in 1953. The villain, or at least loser in this account, is another Air Force general, Haywood Hansell, who had tried to win the war in the Pacific through the precision-bombing of Japan. Those fools can really do some damages if you capture one in the kisser. [13], Other opposition was more subtle. Gladwell delves deep into how the Norden didnt quite deliver for Hansell in Europe and how the (as-yet-undiscovered) jetstream made it even more difficult to use in American bombing raids over Japan. The Listeners Guide features additional commentary from Malcolm Gladwell, reflections on the production from producers and engineers, and archival photos from the period. Most military thinkers in the . The podcast is called Revisionist History, and is excellent by the way. [18][19][20] James McConnachie of The Times stated "for a book that is not a war story, this one is brilliantly, brilliantly told". What about the sailor whose ship is torpedoed and who hangs from debris in the water with no chance of rescue? Two questions have students connect the material to today. You can pay with any major credit cards, as well as Apple Pay on iOS and Google Pay on Android. There are a lot of moral dilemmas to chew on here. Gladwell is the author of several New York Times bestsellers, including The Tipping Point, Outliers, David and Goliath, and this book. Very interesting. Malcolm Gladwells exploration of how technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war. In Gladwells account, Hansells relatively more humane approach didnt work. [1] The bomber mafia's strategic doctrine, changed by war and experience, helped shape the mission of the new Air Force and its Strategic Air Command.[2]. Precision-guided munitions are hugely expensive, and the stockpiles of them are surprisingly small. Sorry, but these apps are not currently supported: Stitcher, Podbean, or NPR One. Part one on the extraordinary life of the Air Force General Curtis LeMay. Why must they act like peas? Kelsey formulated a new "interceptor" class of aircraft in order to sustain his idea that a well-armed fighter aircraft could successfully attack enemy bombers, and that, given drop tanks for long range, it could defend friendly bombers all the way to the target and back.[15]. [24] DeGroot said "the subject demands more depth than this volume provides", and stated Gladwell boiled down the bombing strategy's evolution to personality clashes between Hansell and LeMay while ignoring other major factors, such as how the morality and acceptance of bombing evolved. Through Ashley Gutermuth's many military moves, she has learned to flip circumstances around to find the humor, and the President Joe Biden awarded the commander-in-chief trophy to the Air Force Academy for winning football games against its At the end of the day, "Minecraft Legends" has some compelling elements that unfortunately don't feel fleshed out. Once you are in a way, are some forms of bombing more humane than others? The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War Buy on Bookshop Little Brown and Company, 256 pp., $27.00 The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the. I have read up on LeMay, he did in fact tout a theory that killing civilians by carpet bombing was a winning strategy, that it would destroy the morale of the citizenry. Upon release, The Bomber Mafia was met with mixed reviews, with reviewers praising its audiobook version but criticizing the book for a lack of accuracy and for being light on details. And also yet, this publication is something that maintains you invested as it exists as a little bit more than an item of history. Kenney left ACTS in 1929, and heavy bomber doctrinarians filled the vacancy. [14], After the 1991 Gulf War, David L. Goldfein states that by then bombs could hit, with precision, a specific wing of a building. In Chapters 4 and 5, Gladwell provides background about Hansell and LeMay, and outlines the Americans bombing mission on Germanys ball-bearing factories, led by Hansell with LeMay a participant. To bombing experts, parks are nettlesome firebreaks that interfere with a target citys combustibility. Ultimately, though, the Bomber Mafia was right. LeMay was instead, in the words of the military historian Conrad Crane, the Air Forces ultimate problem solver. As Gladwell tells it, the practical problem was how to win the war as quickly as possible. [3], This theory was first espoused by Italian General Giulio Douhet, though his ideas included the terror bombing of population centers that the American theorists eschewed. If the Allied forces had been forced to invade Japan, the country likely would have been split up by the Soviets and Americans after the war, and the casualties are almost impossible to imagine. From what Ive read, dropping the atomic bombs was more a signal to Russia of our strength than a strategy to defeat Japan, which was pretty much defeated already. This book once more casts an extra critical eye on this situation and outcome. A third hit the bombardier in the head and shoulder. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine for over 25 years and was named by Time magazine as one of its 100 Most Influential People. Senora Panqueque's Classroom. InRevisionist History, Gladwell re-examines moments from the past and asks whether we got it right the first time. I caught Gladwell on CNN last Sunday. Gladwell argues that LeMays savage firebombing campaign succeeded, and that, combined with the two atomic bombs that followed, shortened the war. Later, Saville successfully implemented his ideas in the Mediterranean Theater. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Blandthrowing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. I just re-listened to Gladwell's podcast on Curtis LeMay and the Bomber Mafia. Unfortunately for its believers, the Norden bombsight was a brilliant idea that didnt quite work in practice, mostly because the technology did not yet exist to do the additional computations that real-world issues required to move beyond the theoretical ones that worked so well in the lab. The biggest runs against a strategic target, specifically a ball bearing factory, largely was a failure. There are actual recordings of interviews conducted by Gladwell and also taken from documentaries filmed or recorded in the decades since the war. Chapter 7 provides some background regarding the development at Harvard University of napalm, an incendiary substance that could be used in bombs to create an intense firestorm. After graduating from ACTS in 1931, Mitchell protge Harold L. George stayed at the school to refine and teach the new bombing theory, soon recruiting as teachers his former students Haywood S. Hansell, Donald Wilson and Laurence S. Kuter as fellow bomber advocates. [23], Writing for The Baffler, Noah Kulwin criticized the book as "an attempt to retcon the history of American aerial warfare by arguing that developing the capacity to explode anything, anywhere in the world has made America and, indeed, the rest of the globe, unequivocally safer" and stated "by taking up military history, Gladwell's half-witted didacticism threatens to convince millions of people that the only solution to American butchery is to continue shelling out for sharper and larger knives. Listen to audiobooks in the same place you spend hours listening to your favorite podcasts. However the tale deserves to be informed. They intended the mission to be against military and industrial targets, not populations. [13] The result furthered the Allies' military objectives leading to Japan's surrender, such as with the Bombing of Tokyo on March 10, 1945 with Operation Meetinghouse. Yet the issue the Bombing plane Mafia was attempting to fix has both physics as well as moral angles. I enjoyed this short book thoroughly, and would have been happy if it had been twice as long. Developed over the years 19261929 at Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) at Langley Field in Virginia, a forward-looking doctrine of daylight precision bombing was promulgated by Brigadier General William "Billy" Mitchell who advocated a greatly expanded role for the bomber force. His thinking was that it would be better to force the enemy to surrender early, as a prolonged war would cause more suffering. Gladwell steps back from the bombing of Tokyo, the deadliest night of the war, and asks, Was it worth it? The attack was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives but may have spared more by averting a planned US invasion. The system was then implemented in The second world war to varying outcomes. We are excited to provide you an exclusive Listener's Guide that offers an inside look at the production process, archival imagery, and commentary from Malcolm and the producers and engineers involved with this extraordinary project. Just that, with bombing plane B29s the issue is definitely a lot more intricate with visibility, weather and anti-aircraft weapons to battle with. I went back and read The Bomber Mafia a second time. The Bomber Mafia follows the stories of a reclusive Dutch genius and his homemade computer, Winston Churchill's forbidding best friend, a team of pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard, a brilliant pilot who sang vaudeville tunes to his crew, and the bomber commander, Curtis Emerson LeMay, who would order the bloodiest attack of the Second World War. Many years later a related term "Fighter Mafia" described those within the Air Force that favored lightweight fighters good at dog-fighting instead of heavy missile-firing fighters. The destruction was so far beyond anything theyd seen before that the reality of the reports coming in from American bases in the Mariana Islands just didnt register. USAAC Fighter Projects officer Lieutenant Benjamin S. Kelsey appreciated that a large bomber fleet would be able to perform many military tasks, not just strategic bombing, and felt that the force's doctrine should remain flexible to meet any demand. Actually, Gladwell mentions that the audio style is the initial text, as well as the hardback is the secondary item. Almost 100 B-24 planes were lost with only minimal damage done to the ball bearing plant. This was not a standalone event. One of Gladwells skills is enabling us to see the world through the eyes of his subjects. A sixth hit the number 3 engine, setting it on fire. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Gladwell opined that the moralistic, casualty-avoiding ideas of Haywood Hansell stayed relevant for many years while the heavy death toll of area bombing fell out of favor. Captain Claire Lee Chennault, senior instructor in fighter tactics at ACTS, was a vocal Air Corps officer who challenged the bomber mafia for more than a decade; he was forced into early retirement in 1937, leaving the precision bombing advocates unopposed. But a small band of idealistic strategists had a different view. We could have surrounded their ports, mined their harbors, Japan has no energy natural resources, that is why they invaded Maylaysia and the Borneo oil fields. Much of Japanese housing was wood, paper, with straw mats. [21] In The New York Times Book Review, Thomas E. Ricks called the book "a conversational work" which he enjoyed, but noted that "when Gladwell leaps to provide superlative assessments, or draws broad lessons of history from isolated incidents, he makes me wary". 1. As listeners hear these stories unfurl, Gladwell examines one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history. LeMay replaced Hansell at the end of 1944 and soon began a campaign of terror that eventually visited virtually every major city in Japan. "[26] Fedman and Karacas state "[w]ittingly or not, [Gladwell] omits or downplays evidence that undermines the very premise of the book. You can send this audiobook as a gift by visiting this page to select the audiobook and enter your lucky recipients information. The Bomber Mafia isn't an honest or earnest look at what experts have written and thought about America's air campaigns during WWII. Hansell was a junior member of the Bomber Mafia, a group that put its faith in the new Norden precision bombsight. Bomber Mafia Daylight precision-bombing advocates Carl A. Spaatz, Muir S. Fairchild and Donald M. Wilson at Maxwell Air Force Base in 1946 The Bomber Mafia were a close-knit group of American military men who believed that long-range heavy bomber aircraft in large numbers were able to win a war. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); June 29, 2021 9 comments. Supported apps include: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocketcasts, Podcast Addict, Castbox, BeyondPod, Downcast, PlayerFM, Breaker, and RadioPublic. In his 2021 popular history book The Bomber Mafia, Malcolm Gladwell wrote that the idea of precision bombing stayed alive in the US military, with greater accuracy obtained in the 1990s through to the present with guided bombs, such that a modern laser-guided bomb or missile might be expected to destroy not just a single building but a single room in the building, minimizing collateral damage. I was also aware of Bomber Harris who led the fire battle on Germany, and I have actually reviewed exactly how this impacted cities like Dresden. To implement these changes, the ACTS instructors began to instill a sense in their students that a separate and independent air arm of the type described earlier by Mitchell, to be called the United States Air Force, was the way forward. In the Pacific, they had better planes to go against Japan. There is nothing 'inappropriate' in the book, it is simply not about battles and actions. The Bomber Mafia were a close-knit group of American military men who believed that long-range heavy bomber aircraft in large numbers were able to win a war. or ask your favorite author a question with Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we dont know. In one day in March, 1945, more than 400 B-29s totally burned 16 square miles of Tokyo killing far more than 100,000 people. These Podcasts Aren't So Sure", "Presenting: The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell", "The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War", "The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell review why 'precision bombing' is an utter delusion", "Wrestling with the strategy and morality of the firebombing of Japan", "The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell, review the Outliers author on the morality of war", "Malcolm Gladwell on the Hard Decisions of War", "When Pop History Bombs: A Response to Malcolm Gladwell's Love Letter to American Air Power", "Malcolm Gladwell's The Bomber Mafia is misleading history-lite", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Bomber_Mafia&oldid=1134344848, This page was last edited on 18 January 2023, at 06:23. The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War is a nonfiction book by Malcolm Gladwell, published in 2021. The American military leaders, however, convinced their allies to let them pursue precision bombing, based on the Bomber Mafias philosophy of taking out vital choke points. Yup, thats right! Randall Jarrell captured LeMays blithely brutal approach in two of the most memorable lines of 20th-century American poetry: In bombers named for girls, we burned / The cities we had learned about in school.. Gladwell describes the challenges that both faced. I am a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell. I didn't know he had a podcast on this topic, but after listening to the book my immediate thought was "Why did I pay for this book? The audiobook is an experience in itself, complete with sound results, music, and old interviews from the men he profiles (and also several of their battles survivors). It's true: The audiobook breaks conventional audiobook standards, as this is a well-produced audio experience. The three factors that accounted for 91% of the rankings were (1) total endowment (2) price of tuition and (3) how many white people were on campus. No new apps to download, no subscription fees. One historian tells the author that Hansell was not the kind of man who was willing to kill hundreds of thousands of people. Or the soldier in a minefield whose buddy is bleeding to death? Those are exactly the same, but there's a lot more to the book. By subscribing to Pushkin+ or purchasing an audiobook, you are agreeing to be bound by Pushkins Terms of Service and Privacy Policies and to be added to Pushkins mailing list. Malcolm Gladwell's extraordinary new book, "The Bomber Mafia," tells the story of a group of pilots who met on a muggy airbase in central Alabama and hatched a plan to revolutionize warfare. This is a case where the audiobook definitely defeats the print version. LeMay would have no place in a modern air force, his outdated and shallow, callous theories are now considered war crimes, we will never do it again, and we will never sit back and watch it happen somewhere else. We now live in a world where its not too much of an exaggeration to say that a bomber flying at 50,000 feet can tickle a targets nose hairs with the advanced systems we now have in place. The book concludes that "LeMay won the battle. While one is a celebrated hero, the other was an idealist whose concepts allowed him to be sidelined in the annals of background. in the program we will take some of your questions.
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