The Bomber Mafia

Malcolm Gladwell 2021

West Slope Library 940.5449 GLADWELL

Gladwell podcasts

• xii Roberta Wohlstetter Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision 1962
  • PSU Basement D767.92.W6 (perhaps also ebook)
• xiii ... drawn to obsessives. I like them. ...

• 003 worlds largest airport 004 Tinian North Field, 4 8500 foot runways 005 21st Bomber Command B29s

• 008 Curtis LeMay replaces Haywood Hansell

• 013 Carl Norden Born Holland, Retired Switzerland

• 014 Stephen L. McFarland Books

  • The Legendary Norden Bombsight Albert L. Pardini 1999

• 016 Norden cranky perfectionist

• 019 Donald Wilson What if we just fought wars from the air?

• 025 bombsight officially Mark XV, 55 lb analog computer on a gyroscope-stabilized platform

• 026 six month training films

• 033 Air Corps Tactical School Langley Virginia - stables, pilots expected to learn how to ride
• 034 "the Bomber Mafia" not complement, outcasts
• 037 tenets "The Bomber Will Always Get Through" "Attack by Daylight" "Accurate Bombsight" "30Kft, above AA"

• 039 Richard Muller Air University

• 040 Carl Builder The Masks of War

• 042 Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel - plastic over leaky glass

• 046 1936 Pittsburgh Flood, propeller spring factory flooded, no variable pitch propellers, aircraft industry halted

• 049 bomb weakest links, such as New York aqueduct and electric grid - 17 bombs would disable New York City

• 051 Air War Plans Division AWPD-1 document

• 054 Ira Eaker Precision daylight bombing vs British night civilian bombing

• 059 Eaker convinces Churchill to try daylight bombing
• 062 German bombing, British leadership expected panic, 43K killed, 1M buildings damaged or destroyed, population shrugged it off

• 064 Churchill advisor Frederick Lindemann believer in Dehousing, disbeliever in V-2

  • KL note Lindemann also eugenicist, hated working class, homosexuals, and blacks
  • KL would WW2 be over sooner without Lindemann misdirecting British war efforts?

• 082 1943 Regensburg-Schweinfurt ball bearings

• 084 LeMay leads attack on Regensburg Messerschmitt factory

• 087 combat box formation

• 088 flashback 377 rounds to take down a bomber, hence fly straight in so bombardiers can aim

• 092 flashback 1937 Air corps test of bombing technique, LeMay scores

• 097 LeMay practices blind takeoffs in fog

• 099 LeMay departs (in fog) on time, Schweinfurt mission launches hours late, after German fighters return to the air

• 101 230 bombers, 2000 bombs, eighty hits
• 102 mass produced Norden bombsight performed poorly
• 104 Kugelfischer ball bearing only partly undamaged, up and running in weeks, ball bearing total production reduced only 30%, costing Allies sixty planes and 552 airmen
• 106 second raid similar poor results 108 "Home of the 367th Clay Pigeon Air Force"

• 110 Leon Festinger When Prophecy Fails 259p 1955 book online

• 114 Hansell delusional LeMay "swivel-chair target analysts 116 LeMay house entryway, murals of Regensburg and Schweinfurt

• 121 Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage

• 128 1944 Nov 17 first attempt ... extra fuel, overweight, headwind needed, then typhoon, then nothing for a week
• 130 had they launched, the typhoon would have prevented a return

• 132 LeMay from Kolkata to refuel at Chengdu to southern tip of Japan, 700 planes lost

• 133 worse, the fuel at Chengdu brought by air, 12 gallons to deliver one gallon
• 134 India 1944 June 13, 92 B-29s launched, 7 planes and 55 men lost, 47 arrived, 15 saw target, one bomb delivered
• 138 Saipan 1944 Dec 140 mph jet stream winds

• 146 National Defense Research Committee NDRC 1939 incendiary bombs

• 148 Dupont divinylacetylene, Harvard's Louis Fieser investigates

• 153 incendiary gels, rubber and gasoline better, aluminum napfthenate plus aluminum palmitate -> napalm

• 160 model villages, 24 residences with 2 in tatami mats and shoji sliding screens, M69 bomblet in groups of 38

• 162 100% in violation of "bomber mafia" principles

• 165 Historian Stephen L. McFarland says Hansell was not a combat officer, not a great leader.

• 166 commanded to napalm Nagoya, only 3 acres, Norstat replaced LeMay for Hansell, sent home to run Arizona training school

• 167 footnote: Hansell final mission Jan 29 1945, 62 B-29s destroy entire Kawasaki factory, 90% production loss, no B-29s lost.

• https://www.japanairraids.org

• 169 LeMay dines with Nimitz, palatial Navy dinner; Nimitz dines with LeMay, C rations in Quonset hut. "I get your point", Nimitz sends more construction materials

• 171 come in under clouds and jet stream, at night, no precision, hence napalm