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 Schweinfurt ball bearings

• 084 Regensburg-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
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