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The Bomber Mafia

By Malcolm Gladwell

Published in 2021 by Allen Lane

This was The Mules’ book selection for July.

Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favorite non-fiction authors. His books are about ideas. Interesting, often contrary ideas that have an enduring impact on my thinking.

One example: The Tipping Point, which presents his theory on how trends take shape and sometimes take over. (I use this idea all the time when discussing marketing and product development with business colleagues.)

Another example: Blink, which explores the concept of “thin-slicing” and explains why spontaneous decisions are often better than carefully planned ones.

A third example: David & Goliath, which is about why being disadvantaged is often a blessing.

The Bomber Mafia is basically about the development of precision bombing during WWII.

The question that Gladwell sets out to answer: What if, instead of the traditional carpet bombing that kills hundreds of thousands of civilians, you could conduct a campaign of “precision bombing” that would take out key infrastructure and manufacturing targets and incapacitate your enemy? Would that be the way to go?

To answer that question, he focuses on the opposing views of the two very different military leaders assigned to the war in the Pacific: Curtis LeMay and Haywood Hansell. LeMay as the pragmatist in charge of the brutal firebombing of Japan that killed more innocents than the two atomic bombs that followed. Hansell as an advocate for fewer civilian casualties through precision bombing.

But since it is a Malcolm Gladwell book, there is more going on than that. The Bomber Mafia is also about the technology and psychology of military conflict. It is about the morality of war and warfare. Plus (what was most intriguing to me), it is about the capacity of smart people to ignore facts – big, obvious, in-your-face facts – when you are committed to an idea.

What I Liked

Malcolm Gladwell is a great storyteller. And, as a collection of stories, The Bomber Mafia is ripe with wonderful characters (in addition to LeMay and Hansell) and vignettes. The Dutch genius that invents a homemade, precision-bombing computer. The band of nerdy officers of the Air Force Tactical Squad in central Alabama. The pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard.
And here is Gladwell’s stunning description of a B-17 bomber being attacked on a run over Germany:

“One 20-millimeter cannon shell penetrated the right side of the airplane and exploded beneath the pilot, cutting one of the gunners in the leg. A second shell hit the radio compartment, cutting the legs of the radio operator off at the knees. He bled to death. A third hit the bombardier in the head and shoulder. A fourth shell hit the cockpit, taking out the plane’s hydraulic system. A fifth severed the rudder cables. A sixth hit the number 3 engine, setting it on fire. This was all in one plane. The pilot kept flying.”

What I Did Not Like

When Gladwell leaps to provide superlative assessments or draws broad lessons of history from isolated incidents, he makes me wary.

He argues, for example, that Curtis LeMay’s savage firebombing campaign was a success because (combined with the atomic bombs) it shortened the war. Had the war gone on longer, he suggests, millions of Japanese could have died of starvation. And he waves away any and all lingering questions of wartime atrocity by quoting a secondhand anecdote about a “senior Japanese historian” who once “thanked” an American historian for the firebombing because it prevented a land invasion.

Critical Reviews

* “Gripping… Gladwell is a wonderful storyteller… in [his] deft hands, the Air Force generals of World War II come back to life… I enjoyed this short book thoroughly, and would have been happy if it had been twice as long.” (Thomas E. Ricks, New York Times Book Review)

* “A thought-provoking, accessible account of how people respond to difficult choices in difficult times… Gladwell’s easy conversational style works well… and his admiration for the Bomber Mafia shines through. His portraits of individuals are compelling.” (Diana Preston, Washington Post)

* “Truly compelling… written in New York Times bestseller Malcolm Gladwell’s characteristic approachable, story-telling style.” (Zibby Owens, Good Morning America)

Interesting Facts

* The book began as an audiobook, which is obvious because of its conversational style.

* After World War II, the 20 years of foundational work by the Bomber Mafia resulted in the separation of the United States Air Force from the Army.

* 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.

The Best of Enemies (2019)

Available on Amazon Prime and Netflix

Written and directed by Robin Bissell

Starring Taraji P. Henson and Sam Rockwell

In the last few years, Hollywood has been frantically putting out woke movies, and particularly movies that deal with racism. So when K decided that we should watch The Best of Enemies as our movie of the week, I was skeptical. But then I looked at some critical reviews. And all of the most woke critics hated it. So, I watched it. And enjoyed it. And I like it even better today, after thinking about it.

If you can put your ideological glasses aside, you might like it too, because it is a good movie, with an emotionally compelling plot and two outstanding performances by the lead actors.

The Best of Enemies is based on a true story: a very unlikely relationship that developed between C.P. Ellis, a White Supremacist (played by Sam Rockwell), and Ann Atwater, a Black community organizer (played by Taraji P. Henson), in a dispute over school integration in Durham, North Carolina, in 1971.

At the surface level (which may be all that writer/director Robin Bissell intended), it’s a touching, almost Hallmark-sentimental, story about understanding overcoming prejudice. And it might have played that way a decade ago… or even as recently as 2018, when Green Book, which was similar in some respects, won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

But that was then. Seeing it today, in our hyper-racialized culture of BLM, it’s impossible to take it that simply. Race reconciliation stories are no longer acceptable, even if they are based on true events.

If you favor that perspective, you won’t like the movie, because it’s more about the White man than the Black woman, treats the problems of racism too superficially, and suggests an outcome (amenity between the races) that is, from a Critical Race Theory viewpoint, morally corrupt.

I didn’t feel that way. But it left me with two thoughts:

* There is a big difference between the legal, political, and criminal justice systems that were operating in North Carolina in 1971 and those that exist throughout America today. And the difference is precisely what CRT disputes. Anti-Black racism was systemic back then. Today, there is plenty of racism of all types, but, systemic, anti-Black racism no longer exists.

* The big struggle of the civil rights movement was about integration – and particularly integration in public schools. That’s what this movie was about, too. It ends on a high note – with the former Klansman voting to integrate the local school. But did school integration achieve its goals? Has public-school integration made African-American children any better educated or better off in any other way 50 years later?

The Best of Enemies is not a great movie, because it does look at this amazing story in a rather sentimental, superficial way. But it is a good movie because the story, as objectionable as it is from a CRT/BLM perspective, is a worthy one. And because, however you feel about it, it challenges you to think outside the box.

Critical Reviews

* “This tale of a KKK president seeing the error of his ways – and bonding with a civil-rights activist – feels all kinds of wrong.” (Nick Schager, The Daily Beast)

* “It’s impossible to ignore that the film is yet another Hollywood narrative of racial reconciliation centered on a white protagonist – and worse, it’s one that seems much more interested in the Klan’s white targets than its black ones.” (Inkoo Kang, Slate)

* “Instead of three-dimensional characters, The Best of Enemies gives us two wax figures in a cardboard town, and they’re all at the mercy of Bissell as writer/director.” (Matt Cipolla, The Spool)

You can watch the trailer here.