I am a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell. Most of his books deal with research into the social sciences, particularly sociology and psychology and have been best sellers. His latest book, The Bomber Mafia, deals primarily with the philosophies of bombing during World War II, and has not become a best seller — at least not yet.
The words “Bomber Mafia” refer to a group of American pilots in the 1930s stationed at what was then called Maxwell Field in Montgomery, Alabama. These pilots dreamed of more humane ways to conduct wars. They believed that bombing strategic targets made sense, and bombing population centers didn’t.
During World War II, some of these pilots became major decision makers. The theoretical discussions they had back at Maxwell Field didn’t properly account for weather, enemy fire, and mass-produced bomb sights. The biggest runs against a strategic target, specifically a ball bearing factory, largely was a failure. Almost 100 B-24 planes were lost with only minimal damage done to the ball bearing plant.
In the Pacific, they had better planes to go against Japan. The B-29s were capable of making the 3,000+ mile round trip from Guam to Japan. The problem here was there above Japan there was a 140 mph (125 knot) jet stream, which played havoc with the bomb sight and precision bombing.
It was decided primarily by General Curtis LeMay to carpet bomb Tokyo, using napalm. He flew in at 5,000 feet elevation, which was under the jet stream, and under the altitude at which Japanese antiaircraft weapons were effective. Napalm is a gel that when it explodes, blows large clumps of fiery hot substance that sticks to every substance and burns brightly for several minutes. Much of Japanese housing was wood, paper, with straw mats. Perfect tinder for firebombing. 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. And then they did the same thing to another city. And then another.
We’ve all be taught that it was the two atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki that caused the Japanese to surrender. Actually, LeMay’s B-29s firebombed 67 different Japanese cities with far more lives lost than the atomic bombs. If LeMay firebombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the loss of life would have been similar as to what the atomic bombs caused — without the radiation.
After the war, LeMay was given a high medal by the Japanese government. Why? Because even though his bombing caused more than 500,000 Japanese citizens to lose their lives, it prevented a land invasion — which undoubtedly would have cost many more deaths than that. On both sides.
The war ended some 76 years ago. Perhaps bombing debate this is old hat to many of my readers. But it was news to me. And interesting.
There are a lot of moral dilemmas to chew on here. Once you are in a way, are some forms of bombing more humane than others? Can the less humane way actually save more lives in the long run.
I went back and read The Bomber Mafia a second time. And was engrossed once again.
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Very interesting. From what I’ve 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.
I caught Gladwell on CNN last Sunday. 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). I’ve read most of Gladwell’s books, but he always finds something new to tackle from a different angle.
He basically reported that he hired hackers to pull the criteria for university rankings. 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.
Many of my academic friends have warned me to take his conclusions with at least a few grains of salt. He’s more of an intellectual explorer than a disciplined academic
Malcom Gladwell’s book Talking to Strangers is a very good book that ties together
a lot of current racial issues facing our country. Highly recommend it.
Many historians posit that the primary reason for Japanese surrender was not the use of the atom bomb. (For the Japanese the atom bomb was just a more effective way to bomb them, some watching they were used to.)
But rather Russia’s entry into the war and their invasion into Japanese-held Manchuria. Along with the bombing this was a key factor in Japan’s decision to surrender. Maybe so. Regardless, it was estimated that there would have been 2 MILLION American casualties had there been an invasion. For those of us who had family waiting to invade, whatever the reason(s), it was very welcome.
If burning entire populated cities from the air was effective the war would have been over way sooner in Europe and the Pacific. LeMay was allowed to kill civilians by the tens of thousands because he had a theory about morale among the populace, which never came close to a conclusion. Of course today he would be ignored and demoted. Nixon tried the LeMay strategy in North Vietnam, and we all know how that ended. This notion that killing someone’s 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…
The object of war is to destroy the enemy which LeMay understood very well, their “morale” had nothing to do with it, and ultimately saved millions of lives on both sides due to a invasion not having to happen. As for Vietnam, Johnson and Mcnamara screwed that up by NOT applying LeMay principals and the war should have been ended in 1965 , again saving many lives.
The United States had already completely cut off Japan’s oil supplies and pipelines by the middle of 1944/beginning of 1945, and decimated their navy. 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. The notion that we were ever going to tolerate a land invasion of Japan is simply not true, we could have cut them off and let their cities crumble. 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. He was and is wrong, killing the elderly, women, and children is not an “object of war”, it’s evil and destructive. Why were the North Vietnamese such a powerful force, because they were colonized for generations and their cities were being carpet bombed by B52’s from 40,000, if you kill someone’s family you should prepare to face their relatives. . 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…
Whether it was the atom bombs or LeMay’s bombing tactic that hastened the Japanese to surrender will always be a debatable topic. I seriously doubt Russia’s entry into the war was a factor. The logistics of sending thousands of men, tanks, artillery and supplies from the western side of Russia to the eastern Pacific side would have been virtually impossible. A third option is rarely discussed. Once Japan became secluded on their mainland why not just create a complete blockade of the whole nation? Yes, it would have caused millions to starve and die but the invasion alternative would have caused millions of allied lives.
Japan was largely self-sufficient as far as food is concerned, they would have become uncomfortable but they would not have starved to death. They had and have no oil or other energy natural resources, their cities and industries would have suffered greatly. Before they started invading China and Southeast Asia, Japan got most of it’s oil from the United States, which they knew was going to end when we realized what was going on. Their “empire” building was targeted towards oil production, in order to be a world power you must have oil. 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. We won the war when we did because our aircraft carriers were luckily out of Pearl Harbor when it was invaded, we were never going to lose but our task would have become daunting if we had to re-build our aircraft carrier fleet in my opinion… Germany invaded Russia for it’s oil, oil was and is the commodity needed for modern militaries…