Alan Allport

If this quote is accurate, what did Reagan mean by a corvette? Chevy didn’t start making the car until the 1950s. As for the ship ... well, it’s a lot longer than a B-29. Anyone?

Up to page 36 and relentless American exceptionalism of strategic bombing theory continues. Absolutely everything associated with sbt came out of Maxwell Field. Oh, and they came up with ‘the bomber will always get through.’ No, I’m not making that up. Sorry Stanley.

Page 51-2. Account of the Air War Plans Division 1 doc in summer 41 implies it was entirely a creation of Maxwell Field theory, ignoring that co-author Hansell (one of the main characters in the book) had just returned from the UK with 500 lbs of documentation about RAF bombing.

Also suggests (because that’s Gladwell’s thesis) that AWPD1 solely focused on precision bombing of industry choke points. In fact, it accepted that bombing of civilian urban areas for morale purposes might be an important secondary target in an extended strategic bombing war.

Where to even start with this horseshit?

That the RAF had already spent two painful years trying to make precision bombing work? That Chamberlain had personally begged FDR to send the British the Norden Bomb Sight? That Harris (he’s still to come) didn’t actually believe that area bombing could destroy morale?

The RAF did area bombing because Frederick Lindemann wanted it to area bomb and he wanted it to because he was a sadist and Arthur Harris carried it out because he was a psychopath. You think I’m exaggerating, I bet. That’s what Gladwell says. That’s the words he uses.

I’m not even a fan of Harris and this book is making me want to flag wave for him.

Fellas, stalk that girl so relentlessly that eventually she marries you because she’s run out of other options.

Describes the Regensburg part of the Schweinfurt-Regensburg raid as a mere ‘diversion’ which doesn’t sound right to me although I admit I’m no expert here.

Getting the sense that Gladwell is really, really uninterested in any causal explanation in history that doesn’t boil down to the personality quirks of some weird guy.

We’ve jumped to October 1944, so apparently this history of American strategic bombing in WWII in the ETO is going to not mention the P-51 or counterforce strategy or Big Week or any of that. At all.

Author has totally lost interest in Europe now, so I *think* we’re supposed to understand that the sbc against Germany was a failure because Schweinfurt didn’t go well. Maybe. Honestly I’ve no idea. Anyway, onto the Pacific.

Confident evidence-free assumptions about the motives of the main characters *abound* in this book, far too many to mention. Gladwell just assures us that this must have been why X did Y.

Gladwell literally seems to believe that area bombing involved flying over a city and just randomly dropping your incendiaries, ignoring the fact that (a) this didn’t work and (b) the RAF knew it didn’t work and (c) it went to great lengths to figure out specific target patterns.