The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Part 1, Chapter 2

Part 1, Chapters 3-5

Part 2, Chapter 6-Conclusion

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Don Quixote

The motif of the literary character Don Quixote from the Cervantes novel of the same name is one that Gladwell uses in reference to General Haywood Hansell to support the theme of Idealism versus Pragmatism. As a member of the Bomber Mafia, Hansell is drawn to ideas and ideals. He is a romantic figure like Don Quixote, seeing the world as he wants it to be while sometimes missing or ignoring the reality of it all. Gladwell writes that Don Quixote was Hansell’s favorite book from the time he was a young man studying literature. It’s a fitting detail because Hansell’s personality was so similar to Quixote’s.

Gladwell tells the story of Hansell courting the woman who would become his wife, Dorothy Rogers. He, of course, was smitten right away. They met in Virginia, and when she returned to her home state of Texas, he wrote to her every day for almost a year. Rogers “found him tiresome. He found her delightful” (78). She only answered a few of his letters, but in the end they married. It’s exactly what Quixote would have done, writes Gladwell. Still, the knight’s world is based entirely on an illusion, so the book is an odd choice for a military commander—who must deal with reality—to choose as a favorite.

Pickle Barrel

The pickle barrel is a symbol Gladwell uses to represent precision bombing. It’s a turn of phrase he creates after quoting Carl Norden’s business partner as saying, “We do not regard a fifteen-foot square […] as being a very difficult target to hit from an altitude of thirty thousand feet” (29). That’s not a very catchy quote, so Gladwell writes that it’s the equivalent of dropping a bomb into a pickle barrel from that altitude. The pickle barrel is a concrete image that more easily comes to readers’ minds, so Gladwell uses it throughout the text as a symbol of the Bomber Mafia’s approach.

The Temptation of Christ

Gladwell uses the temptation of Christ from the New Testament books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke as an extended motif in Part 2 of the book—which is titled “The Temptation.” He presents Hansell as a Christlike figure, a “true believer,” who is tempted to discard his faith in precision bombing and take the easier road of adopting area bombing with the use of incendiary gels. Gladwell first introduces the motif at the end of Chapter 6, when Hansell discovers that the jet stream over Japan is making the work of precision bombing impossible. At that point he knew he was not accomplishing his mission. It was a “moment of vulnerability and frustration” (144) in which Hansell was faced with a temptation: using napalm. Gladwell quotes from the Bible, in a scene where Satan tempts Christ for 40 days and 40 nights, before imagining that Hansell faced a similar enticement. He presents it as words spoken by the Devil: “You can have everything. Victory over your enemies. Dominion over all you can see from twenty thousand feet. All you have to do is walk away from your faith” (145). In the final three chapters, Gladwell continues the motif, presenting the different approaches to bombing as a struggle of good and evil:

Haywood Hansell sided with Jesus on that question: you should never do evil so that good may come. But LeMay would have thought long and hard about going with Satan. He would have accepted the illegitimate means if they led to what he considered a swift and more advantageous end (179).