Didn’t have it in his soul.” After a few months in command of the B-29 raids on Japan, Hansell was dismissed and replaced by LeMay, who was told to come up with a new plan. One historian tells the author that Hansell “was not the kind of man who was willing to kill hundreds of thousands of people. 1952 August 7: Malcolm is released on parole, spends one night with Ella Collins, then goes to Detroit to live with his brother Wilfred. In Gladwell’s account, Hansell’s relatively more humane approach didn’t work. (Gladwell partly excuses this notorious phrase, saying it was likely the work of a ghostwriter.) The villain, or at least loser in this account, is another Air Force general, Haywood Hansell, who had tried to win the war in the Pacific through the precision-bombing of Japan. The unexpected hero of Gladwell’s story is Curtis LeMay - yes, that one, the general who firebombed Tokyo and dozens of other Japanese cities and then, decades later, supposedly advocated bombing the Vietnamese back into the Stone Age. A sixth hit the number 3 engine, setting it on fire. A fourth shell hit the cockpit, taking out the plane’s hydraulic system. A third hit the bombardier in the head and shoulder. A second shell hit the radio compartment, cutting the legs of the radio operator off at the knees. “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. He, perhaps better than King, understood the inner workings of empire. For him there was no great tension between the lofty ideals of the nation-which he said were a sham-and the failure to deliver justice to blacks. Here is Gladwell’s stunning description of a United States Air Force B-17 bomber being cut up on a run over Germany: NEW YORK- Malcolm X, unlike Martin Luther King Jr., did not believe America had a conscience. Horatio Nelson and his band of audacious captains from the age of fighting sail. military, and also for the Air Force.” But in Gladwell’s deft hands, the Air Force generals of World War II come back to life as the stirring 20th-century equivalent of Adm. Malcolm Gladwell on the Hard Decisions of War Gladwell’s The Bomber Mafia looks at the air campaign against Japan in World War II and finds a surprising hero in Curtis LeMay. Also, the air arm tends to be regarded by the other services as suspiciously civilian-ish - as in the soldiers’ one-liner, “I have a lot of respect for the U.S. In the end, she chooses to chase her dreams. Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War” is a kind of love song to the United States Air Force, which is surprising, because it is the least romantic of our armed services, with leaders who focus on technology, not tradition. With Rashaad Ernesto Green's 2020 film 'Premature,' 17-year old Ayanna (Zora Howard) has a sexual awakening the summer before her first year of college. A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |