How a small team of utopian Air Force strategists attempted to win World War II through precision bombing—when in reality, the firebombing of entire cities became America’s strategy. A tale of idealists, grim pragmatists, technologists, and the wages of war. For most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II, the airplane was just a supplementary weapon, to be used in support of armies on the ground. But a small band of idealistic strategists dreamed of revolutionizing war, making it far less lethal by sending jets into enemy territory, and bombing crucial choke points.Their theories didn’t work out against Germany, where they faced bad weather, enemy jet fighters, and human error—but the pilots were true believers, and they moved on to the Pacific War. Again, they failed—due to jet-stream winds, challenging weather patterns, and yet more human error. In the end, only the brutal firebombing of over sixty Japanese cities succeeded in winning a war from the air.
