Malcolm Gladwell: The strange tale of the Norden bombsight 

That's what Tecumseh Sherman thought during the Civil War.

Likewise, Maxim thought with his invention of the Machine Gun, and Alfred Nobel thought his invention of Dynamite would surely be so obviously devastating as to make war unthinkable. When Dynamite did not end wars, instead they got worse, Alfred Nobel created the Nobel Prizes, esp the Nobel Peace Prize. Not until the H-bomb did a weapon make war so obviously, unwinnably horrible, that people thought twice and thrice and stopped doing super-huge mega-wars. So far.

@@carlcushmanhybels8159 Syria is destroyed and millions of people are displaced. War continues. Someday it will include nuclear weapons.

@@johncoffey1208 True, but See above: My comment about nuclear deterent --so far (through MAD), (despite previous weapon inventors thinking surely their weapon was so horrible that would stop wars,) "Not until H-bombs... That people thought twice and thrice and stopped doing super-huge mega-wars. So far."

@@carlcushmanhybels8159 I just think that those inventors were wrong to think they'd invent a weapon to stop war. Weapons are used in war to win. Nuclear weapons are used in the same way.

Yes . Roe - that was a good point to make. Strange that he padded his good point with so much adolescent posturing. 15 minutes of kiddy talk and 3 seconds of wisdom.

STEM gave us nuclear weapons. Philosophy has kept us from using them. But, we don't need the liberal arts anymore. Consider the consequences of that.

I've, forever, felt like much of our military budget, as Americans, should be spent less on kinetic weaponry of conventional war (that's unlikely to happen) and more on intelligence (primary focus), economic approaches, and even exploration of nontraditional creative campaigning. edit: maybe we should, also, just keep an eye on defensive interception of hypersonic ballistic missiles.

It's all these things. Advanced tech without the information and better judgement is the real problem

And intel is rarely accurate. Defense spending is largely a complete waste of money.

Except a broken Swiss watch is correct at least 2 times a day, vs. Nordens.

I felt that :/

Amen to that.

I hope you'll forgive me 'necroposting', not to mention that I'm probably missing the point of what you're saying, but in practice we have all but _become_ a cashless society! I mean, it does depend on where you live; as with Google Streetview, the Germans, I'm told, are rather lairy of 'cashless' (and, if so, good for them!) Where I live (Rep. of Ireland) cash has, in effect, become something you keep a little of, in case you need to buy a newspaper ("what're they?!") from a street vendor, or in case the vending machine at work goes 'on the Fritz') or in actuality, for the most part, the 'good deed for the day' Euro or two you toss your local homeless person. And the last time I checked (2 or 3 years ago), usage of cash in some of the Nordic countries was well down in to single figure percentages! You may have gathered that I am uncomfortable to say the least about these developments, but that is probably something better left for another thread! As to your father's commentaries, I don't know whether it would be better to say that on this point he was mistaken (no "Na Na Nyah Nyah Nah" implied!) -- or that, by the very fact that he spitballed on the subject, he was actually way ahead of the curve compared to most people on the subject of a cashless society. [EDIT: Notwithstanding of course, the fact that I never knew him!] I would be inclined to say that the latter was the case.

Where is it now?

Cool story, Neato... Yet I would say we should have joined the Nazis in defeating Russia in Finland and Russia overall... But it was too late when France and England declared war first...

@SaveBlueEyes Great post as you know some history but I will have to look up Pearson... I remember some news report of this guy that didn't like what his kids were being taught so you went through an entire history book and then printed it up all the mistakes and lies and whatnot and he had it printed all-in-one long sheet of paper that rolled down several steps of a staircase to illustrate what I believe is political correctness and multicultural Marxist lies written into our history and maybe just stupid scholarship with no real agenda in mind I remember my dad talking about the NEA years ago which is the National Education Association I think and he mentioned that it was not always this politically correct Lefty publication or organization as I was reading the publication out loud and commenting on what a lefty rag it was My brother gets it because he is a teacher and pathetically enough a lefty one

That’s a weird tale. Your uncles caused their parents to meet?

In the mid 70's I had an opportunity to buy a complete Nordon bomb sight for $600.00. I needed a couple of hours to get it. When I got back, someone beat me to it. I still regret that.

Germans had one they found in a bomber back in 43. They tested it and didn't think much of it. When the RAF got one they thought little of it as well.

+1 exactly what I was thinking

yeah..it would suck to have to eat blown up pickles all the time..

Oh ... you didn't hear about that? Well you see there was this Strike by the Copper Miners who were breaking the War Regulations Act by doing so but - when the warrant was issued to arrest the striking copper workers - there was a typo. They spelled Copper - Cooper. The end result was that it was all the barrel makers who were arrested and sent to prison - unless they volunteered to serve in the army - and hence the lack of pickle barrels. This shortage resulted in the creation of the ubiquitous 55 Gallon Drum that is seen to this day all over the world - but which being an industrial product doesn't require the efforts of a craftsman to produce it. .

I’m cracking up here

I didn't know the pickle barrels were so important.

That would have left everyone in a pickle, I suppose...

If they used a thermonuclear bomb then the whole city would be vaporized. Thermonuclear bomb is somewhat 20-100x more powerful than a nuclear bomb.

It was not "more than 10 years after." Check your history -- it was developed in 1951-1952, which is much less than 10 years after August 1945.

Thanks,... Einstein

The atomic bomb did reduce pain and suffering. It prevented a land invasion to Japan in which millions of soldiers on our side and their side would have died. The fire bombs dropped on Japan before the atomic bomb killed many more people then both nuclear bombs and we wont mention how many soldiers and civilians of our country and other countries were killed by the Japanese during WW2 . It would not have broken Norden's heart if he knew his bomb sight was used to drop the atomic bombs. It vindicated his invention because it did what it was intended to do.

Douglas Tees.... You know your history.. You are either self-educated or you were educated before Carter federalized the public schools and reduced education to the lowest common denominator. Thank you for your comments. It is refreshing..

I wouldn’t say he’s talking with authority he’s just telling a story

G.Fisher Also to nitpic, he said thermo-neuclear instead of nuclear.

Surface to air, surface to surface - doesn’t matter. They were killing people and had to be destroyed.

This is not uncommon with Gladwell. His audience knows books, and academia, and they forgive his knowledge gaps.

@@amariner5 I recently finished his "Talking to Strangers"...and have read others His rigor appears unimpresive. It suggests he looks for a "hook" and runs "somewhere".

No kidding, but facts make no difference to the retards in the historical revision business, alas.

The Manhattan project cost much more than $2B. The cleanup project at Hanford Nuclear Reservation still continues. Until complete we won’t know the final cost. I doubt it will be complete in the first hundred years after the Manhattan Project started.

@@billsmith5109 But, being part of The Greatest Generation means never having to say, "MY Bad!"

This app will change the life of about one million people rich enough to use it to its full extent!

That’s where you and I come in.

trefod Forrest or the trees. Look at the bigger picture.

Eh. Kind of a blah lecture, aside from the theatrics. It doesn't take much insight of any kind to understand and point out the law of unintended consequences and the law of diminishing returns using hindsight. Which our politicians and military admittedly regularly ignore or dismiss because of various ideological motivations. This is more about inculating leftist anti-military politics piggybacked on a few jejune observations. Aside from that, the lecturer is impressed with his own peraspicity to an unagreeable extent.

"Which our politicians and military admittedly regularly ignore or dismiss because of various ideological motivations." Grammar much?

Details are important, Osman.

"The lecturer is impressed with his own peraspicity to an unagreeable extent," said the guy with the screen name, "massive reader," who misspelled two out of the three hundred-dollar words he had unnecessarily deployed in his youtube comment. If you are intellectually honest, you will be willing to consider that it is your reading of this lecture that is jejune, tinted by an ideological animosity towards those phenomena to which you apply the term "leftist."

I agree with you. While the device did allow precision destruction, in the end it saved lives.

That's weird logic. He's making that statement based on Norden's speeches, writings, and talks with others. If he was telling how he truly felt, you don't need to ask directly. If he was lying in his speeches, writings, and talks, why wouldn't he just keep lying if you asked him directly?

It seems that he has an agenda rather than the reality that we faced at the time. Missing by 800 ft is a lot better than losing half a million allied lives, not to mention the number of Japanese lives.

Japan surrendered because Russia declared war on them.

@@AJ-fo2pl just out of curiosity, how well have you studied their culture? How well have you took a deep introspect into all of the machinations that were going on at that time? I have spent over 2 decades in the study of it. If you wish to poke holes in my statement, feel free. You will need to come with competent sources. When I say it saved lives, it did. In a nutshell, if the island was invaded, the carnage would have been extreme. Far worse than it was. It also has saved lives after the effect. All people now know how devastating those weapons are. That is a main reason they are not used. If you believe me to be brainwashed, that is your prerogative. Please back it up.

Every statement above is FALSE

But less false than yours.@@thegeneralist7527

@@beachcomber2008 I've studied Luftwaffe air defenses and the allied bombing campaign extensively. The British led Commonwealth strategic bombing campaign was much more effective because they had learned the hard lessons earlier in the war about the dangers of daylight bombing. The British also learned from their poor results at precision bombing and switched to area bombing, developing pathfinder tactics for target marking, developed electronic navigation aids and countermeasures and many other innovations. The British used their advanced radar in tandem with their sophisticated fighter control network to win the Battle of Britain. Conversely, the German Kammhuber Line air defense system was flawed and vulnerable to being overwhelmed by massed bomber streams. The British shared this information with the US, but the American's blind belief in their daylight precision bombing doctrine and the Norden bombsight resulted in severe mauling by the Luftwaffe until long-range fighter escorts became available. Even as late in the war as the Battle of Berlin the German's were still able to inflict heavy and unsustainable casualties upon both the RAF and the USAAF. The point I would like to make is that this like many other subjects is much more nuanced than a cursory glance would suggest. The Norden bomb-sight was USELESS if you could not see the target because of cloud, as was often the case, especially after the first bombs had been dropped and smoke obscured the target. Let me put it this way, the comment I am criticizing MAY be accurate from an engineering point of view but that it is entirely inaccurate from a historical point of view.

@@thegeneralist7527 I liked and enjoyed your second post, and your analysis agrees with mine, historically, and in engineering terms. Perhaps you shouldn't live up quite so closely to your handle. You seem to be agreeing with the OP here - and yet you call it false. Duh.

What is your analysis historically, and in engineering terms? I do not agree with the OP.

I know one thing! I can learn just like I learned that job up there! Fred Derry

If he served in the European theatre, then his three years as a bombardier could be translated as "I'm incredibly lucky."

Gladwell often takes a certain amount of dramatic license with his facts during his talks for dramatic effect. The problematic is that because of who he is, sometimes ppl that don't know better, take his talks as 100% factual.

It's a safe bet that when you know 3-5 facts that are clearly wrong, there are a bunch of other facts that you may not have personal knowledge of that are also wrong. Gladwell churns out a yarn to illustrate some point, but does so in a fundamentally dishonest way. He gets more than little details wrong, because if he got those details right his story would no longer support his position. He tells a story of how wet sidewalk causes rain, then tells us all that we should water the sidewalk from time to time to ensure the crops come in.

Another point of interest, the scud bombing campaign was assumed to have of little chance of success, but was carried out to placate the neighboring countries who were worried about the equally inaccurate scuds...

who2u333 ~ If those three essentially insignificant things are your point of focus, then you completely missed the point.

@@prybarknives When they are firing them at whole cities of civilians, they don't need to be all that accurate.

@@Mortlupo, instead of just assuming, look up facts, tell me how many casualties came to outside interests, from scud attacks... I'll wait.

Hence, a Swiss Engineer. A Swiss engineer who happened to be of Dutch citizenship. But his engineering was definitely Swiss.

He was Dutch, hello... Just because you went to Switzerland for a while doesn't make you Swiss

Wonder where Carl Norden was from??

@@johnstuart5437 That makes no fucking sense. If you're born in the Netherlands or a colony of the netherlands to dutch parents, you're dutch. You don't become swiss just because you live there.

@@captainoblivious_yt He went back to Switzerland after the war and lived the rest of his life there. So he spent most of his adult life in Switzerland. Easy mistake to make....

You're talking as if the Taliban are reasonable people; they are religious extremeists who have no problem with killing anyone who doesn't agree with them. If you built a nice school for girls they would destroy it, same with anything else. You can't change their mind with money, they are living for the next life, not this one.

I don't think that the creation of prosperous, independent nations in the Middle East was quite in line with The West's aims over the last 70 years. Broken, struggling countries that tow the line are much more useful. A few terrorist attacks are inconsequential compared to the geopolitical benefits.

@@jimmorrison4291 you're not wrong there bro, pity those geopolitical aims benefited only 3% of the population

@@martinomichael4967 I have to agree with you. Not much of the money and benefits got down to the lower levels of society in either country. But one thing I know for sure... Cheney's Halliburton walked away with over $$$ 40 BILLION $$$ IN NO BID CONTRACT PROFITS $$$$$ It's ALWAYS about the money!!!

Brilliant!😊

John Simpson no his talks are finely disguised anti war.

@@acbulgin2 ty. At least someone gets it. 67 here.

Exactly.

Then you haven't encountered the truly great TED Talks. Not a ton of great ones, but they are there.

@There's No Godand who made all those movies with explosions? Why it was the Hollyweird crowd. You gullible liberal, Demwit morons are the problem. You hypocrites attack gun owners while murdering everyone with guns in your movies.

Saying he was Swiss saved some time though

True-ish. But he could have said "Dutch-Indonesian-Swiss" in the same length of time. It's his funny story about the Swiss character that he wouldn't have been able to use without mashing it.

Who cares, he studies engineering in swiss university so swiss engineer

Surface to suface....ballistic....and he clearly knows nothing about Iron Dome....or doesn't want us to know.

Also that wasn't a thermonuclear bomb "twas a nuclear bomb. This idiot doesn't know what he is talking about.

Really effective Speaker, however I think his stats on the number of launchers destroyed is off. Having been there, when the first Scuds were sent at the Coalition and the Raytheon Patriot system was used to counter them, I can tell you a tale that seems to make sense. Based on my experience seems to be true. I was in the chow line one day talking to some guys that operated the patriot battery that was protecting the area. Those guys said if we wanted , we could have jammed all the launchers, as we controlled the air (We did.) We had planes constantly monitoring the entire country waiting for launches. Plus there was a lucrative opportunity for Raytheon to prove it's system and make sales to Israel, Kuwait ,Saudi Arabia ,Turkey etc.. These guys said they needed live tests, and the US wanted to kill the mobile launching platforms, so the missiles were allowed to be launched. The circling F-16's and other fighters would then see the launch and swoop in to kill the mobile launcher. I was younger and very sceptical, thinking "No way our government would allow such a thing." Two days later, we got orders to move some equipment form the port to our forward staging position. It was a bright hot day and I had to urinate, so I found a nice dry spot in the Dessert. As I was admiring the surroundings, in the distance a missile was launched and it was heading back towards the port. A few seconds later an F16 about 100 feet off the deck broke the sound barrier over me heading toward where the missile was launched from. I was knocked down and of course urine was everywhere and I couldn't hear, but I kept my eyes on the fighter. In the distance there was an explosion. Again, I can only give you my experience, but I think we did get 1 launcher. All I could say was OMG it's true.

@@CharlesPayne It seemed a pretty effective tactic. To my knowledge the only casualties the SCUD missile inflicted during that conflict were to about a dozen or so support troops from the (since de-activated} 1st COSCOM. There's a small memorial monument by one of the "dining" facilities in their former area.

@@elmospasco5558 I do know we were back at the port waiting on more equipment and stayed at a hanger with a reserve unit from PA, I think. We left the next morning with equipment heading to the front. About a week later we got some news papers and saw where a scud dropped that was hit by patriots fell on the hanger and killed the folks we met. It's been a long time, but I found this article article that has similar details to the one we read. www.nytimes.com/1991/02/26/world/war-in-the-gulf-scud-attack-scud-missile-hits-a-us-barracks-killing-27.html . We were eating and bunking with those folks the night before they died . The patriots were designed to hit the SCUD before the warhead armed, but the collateral fallout was dangerous. I recall seeing large a piece of of a SCUD that hit a town called hafar al batin (I think ) it was over 1/4 inch thick and about 5 feet long. Looked like it had russian writing on it.

why? he is not the writer of music that Paul simon is but he has a beautiful voice! :=). I guess maybe the years haven't been kind to it however. ahem... with no criticism intended towards the speaker with questionable identity appearing in this video.:-)

Too bad for Simon huh!? Lol

YOU WATCH OUT JEMIMA HE MIGHT DROP A DRONE IN YOUR PICKLE BARREL.

This guy is an idiot. He was wrong on much more than that.

Yup, Gladwell's such a total idiot which is why "Rico Chofsky" & "Marco Valenzuela 3D Additive Artist" are such well known thinkers and authors and have been know to appear in many TED Talks. Their works are available on amazon.com is you just go looking, I'm sure.

@@johnconroy3078 Wow this sheep can talk. TedX is garbage. Anyone can speak at a TedX conference from palm readers to solo drummers.

Exactly correct, sir.

@@marco3dartist such as?

Absolutely......:-))))

@Harry Lagom Most white Indonesians were Dutch, to part-Dutch. Indonesia had been a Dutch colony.

How so? His birthplace has no bearing on the story's unfolding.

You are so correct Flywire..... he did!!

When I was a kid and Bombardier was still only in the snow mobile business, everyone pronounced it bombadeer. don't know when/how the pronunciation changed.

Eisenhower warned about a 2 part dange. He saw military -industrial as one part. He saw academic as the 2nd. He feared the growing influence of academics sold on sweet sounding theories unchecked by messy reality.

Bombardier is a french word, the way Malcolm is saying it is actually the (more) correct way, and he is Canadian and thats the way we pronounce french words, the french way (without the french accent however if you are an anglophone).

Indeed the pursuit of technology overshadowing the end goal, is a problem for DoD as whole. In fact this is such a recognized problem that the Army created a new command, Army Futures, in the hope of addressing this issue. No telling if the AFC will be successful in making sure delivered products actually address end user needs, but at least they are trying.

There are some reports saying that there are instanves were bombs are dropped in areas were they could not even tell if the individuals being bombed are involved in terorist activity. So yes there still are cases were inosent lives are lost with no proff if they were anywhere neer someone who was threat to begin with.

But it really didnt. Strategic bombing was notoriously inaccurate, the inclusion of the norden sight had miniscule effect.

WE in the USA kill many innocent people all over the world with our 62 cents out of every tax dollar war machine! GET SMART MARIKA!!!!

@@smudge503ear Judy...you might want to get your facts somewhere other than You Tube...defense is less than 16% of the federal budget.

Brian Savage BOX? How about outside the pickle barrel? He is antiwar in reality.

Would my father have lived through an invasion of Japan? Who knows, but as it turned out, he was in first wave of occupation troops. He came home to his beloved farm and raised a family.

That’s only the second time I’ve heard that reasoning for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Keep the Russians(still officially allies), out of the Pacific theatre. 👍

"When the British missed the target, the bomb missed the entire city." This is untrue. While the Brits were aiming to destroy cities, they still used an aiming point as a target. This was because they wanted to concentrate the bombing in time and space, so as to overwhelm the civil defenses. That meant getting the entire raid across the target in minutes, and getting the payload as close to the aiming point as possible. By mid 1943, particularly with the use of electronic bombing aids like Oboe and specialized pathfinder formations, RAF Bomber Command was regularly achieving a CEP (Circular Error Probability) of 1 mile or less. That means that 50% of the bombs fell within a mile of the target. Coincidentally, that's standard of precision that the USAAF required in order call a raid 'precision'. Also, we should understand that 'precision' was a euphemism. The USAAF bomb groups typically bombed on the command of the lead bomber. Consider a formation of B-17s - a combat box - and think of the sheer space it takes up. Then imagine that box of bombers all toggling their load on the drop of the lead bomber. You're getting a combat-box-sized bomb pattern on the ground.

Bladder Splattle I beg to Differ, in 1943 32% of American bombs fell on the specific building or factory or within 1000 feet by late 44 the figure had reached 60% The accuracy of the British aerial campaign was calculated as striking with 1000 feet of the city. In 1941 only 20% of Bombs landed within 5 miles of the target little wonder since they were area bombing, by end of the war using magnetron radar British bombers were able to reliably drop Bombs with 25 feet of the target, but the target was still a city. www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/the-butt-report-revealing.html/amp

The British Royal Air-force commission a neutral study compiled by an assistant to the Viscount Lord Lindemen, Churchill’s most trusted advisor: The report reads as follows: “It must be observed also that by defining the target area for the purpose of this enquiry as having a radius of five miles, an area of over 75 square miles is taken. This must at least for any town but Berlin consist very largely of open country. The proportion of aircraft actually dropping their bombs on built up areas must be very much less...” The effect of the contents of the report were both shocking and devastating. Of bombers which reported that they had successfully bombed, on average, only one in five had actually dropped their bombs within five miles of the target. For targets in the heavily defended Ruhr, this dropped to one in ten. On nights when there was a new moon, this fell to one in fifteen. “... For all the courage, professionalism and determination of the British bombers crews, it is clear that most of their bombs are falling harmlessly on open country and very, very few were actually hitting their ‘targets’ ...”

From UK National Archives. www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/worldwar2/theatres-of-war/western-europe/investigation/hamburg/sources/docs/7/ This graph shows the accuracy of night bombing of German cities, excluding Berlin. It comes from a detailed report about war operations from 23rd February 1942 to 8th May 1945 by Air Chief Marshal, Sir Arthur Harris. The graph shows the percentage of aircraft attacking their target area. These figures are based on photographic evidence that show bombers reaching within three miles of their aiming point. Various radar based navigation aids, like "GEE" are also shown on the graph. The "GEE" system had a limited range and from August 1942 the Germans were able to start jamming its signals. Other radar navigation aids such as OBOE and H.2S were developed to increase the accuracy of the bombing.

The failure of American precision bombing during the years of 42-43 was not the result of missing, but the result of immense losses due to German air defenses, both fighter as well as ground based anti aircraft artillery. The concept of self defending bomber formations proved to be deeply flawed and it wasn’t until the development of long range fighter escort and maintenance of air superiority leading to eventual air supremacy that the benefits of daylight aerial bombing outweighed the massive cost in men and material. The British had much fewer casualties, both because of the fewer bombers used but also the relative safety of darkness. British bombing was no more effective despite the fact that more bombers completed missions, because the bombing of civilian targets (based on post war analysis) had little effect on productively.

He's a liberal boob. Very informative, though.

He does look a lot like G doesn't he?

so i wasnt the only one noticing that resemblance.

whitehorse1959 That is so funny!!

You like shtick?

Check out Revisionist History - he's an absolutely masterful storyteller.

@@williamwoody7607 Can you explain why you chose that word or

It was developed to bomb Germany, not defend US shores. There was no real threat of invasion of the US. The US is essentially a fortress as we are in probably the most geographically advantageous location on the globe and would be damn near impossible to invade. The supply lines needed alone for such an operation by any potential invading force makes it damn near physically impossible. The bombsight was created because bombing was horribly inaccurate and the US thinking at the time in the Air Force was that we could end the war with a very small number of perfectly placed bombs on very specific industrial targets. For example, we thought that if we could just eliminate the ability of Germany to produce the precise ball bearings needed for mechanized hardware we could end the war right there without all the bloodshed and destruction that typically accompanies mass bombing campaigns. The goal was to avoid Dresden, to avoid the firebombing of Tokyo. Tokyo was firebombed because we discovered the existence of the jet stream; we had to fly high to avoid the anti-air guns but doing so put us up against this MASSIVE headwind and the weather over Japan was also very very cloudy which meant even if we could fly high and get there with enough fuel that we couldn't drop precise bombs because we couldn't see the targets. It all became too much to overcome. We had to fly in low at night in order to avoid the jet stream and come in under the clouds, but this left American bombers still exposed to AA guns and eliminated the ability to see any targets clearly as they'd have gone lights out on the ground as well. Because of these factors the air campaign was going very poorly with attempted precision strikes (on top of the bombsight being very difficult to use and the fact that if tolerances on the parts within were off even the slightest bit that bombs would no longer be anywhere near precise and machining simply wasn't good enough to prevent that, especially in such a complicated mechanism with so many moving parts in such a demanding environment) and General Curtis LeMay was brought in to manage the campaign and make it work....and so the massive bombing raids against Japan began with napalm being created and used for this purpose because of the proportion of structures that were built almost entirely of wood.

Actually no, the Japanese tried to negotiate a end of the war via intermediary countries at least 3 times. In fact many Historians feel there would've been a negotiated surrender at least 3 months earlier if the US had not had any nukes in it's armoury

@@mickvonbornemann3824 This is news to me - no sarcasm. Where can we find evidence of the negotiations?

@@ihaligrygg9411 Alright, let's put it like this. You want fewer innocents to die and you want to reduce suffering. You invent this device and since they don't use it like you intended your machine is used to almost indiscriminately bomb civilian areas. Ultimately it's used to deliver the most horrific weapon in human history, obliterating a city the size of Malmö, Sweden killing over 100 000 people. Some were lucky and died painlessly as they were disintegrated by the blast, some were not and would die of radiation poisoning (a symptom of which is your skin painfully falling off). If your invention, designed to minimize suffering, leads to countless children dying in agony as their skin peels off it isn't a bitter sweet victory. It's a disgusting perversion of your original intentions.

Amen. The atomic bombs actually saved countless more Japanese lives and infrastructure since they were committee to dying for their empire. Not to mention the lives of allied forces. All because they believed their emperor was a deity. Could the bombs have been placed on military targets? Maybe. But Americans can't typically understand how different the Japanese culture and resolve was.

Ralph Worlein and if you were Japanese American you would have ended up in a camp.

Sounds like you didn't laugh at the Lenin joke either...

The point wasnt that it didnt work, note that whem he points out the flaws he says "doesnt work as well" not doesnt work at all. The point was that it was hailed as the thing to win the war, it would be crucial for the war, its the best thing since sliced bread when it didnt live up to expectations and didnt make as big of an impact as expected

It’s also people like this that look past the benefits of defense spending because they’re too focused on the casualties of war

True. He was educated in Switzerland though. And went back to live there after the war.

Yes, I listened to 'Bomber Mafia' on audiobook and it's an excellent kind of history of the Air Force through about WW2 and the military's strategic thinking around air power at that time. It amazed me to find out that the Japanese had invited LeMay back to Japan in the 60s to THANK HIM for dropping the bomb on them, as the Russians were also on their way and surely would have lead to a partitioned Japan and nothing like what they developed into after WW2.

Yeah, great book. LeMay was a brutal man, but he had no illusions about what it took to win a war.

Well, I think we can all agree: it sucked!

My uncle Tony was in the Army Air Corps. Based in Alaska. His job was to service the Norden bombsite on planes that were based there.

Very interesting. What can you tell us about these acoustic sensors (listening devices)? How were they designed to survive the drop into the bush? How long could they operate for with the batteries built-in? What data did they send back? This was before GPS, so that alone would be interesting. How sensitive were they?

He really wasn't that engaging as a storyteller.

He mentions that at 7:25.

Plus many other factual errors in his presentation. Additionally Bomber Harris + Allies totally carpet bombed German cities and the Americans leveled fire storm raids on Japan that were very devastating. The whole reason in modern warfare we have precision guided systems is so we don't have to carpet bomb entire cities with massive civilian casualties. Malcolm G, strangely sloppy work and "Thesis".

And... the SCUD was surface to surface not surface to air.

Wow, and your responses and opposition to his discussion is based on unimportant Oh never mind, you trolls. Why would I even bother trying...? -sigh- Humans, so happy in their supreme and superior smug ignorance... and yet, I have such hope for them.

@@howarddavis165 Everything you just said could 100% be applied to Gladwell's presentation. Very poor standard of research. to make a very weak point. Precision guided munitions means we don't carpet bomb cities anymore. Gladwell framed the discussion very poorly IMO. With the fires storms in Japan and the carpet bombing of cities like Dresden and Hamburg where the black top/ tarmac is boiling from 400 mile an hour pyroclastic winds virtually made atomic munitions mute/ irrelevant at that point. Japan made the false assumption that the US could rapidly build more atomic weapons, but in reality the millions of tons of bombs and incendiary devices did by far the bulk of the work. The US Airforce did extensive reconnaissance work and studies after the war to confirm that. If you look at the aerial imagery you will see for yourself. Gladwell needs to hold himself to a higher standard … Not just 'cuz it's a TED Talk.

EXTRA DIMENSION Ahh! MG is a storyteller. He has allowances for artistic license. Don’t you guys see that?

Yep. A thermonuclear bomb would have done significantly more damage.

Facts mean nothing to liberals.

@@brucemastiff7390 I'm a liberal, so...

I have lots of liberal friends, but I dont know for the life of me, why they support abortion and want to tear up the constitution and get rid of freedom and the 2nd amendment. Can you help me out with that?

@@BuddyNutcracker The only liberal thing about liberals is the liberties they take with other people's property, money and lives. That is why they are so comfortable with totalitarian regimes.

If Norden was trained as an engineer in Switzerland, and/or if he personally claimed to be Swiss, most would consider him Swiss.

I just made a comment on this talk that agrees with pakurilecz "so many errors in this talk." Isn't there anyone that fact-checks before airing?

"...Carl Norden was enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1994. The following is a summary of his career as presented in their citation. Carl Lucas Norden was born on April 23rd, 1880 in Semarang, Java,(now Indonesia) the third of five children. Following the death of his father in 1885, the family returned to Holland, then moved to Dresden, Germany in 1893. In 1896 he began a three year apprenticeship in a Swiss machine shop, after which he entered the world-famous Zurich Federal Polytechnic School. He graduated as a mechanical engineer in 1904 and came to America." He moved to Switzerland when he was a teenager, apprenticed there as a kid, and was educated in Zurich, then went back and died in Zurich,. So its not such a stretch to say he was a "Swiss engineer"

William Trione ~ Seriously? He could have used any number of other examples and made the same point-which was the point.

I think most of his errors were minor and didn't change the point or the validity of his conclusion.

William Trione What are the errors?

Malcolm Gladwell is over-rated, and his "work" is interesting but not completely reliable or correct. He is getting very close to his 15 minutes being over.

Okay I'm open minded but please say what the errors are concisely and with a little bit of evidence.

I agree

I know, right?

Canadians I know speak like that. Some Irish, some Scots. It does not bother me too much!!

Agree, almost as much as leaving your collar buttons unbuttoned.

Leftists don't like to say anything positive about America...ever.

True in Europe partially but in Japan the US carpet bombed most of the major cities to ashes. Bombing of Tokyo caused more death than Hiroshima or Nagasaki and it was neither precise nor nuclear. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo

Shows how little you know.

The effect was much the same. The Norden sight spread US bombs out over only slightly less area than RAF area bombing. And the USAF used area bombing with incendiaries at night over Tokyo and other Japanese cities causing the most destructive raids in history, over 100,000 people died in Tokyo alone. Then there were the two atom bomb attacks. All necessary to end the war. So quit your virtue signalling Yank.

@@SvenTviking you forgot to mention how the japanese military would not allow their civilians to leave town because that would show weakness. You also forgot to mention how the US would drop thousands of leaflets three entire days prior to all city bombings to reduce possible casualties...

@NOTMYNAME I came to comment precisely about that and then thought I should check if someone else had pointed that out -- and indeed your comment says that it wasn't a thermonuclear weapon. 🙂

Hitler called, and he wants his "end justifies the means" mentality back.

Miss points much?

@@timherald4516 He didn't the miss the "fact" that many of his points were based on inaccuracies, all leading to the great epiphany, war is bad. Thanks Capt Obvious.

@@ckmoore101 WOW because that was not the point of the talk AT ALL.

@@ckmoore101 You really thought he came to an anti-war conclusion? Jesus...

You must be using a norden mkXV bomb sight cos you've missed the point spectacularly

That could be followed by "The Strange Tale of Leif Johnson's Empty Skull."

Lay it on my, chief.

That is a very specific estimate that most historians agree was an exaggeration even before you question those numbers underlying assumption that the Japaneses would not have surrendered without an invasion.

@Speedy TalkerThe Japanese were willing to surrender if they could keep their emperor but we demanded unconditional surrender and then allowed them to keep him. Total racism and retribution for Pearl Harbor.

@@drcthru7672 where is the racism?

@@vagabondroller We would never have used nukes in Europe!

@@drcthru7672 Right, because the war in Europe was over in May of 1945 and the bomb wasn't ready until June. If the situation warranted it we would have nuked Germany. We firebombed Dresden didn't we? The death tolls at Dresden and Hiroshima were both around 135,000. Both the Germans and Japanese were the aggressors in the war and committed horrible atrocities. They got what they had coming.

Eureka!