I didn’t really try to learn from it – more took it as a story. I was interested to see that Beirne Lay was mentioned in the section on the Schweinfurt/Regensburg raid. I have his book I’ve had it on my to-read list for a while now. My only knowledge of Schweinfurt before this was as a city where I walked a long way to the youth hostel only to find it closed.
The conclusion wasn’t super satisfying. In the end, in WWII, practicality carried the day, and since the Norden bombsight didn’t live up to its promise, and relied on cloud-free skies, that meant flattening or burning whole cities. The idea that modern technology has made high-altitude precision bombing possible is discussed briefly, along with the question of even though you can do it, should you? But I feel like the discussion should have been expanded or removed completely.
