“He was the finest…kind of commander he was”： Errol Morris, dir., The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara （New York: Sony Pictures Classics, 2003）。
The following quotations are from Reminiscences of Curtis E. LeMay: Oral History, 1971 （Air Force Academy Project, Columbia Center for Oral History, Columbia University Libraries, New York, NY）： “The Air Force has been battling…Find the battleship”; “Finally they agreed…this time, I’m sure”; and “Everybody [was] diving…hurt a little bit.”
“I remember watching…frag like that”： Curtis E. LeMay with MacKinlay Kantor, Mission with LeMay: My Story （New York: Doubleday, 1965）， 150.
“Dawn, August seventeenth…deep in Germany” and “By the time we…dispatched to date”： The Air Force Story: Chapter XIV—Schweinfurt and Regensburg, August 1943, produced by the Department of the Air Force, 1953, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB8C-CagZeU.
Chapter Five: “General Hansell
was aghast.”
For more information about the Schweinfurt-Regensburg raid, see Thomas M. Coffey, Decision Over Schweinfurt: The U.S. 8th Air Force Battle for Daylight Bombing （New York: David McKay, 1977）。
Curtis LeMay’s quotations in this chapter, unless otherwise noted, are from Reminiscences of Curtis E. LeMay: Oral History, 1971 （Air Force Academy Project, Columbia Center for Oral History, Columbia University Libraries, New York, NY）。
“A shining silver…100 percent loss”： Lieutenant Colonel Beirne Lay Jr., “I Saw Regensburg Destroyed,” Saturday Evening Post, November 6, 1943.
“G?ring’s Luftwaffe…explosives to deliver” and “After getting eighty…home fast”： The Air Force Story: Chapter XIV—Schweinfurt and Regensburg, August 1943, produced by the Department of the Air Force, 1953, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB8C-CagZeU.
The information about the condition of the Kugelfischer ball-bearing plant after the air attack is from Thomas M. Coffey, Decision Over Schweinfurt: The U.S. 8th Air Force Battle for Daylight Bombing （New York: David McKay, 1977）， 81.
“there is no evidence…war production”： The United States Strategic Bombing Survey: Summary Report: European War, September 30, 1945, 6, available at https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_United_States_Strategic_Bombing_Surv/EfEdkyz_D0AC?hl=en&gbpv=1.
“There’s only one…fly ’em some more”： Henry King, dir., Twelve O’Clock High （Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox, 1949）。
“We were assigned…for that squadron”： National WWII Museum, George Roberts 306th Bomb Group, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRO1R7Op1ec.
“We took off…aiming point”： Alan Harris, ed., “The 1943 Munster Bombing Raid in the Words of B-17 Pilot Keith E. Harris （1919–1980），” AlHarris.com, available at http://www.alharris.com/stories/munster.htm.
The anecdote about the navigator who faced court-martial is from Seth Paridon, “Mission to Munster,” National WWII Museum, November 20, 2017, available at https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/mission-munster; and Ian Hawkins, Munster: The Way It Was （Robinson Typographics, 1984）， 90.
“General Hansell was aghast”： Ralph H. Nutter, With the Possum and the Eagle: The Memoir of a Navigator’s War Over Germany and Japan （Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 2005）， 137.
“The idea…pervasive thing,” “We were reasonably…personal salvation,” and “One of the things…difficult to do”： Leon Festinger, interview by Dr. Christopher Evans for the Brain Science Briefing series, 1973, available at https://soundcloud.com/user-262473248/a-sixty-minute-interview-with-leon-festinger.
“Suppose an individual…will happen?” and “When the…frozen and expressionless”： Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley W. Schachter, When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World （Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956）， 3, 162–63.
“I need not…points of the war”： Charles Griffith, The Quest: Haywood Hansell and American Strategic Bombing in World War II （Montgomery, AL: Air University Press, 1999）， 132.
“The attacks on the ball-bearing…our last gasp”： Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs by Albert Speer （New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997）， 286.