The Hunt in the Dark

"or they could use what the French called 'chasse obscure', in which the fighter pilot tried to find and attack his quarry in the dark" (Lee Kennett, 'A History of Strategic Bombing', p. 96). In this beautiful and terrifying book, Kennet traces the advance of strategic bombing from a fanciful idea, through the rise of public opinion and the masses, into the firestorms of Hamburg and Dresden (where temperatures were over 800 degrees Celsius) and the 'tidal wave of fire' that swept Tokyo, and finally to the Atom bomb - which wasn't that much worse, initially, than a normal bombing run. While bombing was notoriously imprecise, defense against aerial bombardment was, at times, nearly impossible. Up to the 1940's, when the darkness had settled and the signals warned of approaching bombs, pilots would rise into the sky with only the help of searchlights on the ground. While it was certain that bombers were present, finding them was immensely difficult - thus the 'chasse obscure', or the 'dark hunt.' More often than not, these sorties were met with failure, yet every once in a while they produced a dramatic score, as suddenly machine guns unleashed their charges and flames erupted from a Luftwaffe engine (substitute also the British, Italian, French, and Austrian aerial forces).

That, it seems to me, sums up pretty well the experience of those who attempt to think the limits of our time and the prospects for a different world. Simply ascertaining the conditions of the times is only the beginning of the task. More often than not, thought and action are in a dark hunt for a target that must exist, yet refuses to reveal its essential mechanism. So, with the appropriate fanfare and lofty (read: pretentious) aspirations that the dark hunt entails, here goes another flight.