Cub Driver wrote:

I saw this remarked upon elsewhere--the bit about jet fuel, I mean.
Which leads me to think it's the major howler in the book. One
suspects that it was inserted by a 23-year-old editor.

I suspected this as well.

As for the big radials, well, perhaps they did have a tendency to
stall--which an aviator would describe as quitting. To most
non-pilots, stalling exactly means an engine stopping without warning.

Well, I didn't. Stalling is an engine quitting because you loaded it down too
much without advancing the throttle. It is a very specific type of quitting, and
it never happens without warning. This is the case even for non-pilots; go to
your mechanic and tell him the engine stalled and it's an entirely different
ball game than if you tell him the engine died. Unless you get a prop strike,
it's impossible to stall an aircraft engine.

Please post your thoughts. I haven't bought the book; I'm still
inclined to.

Like Corky, I've read a good deal about WWII in the last 40 years. It's been
sort of a hobby of mine. I'm not as good as Corky is at dredging up info I read
or remembering where I read it. I also haven't read as much about the Pacific
theatre as perhaps I should. I'm also not familiar with the events in that part
of the world around the end of the 19th century. Still, there were a surprising
number of items in that book of which I had not heard before.

As a result, I was surprised by some of the things presented in the book, but
am not qualified to say they are false. Since it is well written and the author
is reasonable about those things with which I am familiar, I would be surprised
to find any falsehoods with the rest. As I said, the book has an extensive
bibliography. The author has also footnoted things well, which should make it
easy for me to take a look at more primary sources. In my copious free time.

George Patterson
Great discoveries are not announced with "Eureka!". What's usually said is
"Hmmmmm... That's interesting...."