I took the liberty of moving the thread

As I get deeper into Flyboys, my irritation increases. Bradley
regularly refers to the North American B-25 Mitchell bomber as a
Billy. "Flyboy" as a word for pilot or air crew is bad enough, but
Billy! Where did he pick that up?

I'm also despairing that his 10-to-12 page histories are continuing.
I'm about halfway through the book and we still haven't come back to
Chichi Jima. He's trying to cover the entire 19th-20th century misteps
of Japan *and* the United States in this fairly slender volume, and he
just doesn't know what he's talking about half the time. It all
depends on which source volume he picked up (take a look at his
citations: there'll be one book cited, then ibid, ibid, ibid).

He doesn't know the difference between casualties and deaths. Airplane
engines stall in mid-air. And of course there's the famous jet fuel on
carrier decks.

But what really set me off was his account of the Doolittle raid,
which ends with the statement: "The U.S. and Japan were even" -- they
mounted a sneak attack on us; we mounted a sneak attack on them.
Bradley is able to overlook the rather important difference that in
April 1942 Japan and the United States were at war!



On Wed, 17 Dec 2003 05:12:53 -0500, Cub Driver
wrote:


I do believe that Bradley really overworked the term in "Flyboys".
His continuous use of the term throughout the book reminded me of some of
these rock groups

As I get farther along, I find he's doing it with other terms. In
chapter three he explains that the cruder gang who took over the
Japanese military after the Russo-Japanese War concluded from that war
that everything depended on the spirit of the soldier. He segues from
that to calling them the Spirit Boys.

I guess it's just an irritating tic that I'll have to accept. The man
has discovered a few concepts and wants to make sure that we remember
them. Apart from that, I thought his ten-or--twelve page history of
Japan was a damn good summary of a world that westerners find it
almost impossible to understand. (We are still arguing about the
emperor's role in starting the war, never mind ending it.)

Thanks, everybody!


all the best -- Dan Ford
email:

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

all the best -- Dan Ford
email:

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com