B-17's and Strategic Bombing (Was:Was D VII a good plane)

Should I post the serial number of that B-17?


If you do, make sure you post the entire serial number, not just what is
painted on the tail.

That was the S/N as it appeared on the tail, and also how it is reported in the
381st BG unit history.

I could have -assumed- there was more to it; I knew it was short, but I didn't
want to report something I didn't know for sure.

Walt

Mr. Gustin said he'd need a better source than Martin Caidin for the
B-17/FW-190 story. In this case, although it's been amply shown that Caidin
shouldn't be trusted on much, he was pretty much correct about this story.

Agreed - Marty didn't fiddle with this one, but, can you see why Mr. Gustin
didn't want to jump right up and take MC's word for it, before the other source
came up?

I think I would have worded it similarly if I were to have been the responder
ahead of him - MC was a GREAT writer and I would never take that away from him.
I am a struggling writer myself and I know there are times when I see a great
story in someone's book, the first inclination I have is that I want to use it;
the second inclination is to realize that simply by being in someone else's
book, the details have already been through at least one filter, perhaps more.
So I tend to reject published books as sources, unless I can read a long list
of original historic sources listed in the credits - even then, I typically go
off to find those original sources.

I believe the same thing as he does about Caidin - he filled his books with
bar
stories and genuine historians are going to be cleaning up his mess for the
next 100 years.

You are probably right.

snip agreed stuff

Getting back to the original FW 190 / B-17 story, which is more accurate,
Caidin, or the other...? Marty wrote to thrill; the other guy wrote his
account to tell the story accurately.

Based on the two accounts, Caidin inflated 2 FW's to 3. It would be hard to
gainsay the other account, as he was sitting about six feet from where the FW
struck. Nothing else in the co-pilot's account contradicts what Caidin said,
although the co-pilot has the FW strike inboard of the #3 engine and Caidin
indicates a strike on the engine itself. That's a difference of a few feet.


True - what I was pointing out was the main difference between the two
accounts. One was the nuts and bolts blow by blow description by the CP - in
contrast, MC's account was more like the "Two Fisted Tales"-type of writing,
where Marty talks about the 'Fort blasting enemy fighters and only just barely
refrains from using the "there I was, waist deep in spent shells.." line.
But that is why I loved to read him as a kid!

I appreciate your comments.

Cool - glad we can disagree without slinging monkeydoo.

v/r
Gordon
====(A+C====
USN SAR

Its always better to lose AN engine, than THE engine.

Mr. Gustin shows his anti-American bias:

My point is that when it came to strategic targets in Germany
itself, the actual practice amounted to, as you say, "leaving
damn little standing". Which simply does not involve much
accuracy, except being able to hit a city-sized target.

The Americans always eschewed that approach. They always sought accuracy, and
for the day, and under the conditions, they often obtained outstanding accurary
and results.

.....

Precision bombing may have been the officially stated goal; but
the effect on the ground was usually indistinguishable from
area bombing.


That's just false.

The Germans began redeploying their day fighters back to Germany at a time when
the USAAF was sending only a few dozen -uescorted- bombers at a time and only
striking in clear weather.

I just don't see how you can discount this. The Germans began deployment of
their day fighters from about May, 1943. That was directly because of the
effect of --daylight precison bombing--.

The USAAF flew its first radar assisted mission in November, 1943.

A very large percentage of bombs were dropped in the campaign by radar and
other non-visual means, but when the weather was clear the USAAF had the
equipment and techniques to achieve very high accuracy for the day.

The Germans are -clear- that this hurt them very badly. They are also very
clear that the USAAF hurt them worse than the RAF did, despite the fact that
the front line strength power curve of the RAF was about two years ahead of the
Americans.

See this link for an example of USAAF accuracy:

http//members.aol.com/walterm140/strike1.jpg

Walt

"WalterM140" wrote in message
...
Mr. Gustin shows his anti-American bias:

My point is that when it came to strategic targets in Germany
itself, the actual practice amounted to, as you say, "leaving
damn little standing". Which simply does not involve much
accuracy, except being able to hit a city-sized target.

The Americans always eschewed that approach. They always sought accuracy,
and
for the day, and under the conditions, they often obtained outstanding
accurary
and results.

This will come as a great surprise to those who have studied the
USAAF campaign over Japan which utilised area bombing
at night to great effect.

Keith

There is nothing magical about 'original
sources' that makes them inherently correct.

What are you defining as an "original" source?
I would define such as things such as minutes of meetings, letters, orders,
weather reports, diaries, logbooks. By their nature they are as "correct" as
we are likely ever going to get and are very useful at determining the truth.
For example, S.L.A. Marshall claimed to have participated in the 1918 campaigns
at St. Mihiel, Soissons, and the Meuse-Argonne and won a battlefield
commission. However, military records state that he was a sergeant in the
315th Engineers constructing roads behind the lines. Anyone relying on his
autobiography, "Bringing Up the Rear," to write about him would be using a
secondary source, and would succumb to the errors and distortions it contains.
Had he, however, going directly to the "original source," unit records and
Marshall's military records, he would have avoided that and what he wrote would
be as close to accurate as you can get.

(I hope Art has his
tranquillizers at hand.)

Oral history is not the same as "original source" history. Although it can be
useful, memories can be faulty and individual selection and emphasis of detail
(even if unconscious) can distort. Of course, the first-person account
provides an immediacy to the past that documents rarely can.

Often they were written by people who
had some policy or interest to defend;

What type of document do you have in mind? It may well be that the researcher
is looking for just such proofs of policy interest and is quite pleased to
discover them. (Here I am thinking of things like position papers, memos,
letters, transcripts.)

official, contemporary
reports can still be biased and unreliable.

Well, they are reliable in that they _are_ the contemporary reports and as such
they are valuable for revealing what was conveyed, whether it was, after the
fact, accurate and truthful or not, and may explain why otherwise puzzling
decisions were made.

And 'being there'
doesn't always protect people from being misinformed or poor
observers.

True in general but not necessarily in particular. Having original sources at
hand helps you sort out the accurate memories from the inaccurate ones.

A good researcher with plentiful background knowledge
and a diverse range of sources at hand can provide a very useful
analysis.

Provided he is unbiased or is honest (especially with himself) about his own
biases.

Whether a source is original should IMHO only be one
element in evaluating its credibility, although an important one.

If it is an original source, it _is_ credible, within the confines of what it
is.
But what do you mean by "credible" and "original source"? Could you provide an
example of an "original source" that is not "credible"?

But given a single secondary source and a single
primary source that contradict each other, it would be overhasty
to reject the secondary as wrong
maybe the secondary is based
on five primaries that all contradict your single primary.

What do you mean by "primary" source?
In any case "maybe" shouldn't be part of the equation.
Original historical sources are not fungible, like scientific tests repeated by
various laboratories, with the anomalous one rejected and condemned to a
footnote in report of results.
That doesn't mean every original source carries the same weight. History is
more like criminal prosecution than research science. You interview
eyewitnesses, you examine physical evidence at the "crime" scene, you examine
documents, letters, diaries, computer disks, you take statements from
interested parties or those who know the parties involved, you talk to experts
to understand the significance various pieces of evidence. You try to fit it
all together to detect patterns, motives. In doing this, some things you have
collected will prove invaluable, others inconsequential. But you collect them
all, study them all until you do understand their degree of significance. And
you are always skeptical, assuming nothing without corroboration.
Secondary sources, in this comparison, are like hearsay. It can be useful
during the investigation (although it can also be misleading, so always treat
it with caution). It is never allowed "in court" and if you base your case on
it, you will lose.


Chris Mark

I didn't intend to suggest that I find original records error free - what I
said was that I prefer to use such records over something I find in a book.
That same suspicion is cast on everything that goes in to the text because I
can't afford my first book to have obvious errors in it, if I have it in my
power to catch them. I can't go back and get it right later.

Here's an example - I found a document in a German archive that I thought was
good info for my topic. Specifically, it was a "lessons learned" written in
Autumn, 1944, concerning the 5th and 6th Squadrons of JG 300 and Ekdo 262, the
first units to recieve the precursor to the EZ42 gyroscopic gunsight. My book
is about men that served in the nightfighter squadrons of JG 300 that shared
equipment and the airbase at Jueterbog, defending Berlin (ineffectively) from
Mosquito attack. Some of 10./JG 300 had EZ42s installed in their specially
prepared high altitude Bf 109 G-10s, so I felt that the document could provide
insight and direct input from men in the same unit as the Mosquito hunters.

It was brilliant; in fact, it was "Caidin-esque". Then, I caught a detail
among several questionable statements - it turned out the author was a tech rep
and intel specialist, assigned to the EZ42 program. That meant he had good
reason to want to justify his pet project and continue his rear echelon duties
at a time in the war when a lot of engineer technicians such as he were getting
quick refresher courses in the Karabiner 98K. Not surprisingly, he was
enthusiastic in his writing duties. The author interviewed the pilots within
hours or days of the missions described in the report - their comments were
paired with victory confirmation data from the Luftwaffe, 'proving' the EZ42
was both revolutionary and highly effective.

Only thing is, if you go through German and Allied records, the combats
described by the tech rep do not match the dates on claims or losses, although
its clear that the distortion is not intended to give pilots credit for things
that did not happen. Instead, it seems the writer was trying to interject that
the men involved went from nachwuchs to dead-eyed killers overnight, with the
addition of this gadget. The report included reports of B-24s going down with
remarkably few shots - this, by kids that normally would not be scoring any
hits at all as they jostled and tumbled through the bomber formation's
slipstream.. The report paints a picture of jubulation among squadron pilots,
as if they had been granted instant superiority over the thorny Boeings and
Liberators they faced.

The bottom line is that it was flawed in the details, to the point that it
makes it useless. Its not the only time I've seen 'original documents' that
miss the mark, but what it suggested to me is that if another writer saw and
used that single report, it would look completely legitimate in a book. Still
would be "filtered" - where the original document fell apart under scrutiny, a
respected writer might legitimize the errors by using the flawed data in an
otherwise accurate book, or hopefully, he'd catch the problems and not rely on
it.

Not easy...

v/r
Gordon
====(A+C====
USN SAR

Its always better to lose AN engine, than THE engine.

Here's an example - I found a document in a German archive that I thought was
good info for my topic.

A good example of a primary source that is not reliable--but nonetheless is
useful and interesting; the story you relate is worth reading and maybe you can
include it in an appendix to your book. It humanizes the subject and helps the
reader grasp that people involved in prosecuting a world war still had their
own personal agendas, that they all weren't cartoon heroes.
Your story also illustrates why all historians are not fungible. Among many
reasons is that some are more skilled at assessing the value of the research
materials they examine. Some are too credulous, some too ignorant, some too
sympathetic, some too biased. Often, one author can be all four.
Thus, authors gain reputations: Which books should I read about the Pacific
air war in WW2? Anything by Lundstrom or Sakaida, be careful with Bergerud and
Hoyt, stay away from Caidin and Edmonds.
Unfortunately, it seems that the authors who are the least reliable factually,
seem to have the most engaging writing style and become most widely read. The
best researchers often write boring books that have little impact on the
popular imagination.
The person who is an excellent researcher and also can tell a gripping story is
rare; unfortunately for US WW2 aviation buffs, most of these write about the
ACW or the opening of the West--your McPhersons, Footes, de Votos, van Everys.


Chris Mark