First, Bodhi, I dunno if naming names and making unprovoked attacks at folks is going to help. We've all seen morons online squeaking about this or that aspect on the basis of some shoddy piece of work; most of us know them to be asses, and frankly I think it superfluous to do so online. Besides, it's much more fun to string 'em along and hang 'em out to dry ("You hate the spitfire right now, eh? Yeah, well, you know, I was talking to HT the other day, and he said he was going to perk the G10 because he couldn't stand those LW alt-monkeys any more.") On the other hand, before calling them morons on the board, I'd wait for them to post. Then let 'em have it.
Second, you're right. There is no "Truth" out there; history is not the past, but rather the past as remembered (or better, as we choose to remember it). The first thing you have to do in any serious historical research is check your sources. That's why serious history books have tons and tons of notes in the back. A book saying "The Mosquito Mk. VI F/B had 500 rounds of 20mm per gun" has practically no value unless it tells us _where_ that number comes from.
There's no book out there that gets it "all right", and when you get to the bottom of the "facts", you'll have a buttload of contradictions. Whatever the case, odds are you won't get enough uncontested engineering data that the flight/gunnery/damage models will build themselves; you still need to make an interpretation.
Third, we should not underestimate the social value of whining. Whenever a group of relative strangers gets together, the first thing they do is establish a common bond. Ideally, that bonds forms along the reason for them getting together. But human experience shows that few people enjoy the same aspects of any experience. In AH, some love getting shot down, some enjoy furballing, some buffing, and so on. On the other hand, the negative aspects are invariably the same, and serve as great community builders. So, a *touch* of squeaking is not a bad thing. What _is_ a bad thing is when people do nothing but whine.
