I'll bite... Why have I lost credibility? not that I had any to begin with?
Citing anything written by Martin Caiden as having something to do with historical fact. Next to "Flying Forts," "Fork-tailed Devil" is probably his very least reliable book. It's got ghost stories (the 38 landing in Africa with the dead pilot), Hollywood fantasy (the Italian pilot flying the 38), and magic-with-numbers (making the 8th AF 38 kill/loss ratio look good). And lots more, it's been decades since I last read the book. Probably if you search around in these forums, or google on-line, you'll find people more skilled than me who can go into more detail about Caiden's imaginative history. When he had someone to keep him honest - Robert Johnson or Saburo Sakai or Fred Saito - his fish stories were kept in check (for the most part), but when unleashed Caiden should have just been forthright and said that his books were "based on actual events."
- oldman (hey, you asked!)