A fantastic book -- must read for the P-38 nut.
Come on -- don't give Guppy a hard time -- this is truly a good book. Maybe it has some inaccuracies in it, but it is still a good book.
What do you guys not like about it specifically?
Not having a copy around to give you a detailed analysis, I can think of these things:
1. It contains much fantasy. Dead pilots landing their 38s in North Africa. A whole chapter on an Italian in a captured 38 being baited by a b17 pilot who paints the Italian's wife on the nose and, after the war, attends the Italian pilot's funeral. Probably more, as I said I'm going on very long-term memory.
2. It's a pathetic apologia for the 38's failure as an escort fighter in the 8th AF. The 38 might have worked out fine in the Med and Pacific and even in the 9th AF, but it didn't work out fine in the 8th. Many on these boards and others have offered good explanations on WHY this was so, but Caiden tries to make it look as if it were not so.
3. It's a pathetic apologia (I'm beginning to love that word) for the P-38's design flaws. All through the book Caiden is saying things like "Yes, this didn't work, but by the time the P-38L came around it did!" Fine. That was too late. The plane didn't work when it counted.
4. I grew up on Caiden books. "Black Thursday," "Thunderbolt!", ""Samurai," "Everything But the Flak," "The Rugged Ragged Warriors," I read them all. Worse, I believed them all. Once I realized that "Fork-tailed Devil" was dishonestly written I went back over the others and found many other, similar problems (although happily not in the two where the real pilots could keep Caiden honest). So I was the Betrayed Angry Person.
As I say, that's just off the top of my head.
- oldman
