Definitive proof of origin of "Fork-Tailed Devil"

[Brooke]

Here we see again that "I read a lot of books and none of them mentioned this" and "it doesn't sound right to me" are not telling arguments and are not in the slightest proof that something didn't happen.

I posted one reference from 1943 Life Magazine -- and it was dismissed as a lie by the author unless there was some other source out there, preferably from the German point of view (evidence being essentially "because it doesn't sound right to me").

I posted a reference from a German flak crewman -- and it was dismissed as a lie unless there was some other source out there, preferably from a German pilot (evidence being essentially "because it still doesn't sound right to me").

I now have posted a third reference from a well-known German Bf 109 pilot, Franz Stigler, member of JG 27 (and late in the war with JV 44 in Me 262's), who flew in 109's in North Africa, Sicily, and Germany, against many types of enemy planes including notably P-38's.

If you still want to dispute things, the ball is now in your court -- show evidence that all three of these independent references were lying about the phrase "fork-tailed devil".

[DaveBB]

Here we see again that "I read a lot of books and none of them mentioned this" and "it doesn't sound right to me" are not telling arguments and are not in the slightest proof that something didn't happen.

I posted one reference from 1943 Life Magazine -- and it was dismissed as a lie by the author unless there was some other source out there, preferably from the German point of view (evidence being essentially "because it doesn't sound right to me").

I posted a reference from a German flak crewman -- and it was dismissed as a lie unless there was some other source out there, preferably from a German pilot (evidence being essentially "because it still doesn't sound right to me").

I now have posted a third reference from a well-known German Bf 109 pilot, Franz Stigler, member of JG 27 (and late in the war with JV 44 in Me 262's), who flew in 109's in North Africa, Sicily, and Germany, against many types of enemy planes including notably P-38's.

If you still want to dispute things, the ball is now in your court -- show evidence that all three of these independent references were lying about the phrase "fork-tailed devil".

I took a course from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Dept once, and while studying, I came across a great sentence published the FW Dept.  "People will often ignore obvious facts due to cultural or religious beliefs".  So I think you are dealing with folks that are ingrained with skepticism that may be borderline conspiracy theorists.

[Hungry]

I'm amazed too but what I'm really amazed about is what a Schwantz really is

[Brooke]

I'm amazed too but what I'm really amazed about is what a Schwantz really is

One of the reasons it seems people don't believe in "fork-tailed devil" is that they think of it as being a flattering term and think that the Germans wouldn't give the P-38 a flattering nickname.

I, too, am not so sure it is a flattering nickname, but that's beside the point for me.  For me, it's just about evidence of was the term used or not.  Evidence -- not conjecture or what a person emotionally believes.

[Brooke]

It's ironic.

Folks here often go to great lengths to research WWII aircraft and to dispel misinformation regarding them.

Here we have something that folks thought was misinformation that now has evidence of not being misinformation after all.

Opposing the evidence with purely emotional arguments like "it doesn't sound right to me", "I didn't see it in other books I read", and "I heard it isn't true" -- when decent actual contrary evidence is clearly posted above -- is now promoting misinformation, not working to dispel it.

[Arlo]

One can play 'devil's advocate' either way, Brooke. I was fine with your first post proving a date of reference for the term. That would be a fact that the author of the book didn't make up or imagine the term. Clean cut. The 'truth' regarding true origin or design, however, is always a perceptively fuzzy thing. I've always liked the 'fork tailed devil' and 'whistling death' references. I could probably spend a lifetime playing history detective on their 'true' origin .... and still come up wanting. More so, the Luft fans and IJN fans will never believe anything that proves (or almost proves) it just as the USAAF and USN fans will never believe things that prove (or almost prove) the opposite. Second hand data, even in large quantity, can never be the 'truth' to someone that requires first hand experience. Unfortunately, first hand experience actually requires being there, in person, when it happened (and, even then, that's one moment in time at one spot that is a very specific situation without an omniscient view of what may have impacted it somewhere else at another time).

Having gone all philosophical and blurry, let me say I do appreciate each little bit of archival information you share. 

[Brooke]

I hear you, Arlo.

I actually expected the claim of the Germans using "fork-tailed devil" to be false (because I, too, hadn't seen it in German memoirs yet).  I looked into it only because I felt people were being overly harsh on Caidin, much of whose work I like, and I wanted to see if I could find a reference to use earlier than his P-38 book.  Then, I started to find things that were surprising to me.

[Arlo]

We could all use fresh viewpoints and perspectives. Thanks, again, for sharing yours. 

[Brooke]

By the way, for those just going through this thread, here is a summary of the references and what they say.

-------------------------------------------

1.  Life Magazine, August 16, 1943, p. 51, in the article "P-38":
https://books.google.com/books?id=RVAEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA51&dq=gabelschwanz%20teufel&pg=PA51#v=onepage&q=gabelschwanz%20teufel&f=false

"Into that camp the military police brought a disheveled German flier who was mumbling hysterically and repeating something about 'der Gabelschwanz Teufel'.  An interpreter was called, and he had the translation quickly:  'the fork-tailed devil'.  The German was talking about the P-38."

---------------------------------------------

2.  From "Jungvolk: The Story of a Boy Defending Hitler's Reich," by Wilhelm R. Gehlen (flak crew member)

"There were four of them, the new American fighter bombers, P-38s or Lightnings made by Lockheed, which could also be fitted with drop tanks and used as a long-range escort. . . . We had given them the name “Gabelschwanz Teufel” (fork-tailed devil) on our identification chart a few weeks ago, but this was the first time we had seen them for real. We had been told that their range was insufficient to reach us in Germany, but these devils had drop tanks."

-----------------------------------------------

3.  From "A Higher Call" -- Author:  "What you’ll read in the following pages is built around four years of interviews with Charlie and Franz and four years of research, on and off."  Franz Stigler was a 109 pilot, and here is what he relates:

"THREE DAYS LATER, APRIL 16, 1943 . . .From Olympus, the controllers radioed the flight to alert them that P-38 fighters had been sighted above the Gulf of Palermo. Franz had never seen a P-38, but he had heard the name the boys in Africa gave the new American fighter—“ the Fork-Tailed Devil.”

. . .

"Franz liked the idea of pursuing “the herd,” as the bombers were called, instead of “the Fork-Tailed Devils.”

. . .

"He saw green silhouettes just two thousand feet below him. At sixteen thousand feet they motored in the opposite direction, toward Africa. Franz’s eyes went wide. Each fighter had two engines, one attached to each large wing. The engines’ booms extended back like fork blades connecting to a small tail. They were P-38s, ten of them, the Fork-Tailed Devils of the 82nd Fighter Group. The Americans called their planes “Lightnings.”

. . .

"When Franz and Willi landed at Trapani, they hurried to fill out their victory claims in the operations shack. Willi claimed two P-38s and Franz one. Willi was cheerful because they had chased away an entire flight of Fork-Tailed Devils . . ."

[Delirium]

Brooke, you need to drink less coffee. This is much like a political argument, you aren't going to convince anyone to change their minds.

I love the P38 and I would really enjoy to read something along the lines of, "That monster came down, shot me down, knocked up my sister and groped my wife." However, items written during wartime for civilians to read are notoriously inaccurate. I have a great set of books that were printed during WWII that documents the war and reading it is pretty comical because there are all kinds of errors and complete falsehoods. I enjoy reading them because I take what I read with skepticism, but the real reason I read them is because it allows me to view the war through the eyes of the average person at home.

Besides, of the three references you posted above only one was written in the same century as WWII. Time can also affect a story's validity as well!

[RJH57]

This one *is* from a German pilot whose information is given in the book "A Higher Call".  From the writer of "A Higher Call":  "What you’ll read in the following pages is built around four years of interviews with Charlie and Franz and four years of research, on and off."  Franz Stigler was a 109 pilot, and here is what he relates:

no, NOT written in German by Franz Stigler during the war or not even shortly after the war! "A Higher Call " was written by 2 professional writers - Adam Makos and Larry Alexander - here in the USA, published in 2013.  They are NOT translators of primary source material, nor academic Historians but  journalists whose job is to CREATE a readable story and SELL it - in a book, magazine or newspaper.   And guess what - every author's dream - MOVIE RIGHTS! British playwright Sir Tom Stoppard and his producer son, Will, have acquired the film rights to Makos’s book.  ‘It’s going to be an epic,’ says Stoppard Jnr.
Your "THREE DAYS LATER, APRIL 16, 1943" excerpt has written by a journalist all over it.  Do you think an old man is going to remember this kind of vivid detail (e.g. "Spiraling upward in their 109s through scattered clouds above the airfield, Franz and Willi saw smoke rising on the other side of Olympus...  Franz, Willi, and twenty-one of their comrades had scrambled too late.The skies were otherwise empty. It was 4: 30 P.M..... Not a minute had gone by before someone radioed, “Fighters! Eleven o’clock low!") SIXTY YEARS after the fact ? Hell, I can't remember what I was doing yesterday, a week, a month ago at 4:30 PM.


I would say the spirit of Martin Caidin lives on in Adam Makos.  Fyi, author Adam Makos - a young, self-admitted aviation enthusiast  who must have been well aware of the P-38's "Gabelschwanz Teuffel" moniker - began work on the book in 2004! Franz Stigler died in March 2008 and Charlie Brown eight months later. I'm not questioning the event but the telling of it in the book are NOT (rarely ?) always the precise words of either Stigler or Brown but based on fragmentary interviews with them. Poetic license - it's what writers and journalist do to create an effect or emotional impact, by embellishing a story, not necessarily lying with a deliberate intent to deceive or mislead.  Being a pilot does not make one a good writer. And being a journalist does not make one an aviator.

About the Authors

Adam Makos is the author of the New York Times and international bestseller A Higher Call. In his sixteen years of work as a journalist in the military field, Makos has interviewed countless veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and present-day wars. In pursuit of a story, Makos has met with presidents, had tea with Prince Charles, accompanied a Special Forces raid in Iraq, and organized an expedition into North Korea in search of an MIA American serviceman. A native of Pennsylvania, he currently lives in Denver, Colorado.

Larry Alexander is the author of the New York Times bestselling biography Biggest Brother: The Life of Major Dick Winters, the Man Who Led the Band of Brothers. He is also the author of Shadows in the Jungle: The Alamo Scouts Behind Japanese Lines in World War II and In the Footsteps of the Band of Brothers: A Return to Easy Company's Battlefields with Sgt. Forrest Guth. Alexander has been a journalist and columnist for the Intelligencer Journal in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

[RJH57]

I thought a bunch of P-38s and B-25s shot down a whole squadron of helpless JU-52s over the Med.  I could see a shocked JU-52 crewman calling a P-38 a "fork tailed devil".

they would have called out  "Banditin!" (bandits)  or "Indianer!" (Indians), the German equivalent of "bandits" or "bogeys". In the Mediterranean incident you cite, the hapless low & slow Ju-52's probably simply cried out   "Scheisse!", possibly "küss dein Arsch Auf Wiedersehen" (kiss your *ss  goodbye)  or in a comic book version: "Holy Gabelschwanz Teuffel Batman!" 

[RJH57]

So you also don't accept 95% of the content in 1st-hand accounts of combat in all those books you read, 

.... you would disbelieve.
.... you would disbelieve.
.... you would disbelieve.

Your "Life Magazine 1943", "Jungvolk" and "Higher Call", Caidin book references are NOT 1st-hand accounts! All written by professional AMERICAN writers, journalists, and a University professor.
Because someone disbelieves ridiculous "Gabelschwanz Teuffel" propaganda term does not invalidate an entire book or episode nor detract from the reading enjoyment.

[Brooke]

3 references.

You have none.

[GScholz]

I have A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II. Pre-ordered it in fact. It is a good read, and it is based on interviews with Stigler and Brown, but Markos embellish the story a lot. I'm not necessarily against this embellishment/artistic license because it makes the book an engaging novel and very enjoyable to read. After all the point of the book is to tell the story of two men caught up in the air war of WWII. However, the book is also full of factual errors and should not be used as a source for anything. Some errors were almost gratuitous and should have been avoided by doing just a little more research. Like the author's vivid description of the Pratt & Whitney engines of Brown's B-17 coughing to life in a cold, dreary English morning. Well, the B-17s didn't use Pratt and Whitney engines. They used Wright Cyclones.