Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: RJH57 on March 31, 2016, 08:31:01 AM
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interesting blog about WWII Japanese pilots
http://dianediekman.com/japanese-zero-pilots/ (http://dianediekman.com/japanese-zero-pilots/)
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The book "Samurai," by Saburo Sakai is excellent. The author mentions it in the article. If you like the article, you will love the book. It is now available on Amazon as a Kindle book for about $5.
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The book "Samurai," by Saburo Sakai is excellent. The author mentions it in the article. If you like the article, you will love the book. It is now available on Amazon as a Kindle book for about $5.
It is one of my favourite books in my collection and well worth reading.
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Martin Caiden's "cyborg" series is some good science fiction.
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Martin Caiden's "cyborg" series is some good science fiction.
Heh. So are many of his "non-fiction" books.
- oldman
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I will always say a word in Martin Caiden's defense (not necessarily regarding his veracity).
As a young lad, I can name three books that fueled my interest in WWII aviation. "Battle of Britain" by Quentin Reynolds, "Great American Fighter Pilots of WWII" by Robert Loomis, and "Zero Fighter" by Martin Caiden.
The first two laid the groundwork but Caiden's book was absolutely a match to to the fuel-soaked tinder of my imagination.
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Martin Caiden's "cyborg" series is some good science fiction.
Heh. So are many of his "non-fiction" books.
If I remember correctly, in his book "THUNDERBOLT" he claimed that after the upgrade to the Hamilton Paddle Blade propeller, the P-47 could hang on its nose in a vertical climb
http://p47.kitmaker.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=SquawkBox&file=index&req=viewtopic&topic_id=128328 (http://p47.kitmaker.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=SquawkBox&file=index&req=viewtopic&topic_id=128328)
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I think someone here once said he was a writer who never let the truth stand in the way of a good story...
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I think someone here once said Martin Caidin was a writer who never let the truth stand in the way of a good story...
(http://theretiredmillennial.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/handle-truth.jpg)
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I like Caidin's books.
There might be inaccuracies in them (although people I've asked to point out the inaccuracies often can't do so), but there are also many things that are not inaccuracies, and the books are fun to read.
Several of them are stories from other people with Caidin as the writing collaborator, such as Samurai, by Sakai and Caidin; Thunderbolt, by Johnson and Caidin; and Zero, by Okumiya and Horikoshi and Caidin -- which are all excellent books.
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I like Caidin's books.
There might be inaccuracies in them (although people I've asked to point out the inaccuracies often can't do so), but there are also many things that are not inaccuracies, and the books are fun to read.
Several of them are stories from other people with Caidin as the writing collaborator, such as Samurai, by Sakai and Caidin; Thunderbolt, by Johnson and Caidin; and Zero, by Okumiya and Horikoshi and Caidin -- which are all excellent books.
Caiden had a leash when he co-authored books, because the other author (presumably) would correct the fantasies. Johnson, Sakai, Okumiya and Horikoshi were able to keep things fairly straight. The parade of fish story books probably began with "Black Thursday," hit a high with "Fork-tailed Devil," and peaked with "Flying Forts." If you haven't found the inaccuracies, you haven't been looking.
OTOH, the books make really enjoyable reading, so long as you don't consider them to be historical.
- oldman
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I read "Fork-Tailed Devil" and liked it a lot. It's what initially got me interested in the P-38.
You say that, if I haven't found the inaccuracies in that book, I haven't been looking.
Yet, having read a great deal on WWII history (perhaps about 50 books on it) and WWII aviation (including "America's Hundred Thousand," by Dean and the definitive tome on the P-38, "The Lockheed P-38 Lightning," by Bodie), I still like "Fork-Tailed Devil".
I'm sure it's not perfect, but I don't see so many huge inaccuracies in it compared to many other such books, and don't know what causes you to dislike it so much.
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I'm sure it's not perfect, but I don't see so many huge inaccuracies in it compared to many other such books, and don't know what causes you to dislike it so much.
Three things, just from memory:
- The story of the Italian pilot flying the captured P-38. There was no Italian ace named Guido Rossi. There were no YB-40s in the Mediterranean. There was no Major Fisher killed in the Berlin airlift. The entire story - including tracking down "Rossi's" wife, painting her name on the nose of the plane, &c - was made up.
- The ghost P-38 landing in North Africa, with fuel long gone and pilot long dead. You can search in vain for any other account of this remarkable story.
- Caiden's painful attempt to prove that the P-38 in the ETO really had a great kill/loss ratio.
I thought it was an interesting book, too, and I'd grown up reading all of his other books. But "Fork-tailed Devil" was the one that made me think, "Hey, I'd better check some of this stuff out."
- oldman
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I have read MANY German books about the Luftwaffe - memoirs & biographies, unit histories, its battles & campaigns, etc.. and I have yet to find a single reference to a "Gabel-Schwanz Teuffel" (i.e. "Fork-tailed Devil") in any of them (e.g. "ACHTUNG! ACHTUNG! Gabel-Schwanz Teuffels!"). I think that term was one of Caidin's literary inventions.
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Yes, there might be several incorrect items in the book.
However:
1. Many books of that type have some incorrect items in them, like saying that the P-39 was primarily used by the Russians for ground attack or saying that the Corsair had gull wings only because of landing-gear length.
2. Just because you can't find another source for a story doesn't prove that it is false.
3. If there is made-up story, you don't know if Caiden made it up or was writing down what his sources told him. I imagine that there are quite a few tall tales that ended up in lots of books.
As a result of this, you mention only one story that you know is false -- the captured P-38 story.
Anyway, even if all that is wrong, it still leaves the large majority of the book being good and entertaining, with interesting and valid information.
My feeling is that:
1. Some people on the AH forums don't put other books through the same level of scrutiny they apply to Fork-Tailed Devil.
2. Fork-Tailed Devil, even if they are right in their criticisms, is still to a large extent good.
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Regarding the origin of "fork-tailed devil", it is incorrect to think that Caidin invented it, and a little more detail on this mistaken perception is a good reason why you shouldn't put much weight in "I didn't see it anywhere else, so it probably isn't true."
I, too, have read German-authored books (and non-German-authored books that are very finely detailed, such as to daily diary levels, such as JG26: Top Guns of the Luftwaffe) and haven't seen "gabelschwanz teufel". That is not a negative proof.
I have read accounts from pilots (The Wrong Stuff, by Smith, a B-17 pilot, and Malta's Greater Siege, by Warburton, P-38 pilot, for example) who, in writing about it, say it was called the "fork-tailed devil". But they might have picked it up from parlance post WWII and assumed it was a term used during WWII. In his book, Warburton says that he used "Gabelschwanz Teufel" while he was flying it in WWII. Maybe he misremembered, though -- it is possible.
Interestingly, though, there is this from Lockheed's corporate site ( http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/100years/stories/p-38.html (http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/100years/stories/p-38.html) ):
"Within six months, as the P-38 showed its versatility in North Africa, a lone hysterical German pilot surrendered to soldiers at an Allied camp near Tunisia, pointing up to the sky and repeating one phrase—“der Gableschwanz Teufl”—over and over. Once the phrase was translated, U.S. officials realized the focus of the pilot’s madness. The P-38 had been given a new nickname: the “fork-tailed devil.”"
The details of that account do not appear in Caidin's Fork-Tailed Devil. Caidin's book mentions the term "fork-tailed devil" only once in the whole book, in chapter 8, where it says: "NORTH AFRICA WAS WHERE the P-38 earned its name— Der gabelschwanz teufel. The fork-tailed devil. It took a while, though." That's all it says. Details mentioned in the Lockheed article don't appear in Caiden's book, and so it seems unlikely that Caidin is the source of those extra details.
The Lockheed article lists these as its sources:
-- Boyne, Walter. Beyond the Horizons: The Lockheed Story. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1999.
-- Pace, Steve. Lockheed P-38 Lightning. Minneapolis, MN: Motorbooks International Publishers and Wholesalers, 1996.
-- Stanaway, John. P-38 Lightning Aces of the ETO/MTO. Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 1998.
-- Gray, William P. “P-38” Life magazine, 16 August 1943.
It would be most interesting if the 1943 Life Magazine article were the source, of course.
As it turns out, from Life Magazine, 1943, 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 (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."
So, there you have it.
Either a German pilot did originate the term "fork-tailed devil", or Life Magazine made it up in 1943 for one of their articles.
Either way, Caidin is not a liar about that term.
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Either a German pilot did originate the term "fork-tailed devil", or Life Magazine made it up in 1943 for one of their articles.
And there you have it!
- oldman
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Back in the day, I read every air combat book I could get a hold of. Enjoyed all of them at the time, including Caidin's books. He's not a bad writer. But a good writer and a good historian are not always the same thing.
"...be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh." ~ Ecclesiastes 12:12