# Books to stay away from



## Oreo (Jul 18, 2012)

Njaco said in another thread: "I should start a thread on bad or poor books"

So I will just start it for him.

Gollum: "For us." 

Smeagol: "Yes, yes, we meant for us."

So. What are your bad books? Related to aviation, war, or especially, WWII.


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## A4K (Jul 18, 2012)

Will post if I think of one, precious


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## FLYBOYJ (Jul 18, 2012)

Osprey - good pics, some of the text is poorly written, inaccurate or flat out wrong.

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## Oreo (Jul 18, 2012)

And of course, tell why. Having said that, I would not outright condemn a book for a single mistake or oversight, unless it is blatantly irresponsible. I also personally give a certain amount of leeway for technical data in books that are not overly technical in nature, but if a book claims to be some sort of exhaustive reference book, it ought to have reasonably reliable data. I also give a certain amount of leeway on absolute accuracy during personal accounts if it is reasonable to think that a person truly thought what they said was true based on their knowledge at the time of saying it. Robert Johnson, for instance, is credited at least in some places, I've been told, with shooting down an Me 210, but of course it was more likely an Me 410. These kinds of mistakes are easy to make. Robert Scott and certain other people in the heat of the battle sometimes referred to just about any radial-engined Japanese fighter as a Zero. That evidently was common at the time among some people, some squadrons, some locations. Those kinds of things I can deal with, especially for accounts that were actually written during the war, when many of these things were not fully understood by the people relaying the information. But I think we know what I mean. Bad books where the author was just irresponsible.


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## Juha (Jul 18, 2012)

IMHO Osprey quality fluctate wildy, much depends on writer, some are very good for ex the Betty booklet, so me are good, for ex the Price's Spitfire booksand there are a few truly gems like like the VIII FIGHTER COMMAND AT WAR "Long Reach" and "Twelve to One" V Fighter Command Aces of the Pacific to mention a few.

Juha


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## FLYBOYJ (Jul 18, 2012)

Oreo said:


> And of course, tell why.


I've seen "dozens" of mistakes, not just little oversights over the years in Osprey books. I'm not at home to go through the few that I have but I do know there's been mistakes in aircraft performance descriptions when compared to POH's, mistakes in photo captions, and misquotes and errors in factual events.

The Robert Scott situation is one where older books can be "forgiven" based on research by authors who had better and more accurate information at their disposal. Then you have authors like Cadin who blatantly fabricated stories in some of his books



Juha said:


> IMHO Osprey quality fluctate wildy, much depends on writer,



Yepp!

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## Njaco (Jul 18, 2012)

I think I'll just re-post the earlier post that I posted earlier today...on a post.

"Great Battles of WWII: Military Encounters that Defined the Future". This book is complete trash. There really is no author (Editor is a Dr. Chris Mann) and I should start a thread on bad or poor books - this one takes the cake. Bad research, poor maps (no scale or locations on them) and the worst are the battles they reference. Understand, these are supposed to be battles that 'defined' the future: So how does the Battle for Narvik or the Warsaw Uprising fit in? Sorry, important events but not defining. And many debunked myths are repeated here. Its as if they grabbed every war book from 1950 and just reprinted the stories. Thank God I only paid about $2.99 for it at Barnes Noble and even that was overpriced.

Avoid this book.

PS: It just came to me one of the glaring inaccuracies. The 'myth' that the flag raising on Iwo was staged. That is how most of the book is written - very poorly.


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## stona (Jul 18, 2012)

FLYBOYJ said:


> mistakes in photo captions,



I'm afraid this happens in the best books too. I know of one case (directly from the author concerned) where an erroneous caption,despite having been noticed and highlighted,pre-production,still ended up in the book. I won't name names but this was a reputable publisher in the field of military history.

Steve


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## FLYBOYJ (Jul 18, 2012)

stona said:


> I'm afraid this happens in the best books too. I know of one case (directly from the author concerned) where an erroneous caption,despite having been noticed and highlighted,pre-production,still ended up in the book. I won't name names but this was a reputable publisher in the field of military history.
> 
> Steve



It does but Osprey IMO is the worse


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## Wayne Little (Jul 18, 2012)

They certainly have there share, that's for sure...


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## Rogi (Jul 18, 2012)

They should just start handing out Osprey books for free, the last couple months I've found like 10 at local garage sales for like a buck each. I like them a lot :S the "How to model" series is pretty nice


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## tyrodtom (Jul 18, 2012)

When I was still in the service in the late 60's and early 70's I started collecting the little $1.00 Ballantine Illustrated History of WW2, I've got almost 100 of them, on weapons, personallities, battles, campaigns. Different authors, the technical drawings are not bad, but specs are sometimes a little lacking, and since they're all the same size, 5x8x1/2", they can't go very deep into any subject.

They're interesting little books, but since they were written while the cold war was still going strong, and also before a several important facts about WW2 still weren't released, when I reread them now I realize they were printed to appeal to a mass market, I can't have a lot of confidence in their veracity.


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## buffnut453 (Jul 18, 2012)

I gave up reading Bergerud's "Fire in the Sky". It had lots of promise but I found his descriptions of aeronautical terms and tactics to be plain annoying. Probably just me as I know others who think it's great...but I don't.

As for Caidin, I still have a soft spot for "The Ragged, Rugged Warriors" which I bought in Canada as a teenager. We were visiting family friends who, sadly, are no longer with us. The book is complete trash but the memories of my now-departed friends are priceless!


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## vikingBerserker (Jul 18, 2012)

I'm glad I have avoided Osprey for the most part then. This is a great thread!


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## A4K (Jul 19, 2012)

Yep, great thread guys! Might save a few unwary buyers from bad deals...


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## nuuumannn (Jul 19, 2012)

Forever Strong, the story of 75 Squadron by Richard Franks; commonly known around the traps as "Forever Wrong". Lots of errors in Richard's research; he's written some good stuff in the past, but this isn't one of them.


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## A4K (Jul 19, 2012)

That is sad to hear though, had thought to read that some day if poss.


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## Trilisser (Jul 23, 2012)

buffnut453 said:


> I gave up reading Bergerud's "Fire in the Sky". It had lots of promise but I found his descriptions of aeronautical terms and tactics to be plain annoying. Probably just me as I know others who think it's great...but I don't.
> 
> A



I found the book most annoying too!


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## vikingBerserker (Jul 23, 2012)

Oh Gees, I almost picked up that book this morning!


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## Oreo (Jul 24, 2012)

I remember another problem with Bill Gunston's CAOWWII. In a photo caption involving Hellcats on a carrier deck, it stated that it was somewhere in the Pacific in 1942. I don't think that would have been the case, certainly not unless the F6F's were just out on flight trials and not ready for combat. F6F combat, afaik, began in August of 1943. 

I'm not saying don't buy the book, just beware of several errors I have found. Overall I liked it, though he had some strange omissions and inclusions that I don't understand.

He included the P-59, F7F, Do 335, and He 162 which evidently never saw combat (I realize they had significance to the WWII story), but he did not include the SB2U, IAR 80, P-35, P-43, VL Myrsky, Ki-51, E14Y, SOC, SO2C, SO2U, and several other types that did see combat. Anyway, it could not be said to be an exhaustive resource, but it does have some good info and great pictures.


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## A4K (Jul 24, 2012)

There are a few books with that problem unfortunately. A common mistake is misnaming aircraft/ tanks. 
Kinda funny (but also annoying) to look at a photo of, say a Dauntless, with a caption reading 'An Avenger takes off from...'. How many people do these books put crook I wonder?


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## Oreo (Jul 25, 2012)

Yes, I know. Not an aviation book, but one of the worst books I have EVER seen for typos, bad captions, and "miss-the-point" bloopers, is "Endless Tracks in the Woods" by Jerry L. Budy and a second author I can't remember the name of. Now, the book if full of beautiful b+w photos documenting the logging days of 1900-1960 or so, but the authors and editors got it SO wrong throughout the book it isn't even funny. It would be almost like writing a book without doing any research, or doing just enough to get you in trouble. And the typos are worse than anybody's thread posts I have seen on this forum, I think. . . . . It's one thing to have typos while nodding off to sleep and writing on an on-line forum, but this book actually got published!


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## A4K (Jul 25, 2012)

Agree completely. Wonder if editors leave their work to 'spell check' these days - some books Ive read are full of typos and double phrases! 
What is possibly worse is how badly many newspaper articles are written now. Full of mistakes and very amateur sentence structures. I swear a 14 year old could write better articles than some I've read.


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## Lucky13 (Jul 25, 2012)

Doubt it mate, it would be written in SMS or text style! 
Imagine that, a whole book written in l8r, u 2 etc., etc...


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## A4K (Jul 27, 2012)

Take up less space on the shelf!


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## Capt. Vick (Jul 27, 2012)

Burt Rutan: Reinventing the Airplane by Vera Foster Rollo... Proof that given unlimited amounts of time, monkey's and type-writers, a readable book will eventually be written…but just barely!

The Wild Blue : The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-45 by Stephen E. Ambrose… Don’t let the title fool you, this is really a partial, and boring, biography of George McGovern’s war years. The only book I ever took back AFTER I read!


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## parsifal (Jul 27, 2012)

William Greens books on WWIi aircraft. to be fair, he does have some useful information, but there are huge errors as well, and the trouble is, you just dont know when hes right and when hes wronng

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## oldcrowcv63 (Dec 26, 2012)

A4K said:


> There are a few books with that problem unfortunately. A common mistake is misnaming aircraft/ tanks.
> Kinda funny (but also annoying) to look at a photo of, say a Dauntless, with a caption reading 'An Avenger takes off from...'. How many people do these books put crook I wonder?



It's annoying when such a misidentification is found in a book. I was shocked to find one such mis-captioned photo on the wall of a building at the Naval War College in Newport, RI. As I recall, the photo showed a Dauntless misidentified as a Hellcat.


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## Milosh (Feb 7, 2013)

oldcrowcv63 said:


> It's annoying when such a misidentification is found in a book. I was shocked to find one such mis-captioned photo on the wall of a building at the Naval War College in Newport, RI. As I recall, the photo showed a Dauntless misidentified as a Hellcat.



Now that is really funny. Hope you mentioned the error to someone.

W. Green's books (Famous Fighters, and Famous Bombers, of WW2) were first published in the '50s.


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## MiTasol (Jul 20, 2013)

I started to read one recently - cant remember the name or author of it - but it called the T-6 the Texas instead of Texan multiple times on the first page. If I come across it again I will provide the name and author


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## Graeme (Mar 4, 2016)

Saw this one in a new book the other day. The text is fine, the specs are fine and the little angled photo of the Fw-190 add to the entry and all make sense..
...but the Nieuport? Go figure.

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## parsifal (Mar 4, 2016)

In the realm of board games, some of the worst are "to the greenfields and beyond" (a game about the battle of the marne) , Avalon Hills "Fall Of France", and GDWs half finished but still published "Pearl Harbour - the war against japan" are in there as the worst in my book


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## drgondog (Jun 5, 2016)

Interesting, I read Fire in the Sky and found it to be exceptionally well developed historically - even with the odd mistakes regarding aircraft terms and, in some cases, types.

As to editors - by my current count Schiffer ignored about 30 typos and table corrections on my final Proof - not all but a significant %, demonstrating that someone got bored during the final review of Our Might Always - History of the 355th FG WWII

Steve Blake reported similar behavior on his Pioneer Mustangs - History of the 354th FG

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## CharlesBronson (Jun 6, 2016)

The Osprey serie regarding aviation is sadly ones of the worst , and I say sadly because the presentation and format is very good, but for example the osprey Air war in the Falklands was so full of mistakes that let me in shock....Then I started to look with suspicion the other ones on tanks, armor, armies, etc.


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## Capt. Vick (Jun 6, 2016)

Once got a pamphlet from the Smithsonian NASM that had a picture of a B-17 labeled as a B-24, or visa-versa.


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## Catch22 (Jun 8, 2016)

Capt. Vick said:


> Once got a pamphlet from the Smithsonian NASM that had a picture of a B-17 labeled as a B-24, or visa-versa.



Unfortunately that happens, as that pamphlet wouldn't have been actually made and laid out in house. The text would have been written by the Smithsonian, but all it takes is one person missing something during the proof reading and that's what you get.


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## Airframes (Jun 17, 2016)

And often, images are laterally reversed, quite often deliberately, but more often due to lack of knowledge.
An example of deliberate reversal is where the designer wants a heading photo, with the aircraft diving in from the left, on the left hand page.
A photo of, say, a Spitfire in level flight, flying from right to left, is then reversed and angled, to show it diving from left to right. Annoying enough when the markings can't be seen, but worse when letters read backwards, as in a mirror !!


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## Capt. Vick (Jun 17, 2016)

Oh, I remembered another. The early Schiffer books that were laid out like the Squadron Signal In Action books. (I think they were rebanded budget German publications) Many pictures miss labeled and at least 1 photo printed upside down!


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## pinehilljoe (Sep 7, 2016)

Anything by Keegan, I think he should fire his editors and fact checkers.


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## Capt. Vick (Sep 8, 2016)

Another book that lured me in with the title and publishing entity (SAE Society of Automotive Engineers of which I was once a member) was LOST FIGHTERS: A HISTORY OF U.S. JET FIGHTER PROGRAMS THAT DIDN'T MAKE IT by William Holder. Mislabeled photos, wrong information and basic text make this a sophomore effort on Mr. Holders part. Avoid.


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## vikingBerserker (Sep 8, 2016)

Whoa, thanks for the heads up!


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## Snowygrouch (Feb 17, 2017)

Powering the Luftwaffe: German Aero Engines of World War II
Jason R. Wisniewski

Amazon product
_View: https://www.amazon.com/Powering-Luftwaffe-German-Engines-World/dp/1460215842_


I feel a bit bad criticising any book, because its a huge slog to prepare any manuscript and get it published. However this was just so dissapointing in almost every respect that it really REALLY should have had another year put into it (as it was such a good idea). A great example of an early draft being shoved through to print....

The first few pages with maps showing where some of the factories are, was quite good (one of the few bits of genuine research, maps from USSBS survey reports) - but the rest is literally Wikipedia copy-pasted, and contains little I cant find from a 2 minute google search.

I don't have it to hand, so I cant really remember if the content is factually incorrect, but it should have never been published at that stage of writing. If the author is reading this, I encourage you to carry on with it and release as a new edition with some more research. Its not ready in its current state for commercial print.

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## Robert Porter (Feb 17, 2017)

FLYBOYJ said:


> I've seen "dozens" of mistakes, not just little oversights over the years in Osprey books. I'm not at home to go through the few that I have but I do know there's been mistakes in aircraft performance descriptions when compared to POH's, mistakes in photo captions, and misquotes and errors in factual events.
> 
> The Robert Scott situation is one where older books can be "forgiven" based on research by authors who had better and more accurate information at their disposal. Then you have authors like Cadin who blatantly fabricated stories in some of his books
> 
> ...


Sorry my ignorance is showing, what does POH mean? I found several possible definitions?


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## Robert Porter (Feb 17, 2017)

Martin Caiden's Flying Forts should be avoided at all costs. Great read, but mostly fictional. Same is true of the majority of his aviation works. He perpetuated myths such as the Wing and a Prayer, Fork Tailed Devil appellation for the P-38. He seemed to mix fact and fiction rather liberally in the same book.

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## buffnut453 (Feb 17, 2017)

Actually stay clear of any Caiden books. He wasn't prone to let facts get in the way of a good story. I feel bad writing this since his "Ragged, Rugged Warriors" first got me interested in the Far East and the AVG...but it's simply not an accurate historical work.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 17, 2017)

Robert Porter said:


> Sorry my ignorance is showing, what does POH mean? I found several possible definitions?


Pilot's Operating Handbook

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## pinehilljoe (Feb 17, 2017)

buffnut453 said:


> Actually stay clear of any Caiden books. He wasn't prone to let facts get in the way of a good story. I feel bad writing this since his "Ragged, Rugged Warriors" first got me interested in the Far East and the AVG...but it's simply not an accurate historical work.



Caiden is more a novelist than a Historian. His book list has more works of fiction than history. 

I do like Edward Jablonski works from the 70's. The multi volume Airwar, and Flying Fortress.

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## vikingBerserker (Feb 17, 2017)

Dang, I did not know that about Caiden. Thanks for the heads up.


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## Robert Porter (Feb 17, 2017)

It was so disappointing to me to learn about Caiden. I had read several of his books and whatever else you can say about him he is a fine writer. I really enjoyed his books and made a fool of myself more than once quoting his stuff until I learned about him.


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## Capt. Vick (Feb 17, 2017)

I remember reading his book on the B-17 as a kid and thinking the Fortress was nearly indestructible...I mean WAY more then it actually was. What a letdown when I learned the truth.


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## Robert Porter (Feb 17, 2017)

I think what hit me the most was how he embellished when there was no need. The factual story was fine before he added his bits into them. Others he just plain fabricated out of little bits and pieces.

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## tyrodtom (Jul 8, 2018)

I saw a new series of "bookazine" at Books A Million, All About History, Story Of the First World War.
So many misprints and errors if I do see something in it I didn't know before I would have a hard time trusting the information, because of the known false information in it.
For example a statement by Lt. Alfred Splittgerber, 211th IR, states "The superiority of the German Army has never been made clearer, etc. etc." Two pages later the same exact statement is attributed to Lt. Ernst Junger,73 Fusilier Rgt.
The Red Baron was shot down by Cpt Roy Brown, and Cpt. Arthur Brown, both on the same page, though they do mention it was possible the Australians actually were responsible.
Some of the illustrations are so bad they're funny. A aircraft performing a Immelmann turn is shown swapping ends 180 degrees in the middle of the turn. A Morane Saulnier L ided as a Vickers FB5, and then correctly identified on the next page.
Way too many other errors to list them all.
Evidently nobody proofreads anything any more before it goes to final print.

I should check facts before I post , the Red Baron was maybe shot down by Capt. Arthur Roy Brown, so now I know his entire name.

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## GrauGeist (Jul 8, 2018)

In light of the fatal injury to Richthofen - bullet entered under the right armpit and exited the left nipple, it's been determined he was killed by ground fire, as Capt. Brown had been attacking from Richthofen's high-six O'Clock - which would have resulted in wounds from behind, traveling downward.

There have been several suggestions as to whom made the fatal shot, none concrete, but the wound clearly indicates that ground fire killed him.

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## Milosh (Oct 1, 2018)

tyrodtom said:


> I saw a new series of "bookazine" at Books A Million, All About History, Story Of the First World War.
> I should check facts before I post , the Red Baron was maybe shot down by Capt. Arthur Roy Brown, so now I know his entire name.



And he was trying to protect his boyhood friend, WOP May, who later went on to be a Canadian bush pilot of some fame.


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## taly01 (Oct 1, 2018)

> I gave up reading Bergerud's "Fire in the Sky".



Sacre Bleu!... I have to rebut the two negatives on this. "Fire in the Sky" is an awesome book and most of it is great, but it is a massive tome at 720 pages so you maybe you hit an area dull to you. Its a modern style book that covers the topics in a multi-dimensional manner a bit like "Shattered Sword" did for Midway and is entertaining to read. I found "Fire in the Sky" best for its coverage of early Guadacanal (the conflict of tactics and strategy that Japan chose) and MANY great pilot stories, he also has a great description of evolution of WW2 aircraft far more detailed and explained than expected.

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## MIflyer (Oct 1, 2018)

I have a book somewhere, one of those big "coffee table" items, long on pictures and short on facts, that has picture of an Oscar labeled a "Zero." Another one of the same type has a picture of one of the Tora Tora Tora modified AT-6 "Zeros" that says, "We are not sure if this is a Zero or one of the postwar reproductions." 

Then of course there is TV. My favorite all time howler was some great video of a couple of P-80A's in England with the voice over, "These F-80's are called P-80 because the P stood for prototype." The really bad thing about this kind of stuff is that they HAD to make it up - no reference source or expert would have told them that. I suspect that since it was a British production that they were confused by the fact that WWII British prototype aircraft had a big "P" on the sides.


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## rob23 (Aug 11, 2019)

I did not about Caiden. Dang! The Ragged Rugged Warriors? What about Saburu Sakai's bio Samurai and Iron Annie?


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## MIflyer (Aug 11, 2019)

In "Rugged Ragged Warriors" Caiden does quote quite a bit from the official history of the 67th Ftr Sqdron, which flew P-400's from the "canal, so that much is pretty accurate as far as I know.

I actually saw him hereabouts a couple of times. A friend of mine had known him for many years and told me not long before Caiden's death, "I saw Marty Caiden the other day and talked to him a bit. It was kinda sad. He's getting old and is not the same. We talked for 15 min and he did not even piss me off once."


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## swampyankee (Aug 11, 2019)

Robert Porter said:


> It was so disappointing to me to learn about Caiden. I had read several of his books and whatever else you can say about him he is a fine writer. I really enjoyed his books and made a fool of myself more than once quoting his stuff until I learned about him.



His books were great reads, but really the written version of a historical movie.


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## MiTasol (Jun 20, 2020)

Here is a book I will not waste time or money on. The author/publisher is so stupid they do not even know that the Lancaster was a British aircraft.

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## SaparotRob (Jun 20, 2020)

It wasn’t?


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## MIflyer (Jun 20, 2020)

Osprey has a couple of books on modeling the P-51. In one of them they show how to superdetail the SCR-274-N radios used in the 1/48 P-51A and A-36 by Accurate Miniatures. This is a commendable idea but is based on pure fantasy. They got it SO wrong and could have only acquired that information by making it up from scratch. I have some of the real, actual radios and know the real details very well. Aside from that, Accurate Miniatures got the radios seriously wrong in the first place. If you get two sets of the parts I know how to fix them.

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## RW Mk. III (Jun 20, 2020)

Spitfire: A very British Love Story, by John Nichol. 

A few choice bits of nonsense and rot inserted throughout.

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## Dinger (Jun 20, 2020)

RW Mk. III said:


> Spitfire: A very British Love Story, by John Nichol.
> 
> A few choice bits of nonsense and rot inserted throughout.



True, I was very disappointed. I picked up "Spitfire - Portrait of a Legend" by Leo McKinstry at the same time - The exact opposite, full of original research and insight.

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## Graeme (Jun 20, 2020)

From a recent book purchase.
Note the armament...

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## Capt. Vick (Jun 20, 2020)

Graeme said:


> From a recent book purchase.
> Note the armament...
> 
> View attachment 585698



Retro


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## rochie (Jun 21, 2020)

Graeme said:


> From a recent book purchase.
> Note the armament...
> 
> View attachment 585698


Dont see a problem, Vickers made a decent gun didn't they ?


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## Acheron (Jul 19, 2020)

Graeme said:


> From a recent book purchase.
> Note the armament...
> 
> View attachment 585698


I am disappointed they didn't list for powerplant "Fire-tube boilers" or something like that.


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## ClayO (Dec 19, 2020)

My least favorite book I've read recently is "Saga of Pappy Gunn" by General George C. Kenney. It's not so much inaccurate as it leaves out a lot of pertinent information, I think Gen. Kenney wanted to make his friend appear better than he was.
For instance, when describing Gunn's addition of the 75mm cannon to the B-25, Kenney says that Gunn took the modified plane up the first time, hit a destroyer with three shots and finished it off with a 500lb bomb. It's possible it really happened that way, but by all other accounts, the 75mm was so inaccurate and so slow to reload, it was rare to get off three shots, and hits were few and far between.
The story needed more detail on a lot of non-technical points as well: I didn't buy in to the reasons that Gunn left his wife in the Philippines to be captured by the Japanese while he escaped to Australia. I get it that I have no appreciation for how crazy things were then, but I feel like that was a pivotal moment in the story and deserved a lot more explanation. During the war, he describes Gunn hanging out with Hollywood starlets while his wife nearly starved in a Japanese prison camp. Never a word about how he felt about that. After the war, Gunn went back to the Philippines while his wife settled in Panama City, Florida - which is just about as far away from him as she could get, without leaving planet Earth. I think that says a lot, but Kenney never delves into the reasons they made those choices.
If you want to know more about Pappy Gunn, I think you're better off going to Wikipedia.


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## Glider (Dec 19, 2020)

Can I put Dive Bomber from Peter Smith forward. It simply wrong in so many places and biased. My personal favourite was comparing the German Light Cruisers to a RN auxiliary AA making excuses for the German vessels poor armour. In a way he was right the German Light cruisers were not well armoured. But the RN vessel he was comparing it to was a converted Banana freighter with obviously no armour, sub division or any other passive defence any warship has


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## Escuadrilla Azul (Apr 3, 2021)

"The forgotten air force" by Henry Probert. I read it a long time algo but leave me a bad taste. Quite boring and, IIRC, stated something that the main RAF adversary in CBI was the Zero.


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## MIflyer (Apr 3, 2021)

"Chariots of the Damned" by McKinney and Ryan. It is an interesting subject, helicopter operations, and not one on which I am oversupplied with information. But it was so poorly written in terms of flow that I finally just put it down for good.

When you do writing yourself you have to be self-critical, constantly assessing the way you wrote something. Unfortunately this inevitably makes you assess everyone else's writing. And in this case it was too much work to read the book.

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## FLYBOYJ (Apr 3, 2021)

ClayO said:


> If you want to know more about Pappy Gunn, I think you're better off going to Wikipedia.



Quite a character!

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## MIflyer (Apr 3, 2021)

There is a book about Pappy Gunn, "Indestructible" by John R. Bruning. I have not read it yet.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Apr 3, 2021)

Caidin's writing drives me up the wall. Aside from the factual errors, his style is so purple and full of superlatives that it really clouds the issues. To hear him tell it, every plane he wrote about was the best of the best.

I've owned and read a couple of Osprey books, one on Baar, one about Tiger tanks, both full of inaccuracies.

Ambrose was a pleasant enough writer to read, but I agree with the criticism above of _The Wild Blue_; it is indeed essentially a bio of a young George Wallace (not that that's a bad thing), but doesn't really touch on the bomber's pluses, minuses, and idiosyncrasies.

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## swampyankee (Apr 3, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Caidin's writing drives me up the wall. Aside from the factual errors, his style is so purple and full of superlatives that it really clouds the issues. To hear him tell it, every plane he wrote about was the best of the best.
> 
> I've owned and read a couple of Osprey books, one on Baar, one about Tiger tanks, both full of inaccuracies.
> 
> Ambrose was a pleasant enough writer to read, but I agree with the criticism above of _The Wild Blue_; it is indeed essentially a bio of a young George Wallace (not that that's a bad thing), but doesn't really touch on the bomber's pluses, minuses, and idiosyncrasies.


George McGovern, not Wallace. Ambrose, at least towards the latter part of his career had some pretty well supported allegations about his doing little research and less writing.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Apr 3, 2021)

swampyankee said:


> George McGovern, not Wallace. Ambrose, at least towards the latter part of his career had some pretty well supported allegations about his doing little research and less writing.



Thanks for the correction, definitely a brainslip there.


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## ClayO (Apr 4, 2021)

MIflyer said:


> There is a book about Pappy Gunn, "Indestructible" by John R. Bruning. I have not read it yet.



Agreed. From the description, Indestructible sounds like the biography that "Pappy" Gunn deserves.


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## special ed (Apr 4, 2021)

I will have to search for the book as I haven't seen it since my move, so I can't remember the title, but one of the most memorable things I remember was an outdoor chow line in the rain and two newly arrived B-24 Lieutenants were walking to the front of the line when a voice called out "You two. To the end of the line." It was Gen. Kenny in line with the rest of the troops. I always thought that incident would boost Kenny's opinion in the men.

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## ClayO (Apr 5, 2021)

Kenney was the man for the job in the Southwest Pacific, all right. A better war General than a political General, from what I gather, but he's not alone there.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Apr 5, 2021)

ClayO said:


> Kenney was the man for the job in the Southwest Pacific, all right. A better war General than a political General, from what I gather, but he's not alone there.



If the story about him explaining air power to Gen Sutherland is true, I'm a fan.

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## TedJ (Apr 14, 2021)

parsifal said:


> William Greens books on WWIi aircraft. to be fair, he does have some useful information, but there are huge errors as well, and the trouble is, you just dont know when hes right and when hes wronng


Sorry, I’ve gotta defend William Green. His Warplanes of the Third Reich is an all-time classic, never to be surpassed. I love his Famous Aircraft of World War II which got me interested in the subject in the first place. A pioneering effort in 1960 to start getting out the real facts out about warplanes instead of propaganda.

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## MIflyer (Apr 14, 2021)

The one that got me was in Lemay's book with Bill Yenne, Gen Stillwell stopped by Saipan and Lemay tried to explain to him what they were doing. Stillwell was as old school infantry as they came, and in Lemay's words, "Was not yet ready to admit that the wheel was useful in warfare." They met again at the surrender ceremony on the USS Missouri. Stillwell walked over to Lemay and said, "I was pretty familar with what Japan had before the war and I've been looking around by Tokyo. I see what you did. And I think that now I understand what you were talking about."

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## MIflyer (Apr 15, 2021)

TedJ said:


> Sorry, I’ve gotta defend William Green.



I love Green's little Fighters, Bombers, and Seaplanes/Floatplanes books as well as the Warplanes of the Third Reich book.

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## texvanwinkle (May 27, 2021)

I'll see the Caidin caveat crowd—he was an effective novelist who used WWII aircraft as his protagonists—and raise you a LUCKY 666 by Drury and Clavin.

As I say in my Amazon review, it's well-written, a page-turner even, and certainly ends up doing solid honor to an historic crew. But it would have been even more of an honor to get the story right, which they only do in the most bullet-point fashion. It's a story of the Eager Beavers, but it's not the real story. Besides misunderstanding who actually was on the crew, it's a total hash of the actual events, missing the actual formative events in the crew's origin, flipping the order and character of major events, inventing others, and misunderstanding, based on my interviews with his squadron mates and wife, Zeamer himself.

An illustrative example, from my Amazon review:



> - They colorfully confuse the story of the B-17 from which LUCKY 666 takes its title, describing it as a "hulk" resembling a "rotting skeleton" "languishing in the boneyard," the origins of its "previous" name "Lucy" "lost to the mists of time," that Zeamer's crew restores to flight status. All of which would have surprised the 8th Photo Recon Squadron—which was flying 41-2666 for a month before Zeamer appropriated it in mid-May 1943 when it was returned to the 65th BS—and Zeamer, too, who named the previously unnamed Fortress "Lucy" shortly before his last flight in it, after an old girlfriend at Langley. What's especially puzzling about such mistakes—and a number of others, big and small—is that the documents needed to correct them can be found in LUCKY 666's list of sources.



Everyone who reads it says it's a great book, and it does tell the story the authors choose to tell very well. That story is just wrong in so many ways, major and minor, that it flirts with the line between nonfiction and fiction. For anyone interested in the real story and then some, you can find it on the website.

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## ian hathaway (May 16, 2022)

Very controversial I know - The Most Dangerous Enemy by Stephen Bungay. Controversial because it is a very well written book, a good read, and on the surface well researched and believable. You may as well ready it from the back cover forwards, it's a case of writing the conclusions and analysis first then looking for evidence to support those conclusions to pad out the rest of the book. But some people still believe it to be the definitive work on the Battle of Britain, but realistically there is nothing new in there except for the authors interpretation of the facts.


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## A.G. Williams (May 17, 2022)

*Firepower* - read the review.....


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## Snowygrouch (May 17, 2022)

Ah.. Schiffer publishing.

They produce a great breadth of content quality wise as they basically dont edit authors manuscripts. So if you`re lucky the authors were diligent and its great, or...

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## drgondog (May 17, 2022)

Snowygrouch said:


> Ah.. Schiffer publishing.
> 
> They produce a great breadth of content quality wise as they basically dont edit authors manuscripts. So if you`re lucky the authors were diligent and its great, or...


I agree. They published my Our Might Always - History of the 355th FG, did a superb job quality wise but zero content editing - not that any major publisher has the kind of staff to fact check such works. Osprey also did a great job, but only corrected me once - over riding post final edit me citing the A36 as Mustang. They slipped an Apache on me in an image citation.

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## Snowygrouch (May 17, 2022)

drgondog said:


> I agree. They published my Our Might Always - History of the 355th FG, did a superb job quality wise but zero content editing - not that any major publisher has the kind of staff to fact check such works. Osprey also did a great job, but only corrected me once - over riding post final edit me citing the A36 as Mustang. They slipped an Apache on me in an image citation.


I can believe it.

Its 100% why I picked Mortons to publish my book, purely because the editor (Dan Sharp) is probably the only book editor (certainly in Britain) who knows enough Luftwaffe archive material to actually offer me historical corrections, suggestions for further files to read and so on, not about engine engineering, but his knowledge of Luftwaffe airframe programmes is prodigous. I`m sad to say I dont think many authors are so lucky, that only came about because Dan was at the same archive I was and we got chatting by happenstance.

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## MIflyer (May 17, 2022)

In one article I cited the F-4 version of the P-38 as first version in combat in the Pacific, when one was on a recon mission and had an engine shot out by a Japanese fighter but still managed to outrun its attacker. The Aviation History Magazine editor commented that it could not have been in combat because it had no guns.....

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## Greg Boeser (May 17, 2022)

That's exactly what I told a Navy PO2, when he wanted me to submit him for a Combat Action Ribbon. I told him indirect fire (a few stray mortar rounds) doesn't count as combat in the army.

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## SaparotRob (May 17, 2022)

drgondog said:


> I agree. They published my Our Might Always - History of the 355th FG, did a superb job quality wise but zero content editing - not that any major publisher has the kind of staff to fact check such works. Osprey also did a great job, but only corrected me once - over riding post final edit me citing the A36 as Mustang. They slipped an Apache on me in an image citation.


I remember you mentioning this once before. It's still funny.


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## ClayO (May 26, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> If the story about him explaining air power to Gen Sutherland is true, I'm a fan.


I hadn't heard that story. It's worth retelling, along with the rest of Kenney's bio. 





The Genius of George Kenney | Air & Space Forces Magazine


He was a superb leader and organizer. He also knew how to get along with MacArthur.




www.airforcemag.com

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## nuuumannn (May 26, 2022)

ian hathaway said:


> You may as well ready it from the back cover forwards, it's a case of writing the conclusions and analysis first then looking for evidence to support those conclusions to pad out the rest of the book.



It is a good read, granted and the statistical research alone is worth it. That he reveals nothing new isn't really the point, it's how it is presented. I've got a few books on the Battle of Britain and for context, Bungay does a good job. By far the best in terms of pure data is the After the Battle tome, otherwise, the overwhelming majority of BoB books use variations on the same information. Some of those authors I swear have read The Narrow Margin and have been struck by the urge to write a new book...


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