Books to stay away from (1 Viewer)

[special ed]

I have run model airplane engines at night, and if the night is dark enough, the blue flame from the exhaust extends from 1/2" to 1". At night one must be very careful of the prop. Perhaps Caiden sniffed model fuel?

 

[Snautzer01]

Perhaps Caiden sniffed model fuel

That would explain a lot.

 

[Sabrejet]

I have run model airplane engines at night, and if the night is dark enough, the blue flame from the exhaust extends from 1/2" to 1". At night one must be very careful of the prop. Perhaps Caiden sniffed model fuel?

Are you talking about Martin Caidin? His name was never spelt with an 'e'. Or is it someone else?

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Are you talking about Martin Caidin? His name was never spelt with an 'e'. Or is it someone else?

As much crap as he got wrong, getting his name wrong is fair game.

 

[fannum]

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.

NASM suffered in their early days by having to utilize the Smithsonian Press which was bureaucratic and self-important. They often resisted galley proof reviews, and image swapping or "spell correct" of technical or historic terms were common. I hope that's improved.

 

[Shortround6]

I find the Yefim Gordon books useful and they may be more accurate than some of the William Green / Gordon Swanborough books on Soviet Aircraft. Might depend on the details we are looking at. I will take the production changes and model changes at face value most of the time. I will tend to discard a lot of the combat reports as to damaged inflicted on ground units.
Nobody could accurately count the numbers, types of vehicles/guns destroyed in air raids/bombing attacks. We know the British could not do it with the Typhoon attacks
being an English only reader/speaker I have to sort through some of the translations and retranslate some of the words. When discussing engine cylinders does "ribs" or "ribbing" actually mean ribs or does it mean "fin/s" or does the original language not have separate words for the two? And what is reason for the "ribs", Strengthening of the of the part or cooling?
I could be wrong but I don't think there were very many years when a Russian author could disagree with the "official" history very much and still get access to official records/documents for his next project as the least punishment.

 

[Mustangtmg]

I think the most recent stinker of a book that I had the misfortune to read - it was a gift from a friend He had received it as a present and when he was finished, cuz he knew that I was a Mustang nut, he kindly mailed it to me and said to keep it.

That book, is probably the worst book out of my 200 or so books (mostly) on WWII aviation: "Wings of War" by White and White. For those of us old enough to remember the 1960s movie, "Love Story," Andy Williams later recorded the theme song that started off with this question: "Where do I begin???"

So...here's where I begin to talk about this book:

I don't know if their out-and-out wrong information, wrong dates, wrong terms ... the laundry-list of screw-ups goes on-and-on was from their own knowledge base or if someone "helped" them put this book together.

First, there's this: The book is supposed to be the story about developing the Merlin Mustang and the cover photo is an NA-91 Allison Mustang (and yes, I know, the two XP-51B prototype Merlin Mustangs were modified NA-91s, but the one on the cover --- nope!). The authors call the first production Mustangs "P-51As," seemingly made up terms that, for the life of me, in over 50 years of reading (and writing about Mustangs and other warplanes), I've never heard ... calling bombs "steel jugs," large bombers called "sky arks" and "sky ships," "sky rams," "battlewagons" ... Me109s were said to attack the "egg baskets" (bombers). The full external wing tanks for long missions on P-51s were said to weigh "108 lbs" (there WERE, of course, 108 gallon external tanks that, filled with fuel, weighed almost 700 lbs each. Nazi planes, in one instance, were said to be "knocked off like carnival pins." They talk about "lizardlike Focke-Wulfs and stingray Messerschmitts." The sky on one bomber mission was said to be a "hot honeyed sun."

The trigger for the Mustang's guns is said, twice, to be the button on top of the stick. THAT's the bomb-release button...the trigger for the guns is on the front of the stick where the index finger can pull it to fire the guns.

Near the end of the book the authors state that 15,000 P-51As, Bs, Cs and Ds had been "milled out of NA plants..." and "shipped to the European Theater of Operations."

I could go on, but y'all are bored to tears already, I'd wager.

THEN, the book ends with the back cover. It's got a couple of Mustang drawings that HONESTLY --- when I was in Jr High (in the early 1960s), I drew Mustangs that looked more like Mustangs than the ones on that back cover.

Who put this crap book together for these people? Maybe they knew even less about Mustangs than the authors.

Ending, I'll paraphrase what a good friend and Mustang expert and author said upon reading the book: "If this book was for sale in a brick-and-mortar bookstore, it would have to be filed in the "FICTION" section.

 

[SaparotRob]

The title cover's wording seems to just skirt plagiarism.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Jesus pleeze us, the lower drawing on the rear cover is closer to a P-75.

drgondog might have a few choice words here too.