of false facts and preemptive strikes
Earlier this year, Jon Guttman reviewed a book of mine in Aviation History: "The honest intentions behind Ford's scholarship have also quelled some of the surviving Tigers' fury, a suggestion in itself that the upgraded Flying Tigers is worth having."
Ah, if only that were true! There's a comical exchange on the AVG veterans' message board, in which one Richard Barthel announces that he has found a "false fact" in the book: "He claims the Japs had 754 or 745 aircraft at the start of the air war." In fact, the Japanese had nearly 2,600 warplanes in the first week of December 1941, as I write on page 90. Mr. Barthel's numbers are totally bogus; he must have plucked them out of the air, since they appear nowhere in the book. What can one do in the face of such solemn ignorance?
Meanwhile, on December 7, Asahi News in Tokyo will broadcast a "Scoop Special" about how the US planned to bomb Japan from China, thus proving that the Pearl Harbor attack was purely in self-defense. Tomoko Nagano, meet Richard Barthel! You two will have much to talk about.
Blue skies! -- Dan Ford
posted by Daniel Ford @ 7:11 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Ah, thanks for pointing to the possible source. The text uses a figure in the high 600s, taken from the English version (by Christopher Shores) of Hata & Izawa's history of the JAAF fighter groups. That was a fraction of the JAAF's total strength (the army was responsible for home defense and for the border watch in Manchuria), and the JAAF was equipped with some fewer aircraft than the JNAF. Their total strength was something like 2500 warplanes in December 1941. Perhaps Mr Barthel didn't read past the introduction.
There are many quotes in the book that use the racial slang, which offends me much less than it does those who grew up in today's more refined culture. Blue skies! -- Dan
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