Warbird Information Exchange

i am unsure if i picked it up from a few years of lurking around here, or elsewhere, but it seems i've heard martin caidin as an author was kinda full of it. is this true? i have to say that last chapter to fork-tailed devil, where the P-38 comes screaming in after hours of being missing, and falls apart over the field, out of fuel and out of pilot...well that story was pretty meaningful to me as a youngster. it makes alot more sense to know it was malarky. so, knowledgable sorts, did that event happen, in maybe a less-embellished fashion? or is it just fiction?

Some call it, writer's license.

For example, the "Alte Tante Ju" [IIRC] Ju-52 3/m that he claimed to have found lost in the jungle, had been actually, parked at the airport in Guayaquil, Ecuador. This, according to a U.S. citizen, who had quite a lot to do with the sale of that airplane.

Saludos,


Tulio

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Why take the best part of life out of your life, when you can have life with the best part of your life in your life?

I am one of them 'futbol' people.

Will the previous owner has pics of this double cabin sample

GOOD MORNING, WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Press "1" for English.
Press "2" to disconnect until you have learned to speak English.

Sooooo, how am I going to know to press 1 or 2, if I do not speak English????

A guy I once knew who passed on many years ago was RAF groundcrew in Italy. He told me that one day a P-38 landed on the airfield in very damaged condition. When the firemen got there, they found the pilot dead in the cockpit. It seemed that he had managed to land before dying. Maybe this is where the story originated and Caidin exaggerated it?

Caidin was one of the adherents to "why let the truth get in the way of a good story". There was the story of George 309, a B-17 that bounced like a skipping stone across the English Channel in the opening chapter of "Flying Forts". I agree, his stories were meaningful to me as a kid and it is disappointing to find out that they were exaggerated. Even his recounting of Jay Zeamer's mission to Buka was exaggerated, claiming some 15 Japanese planes shot down (I think the number was 6, which is still no less of an accomplishment)

I often wondered about his collaboration with Robert Johnson in "Thunderbolt", which is still one of my favorite biographies. It seemed to be on the level. Anyone else care to chime in.

Caidin did have one contribution to the English language: He coined the word "Cyborg"

I consider Martin Caiden to be of the "and then I put more bullets into his belly" genre of aviation history. Yes, it was great to read as a kid, but as I went on to college and learned to think more critically about what might be said or written, I came to understand that a few exaggerations make the entire tome suspect. It means that you can never place a high validity on anything Caiden wrote. And that is a sad thing to say.

A problem is that much of the writing from this genre is taken for truth. I have a couple of times in my life written comments about kill claims (for example, AVG), noting that the actual numbers, in light of records from both sides, were shy of the original claims. I would shortly recieve highly inflammatory letters that personally attacked me as person and a human being. The stories of writers like Caiden fit well into our preconceptions of American superiority and heroism but, like the patriotic movies of the time, the reality was something different. Some people cannot accept that.

What is unfortunate I think is that the reaxinations of these historical periods go largely unread, even by people who are interested in the history of the period, because they dilute the fantasies that we were given when younger.

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Kevin McCartney

Dan Ford had the same problem concerning the AVG. I knew personally several of the Tigers. Anna Chennault, Noel Bacon, and Bob Scott (not AVG but close were in fact charter members of the old IFPF which I founded.
Talking with friends Lydia Rossi and Erik Shilling about Ford's book revealed a lot of dissension on the part of the Tigers concerning the kill numbers.
However, after doing a lot of additional research on my own concerning Dan's book, I slowly came to the conclusion that his research was quite extensive and a fair analysis of what had actually transpired during the period involving the combat record of the AVG.
Dan's opinion, and mine also after re-consideration of his work, was that there was enough confusion and politicizing going on on both the Japanese and American sides of the issue to have skewed everybody's numbers enough that no matter how the pie was cut, the actual numbers could have been off considerably on both sides.
Personally I don't envy the historian's job one bit. Coming up with totally accurate data using war records as a source can be one HELL of an endeavor for anyone to accomplish down to a tee.
The main point about the AVG wasn't the kill ratio anyway. What Chennault and the Tigers DID accomplish with what they had to work with remains and will always remain one of the most successful military accomplishments in military history.
Dudley Henriques

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Dudley Henriques
International Fighter Pilots Fellowship

I was never that big a reader when I was young, but I've seriously made up for lost time in my middle age...
So therefore, I have never read much of his work. A while back, I read, "Everything but the Flak" about getting the B-17s to England for the making of the movie, "The war lover" and having talked to someone who'd been involved in that, I was told, "Yeah, he was there, and yeah, we did take forts across the pond. Other than that, though...."

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Life member, 91st BG Memorial Association
Owner, 1944 Willys MB #366014
Former REMF (US Army, O3)

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Daviemax
Researcher of Post-War B-17 History
Maintains database of B-17s used from 46- on.

Interesting that Martin Caidin is being discussed for his legacy of fictional and non-fictional writing. I had a class in college that discussed in detail the parallels and problems many prolific writers have had when writing both fiction and non-fiction work. To spare you all a semester of redundant research I'll give you a brief synopsis which concluded that many past writers who chose both styles of writing usually suffered in one way or another from confusing their fantasy from non-fiction. Caidin was no exception to this and as is apparent in many of his writings he embellished quite a bit in his attempt at truth. Certainly not uncommon. To bestow credibility to the writing style of some writers is usually in the eye of the beholder, and who wouldn't reward credibility to a writer such as Caidin especially when Caidin was adamant about his psychic abilities in telekinesis.

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Zero Surprise!!...

this was fun. some very insightful replies. now let's do ernie gann!

Caidin was very profilic. His main purpose, even in his nonfiction works, was to entertain. I personally think his works of most lasting value were Zero! and Samurai!, without which we would lack much in the way of quasi-first-hand (written with at least some collaboration by the original participants during the decades when they were still around, lucid and with reasonably fresh memories) accounts in English of the development of one of the war's most important fighters, the workings of the Japanese aviation industry, and the experience of Japanese wartime pilots -- even if, inevitably, not everything in the books checks out factually.

The importance of Caidin and many of his fellow writers was in many ways what they chose to write about; what is called in media studies the agenda-setting function. They, and not some rational assessment of real military importance, determine which exploits are "famous" and still widely talked about today, while other events of equal or greater significance become the province only of niche researchers. Dudley provides a case in point:



This widespread perception about what was actually a small, locally successful but broadly ineffectual group of mercenaries reflects how the decisions of popular writers (and in this case, diligent propagandists) determines (some might say "distorts", but that might imply that undistorted history is possible, which I believe it isn't) what we see as historically important.

Caidin did not, by the way, coin the term cyborg. If he claimed to, that would be another of his embellishments.

August

I read many books on aviation subjects when I was a kid, and even the ones that were purely fiction captivated me and developed my interest in aviation. All these books, and many (oftentimes) bad movies, while not strictly correct in a historical perspective- help to keep the dream alive.

Bad publicity is better than no publicity = Bad movies are better than no movies!