Yes indeed, warplanes are political. I wrote a book a couple years ago about the air war during the Korean War. Most of what passes for "fact"regarding that benighted conflict is 70 year old unexamined wartime propaganda, which has fossilized into "fact-like material." It wasn't hard to get the information to disprove the USAF "10:1" victory claims for the F-86. The war was much more closely-fought, against an equally-proficient enemy, Soviet pilots in full V-VS/PVO units. As the US pilots themselves put it, "there was no ten-to-one ratio, and every fight was hard-fought." To me, such information makes the story better - if you're covering a football game, winning by one point with a field goal in the last 10 seconds is far more interesting that a 50 point lead at the end of the first quarter, that expands further on. The book got a significant number of 5-star reviews by former fighter pilots who read it, for its honesty. It also got one review that garnered the most "likes"of all the reviews, that castigated it as "woke history" and called it "distasteful."
The funny thing a lot of the winger readers don't know is that a fair number of the authors they read are informal members of what a leading member has called "The Lefty Military Historians Association."
Who else is going to engage in examining propaganda and separating it from the facts to get a true picture?
I did however love Bill Gunston, and have re-read "Early Supersonic Fighters of the West" several times as an example of excellent aviation journalism.
Yes indeed, warplanes are political. I wrote a book a couple years ago about the air war during the Korean War. Most of what passes for "fact"regarding that benighted conflict is 70 year old unexamined wartime propaganda, which has fossilized into "fact-like material." It wasn't hard to get the information to disprove the USAF "10:1" victory claims for the F-86. The war was much more closely-fought, against an equally-proficient enemy, Soviet pilots in full V-VS/PVO units. As the US pilots themselves put it, "there was no ten-to-one ratio, and every fight was hard-fought." To me, such information makes the story better - if you're covering a football game, winning by one point with a field goal in the last 10 seconds is far more interesting that a 50 point lead at the end of the first quarter, that expands further on. The book got a significant number of 5-star reviews by former fighter pilots who read it, for its honesty. It also got one review that garnered the most "likes"of all the reviews, that castigated it as "woke history" and called it "distasteful."
The funny thing a lot of the winger readers don't know is that a fair number of the authors they read are informal members of what a leading member has called "The Lefty Military Historians Association."
Who else is going to engage in examining propaganda and separating it from the facts to get a true picture?
I did however love Bill Gunston, and have re-read "Early Supersonic Fighters of the West" several times as an example of excellent aviation journalism.