[ArtieBob]

I feel I must defend Jim P. This is the comment made by Tony Jones “Its not the rubbish produced by Jim P but scans of the original QM 6 docs”. If I were Jim P, I would have the right to feel insulted. Jim P has shared his work (and George’s) with me in the past and it was one of the first serious attempts to organize data on the Luftwaffe in a digital format.

The original basis was the QM loss records plus virtually every serious publication that contained Luftwaffe aircraft and crew member information plus Fb. and other primary documentation. It has been a huge undertaking and the format and content have evolved and grown through the years. IMHO it is the best and most complete effort of this type to date. To see this kind of work dismissed with such an offhand comment is not in good form.

Others have attempted to paste together databases from multiple individual sources, but IMHO, you cannot even know what questions to ask until you have the experience of having worked on a project like this for a while. My effort has already required over 10,000 hours and new data becomes available daily, plus editing and errata correction. If someone pirated a copy of my efforts from 10 plus years ago, it would be much less than what I have today, but still would not be rubbish, as there was nothing to compare with it at that time. If there are specific issues to be addressed that is a different matter, but probably not timely, if one is working with a hopelessly outdated version.

I don’t think Tony gets it, if he paid for a pirate copy stolen from Jim P’s earlier work, his criticism really is out of place to identify Jim P’s work as rubbish. Further; “And the suggestion by Jim P that I was some type of crook!”. This is another indication that Tony apparently does not get it. Jim P identified the unscrupulous individual as the one who was selling unauthorized copies of his work. So, Tony, unless you are selling copies of Jim P’s work; he is not referring to you. However, any distribution, even if it is free, of someone else’s work without their permission would seem to me to be unethical.

IMHO an apology is called for. In any case, Jim P. I appreciate your efforts and also thank you for your generosity in sharing .

Best regards,

Artie Bob