Source of some 'apocryphal' 8th AF stories..

[John Beaman]

Some may have also come from Caidin's book, "Flying Fortress". Although many of us cut our teeth on his early works, he is now pretty thoroughly discredited. Too bad, because as a writer, he was good: just a lousy researcher and placed good stories over truth for the sake of selling books.

[fsbofk]

I wasn't able to see the books today, but plan to next weekend - I'll let you know if I find anything. I read Caidin's Flying Forts about 10 years ago, but I recall the Big Bad Wulf story from my youth; I'll scan through FF to see if he mentioned it there too.

[drgondog]

My first view of the "WHo's afraid of the Focke Wulf" anecdote was in Tex McCRary's "First of the Many" Simon Schuster 1944 - the book I cut my 8th AF teeth on at the age of 7.

To those who haven't read it, do so - it's simply the best capture of 8th AF in the early days when the daylight battle outcome was still 'uncertain'.

It also has the Gale Cleven 100BG story on the first Shuttle Mission with the famous quote to his co-pilot when they were shot to pieces but not on fire - and the co pilot wanted to bail out.. "I'm sticking, see, and you $oB, you're sticking too!" as he was poking him the chest..

So many great stories about the 'Belle", etc and many individual human interest short stories that captured all the gritty details of guys who lived in fear of their last day on eatth - but climbed into that B-17 (and 24) anyway..

Regards,

Bill Marshall