War over SE Asia part deux

[JoeB]

Originally Posted by Don Clark

Bloody Shambles Vol 1, 2 are shortly to be joined by Vol 3. All fundamental as secondary sources but like all Shores' work, with many detectable errors of detail. Having said that, the difficulties of the primary sources are well documented.

Most of these are at least as reliable as Shores.


[AWM220/25]

I'll save that list, thanks. But many seem likely to be from strictly an Allied perspective, (which ones on the list by the way extensively use Japanese sources?, skimming none seem to be Japanese works). So I'm curious what you mean by at least as reliable as Shores, since the two volumes mentioned attempt to cross check claims and losses of both sides. For one who is not a researcher planning to do this himself, but a casual reader without the language skills read secondary sources of both sides (assuming ones exist covering the exact same topic), this puts any such work way ahead of one sided ones unless riddled with really serious errors, IMO.

Re: Ford as mentioned people picked at his book very publicly; some errors pointed out by AVG vets seems to be correct, but overall the book was still IMO many miles ahead of anything previously written about the unit, just from giving the correct OOB of the Japanese units opposing the AVG (instead of "zero's"), even if there is room for genuine debate about taking surviving Japanese records at face value as correct and complete as far as their losses. I'm not sure if there is a good argument not to take them at face value. I've never seen a non self interested argument to that effect. In the AVG/Ford case the people arguing that clearly wanted to sustain a higher proportion of Allied claims (including their own personal ones) than appear to check out in the records such as are known; but perhaps there is a good argument.

Related to this or not, what are the well documented problems in primary sources related to Shores' book and where are they documented?

Joe