Aircraft of the Third Reich - William Green

[Stig Jarlevik]

Ever so true Nick

Two persons set me off, Bill Green and a certain Captain Jones....

What more could a young teenager want than a Biggles book and a Flying Review?? There was nothing comparable in Sweden at the time, and come to think about it very little today either...

Cheers
Stig

[sirbob]

I'm thinking of buying this series of three books to replace my first edition of "Warplanes Of The Third Reich" .
Before I do, can anyone please tell me if the text has been lifted directly from Green's older books, or have the old errors been corrected with more recent information?

I still use the old book as my main Luftwaffe reference, but every time I see the 3-way view of a Me 109K I wonder what other inaccuracies I am accepting as fact.

[John Beaman]

Originally Posted by sirbob

I'm thinking of buying this series of three books to replace my first edition of "Warplanes Of The Third Reich" .
Before I do, can anyone please tell me if the text has been lifted directly from Green's older books, or have the old errors been corrected with more recent information?

I still use the old book as my main Luftwaffe reference, but every time I see the 3-way view of a Me 109K I wonder what other inaccuracies I am accepting as fact.

I do not know how much "updating" or "editing" has been done in the new version. The original was a great compendium of Luftwaffe aircraft. Maybe do a Google search for a review of the new one?

Hey, you don't believe there was an operational Bf 109K-14? Come'on now "Thomas". You know Hartmann flew one!

[Richard T. Eger]

Dear All,

Being one of those old codgers now myself, I view Green's book as groundbreaking. Sure, it has errors, but as John Beaman has rightly pointed out, we were in our infancy has far as getting details on this wide compendium of German aircraft histories. With many more records now accessible and with historians willing to do ever greater spade work, I think we've become spoiled children expecting utter perfection and nothing less. Those really into it will dig relentlessly to get the facts as best as possible.

But, getting back to Green, my specialty is the Me 262 and I have had to change my views as to what Green said about the Me 262 B-2a, the final version of the nightfighter. At first, one reads in Green that the first example was completed and first flew at the end of March 1945. He then goes on to say that a second Me 262 B-2a was being built, but wasn't completed.

Now, has anyone actually seen a photo of either aircraft? Not I. Has anyone found a record that the first aircraft was completed and actually flew? So, the natural feeling is that Green was making it up. But, from ever more records surfacing, Green wasn't really that far from the truth. Indeed, the first Me 262 B-2a was supposed to be completed at Offingen by the end of March 1945. "Supposed to be" are the operative words. And, here is where it is easy to fall into a trap. The records fall into what I look at as two classes. First, there are documents showing when something was to be accomplished. I call them planning documents. Second, are the records of actual achievement. I haven't got a document that says that the first Me 262 B-2a was completed and actually flew. Perhaps Green did. I can't rule it out. As for the second Me 262 B-2a, it appears that work on this actually got started, I believe at Obertraubling. And, as Green has stated, it wasn't completed, which likely was the case. I must give credit for these bits of information to Manfred Boehme, with whom I've now corresponded for about 10 years.

Frankly, when you really look at what Green turned out, you really have to be amazed that he could have written so much detailed information on so many Luftwaffe aircraft. He may have had to have relied too heavily on planning type documents. And, there was always the possibility of errors in the German documents or changes of information.

Yes, we know more now. But, it takes someone to really spend the time and effort to provide us with so much arcane information. And, as John has said, more information has become available to us at the archives than was available back then. Those of us that have been around for a while have sometimes been presented with a statement of the type "It's been 60+ years since the end of the war. Hasn't everything that could be discovered been found by now?" know full well that, to the contrary, we are in an information rennaissance.

So, give Green his due.

Regards,
Richard

[edwest]

Thank you, Richard. I think there is a tendency to want the end of the story or the final word. A recent book about the British T-Force reveals that some documents are still classified. Can anyone say why? I mean, after all this time and all. The book does mention a few things I'd never heard of, like "electrically charged rockets" being found by the Danish resistance.



Best,
Ed