Secret – or not as it is remembered?

I think the interesting point Graham is making is not about the detail of the contemporary reports, but the subsequent reported implication that those reports didn’t exist and if they did that they were substantially inaccurate – which he’s found is not the case.

Regards,

That’s one of them, yes!

‘Everyone makes mistakes; authors publish theirs’.

I’d agree with most of Graham’s points. There are always generational changes is writing and history (and other areas) where the work of ‘Young Turks’ becomes the orthodoxy and that is, in turn, overturned or revised by following generations.

That’s one reason why methodology and research transparency is as important as the conclusions reached.

Today, one of the factors often missed about the internet is the flattening of writing authority. There’s much more noise, as everyone notices, but the days of someone cornering a false expertise in a field are in most ways over, as it’s impossible to work in a closed publishing environment. That’s why paper encyclopaedias (with their ‘authorities’) are dead and Wikis, even with all their well-documented weaknesses, are thriving – and are, properly used, vastly better.

Like all writers and editors I’ve been afflicted with the clever-clogs spotting errors and thinking that a triumphant announcement is going to impress me (it’s telling that 50% aren’t even usually mistakes, but poor understanding by the pedant). I don’t care about typos or literals in a previous magazine – it’s done and can’t be fixed. Like Graham said, I’m keen to correct errors of fact, and like to hear them.

But it’s a goalkeeper job, particularly as a sub-editor. No one notices the typos and errors you catch, only the few you miss. Likewise, as is often drivelled about here, all published writing is to deadlines with limited time, knowledge resources, and cash. The shorter the cycle, the tighter the time. Most of the cheap (if justified shots) at journalistic errors taken here fail to even realise the timescale and resource limitations, and the proofing isn’t done over a cuppa from the ‘expert’s’ armchair.

I’d be surprised if anything I’ve published is faultless, but I understand that most of it communicates knowledge and brings pleasure and enlightenment to many. (Sadly some of that pleasure is to people who I’d rather kept their amateur red-pen indulgences to themselves. 😀 )

But then the rewards for helping people with revealing and exploring material otherwise lost or forgotten are well worthwhile and lead to more knowledge.

Regards,

Certainly, but there’s subtleties or layers here.

I do entirely agree with what Grahame is finding, but I wouldn’t accept using it as main source without researching on subsequent information.

I think the interesting point Graham is making is not about the detail of the contemporary reports, but the subsequent reported implication that those reports didn’t exist and if they did that they were substantially inaccurate – which he’s found is not the case.

Regards,

and Graham is interested in it as an example of (probably journalisticly driven) hindsight inflating the degree of actual secrecy of the time.

Actually, this time I do not have any ulterior motives, although I will admit that if if enough agree with me, it may well change slightly how I look – and research – things in the future.

I just used the U-2 as an example of something that has been in the back of my mind for some time, but has only recently come into sharper focus – it has reached the point whereby I felt it worthy of opening up to greater discussion.

I am also beginning to think that it is also ‘generational’. In the immediate post-war years there was only a few writers – and most were on the staff of magazines – at the time there were little to no purely historical aviation mags. This situation remained until the early 1970s when a new breed surfaced and a number of authors almost monopolised the then-new historical mags. At the time I was heavily involved in the early days of Duxford and up to my eyes in getting a certain Rapide back in the air, so I was not yet writing. I avidly read all the mags, I still have Aeroplane Monthly number one, and remember going over to Stamford to meet Mike Twite in some tiny little office near the George Hotel there before Key moved out to the industrial estate.

Looking back, it is clear that certain authors in the 1970s had close connections with certain aircraft manufacturers and were able to get a certain level of data – and photographs – from them. I am almost certain that either they, or the magazines editors ‘embellished’ their stories either to make themselves or their magazines look as is they were privy to a certain level of information etc that others could not get their hands on. The obvious way was to add the words ‘secret’ or ‘highly secret’ tags – if this happened enough times, I am sure I for one ended up almost being ‘brainwashed’ into remembering or believing it as they quoted it!

Recently, I suspect some of the newer generation of authors are rightly prepared to question what has previously appeared in print. This brings me on to what should be done about updating our records as more information comes to light – or challenging what others or themselves have made public earlier.

A good instance of this is/was Roger Freeman and his Mightly Eighth trilogy – an absolutely fabulous set of books when they first came out in the 1970s. At the time there was NOTHING available that could touch them. Sadly though, Roger never made any attempt to update them – in a letter dated 1987 from him I have in my possession, he freely admits that those books were written using ‘press and public relations hand outs’ and that he had not had the time to check through all the records that had later become available – unfortunately, this held true even to the point that when the 2000 softback edition came out from Cassells –which was supposed to be a revision – it is possible to see where just to odd word had been changed – they used a very slightly different typeface and none of the… I wont use the word ‘mistakes’ because that is not right, but certainly none of the ‘improvements in our knowledge’ brought about by 30 or so years of additional information coming to light had been fixed.

The unfortunate legacy of that is that so many people hold those three books in such high regard that they are taken as gospel on all things 8th Air Force – and I for one know that it just is not so – but you try and change their opinions!

20 years ago I had a certain book published – last year I got asked if I would like to have it re-printed. I said no, but I would welcome a chance of a revised version coming out, for over the passing years I had kept and on-going programme of revising the original work. I’m not going to mention the title or publisher, but to give you an idea as to the scale of the restoration and changes, it’s gone from 160 pages to 256 – and that’s not saying that the First Edition was a load of crap – it just shows how MUCH additional material has come to light that can be used to tell a more accurate story!

The second thing that has come out of this thread is what should be said or done about accuracy?

I will state now I think that no-one is or can be 100% accurate, but that I strive at all times to be as accurate in my writings as I possibly can be. I was once told by a member of staff at the British Library that they expect all the magazines and books that they are accepting THIS WEEK to survive at least 500 years. To me, being a part of that makes me aware of the awesome responsibly that I must ‘get things right’ for future generations.

So yes, I’m picky, anal, pedantic, obsessive…. and pretty much any other word, phrase or insult you care to throw at me – to me, comments like that shows I am doing what I do to the best of my ability. Criticisms are to be welcomed – as long as they are constructive – that way we all learn. But what makes me see red is that it’s not about WHAT the comments are – it’s the way they are made.

If someone says to me ‘Hey Graham, nice job you done there, it’s good to see all that in print, but by the way, did you know that on page 32…’ I take what they are saying in good grace and welcome their comments, after all, none of us are perfect. But most do not do that. They come over and it’s straight out with ‘You Graham Simons?…. you got that well and truly wrong on page 32…’ there is a smug grin on their face and a sneer in their voice for they seem to take great delight in having caught me out. It’s the same old scenario of put you head above the parapet and someone will kick you in the teeth. I bite my tongue yet again. Oh well, can’t take a joke, should not have joined!

We may all be interested in aviation history, but we all need to bear in mind that the things we do now impact strongly on how future generations see things and we should make every effort to ‘put the record straight’ which is, in my mind an ongoing process. I make a conscious effort to try not to make any of my work look as if I know more, or have better ‘connections’ than others. I also welcome constructive criticism.

(sits back and waits for the next flame-war attack)

On the one hand this is pretty standard history research skills, examining primary or contemporary sources and comparing them to later material; seeing what was included vs omitted at the time against what is known / documented after the fact.

Exactly, what I’m trying to say is that you can’t just make an assumption, one way or the other.
I do entirely agree with what Grahame is finding, but I wouldn’t accept using it as main source without researching on subsequent information.

Dear gents…

English is not, has you certainly already perceived, my primary language. But I don’t think I manage it so bad that

Then I stand corrected

doesn’t mean

I have made a mistake, thanks for pointing it out.

If it doesn’t, I make it clear. Yes, it is Ben Ritch. I mis-remembered his name. And if you want, I can write it down on a piece of paper, have my signature recognized and send it by post (if you pay the expenses) so you can frame it.

happy?

“Banging on about misremembering a name…just gets in the way.”
Oh, absolutely. Ben Ritchie it is. And Kathy Johnson, both of whom worked for Linkhead. Silly me to think that it mattered what a name actually was.

Make the correction, move on. Acting like a bluebottle about it just distracts from the more worthwhile discussion, and drives off some posters. That kind of correction is part of my job, and I could go on about it all day. But it’s not actually the thing to discuss.

There’s no point in getting hung up over errors on forums – they aren’t meant to be ‘clean’ bot an online equivalent to a pub discussion, and valued as such; some nuggets among a lot of amusing vaguely accurate chaff. The original correction was useful. Beyond that, speaking as an editor, so what.

By the way, it was ‘Loughead’. 😉

Regards,

“Banging on about misremembering a name…just gets in the way.”

Oh, absolutely. Ben Ritchie it is. And Kathy Johnson, both of whom worked for Linkhead. Silly me to think that it mattered what a name actually was.

My apologies for getting in your way. Go for it, the runway’s now clear.

There a couple of interesting points being overwhelmed by pedantry, trivia and irrelevance here. Graham (rightly) points out that there was a remarkable amount of contemporary detail on the U-2 at the time of the Powers incident, despite the modern impression that the great secrecy John points out would be carried forward, and Graham is interested in it as an example of (probably journalisticly driven) hindsight inflating the degree of actual secrecy of the time. James (Pagen) adds that there are also notable omissions in the information in cases like this, which is a fair point when considered with Scotavia’s point regarding the management of disinformation by organisations.

Banging on about misremembering a name or getting snitty about additional non-contradictory data just gets in the way.

On the one hand this is pretty standard history research skills, examining primary or contemporary sources and comparing them to later material; seeing what was included vs omitted at the time against what is known / documented after the fact. On the other hand it takes a degree of analytic skill and detachment to do so, and it requires a degree of subtlety not often found in many forums.

Personally I’m appreciative of the constructive contributions to the thread – I’ve learned something, had some stuff to think about that applies elsewhere in my field, and am happy not to assume the whole story is simple or one sided. I can also check someone’s name when I need to without a thread being harassed about it.

Back to the normal transmissions.

Regards,

The U-2 was secret when it was built and first deployed.
There are several books out there…Jay Miller’s 1993 book, “Lockheed’s Skunk Works”, has a lot of details on the security of the operation, including moving production from Burbank to a nondescript building near Bakersfield, California along with photos of the prototype being unloaded at Groom Lake from a C-124. Because it’s “The Official History…” he calls Groom Lake only the “test facility”..but it’s clearly Groom lake, or Site 51 or (I hate to use this term to encourage the UFO nuts…”Area 51″).
The story goes that Johnson scouted locations for the facility from a Bonanza and picked a remote corner of Nevada near the nucleasr test sites…most of the Navada desert was already government property (no one else wanted it..so it was owned by the Land Office…now the Bureau of land Management) so it was easily done.

The U-2 didn’t get famous until after Power’s shootdown…so the cat was out of the bag…

And yes, it really is Ben Rich. I had the great pleasure of meeting him in the early 90s and asked him to autograph a copy of his book and a desk model of a F-117. A very nice gentleman.
I believe one year at Farnborough he autographed copies of his book with proceedes going to the RAFBF.

Blimey, each post a damn error! What’s next?

Then I stand corrected, I offered my copy some time ago and was, has said, working from memory (and didn’t took the work of checking up in the internet). Now I’ll just have to find where the “ie” creep in my mind…

cheers,

I think you may find that “ie” crept in, crapped, and crept out. 😀

RS-71 makes little sense either, as ‘S’ wasn’t a USAF primary designator at the time (it should have been B for bomber)

“Ben Ritchie is the name he uses in his autobio …”

No way. I’m looking at a copy of “Skunk Works, by Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos” right now…

Then I stand corrected, I offered my copy some time ago and was, has said, working from memory (and didn’t took the work of checking up in the internet). Now I’ll just have to find where the “ie” creep in my mind…

cheers,

“Ben Ritchie is the name he uses in his autobio …”

No way. I’m looking at a copy of “Skunk Works, by Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos” right now…

Selective releases of information on classified programs/eqiupment is part of the art of disinformation.Example being showing Nimrods fitted with missiles.

Accidental info releases are another matter and I recall the space trackers who listened in to a Soviet space project have deduced the frequency by scaling up an illustration on a Soviet postage stamep released before the launch and then measurint the aerials.

If we’re going to be pedantic here, his name was Benjamin Robert ‘Ben’ Rich

Secondly, the SAM thing….

SA stands for Surface-to-Air….. the ‘M’ being the Soviet Type M-2 missile as is quoted in the article.

As for Pagens quote ” …details omitted, possibly due to censors”…. what I am actually saying is the opposite – I have discovered that far from omitting details, the early reports contain far more than have been repeated later – which is in agreement with the earlier part of his comment!

Yes but I’m saying that I’ve read some original reports then only to find through research that some stuff was omitted – fact, ignore it for your own views if you wish, but I won’t be buying a book by anyone with a closed mind on the subject.
Even the passage that you attach which appera quite open, also states that the aircraft despite being in service for a few years is something of a ‘mystery ship’, which I would treat as hint not to absolutely trust everything that has been published on it with out further research.
We are of a time where new research and views of old facts makes for good reading.

The pedantic thing is getting stupid, to the point where the posts are containing more chaff than wheat. This is a forum where members from all over, with their own way of saying things post.
SAM like it or not is a well used term.
Names, dates, etc are more important to be correct on obviously.

If we’re going to be pedantic here, his name was Benjamin Robert ‘Ben’ Rich

?? I was quoting from memory and don’t see how my reply can be classified as “pedantic” (or am I getting schrapnel from that SAM burst? gee, Skiper, no need!).

Ben Ritchie is the name he uses in his autobio so thats how I recall it (like “Kelly” Johnson isn’t Kelly Christian name, right? But callin’ him Clarence would probably get you punched…)

peace!

Ben Richtie was the man that replaced Kelly at the Skunk Works helm.

If we’re going to be pedantic here, his name was Benjamin Robert ‘Ben’ Rich

Secondly, the SAM thing….

SA stands for Surface-to-Air….. the ‘M’ being the Soviet Type M-2 missile as is quoted in the article.

Oh, and I made a mistake in my original starter – I said less than a week – in fact the article, which is attached, comes from Aeroplane and Astronautics dated May 13th 1960.

I will not even go anywhere near the Horten thing, I saw the movie when it was first shown, and the innumerable re-runs – it still makes my blood boil!

As for Pagens quote ” …details omitted, possibly due to censors”…. what I am actually saying is the opposite – I have discovered that far from omitting details, the early reports contain far more than have been repeated later – which is in agreement with the earlier part of his comment!

Since, as the Bible reminds us, “there is nothing new under the sun”, it is not surprising that lazy and self-promoting writers and journos would have been doing the same “hype & shout” sensation-mongering decades ago.

And BTB… the designation is SA-2, not SAM-2.

Oh no, arn’t we going through all this with another thread at the moment!:rolleyes:
I do think it’s reasonable that people use SAM instead of SA, it’s only the word Missile being added to the designation, and SAM sites, SAM attacks etc is a populor reference – it’s easy to say.

However I do think the ‘secret’ thing is probably a result of the fact that the press like do apply this word, and most of us readers enjoy the ‘mystique’, when applied to such things as aircraft projects.
I’m constantly amazed at what I find in contemporary ‘Flight’ reports etc that seem to have been either forgotten or given up as esoteric.
Do treat with caution sometimes though, I have read apparently open articles from period reports which I have subsequently found through research to have wrong details in them, or details omitted, possibly due to censors.