Memphis Belle – Dispelling the Myths

Dear B-17 Buff
Thank you for taking time to make a comment about our forthcoming book. If I may, I would like to reply to one aspect of this: ‘The only one concern I have at this point is the seemingly large emphasis you have made on how inaccurate other books have been and just hope this is not ‘over-played’ in the book’

Many of the inaccuracies spring from a small booklet called ’25 Missions’, written by Ben J Grant (who we interviewed before his passing on) and published by the US War Department in July 1943. Over the years the few journalists who bothered to look at the War Department booklet have mis-quoted it. Other journalists and authors who attempted to tell the story later have picked up, re-used and re-mis-quoted the mis-quotes – or wrote a completely different story to suit their own needs.
Literally thousands of articles in newspapers and magazines and at least three major books have already been written about the Memphis Belle and its crew. These can be divided into two broad categories; publicity and propaganda generated during the war and then articles written from a supposed ‘historical’ perspective post war.
The first in-depth research project to make a serious attempt at trying to get to the bottom of the myths and legends was Menno Duerksen’s 1987 book Memphis Belle Home at Last. Memphis newspaperman Duerksen – who was one of the first to break the story to the world back in 1943 – did a remarkable job, given the materials on hand at the time, but he used only the 91st Bomb Group daily logs, which subsequently have been proved to be of dubious accuracy to say the least in some areas. He also did not have access to, or possibly even realised that there were, files in England that could provide a different perspective on the story. Nor did Duerksen have access to digital technology that would allow him to examine, then ‘deconstruct’ and enhance the 1943 movie frame by frame. Duerksen was also up against Bob Morgan who, for whatever reasons in 1986, was sticking to the forty-year old storyline as published in the 1943 War Department booklet ‘25 Missions’. As we show in our book, Bob Morgan was doing all that he could to persuade Menno Duerksen not to investigate in any great depth who did what, where and when back in 1942-3!
‘Colonel’ Brent William Perkins’ 2002 book Memphis Belle – Biography of a B-17 Flying Fortress can only be described as being only marginally acceptable in places. Sadly, there is no bibliography, so we are unable to ascertain the provenance of much of his information. Nor does the work contain any form of index, which makes using the book as a work of reference very difficult. There is also a myriad of glaringly obvious errors. For example, there is a number of what can only be called ‘mis-interpretations’ of airfield place-names – ‘Polegate’ should read ‘Polebrook’ as anyone that that has only a passing interest in the Eighth Air Force during World War Two would know!
It also has far too many items that have no pertinence to the story whatsoever. For instance, there is the matter of how Perkins handles the story of Major Glenn Miller. Firstly, one has to query the relevance of including anything about the American bandleader in a book about the Memphis Belle, for the aircraft and its crew had returned to the USA just about a year to the day before Glenn Miller set foot on English soil. Nevertheless, on page 33 Perkins has a photograph of the famous musician with a caption that says ‘Glenn Miller and his orchestra at Station 121 (the USAAF designation for the airfield at Bassingbourn) five days before his disappearance’. There are two contentious things about that caption and one with the picture itself. Clearly taken in a hangar somewhere, the background of the picture shows the characteristic vertical ‘ripples’ of a corrugated iron sheet-clad building – which proves it cannot be at Bassingbourn, for ALL of the hangars there are brick-built! Miller disappeared on December 15 1944. If the caption in the Perkins book is to be believed, then the date is December 10th. The only known events and performances Miller had close to that date was on December 6th when *he was recording at the Abbey Road Studios in London. Then, on December 12th, Miller and the Band performed at the Queensbury All Services Club in Old Compton Street, London. The most serious problem of all though with this caption is that no records – including the bandleaders own diary – have ever been located that show either Glenn Miller or his full band EVER performing at Bassingbourn! This picture does however appear in another book – and appears to have been taken close to Bassingbourn airfield. It is shown in an enlarged, more complete form on page 123 of Chris Wray’s Glenn Miller in Britain Then and Now. Wray is very specific about the date and location – Friday afternoon, August 14th 1944 at nearby Steeple Morden, then home of the 355th Fighter Group, where 91st Bomb Group photographer Joe Harlick almost certainly took the picture!
These and other such painfully obvious ‘errors’ are consistent with other so-called ‘historical works’ relating to the overall Memphis Belle story. They force the reader to question the standard of accuracy of the remainder of the information in Brent Perkins’ book and therefore devalue all within, for if the author can make such a simple ‘mistake’, what else is wrong?
In fairness to Perkins though, it is quite possible that he was only repeating what had previously appeared in Marion Havelaar’s 1995 The Ragged Irregulars of Bassingbourn – the 91st Bombardment Group in World War Two, which was also published by Schiffer Military History, for the same picture appears on page 83 of this book. Indeed, in this publication the picture is credited to 91st Bomb Group photographer Joe Harlick.

When we heard that the Memphis Belle’s pilot was finally writing his biography, we looked forward to it with great expectation – here at last would be the chance to get the story direct from someone ‘who was there’. The publication of Colonel Robert K Morgan, USAFR, Ret.’s 2002 book The Man who Flew the Memphis Belle, written in co-operation with Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist Ron Powers did not live up to our hopes, or even its own publicity. This book draws heavily on Menno Duerksen’s earlier work, does not mention the War Department booklet at all and, far from providing any clarification as to the contents of that booklet or the 1943 movie, it just manages to muddy the waters even further! Indeed one has a strong suspicion that within this book there was an active attempt to erase Margaret Polk – whom the aircraft was named after – from the pages of history.
The Morgan/Powers book contains enough factual errors and incorrect statements so as to cast serious doubts on the historical accuracy of the entire work – and even to make us doubt who the real author was! One example of this is that over pages 187-189 the authors go into great detail about the members of the Memphis Belle crew meeting up with Hollywood film-star Clark Gable who had visited Bassingbourn. It seems that some of the crew had gone down to London with him to hit the night-spots. Bob Morgan – or was it Ron Powers? – makes a very specific, highly detailed mention that Clarke Gable had been forced to shave off his trademark moustache for military service, but was still very recognisable by all in London. We have located one small reference in the Forces newspaper Stars and Stripes that Gable had to shave off his moustache for induction into the Army Air Force but he was only bare-lipped for a few weeks. Now that may well have been how Morgan remembered it, but one only has to watch Combat America, the film Gable was over in England to make – or to look at any of the hundreds of high quality still photographs that the USAAF 8th Air Force Public Relations Officers were only too happy to hand out – to see that Clark Gable most certainly had his moustache when in England – and very noticeable it was too! Indeed, a good few of these pictures were actually taken at Bassingbourn! It seems that like so many journalists who have ‘reported’ the Memphis Belle story before, they did not let the facts stand in the way of a good story!

So – do we place a ‘seemingly large emphasis on how inaccurate other books have been’? We do not think so – although we have included them, for those very errors and inaccuracies now form part of the ongoing Memphis Belle story! Thus we do point errors in both the context of the story and what our own research has uncovered. After all, that was one of the reasons for writing the book in the first place – to ‘Dispel the Myths’!

Graham M Simons