New B-17 Memphis Belle Book

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

Graham,

I hadn’t missed the point at all. I was making the very same point you have eloquently typed out in somewhat of an essay….

I was simply making the additional point that making a statement on a public forum saying “like the fact that Roger Freeman wrote ‘The Mighty Eighth’ using Press and Propaganda handouts” is a little theatrical and unwarranted in my opinion (just my opinion, before you dwell on that statement).

I am sure you have adequate material and research to show that Roger may well have used PR material to assist him in his research, but he also used material from other sources by your own admission.

I’m not being critical of your work, or your research, I am simply saying, let people read your book and make their own minds up. Roger isn’t here to defend himself and I’m not here to do that for him, I am saying please be aware of the impact your statements will make, when they are read in isolation and without further explanation.

As for inaccuracies…I have found dozens in my forthcoming book, and I’m correcting them frequently…every new bit of information that arrives contradicts another established ‘fact’. You have my sympathies in that respect.

I wish you well with the book and I know you and your fellow author have had a rough time because of your discoveries and revelations…I’m not adding to that grief, I am offering advice as to how to avoid more.

Shabby
www.55th.org
www.station131.co.uk

Memphis Belle – Dispelling the Myths

Dear ShabbyAbbey

Thank you for taking time to make your comment regarding Dr Friedman and my forthcoming book Memphis Belle – Dispelling the Myths. However, I think you miss the point about the purpose behind writing and publishing any aviation history book.
Writing about history is not just about recording the past, it is about recording the past in an accurate a manner as possible for future generations. I was once told by a member of the British Library staff that they expect any book to ‘survive’ at least 500 years; with the advent of digital technology and archiving that timeframe could now be infinate! That is why we take such great care in both our research and our publishing, and ensure when we discover any errors we have made, we correct them in any future editions! It is the very failure of others to do this in the past that has caused the Memphis Belle story to get in such a state in first place!
As regards to Roger Freeman, ‘using cheap shots against a well-respected author’ could not be any further from the truth, for it is not us attacking him, that very author condemned himself with his own words in a letter we reproduce in full in our book – we just reproduce it there because of it’s pertinence to our particular story and relevance for future generations! The story behind that is as follows.
When Menno Duerksen was researching his Memphis Belle – Home at Last, one of the people he contacted was the eminent – indeed, some say revered – 8th Air Force historian Roger Freeman, the English author of The Mighty Eighth, Mighty Eighth War Manual and the Mighty Eighth War Diary, a trilogy of books that many have come to regard as being the ‘bibles’ of the 8th Air Force.
In a reply dated February 6th 1987 to a letter from Duerksen querying mission completion dates between the Memphis Belle and the 303rd Bomb Group’s B-17 Hells Angels, Freeman revealed some interesting information and made some even more revealing points about his own work. ‘…my information as used in ‘The Mighty Eighth’ was based on squadron and group reports and PR handouts rather than an actual count of missions completed from the individual mission reports. In fact, that information was still restricted when I put ‘The Mighty Eighth’ together. Indeed, knowing the liberties that were taken by the PR people, nothing short of the examination of each individual mission record would satisfy me that the date was correct’.
So, it seems that the renowned The Mighty Eighth – first published in 1970 – was written using an undisclosed percentage of Eighth Air Force Public Relations material. This is clearly an admission in the author’s own words that some of the data contained therein is ‘suspect’ to say the least! In the same letter Freeman goes on to drop another bombshell and suggest what he thought was really needed. ‘… I have never had the opportunity to verify this, but it does show that to arrive at some hard facts on this subject it would be necessary to review the individual aircraft records of the three groups’ operations at this time’.
Now it may well have been the case that much material was still restricted from public sight when the book was first published – but why had Freeman apparently not made any attempt to get more accurate information in the ensuing seventeen years?
This is proof that in early 1987 Freeman had still not verified the mission dates. Yet less than a year earlier he had supposedly revised ‘The Mighty Eighth’, but the caption to a photograph on page 50 was still the same ‘…First B-17 in the 91st BG to complete 25 missions, she was also the first in the VIII BC to be returned to the USA with her crew’. As we show in our book, both statements in that caption are incorrect.
As authors and historians who for many years have been involved with the historical aviation movement, we looked long and hard at what had previously appeared in both print and the visual media before deciding that it simply did not do justice to the aircraft or the men involved. We already knew that much of the information which had appeared was suspect – but the discovery of Freeman’s admission about his own work and the contradictions about what he had still not done regarding checking individual mission logs, despite making such a definite statement about the Memphis Belle, came as something of a shock to say the least! If Freeman could allow such a caption containing apparently ‘unchecked’ information to appear – in not only the first edition which would be understandable, but also the revised 1986 edition where he had a perfectly good chance to correct it, then what else was ‘in error’ in the so-called ‘bibles’ of the American Eighth Air Force?
Even by 1994 when Roger Freeman co-wrote Claims to Fame The B-17 Flying Fortress with Steve Birdsall which, according to the title’s own dustjacket in a paragraph relating to the Memphis Belle, was a method of ‘… correcting inaccuracies on the best known Fortress.’ Not only did they still manage to get the date of the King and Queen’s visit to Bassingbourn wrong but they also contradicted themselves. On page 78 they have the Memphis Belle crew starting the bond tour in Washington DC on 9 June. Further on, in one of the photo-sections they have a caption that states that the crew were presented to Generals Eaker and Devers at Bovingdon airfield in England on the same day!

To err is human – we all make mistakes. I personally welcome with open arms anyone that can prove me wrong – that way it can be corrected and we ALL learn! No doubt there are people out there who will say when our book is released that WE are wrong and will claim that we have got this wrong and we have got that wrong because ‘…this book published in 1984 says this’ and ‘…this book published in 1998 says that’. To those people, after all the research we have conducted, we say this – prove it to us with matching contemporary primary source documentation and we will joyfully correct the historical record. However, just to tell us ‘…we are wrong’ with no contemporary proof to back up your point, is simply not good enough!
That is why we have incuded Roger’s letter to Menno in our book. To let such a thing continue over a period of at least 17 years and almost certainly considerably longer is unforgivable especially after revisions and re-prints were done by multiple publishers. It deserves to be brought to the attention of the historical aviation fraternity and historians on a wider scope, for then it puts his work into context.

Graham M Simons

Graham,

This must have been a painstaking process but one well worth doing! You beat me to this as I always dreamed of writing such a book. Having a life long interest in the Memphis Belle, friend of the late ‘Bob’ Morgan and after having the opportunity to visit the belle when she was in one piece in Memphis and getting to know the MBMA, Brent Perkins and the a/c – inside and out(!) I am very much looking forward to your book and have been (quietly) following the progress of the work from your posts.

As I am sure you will, could you keep the forum updated with that launch at Bassingbourn as I, as am sure others, will be extremely interested.

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.

I wait in eager anticipation to judge that for myself though! 😀

Thanks again for the work you have done to unearth more of the Memphis Belle legacy and for bringing it to the aviation fraternity once again.

Graham,

I admire anybody who researches a subject matter to the depth that you have, but I don’t think you need to use cheap shots against a well respected author.

I know a part of what you are hinting at (from a person well linked to Bassingbourn), but I don’t see any value in pointing out other authors’ apparent shortcomings or inaccuracies.

I have found dozens of errors in various books and publications, but I don’t go upsetting the authors in a public forum.

Let’s celebrate your book and perhaps over time you can challenge other people’s work in a more constructive manner (as I am sure you have in your forthcoming book).

That aside, I’m looking forward to your book, it promises to be a good read.

Shabby
www.55th.org
www.station131.co.uk

Thanks for the info Graham.

How widely available will the book be? Just from your own website or other online stores? Any idea of a price?

It sounds an extremely well researched book and I look forward to getting hold of a copy.

Memphis Belle – Dispelling the Myths

Firstly, may I be allowed to say how nice it is to see comments about our forthcoming book before it is released!

Perhaps I can also straighten one point – it has been a joint authorship project between myself and Dr Harry Friedman, who has been heavily involved with the aircraft for many, many years!

The book – a 535 page hardback with somewhere around 2000 illustrations – is due for release on August 30th, following a media event at the Tower Museum Bassingbourn – what we regard as the spiritual home of the Memphis Belle. We hope to have a Tower Open day and author signing there on Saturday 30th August.

We had planned an author-signing at the September 7th Shuttleworth event, but we have recently been told that this is not possible as someone else has the ‘author-signing’ concession there for the entire season – and this is despite us having a commercial stand there for the last 20 years!

If anyone would like further information, we have produced a 16-page brochure for the book, available in pdf format – just email me at [email]gmsimons@btcnnect.com[/email] and I will happily send you a copy!

Likewise, if anyone would like to hear more as to the fun and games we had researching the book, and some of the things we have discovered and can prove – like the fact that Roger Freeman wrote ‘The Mighty Eighth’ using Press and Propaganda handouts, then if the Moderator here allows, I and happy to do so!

Graham M Simons

And heres a link to the book itself.

http://home.btconnect.com/GMS-ENTERPRISE/belle.html

Might be interested in this myself.

It’s called ‘Memphis Belle – Dispelling The Myths’ by Graham Simons. It wil be launched in August at Bassingbourn.

See this thread.

http://forum.armyairforces.com/m_134445/tm.htm