Hmmm… this has often worried me, it’s said that the victor writes the history. But do we perhaps too easily justify our sides less savoury deeds as ‘necessary and excusable,’ in order to defeat an enemy who by deffinition are ‘evil’ and behave far worse. Then do our sides misdeeds get subconsciously excluded from main stream history, as unrepresentative in order to protect our collective self respect.

For example I saw a TV program the other week, which I think was ‘War of the World’ on Channel Four with Prof. Niall Fergusson, which was questioning why the Jappanese had a reputation for never surrendering. The program had some film of American Troops apparently executing Japs who had just given themselves up. True or not it certainly made one think.

Steve.

This is a terrible situation and the Israelis are doing the Jewish people no good what so ever.

Naturally current affairs has allways been a major topic of conversation, but what has shocked me deeply over the last few days is the number of angry people who have expressed views in private that border on the ‘intellectually anti-semetic.’ Now bearing in mind that the Jews have been persecuted and subject to pogroms and attrocities since at least the middle ages, I can see that the root anti-semitism that the Nazis manipulted is still deeply ingrained and could easily again raise its head.

The really scary thing though is that the Nazis killed so many more Jews than earlier persecutions/attrocites/genocides because they applied industrial technology to the process. With advances in technology one can only be terrified at what another state sponsored, organised and funded holocaust might achieve.

If we want to prevent this (and I certainly do) then we need to understand the causes of the holocaust and a simplification of it to ‘Evil Nazis and Inncoent Jews’ is just not good enough, if only because the relationship between Jews and Germans had broken down long before Hitler came on the scene. As indeed it has done between Jews and host peoples in numerous places before on numerous occaisions.

We tend to be historians and their ilk upon this site, maybe the time is ripe for a proper debate upon this subject, rather than shying back from it, because it is PC to just accept the common simplification of ‘Evil Nazis (which they undoubtably were) and Inncoent Jews’

However is a Historic aviation Forum the right place?

Steve.

I seem to remember a story called the ‘Wingless Wonder’ in Warlord about a swordfish floatplane that had lost its wings and went around pretending to be a some sort of MTD, in true comic book tradition it was able to do the unbelievable like knocking out Jap battleships with its machine guns.

Also a story about an RAF pilot who was shot down and instead of being captured took the place of a luftwaffe officer. Naturally he caused ‘war winning’ mahem everywhere he went in Germany.

Steve.
Steve.

Hi,

Slightly off topic, does anyone remember in the 70’s the Navy had a ‘Canal’ fleet, with several narrow boats mocked up to look like warships, which toured the inland waterways for recruiting purposes?

Steve

Hi Moggy,

Thats interesting, according to G-INFO G-ASPA has a Air Transport(Passenger) CofA, but of course without seats its rather meaningless. Perhaps someone in the know might be able to elucidate.

Steve.

PS – Green with envy that you’ve been up as cargo/ballast!

Most memorablefor me; the free airshow in the late 60’s or early 70’s on Dunstable Downs, I can still see the RAF museums Vickers Gunbus in my minds eye and I can only have been 5 or 6.

Steve

Quite a few in museums too, including a flying museum that calls itself the Royal Australian Air Force!

Steve