Warbird Information Exchange

Thanks for posting those links Doug they make for some very good reading.

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Share your story: Rutgers Oral History Archive http://oralhistory.rutgers.edu/

A friend asked if we had a relative that served with the AVG. I said I didn't know of anyone. Then he presented a book with the names of the lost and a pilot with my same last name that had crashed in a PT-22/ Maybe it was actually a Ryan PT-20 or PT-21, Anyway, I always thought a cool restoration paint scheme would be one of the "not a P-40 or P-51" aircraft used in that unit.

That's a trip down memory lane. I recall one quick exchange (clouded by the years perhaps) where someone was talking about, "This airplane was this pilot's, and that plane was so-and-so's" when Erik gently corrected him, pointing out that while they may have flown one or another more often, no one was actually assigned to a given airframe, and availability and pilot rosters meant that they often flew whatever was handy.
The OP claimed to have read every book ever about the Flying Tigers, 'What the hell do you know?'
The reply was simply, "I had to sign for them", followed by an expanded signature with most of his career spelled out.

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Lest Hero-worship raise it's head and cloud our vision, remember that World War II was fought and won by the same sort of twenty-something punks we wouldn't let our daughters date.

I get that all the time; people telling me things about the airplanes I'm actually flying -- and it ends up being authors quoting authors quoting authors quoting authors...

And even the veterans' autobiographies can make large mistakes. Last night I was re-reading Bud Anderson's To Fly And Fight; in it he borrows a Spitfire and relates how he had to apply left rudder to correct for yaw on takeoff because the prop turned the other way than a Mustang. (And it was a Spitfire II, not one with a Griffon.)

Dave