There has also been a matching rise in people who are vociferous in claiming all sorts of things that are totally false, ranging from spurious details about the aircraft to incorrect information about the crew and an utterly erroneous understanding of copyright. It seems they don’t know what they don’t know and do not really care about doing in-depth research but are incredibly vocal in spouting off their theories and ideas to all and sundry – then they get greatly offended if someone tries to correct them! All they seem to want to do is grab the reflected glory of being a 'next gen' and make grandiose statements about the activities of real or perceived family members.
These 'errors' - and I am being polite here - have been perpetuated over many years and by people who have gained almost god-like status in the historic aviation fraternity. When Menno Duerksen was researching his Memphis Belle - Home at Last, one of the people he contacted was 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 shall see, 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 June 9. 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!
Time again to set the record straight
So, once again, it is time to ‘set the record straight’ and provide a balanced record using primary source documentation that removes the glitz, gloss and glamour from people's perceived simplistic fantasies. Sadly for many, the story is not an easy, straightforward one - and also, their heroes have feet of clay.
Over time the 1943 William Wyler movie - which has always been proclaimed as a ‘documentary’ - has been taken as being 100% accurate. So the legends and myths grew - locally, nationally and internationally. The 1989 so-called ‘re-make’ by William Wyler’s daughter Catherine and Lord David Puttnam is also now regarded as a historical document by many of the general public. However, those with a knowledge of the 8th Air Force and the Memphis Belle take a very different view - they see it as little more than a flight of fantasy, albeit one with absolutely stunning aerial photography! With the advent of the internet, those legends and myths have proliferated manyfold, with claims and counterclaims being made by all and sundry.
Also, the story of the 91st Bomb Group and the Memphis Belle has so often been told in isolation with little to no reference to the context of the wider conflict. We have discovered that with the passing of years, younger generations have found it harder and harder to fully understand the background and underlying reasons for what led up to and what was happening globally during this terrible time.
For many years the then-current public perception of the story - with minor variations - can be summed up in the following manner. The Memphis Belle was the first American bomber aircraft to achieve twenty-five combat missions over German-held Europe; it did so with the original crew of ten men; that the crew shot down eight enemy aircraft, and only one crew member was injured. They flew the last mission to Wilhelmshaven in Germany on May 17 1943, and met the King and Queen of England before returning home to the USA.
Senior Curator of the National Museum of the United States Air Force and curator in charge of the restoration of the Memphis Belle Jeff Duford finally managed to correct most of the myths contained in that statement by researching and putting together a most excellent series of articles The Memphis Belle, Delta Rebel No.2 and heavy bomber firsts for the Friends of the Air Force Museum journal and Expanding America's Air Power Reach; Hot Stuff's true Combat Record and Significance for Air & Space Power History. Both are well worth seeking out - but the lies, legends and literal errors remain in popular perception.
By 2020 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.
Indeed, myself and Dr Harry Friedman wrote our 536-page’ Memphis Belle - Dispelling the Myths book back in 2008 and to be honest, I think it was to little avail. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
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 can be seen from the letter which follows, 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! In light of subsequent events with the publication of his own ‘biography’ in 2002, Morgan’s 1986 claim to having a poor memory is truly remarkable!
‘Colonel’ Brent William Perkins’ 2002 book Memphis Belle - Biography of a B-17 Flying Fortress can only be described as marginally acceptable in places. Sadly, there is no bibliography, so we cannot 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 ‘misinterpretations’ 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 photo 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 10. The only known events and performances Miller had close to that date was on December 6 when he was recording at the Abbey Road Studios in London. Then, on December 12, 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 bandleader’s 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 14 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 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, also published by Schiffer Military History, for the same picture appears on page 83 of this book. Indeed, in this publication, the image is credited to the 91st Bomb Group photographer Joe Harlick.
Continued in Dispelling the Myths - Again Part Two
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