When Dr Friedman and I 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 previous 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 from the pages of history.
The Morgan/Powers book contains enough factual errors and incorrect statements 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!
The picture below shows Clark Gable with the crew of Delta Revbel No.2 - the white rectangle shows how the image is often cropped to show him apparently standing in front of a whole range of different B-17s to suit the authors claims!
One of the many ‘oddities’ reported in the Morgan/Powers book occurrs during the 1943 war bond tour of the USA - in particular during the visit to the Boeing Wichita plant on August 1 1943. At the start of Chapter 15 - pages 234 and 235 - they make a great deal about Bob Morgan being taken privately to one side and asked if he would like to see a new, highly secret aircraft that was being kept away from prying eyes.
According to their book, he was escorted into a hangar where he was given a guided tour of one of the B-29s then under a high-security test, and this it seems to start him thinking about what he was going to do once the tour was over. This story is somewhat at odds with two of the pictures we knew of and had used, for Bob Morgan is recorded taxiing the Memphis Belle past Boeing-built YB-29 41-36959 parked out on the ramp for all to see!
The so-called 'secret' B-29 seen out on the ramp at Boeing Wichita as Bob Morgan taxies the Memphis Belle past it.
It all sounded very familiar; then we realised why - it is exactly the same as a scene in a 1955 Hollywood movie - substitute Bob Morgan for Jimmy Stewart and the B-29 for the B-47, and you have the exact sequence from Strategic Air Command where the Stewart character is introduced to the B-47 jet bomber!
Then there is the 91st Bomb Group Association who maintains a website that ‘...exists as a tribute to the members of the 91st Bomb Group (Heavy Bombers) and as a historical record of events that took place in Europe during W.W.II’. Within that website is a section relating to the 91st Bomb Group Daily Diaries as compiled by Captain Theodore R. Parker. A study of what appears on this website when compared to the documents which appear on microfilm roll BO172, one of a series of microfilms supplied to us from the Albert F. Simpson Historical Research Centre at Maxwell Air Force Base shows that Captain Parker appears to have compiled TWO distinctly separate diaries, one much larger and more detailed than the other. It seems that the 91st B.G. Association’s ‘transcripts’ are, in fact, nothing more than ‘extracts’ from the smaller, abridged version.
With the arrival of domestic videotape and later the digital revolution, it is not surprising that numerous versions of the William Wyler movie appeared on videotape and DVDs. One outstandingly bad and thankfully little-known example of this is the 2002 INCA Productions’ Memphis Belle The Untold Story’ released by Beckmann Visual Publishing. Written and produced by Brian Johnson and William Woollard with associate producer Norman de Lacy Evans, this can be at best called a re-hash of the 1943 Wyler movie. The production company took the original, completely re-edited it - at the same time removing all the scenes of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth’s inspection of Bassingbourn and any reference to Margaret Polk - then spliced in additional footage shot in England along with footage of the War Bond Tour shot at the Douglas Aircraft Plant in Long Beach, California. They then junked the entire original commentary and overlaid a narrative by William Woollard that is absolutely riddled with errors. For example, Woollard states definitively that the Wilhelmshaven mission was Morgan’s 25th. That statement sets the standard of accuracy and the rest of the piece goes downhill from there for, amongst other things, they have a B-24 supposedly landing at Bassingbourn in the middle of the B-17s returning from the Wilhelmshaven raid. As with Perkins’ Glenn Miller story, there is clearly a pair of corrugated iron T2 hangars in the background!
Continued in Dispelling the Myths - Again Part Three
No comments:
Post a Comment