Comparison - Mohawk v Oscar/Zeke

[jwilkerson]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf



good books are written close to the event, and have primary sources

bad books are written many years after events occur, to make money

This may be the view of some. In my PhD History program, I was taught the true objective history is written >50 years after the events.

[Commander Stormwolf]

PacWar designers: everyone knows the japanese pilots were a lot more experienced than the allied, from the 4 years they fought in china
- especially the sally and lily units, despite their small payloads, from their thousands of flying hours they had the skill
to destroy a big part of the allied air forces in the far east on the ground, let's give them 80 exp. by contrast the allied pilots
had almost no combat experience, and only limited training, let's give them 40 exp

WITP Designers : maybe the japanese had a small edge in pilot skill, but it was pretty close, let's give them 70exp and the allies 50 exp

AE #2 designers: new research indicates that allied pilots were just as good as the japanese, they just had poor logistics, let's give them all 60 exp


not to poke at AE, it is truly the best wargame ever made, just making a point about how the accepted history changes with time

[Historiker]

So you take witp as a reference? [:)]

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf

good books are written close to the event, and have primary sources

bad books are written many years after events occur, to make money

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson
This may be the view of some. In my PhD History program, I was taught the true objective history is written >50 years after the events.

There are different utility to accounts written at different times. Accounts written right after things happened will contain detail that will fade over time. But anything near the events that tries to synthesize the details into a whole will be of lower quality than something written many years later by someone who is too young to have first hand memories. The later authors have more objectivity over the data than someone closer to the event. The more first hand accounts written close to the event the better job later authors can do.

There is value in both. If I was writing my own book, I would want all the source material written by witnesses I could find. The sooner after the events the better. As a consumer who is reading for my own interests, I want the later written stuff written by someone who did dig up all the original sources.

Bill

[Historiker]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

FYI Historiker

Symonds "The Battle of Midway" does have good individual loss data. Parshalls and Tully's info is fairly detailed too. It differs slightly in places from Lundstrom based on newer research but its ballpark. Kind of like Dan Ford's work on the Flying Tigers when compared to Bloody Shambles vol I and II in regards the CBI

Symonds book is worth getting. Its more detailed on the US end of the battle than SS.

Is it worth reading, when I already have Shattered Sword? This isn't my workfield, so I have less ambition to be fully informed. Unless I start learning Japanese, it hardly makes sense to fully occupy my time with this scenario. Being only able to work with english sources limits me to an unacceptable extend.

[mdiehl]

Here you go, CDR:

How did the U.S. Pacific Fleet's fighting squadrons fare in the first six months of the war? From 1 February to 4 June, USN fighter pilots shot down 74 Japanese aircraft.... Yet in direct confrontations between the two fighters, fifteen Zeros succumbed as opposed to ten F4Fs (seven pilots killed). (Lundstrom 1994:4).

Lundstrom, John B.
1994 The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign: Naval Fighter Combat from August to November 1942. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis.

It and the predecessor are outstanding sources. The claim supported by Nik and others that the Zeros swept the skies before them, winning victory after victory until 1943-44, until the toll of slow attrition despite greater enemy losses dragged them down, is utterly and fatuously false.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

Here you go, CDR:

How did the U.S. Pacific Fleet's fighting squadrons fare in the first six months of the war? From 1 February to 4 June, USN fighter pilots shot down 74 Japanese aircraft.... Yet in direct confrontations between the two fighters, fifteen Zeros succumbed as opposed to ten F4Fs (seven pilots killed). (Lundstrom 1994:4).

Lundstrom, John B.
1994 The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign: Naval Fighter Combat from August to November 1942. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis.

page 4....yes?

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: mdiehl
It and the predecessor are outstanding sources. The claim supported by Nik and others that the Zeros swept the skies before them, winning victory after victory until 1943-44, until the toll of slow attrition despite greater enemy losses dragged them down, is utterly and fatuously false.

Except that Nik made no such claim in this Thread.

[Nikademus]

Nik's reply:

(my apologies to the rest of the forum for my gramatical boo boo. I neglected to mention that the 3 Zero losses to 6 navy Wildcats was specific to Coral Sea though my subsequent posting of Lundstrom's estimates from said Coral Sea battle made that obvious.)

[Nikademus]

For those still interested in the original subject of the Thread: Here's a breakdown of how the Ki-43 did between mid/late 42 and 1945 vs the two aircraft of the OT.

Ki-43
Kills:

Hurricane: 80 (includes 2 x Hurricane IID)
Mohawk: 6


Losses:

to Hurricane: 15
to Mohawk: 4

bulk of these actions occurred later in the war 1943 onward. RAF logistics were fine. JAAF logistics were thin but adequate for 42/early 43 but declined steadily the face of mounting Allied pressure. Burma was considered a secondary theater to Imperial GHQ.....even during the Imphal offensive where Mutuguchi's plan included a promise to continue the offensive using captured enemy supplies.

[Nikademus]

.

[YankeeAirRat]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

.

See that is what is wrong with you Nik, you need to be using a larger font to be heard and either decide on either Courier News or Times News Roman as it is laid out in the new forum rules. For shame.[:-]

[:'(]

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf



good books are written close to the event, and have primary sources

bad books are written many years after events occur, to make money

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf



PacWar designers: everyone knows the japanese pilots were a lot more experienced than the allied, from the 4 years they fought in china
- especially the sally and lily units, despite their small payloads, from their thousands of flying hours they had the skill
to destroy a big part of the allied air forces in the far east on the ground, let's give them 80 exp. by contrast the allied pilots
had almost no combat experience, and only limited training, let's give them 40 exp

WITP Designers : maybe the japanese had a small edge in pilot skill, but it was pretty close, let's give them 70exp and the allies 50 exp

AE #2 designers: new research indicates that allied pilots were just as good as the japanese, they just had poor logistics, let's give them all 60 exp


not to poke at AE, it is truly the best wargame ever made, just making a point about how the accepted history changes with time

That the ammount and composition of available data about a certain event drifts over a given
timespan, is a nobrainer.

That the interpretation of available data depends on external factors as well, such as society, political viepoint, emotional relation to the topic,
life experience of the interpreter and so on, is a nobrainer.

That this drift can potentially change the overall correctness of the data interpretation to better or worse, is
a nobrainer as well.

Your second post does in no way support you initial claim, actually I am at complete loss how anybody,
including yourself, would be able to think it would.

So, either you don´t care whether there is any continuity in your argumental chain, or we have a
completely different understanding of logic, in which case a rational discussion would be impossible. [:)]

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

Accounts written right after things happened will contain detail that will fade over time. But anything near the events that tries to synthesize the details into a whole will be of lower quality than something written many years later by someone who is too young to have first hand memories. The later authors have more objectivity over the data than someone closer to the event. The more first hand accounts written close to the event the better job later authors can do.

There is value in both. If I was writing my own book, I would want all the source material written by witnesses I could find. The sooner after the events the better. As a consumer who is reading for my own interests, I want the later written stuff written by someone who did dig up all the original sources.

Bill

+1

The loss of detail over time should not be overlooked. Reading 1275psi's AAR is a good example, and as he notes several times (paraphrased): in another 50 years will anyone remember what it was like to operate steam boilers and consider what impact that had on naval operations of the 20th century? It is a very valid point. Reading the older written histories, these things are never brought up because everyone of that age "knew" all of this ... it didn't need to be mentioned. Reading some of the newer histories I am frequently disappointed by authors who impose current "knowns" upon the historical figures who could not have known these things.

My favorite example to illustrate this is a photo in the Los Alamos museum (if you haven't been, go. Also, the Trinity site is open to the public every year around Easter, also well worth the visit). It shows a tech (unnamed) wearing an asbestos glove holding the bare core of the Trinity test bomb in his outstretched hand. In a semi-circle around him are the principles of the Manhattan project (Oppenheimer et al). Think about this for a minute .. all the implications of what they knew at the time and what they clearly did not know.

[LoBaron]

True, information is lost over time.

But I would not underestimate the survivability of information in modern times where data is copied and available in electronic form.
The ammount of data lost completely over the past 20 years is probably surprizingly low.

Also I think what is often neglected, independent of whether we talk about WWII or about more ancient historical events, is that
our ability to access, verify, and crosslink data from which to draw conclusions at the current speed is only a bit more than 2 decades
old - at best.

This is of immense advantage when analysing history. Where in the past journeys, long conversations by (snail)mail, or inconclusive telephone
calls were required to get the information together, you can now join that data in a matter of minutes from all over the world and hundreds
of different sources.

I am aware that this is a disadvantage as well as an advantage, as the necessity to verify the credibility of a source
of information has increased by several orders of magnitude, simply because of the abundance of data and the fact that most sources are simply
copy/paste products.

But additionally this has the sideeffect of making this kind of research available to a much broader group of interested people,
which has the advantage of spreading types of and approaches to information gathering and interpretation over a larger spectrum,
resulting in much higher variety of interpretations.

The opportunity to come to new conclusions by crosslinking different sources of information has never been so good since the beginning
of history. The challenge nowerdays is for each person to estimate the credibility of information sources, and not to have the information
available in the first place. A challange which is often too big to handle for a large percentage of people, as has been already demonstrated
several times in this thread. I am not excluding me FWIIW, as doing so would be the first step to fall for exactly the wrong type of information.

Very interesting times IMHO. [&o]

[Historiker]

It should be self explanatory, that memories fade and that is important to get the accounts of eye-witnesses as early as possible.
The German historical science works by the principles set by Johann Gustav Droysen. Every source has to be categorized as either "remains" or "tradition".
Every eye witness can only give traditions, but to get the whole picture, you need remains.

Remains: not intended for the posterity while traditions are. So every tradition has an intention that has to be found and has to be taken into account to be able to work with this source at all.

If someone will find a print of this forum in a thousand years, mdiehl's postings will be a historical source about the combat in WW2. But if the historian then working on them doesn't know his source criticism, he will take them wrong. And as his postings are only tradition, so are mine. If you don't have any remains, you'll run into serious trouble to get the full picture, but remains are scarce immediately after an event.

[Terminus]

To historian finding this forum in a thousand years: "Mdiehl" is a lying sack of crap with the same grasp of military history as a dead dung beetle.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: YankeeAirRat

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

.

See that is what is wrong with you Nik, you need to be using a larger font to be heard and either decide on either Courier News or Times News Roman as it is laid out in the new forum rules. For shame.[:-]

[:'(]

Your right. [hangs his head in shame]

curse that invisible Font! [:)]

[Historiker]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

To historian finding this forum in a thousand years: "Mdiehl" is a lying sack of crap with the same grasp of military history as a dead dung beetle.

That might turn out as a remainder for danish discussion culture [;)]

[mdiehl]

True, information is lost over time.

Well, yes, but information is also gained, in a sense, over time, at least in the short run.

Consider Samuel Eliot Morrison's stuff. Most of it was researched from 1944 through 1950 by a huge staff. In the interim between the research/publication of the volumes, alot of new primary source material has been uncovered. So, while the information was always there (and potentially slowly being lost), it was never available in any form in the west until much more recently.