As an author of non-academic nonfiction history, I have found in my own research that most "official history" is mythology at best and bullshit normally. Governmental bodies involved with keeping the official record to this day are busy cooking the books and stuffing that which they find inconvenient down what Orwell called "the memory h…
As an author of non-academic nonfiction history, I have found in my own research that most "official history" is mythology at best and bullshit normally. Governmental bodies involved with keeping the official record to this day are busy cooking the books and stuffing that which they find inconvenient down what Orwell called "the memory hole."
In my history of naval aviation in the Korean War, I featured the accurate account of an air battle between a Navy pilot and Russian-flown aircraft that from the day it happened the Navy claimed never happened, due originally to their desire to hide from the Soviets the fact that the then-new No Such Agency (as the NSA is known to those of us who research it); the cover was "blown" back in 1992 when the Russians published the names of the four pilots who were killed in the fight. When I did my original research, I went to the Naval History & Heritage Command site, where I downloaded every Monthly Report of every aircraft carrier that was in the war (Monthly Reports are the basic place to start, since each covers everything that happens on a ship in a given month; they're goldmines of information). One of them was the November 1952 Monthly Report of USS Oriskany, where the Navy's cover story of the incident was done in detail. Before the book came out, i contacted NHHC and told them it was coming and asked if they were interested in revising their history to conform to the actual facts. They replied that "official history can only be changed by the sworn testimony of two US participants in the event, verified by subsequent research of the record." A year after the book came out, I was contacted by one of the retired admirals I interviewed, and was told he was unable to find the report up at the NHHC site. I went there and indeed, there was one monthly report missing from all the others - that one. It has been replaced by the Air Group Report, a far less-detailed document that has the cover story in outline only. I again contacted NHHC and they replied that "unfortunately, not all documents survive to be included in our records, and we have used the best available documentation." I replied "Well, since you're missing this report, I'm attaching a copy of my copy of this missing report that I downloaded from your side three years ago" and attached a digital copy to the e-mail. They have yet to respond.
When I wrote my most recent book, about naval aviation in Vietnam, I started with the (alleged) Tonkin Gulf (non) Incident, which I personally know was a bullshit story as an actual participant and from interviews with other participants over the years. The "official lie" that was used to take us into the War of Lies, the "Ur Lie" of the war as I have called it, was first debunked in the Pentagon Papers by the government itself 50 years ago. I came across verified research done in 2006 that found that the "lights in the water" reported as "North Vietnamese torpedo boats " was the reflection of lightning and moonlight on an enormous school of flying fish that annually transits the Gulf of Tonkin at that time, which was not known at the time. It turns out that the only guy who "got it right" was LBJ who exclaimed on being first informed of the event, "Those poor dumb sailors were probably shooting at flying fish." Yet if you go to that waste of electrons known as the Vietnam Fifty Project, which celebrates the valiant efforts of Americans in that war (!), you will find them STILL telling the Ur Lie of the War of Lies. The guy running that bullshit operation doesn't like me after i posted my chapter on the site (which not-so-mysteriously "failed to post" within 24 hours)
I could go on. The "facts" most people know about "the forgotten war" in Korea have turned out in the light of actual research to be what I called in an interview "wartime propaganda that has fossilized over 70 years into fact-like material that is the historical equivalent of coprolites."
Quite frankly, anyone who believes what I call "American Official Mythology" put out by the US government on any topic probably also believes in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and that the sun will rise in the west tomorrow. Another term one can now use is "Republican History." It's as factual as "Republican Justice."
One studying the history of WW II would do well to keep in mind that, as I understand it, every news report went through military authority before being submitted for publication. There were no imbedded journalists reporting directly to their editors. Nothing got published without first being cleared and, if necessary, scrubbed of inconvenient facts, by military authorities.
It is probably just coincidence that the history of US military adventures hasn't been as rosy since the military can no longer control the flow of information.
Putin has clamped down hard on anyone who dares contradict his approved official history, especially of WWII. He doesn't want Russians to think about how much the USSR contributed to Hitler's initial conduct of the war or how Russians in Nazi held territory were just as cooperative with them in exterminating the Jews in their communities or how Stalin's paranoia as a leader led to the unnecessary deaths of millions of Soviet soldiers and civilians.
Every country produces official white washed versions of history and people like you are necessary to combat it so we know the truth. Thank you.
Ah, yes. The Soviets "tore the children away from their mothers and forced them to go to work". Sounds like capitalism. The mothers are forced to work and care of the children is not the problem of the capitalists
Putin is also enraged that it is public knowledge that he and most of his fellow oligarchs lives such lavish lives and are billionaires while Russian citizens struggle so badly. Some knowledge doesn't benefit his keeping his citizens controlled.
Just a thought, do you think those "dumb" enlisted sailors arbitrarily opened up on the "flying fish?" Perhaps, they were ordered to do so? To your point on the "flying fish:
Night of August 4: "The Maddox and Turner Joy moved out to sea, but both reported that they were tracking multiple unidentified vessels approaching their positions. The vessels appeared to be coming from several different directions, and they were impossible to lock onto. Both ships began firing at what they thought were torpedo boats, and again they sought air support. A plane piloted by Commander James Stockdale joined the action, flying at low altitude to see the enemy ships. Stockdale reported seeing no torpedo boats."
I always liked working with officers as a Marine Sergeant as we could have some pretty good conversations as long as I respected the boundaries. I wasn't a sea-going bellhop.
Things are not always as they seem and change after the actuals are no longer around to dispute the facts. Nice story.
I was one of those "dumb enlisted men" (enlisted staff on the command in charge of things). No, they didn't. A month later, I ran across my best friend from boot camp in an Olongapo bar, where he told me the truth: he was the fire control technician in charge of the main battery on Maddox; he refused the order "open fire" three times on grounds the only thing out there was the Turner Joy, and got a General Court-martial and reduction in rank for that. I later met the Asst Gunnery Officer on Turner Joy at Cal where he was a grad student - he was able to convince his captain to hold fire for the same reason.
Several of the naval aviators I interviewed for this book, when told the real story, commented on seeing what they were later told was this school of fish in later years of the war.
I am so enjoying your commentaries. So, well informed. Can you share a couple of the titles of your non-academic historical non-fiction? I am bunkering down in such material perhaps too much as I found myself wanting to suggest one character in one book should connect with another character in a previous novel I read who was doing war crimes investigations and would be a good source for solving the problem in the second book. Thanks for your postings.
There are a few guys whose stories travel through the books. Most particularly the story of my favorite WW2 "hero", John Bridgers, who goes over three of the books from a guy who becomes a NavCad in 1941 for the money ("As a son of the depression, these seemed princely sums") to go to school afterwards and the fact it pays better than being a teacher in North Carolina there, to the guy who graduates from Pensacola as a dive-bomber pilot the week before Pearl Harbor, who is present at the Doolittle Raid, survives the sinking of the USS Yorktown at Midway, survives the "worst" six weeks on Guadalcanal, comes back to the US and is assigned to what becomes the top-scoring Navy air group of the war, and in the end helps sink the battleship Musashi and as a 24-year old Lt. Commander leads the air strike that sinks the last of the six carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor. And thinks to himself on the way back to the carrier afterwards, "I decided that the Navy's investment in me had been repaid."
After the war, he went to medical school on that NavCad money and the GI Bill, and became a hospital administrator who was well-known for creating health care in "under-served communities" for 50 years.
I really love having been able to know so many of that generation.
About 15 years ago my brother and I visited the Turner Joy, now a floating museum in Bremerton WA. The entire presentation was an uncritical celebration of the Tonkin Gulf fraud that led to America's Vietnam War, along with the war itself. Unless it's been substantially revised since then, Not Recommended.
Another couple of things "down trhe memory hole". A late friend was an AP reporter in Vietnam, and turned me on to the story of the USS Higbee, which was the first USN ship attacked by an enemy air force since WW2 in April 1972. In researching it, I found a site where someone had copied the entry for the ship from the USN Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, which had a paragraph in it that covered the attack in outline accuracy. When I went to the DANFS site, I looked at the official entry and that paragraph was missing. When I queried NHHC, they claimed it had never been there! So I hope they will be interested when the new book has the account of the last living VPAF pilot who made the attack, a photo of the attack map they used, and official USN photos of the ship and the destroyed aft turret. "Never happened" my ass.
That same pilot has another story in the book - about his leading the special VPAF squadron, "the victory-minded air unit" who went to South Vietnam, renovated five VNAF A-37s, learned to fly them (over three days) and made the attack on Tan Son Nhut on April 28 1975 that shut down further air evacuation, which Americans have always blamed "turncoat" VNAF pilots for, since they didn't believe Vietnamese could be smart enough to learn how to fly a "complicated" airplane like the A-37 so quickly. I also have photos the the "victory-minded air unit" with their A-37s that will be in the book.
Wow, thanks for sharing this. It’s hard to face the truth, and most of us would rather not, and just “move on.” We need the investigators such as yourself to go after the facts and report on them.
Yes - that the NSA team on the cruiser Helena was listening to the Soviet radio comms (I forgot to put that in and as we know, Substack needs an edit function!)
As an author of non-academic nonfiction history, I have found in my own research that most "official history" is mythology at best and bullshit normally. Governmental bodies involved with keeping the official record to this day are busy cooking the books and stuffing that which they find inconvenient down what Orwell called "the memory hole."
In my history of naval aviation in the Korean War, I featured the accurate account of an air battle between a Navy pilot and Russian-flown aircraft that from the day it happened the Navy claimed never happened, due originally to their desire to hide from the Soviets the fact that the then-new No Such Agency (as the NSA is known to those of us who research it); the cover was "blown" back in 1992 when the Russians published the names of the four pilots who were killed in the fight. When I did my original research, I went to the Naval History & Heritage Command site, where I downloaded every Monthly Report of every aircraft carrier that was in the war (Monthly Reports are the basic place to start, since each covers everything that happens on a ship in a given month; they're goldmines of information). One of them was the November 1952 Monthly Report of USS Oriskany, where the Navy's cover story of the incident was done in detail. Before the book came out, i contacted NHHC and told them it was coming and asked if they were interested in revising their history to conform to the actual facts. They replied that "official history can only be changed by the sworn testimony of two US participants in the event, verified by subsequent research of the record." A year after the book came out, I was contacted by one of the retired admirals I interviewed, and was told he was unable to find the report up at the NHHC site. I went there and indeed, there was one monthly report missing from all the others - that one. It has been replaced by the Air Group Report, a far less-detailed document that has the cover story in outline only. I again contacted NHHC and they replied that "unfortunately, not all documents survive to be included in our records, and we have used the best available documentation." I replied "Well, since you're missing this report, I'm attaching a copy of my copy of this missing report that I downloaded from your side three years ago" and attached a digital copy to the e-mail. They have yet to respond.
When I wrote my most recent book, about naval aviation in Vietnam, I started with the (alleged) Tonkin Gulf (non) Incident, which I personally know was a bullshit story as an actual participant and from interviews with other participants over the years. The "official lie" that was used to take us into the War of Lies, the "Ur Lie" of the war as I have called it, was first debunked in the Pentagon Papers by the government itself 50 years ago. I came across verified research done in 2006 that found that the "lights in the water" reported as "North Vietnamese torpedo boats " was the reflection of lightning and moonlight on an enormous school of flying fish that annually transits the Gulf of Tonkin at that time, which was not known at the time. It turns out that the only guy who "got it right" was LBJ who exclaimed on being first informed of the event, "Those poor dumb sailors were probably shooting at flying fish." Yet if you go to that waste of electrons known as the Vietnam Fifty Project, which celebrates the valiant efforts of Americans in that war (!), you will find them STILL telling the Ur Lie of the War of Lies. The guy running that bullshit operation doesn't like me after i posted my chapter on the site (which not-so-mysteriously "failed to post" within 24 hours)
I could go on. The "facts" most people know about "the forgotten war" in Korea have turned out in the light of actual research to be what I called in an interview "wartime propaganda that has fossilized over 70 years into fact-like material that is the historical equivalent of coprolites."
Quite frankly, anyone who believes what I call "American Official Mythology" put out by the US government on any topic probably also believes in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and that the sun will rise in the west tomorrow. Another term one can now use is "Republican History." It's as factual as "Republican Justice."
One studying the history of WW II would do well to keep in mind that, as I understand it, every news report went through military authority before being submitted for publication. There were no imbedded journalists reporting directly to their editors. Nothing got published without first being cleared and, if necessary, scrubbed of inconvenient facts, by military authorities.
It is probably just coincidence that the history of US military adventures hasn't been as rosy since the military can no longer control the flow of information.
Putin has clamped down hard on anyone who dares contradict his approved official history, especially of WWII. He doesn't want Russians to think about how much the USSR contributed to Hitler's initial conduct of the war or how Russians in Nazi held territory were just as cooperative with them in exterminating the Jews in their communities or how Stalin's paranoia as a leader led to the unnecessary deaths of millions of Soviet soldiers and civilians.
Every country produces official white washed versions of history and people like you are necessary to combat it so we know the truth. Thank you.
Don’t forget Stalin’s worst sin, according to Senator Blackburn(TN-R): free child-care.
Ah, yes. The Soviets "tore the children away from their mothers and forced them to go to work". Sounds like capitalism. The mothers are forced to work and care of the children is not the problem of the capitalists
Putin is also enraged that it is public knowledge that he and most of his fellow oligarchs lives such lavish lives and are billionaires while Russian citizens struggle so badly. Some knowledge doesn't benefit his keeping his citizens controlled.
Have you seen Navalney's documentary about Putin's Palace?
I haven't seen it, but it was that of which I was referring. Ouch for Putin and oligarchy friends.
Yes, they all did, all through history. But we have a chance. Let’s take it.
TCin:
Just a thought, do you think those "dumb" enlisted sailors arbitrarily opened up on the "flying fish?" Perhaps, they were ordered to do so? To your point on the "flying fish:
Night of August 4: "The Maddox and Turner Joy moved out to sea, but both reported that they were tracking multiple unidentified vessels approaching their positions. The vessels appeared to be coming from several different directions, and they were impossible to lock onto. Both ships began firing at what they thought were torpedo boats, and again they sought air support. A plane piloted by Commander James Stockdale joined the action, flying at low altitude to see the enemy ships. Stockdale reported seeing no torpedo boats."
I always liked working with officers as a Marine Sergeant as we could have some pretty good conversations as long as I respected the boundaries. I wasn't a sea-going bellhop.
Things are not always as they seem and change after the actuals are no longer around to dispute the facts. Nice story.
I was one of those "dumb enlisted men" (enlisted staff on the command in charge of things). No, they didn't. A month later, I ran across my best friend from boot camp in an Olongapo bar, where he told me the truth: he was the fire control technician in charge of the main battery on Maddox; he refused the order "open fire" three times on grounds the only thing out there was the Turner Joy, and got a General Court-martial and reduction in rank for that. I later met the Asst Gunnery Officer on Turner Joy at Cal where he was a grad student - he was able to convince his captain to hold fire for the same reason.
Several of the naval aviators I interviewed for this book, when told the real story, commented on seeing what they were later told was this school of fish in later years of the war.
I am so enjoying your commentaries. So, well informed. Can you share a couple of the titles of your non-academic historical non-fiction? I am bunkering down in such material perhaps too much as I found myself wanting to suggest one character in one book should connect with another character in a previous novel I read who was doing war crimes investigations and would be a good source for solving the problem in the second book. Thanks for your postings.
This "outs" who TC is, but since writers are always ready to flog sales, here. :-)
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Thomas+McKelvey+Cleaver&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss
There are a few guys whose stories travel through the books. Most particularly the story of my favorite WW2 "hero", John Bridgers, who goes over three of the books from a guy who becomes a NavCad in 1941 for the money ("As a son of the depression, these seemed princely sums") to go to school afterwards and the fact it pays better than being a teacher in North Carolina there, to the guy who graduates from Pensacola as a dive-bomber pilot the week before Pearl Harbor, who is present at the Doolittle Raid, survives the sinking of the USS Yorktown at Midway, survives the "worst" six weeks on Guadalcanal, comes back to the US and is assigned to what becomes the top-scoring Navy air group of the war, and in the end helps sink the battleship Musashi and as a 24-year old Lt. Commander leads the air strike that sinks the last of the six carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor. And thinks to himself on the way back to the carrier afterwards, "I decided that the Navy's investment in me had been repaid."
After the war, he went to medical school on that NavCad money and the GI Bill, and became a hospital administrator who was well-known for creating health care in "under-served communities" for 50 years.
I really love having been able to know so many of that generation.
I'll try to keep your secret. The books I referred to were by different authors who did not know each other as far as I know. SMILE.
About 15 years ago my brother and I visited the Turner Joy, now a floating museum in Bremerton WA. The entire presentation was an uncritical celebration of the Tonkin Gulf fraud that led to America's Vietnam War, along with the war itself. Unless it's been substantially revised since then, Not Recommended.
TCinLAjust now
Another couple of things "down trhe memory hole". A late friend was an AP reporter in Vietnam, and turned me on to the story of the USS Higbee, which was the first USN ship attacked by an enemy air force since WW2 in April 1972. In researching it, I found a site where someone had copied the entry for the ship from the USN Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, which had a paragraph in it that covered the attack in outline accuracy. When I went to the DANFS site, I looked at the official entry and that paragraph was missing. When I queried NHHC, they claimed it had never been there! So I hope they will be interested when the new book has the account of the last living VPAF pilot who made the attack, a photo of the attack map they used, and official USN photos of the ship and the destroyed aft turret. "Never happened" my ass.
That same pilot has another story in the book - about his leading the special VPAF squadron, "the victory-minded air unit" who went to South Vietnam, renovated five VNAF A-37s, learned to fly them (over three days) and made the attack on Tan Son Nhut on April 28 1975 that shut down further air evacuation, which Americans have always blamed "turncoat" VNAF pilots for, since they didn't believe Vietnamese could be smart enough to learn how to fly a "complicated" airplane like the A-37 so quickly. I also have photos the the "victory-minded air unit" with their A-37s that will be in the book.
"The War of Lies" will never stop.
Wow, thanks for sharing this. It’s hard to face the truth, and most of us would rather not, and just “move on.” We need the investigators such as yourself to go after the facts and report on them.
This was a fascinating post. Thank you.
I'm guessing you have seen the movie 1984? And, the movie "Brazil"? Mythologies in progress.
Wow!!
What was being hidden? That the NSA had some connection to the Navy plane?
Yes - that the NSA team on the cruiser Helena was listening to the Soviet radio comms (I forgot to put that in and as we know, Substack needs an edit function!)