{"id":282,"date":"2019-03-07T18:18:12","date_gmt":"2019-03-08T00:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.forgottensquadron.com\/?p=282"},"modified":"2019-03-07T18:18:12","modified_gmt":"2019-03-08T00:18:12","slug":"review-of-bold-venture-by-steven-bailey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.forgottensquadron.com\/?p=282","title":{"rendered":"Review of Bold Venture, by Steven Bailey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Bold Venture, by Steven Bailey, is an interesting and engaging narrative about U.S. air operations against Hong Kong during World War II. Bottom line: I think it is worth a read, but not if it is the first or only book you read on this subject. Bailey looks at the American attacks and compares them against contemporary reports from occupied Hong Kong and from post-war analysis of actual Japanese losses. That being said, I was disappointed by the lack of new material or new voices. For a book about occupied Hong Kong, it contained almost no Chinese sources. Most of the sources from the Hong Kong perspective were English-language sources from gwulo.com or from British internees or prisoners of war. Almost all of the information on Japan was from existing secondary sources like Hata, Shores, and Izawa\u2019s excellent book on Japanese Army Air Force Fighter Units and Their Aces <\/em>or from Osprey\u2019s aircraft of the aces series. Additionally, a great deal of the information on American operations was from Carl Molesworth\u2019s Sharks over China <\/em>and Carroll Glines\u2019 Chennault\u2019s Forgotten Warriors<\/em>. Unfortunately, he also cites Bill Yenne\u2019s book, which represent<\/g> the low point of scholarship on this topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In between the details is where Bailey shows himself as an\nEnglish professor, rather than a historian. There are an unbelievable number of\nerrors where he allows creative license to advance his literary efforts, or\nwhere he makes assumptions instead of conducting solid research. He writes, for\nexample, that Chennault became a colonel in 1941 and subsequently traveled to the\nUnited States to petition for a volunteer fighter group. In fact, \u201ccolonel\u201d as the\nChinese referred to him, was an honorary title only. He did not become a \u201creal\u201d\ncolonel until he was brought back into the U.S. Army in April 1942.\nAdditionally, his journey to the United States to petition for an American\nVolunteer Group was in November 1940, not 1941. Since Bailey used Chennault\u2019s\nbook as a source, there is no reason he should have gotten these details wrong.\nBailey confuses the status of the China Air Task Force as a subordinate unit of\n10th Air Force in describing the transfer of planes from one to the other. He\nhas the CATF stood up when the AVG was deactivated in July 1942. In fact, the\nCATF came into being in June 1942 and contained the AVG as a subordinate unit\nuntil the 23rd Fighter Group replaced the volunteers in July. Oddly, in\ndiscussing the October 25, 1942, raid on Hong Kong, Bailey omits any mention of\nColonel Merian C. Cooper, the officer who actually planned the mission. He\nclaims Chennault himself briefed the airmen at Guilin, when Cooper in fact did\nso. He also claims \u201cseveral\u201d 22nd Bomb Squadron B-25s joined the mission. There\nwere in fact only two. He bases his account of the mission largely on the diary\nof Jim Young, the radio operator on the last B-25 in the formation. There are\naccounts from the navigator and the flight engineer on that same aircraft that\nBailey apparently did not reference, leading to several more errors. The fact\nthat the airplane was last in the formation because it had been \u201cbumped\u201d by a\ncaptain who preferred to be farther up, is one example. This is not\ncorroborated by Wilmer McDowell, who flew the other 22nd Bomb Squadron aircraft\nin the formation. Or by Brick Holstrom, the flight leader of the last flight. Both\nmen recorded their experiences and Holstrom\u2019s is readily available at the Air\nForce Historical Research Agency. Bailey embellishes Young\u2019s account with\ndetails that are not included in the diary, such as having him perform\nmaintenance on the bomber as if he were a crew chief or engineer, rather than\nthe radio operator. He has Young using a remote controlled bottom turret on his\nbomber even though Young\u2019s own diary (along with other sources) confirms that\nthe turret had been removed. He claims only the lead ship had a Norden bombsight,\nwhich is also not true. It was a formation drop, meaning the entire formation\ndropped off the lead aircraft, but all of the aircraft had Norden bombsights. There\nare no footnoted sources for these invented details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bailey also describes Chennault as gaining some measure of\nindependence from Stilwell upon the standup of the 14th Air Force in March 1943.\nThis is completely false. Though this move took Chennault out from under the\n10th Air Force, it still left him under Stilwell\u2019s jurisdiction. Statements\nlike the B-24 being able to fly over \u201call but the very highest peaks when\nflying over the Hump\u201d because of its 28,000-foot service ceiling make no sense\nwhatsoever. The tallest mountain on the northern Hump route was Jade Dragon\nSnow Mountain, 18,360-feet tall. There are only three mountains in the world\nreaching over 28,000 feet. All three are in the Karakorum Range, over six\nhundred miles west of the Hump. Bailey talks about the B-24s bringing their own\nbombs and fuel over the Hump as if it were an unplanned contingency when in\nfact that was the plan from the beginning. Elsewhere, he notes that a P-38 was\nso badly battle-damaged on a 29 July 1943 mission to Hong Kong that it \u201clater\nhad to force land in friendly territory.\u201d In fact, the pilot became lost and\nforce-landed after his fighter ran out of fuel. He also claims a P-40 was\nreported missing in action on the mission. No such report exists. He might be referring\nto one that landed at another field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bailey further claims the Japanese 3rd Air Division tapered\noff its attacks in 1943 as much because of the weather as due to the death of their\ncommanding officer, General Nakazono. In fact, the 3rd Air Division thought the\nhappenstance interception to have been purposeful and cancelled the rest of\ntheir campaign because they figured their codes had been compromised. He\nmentions pilots strapping into P-38s in China with no experience in the type.\nThis never happened. All of the pilots in the 449th Fighter Squadron were\nqualified in the type prior to arriving in theater. He claims Chennault divided\nthe 14th Air Force into four combat wings in late 1943. In fact, in December\n1943, he stood up the 68th and 69th Composite Wings. The Chinese-American\nComposite Wing operated under the 68th during this period, not as a separate\nfighting force, and the 312th Fighter Wing, which he mentions, was not\nactivated in China until 1 March 1944. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bailey reports elsewhere that \u201caircraft were often referred\nto by the last three digits of their serial number.\u201d In fact, this three-digit\nnumber was completely unrelated to the serial number. Instead, each unit had a certain\nrange of numbers assigned to it \u2013 the 308th had 451-550. He refers to the 9th\nPhoto Reconnaissance Squadron conducting operations in China in the summer of\n1944. In 1943, the 21st Photo Reconnaissance Squadron took over for Flight A of\nthe 9th, which rejoined the rest of the squadron in India. In September 1944,\nthe 35th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron joined the 21st in China. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there are many other mistakes besides. The most bizarre aspect\nof all of this is that most of the details he messes up are given in the\nsources he cites \u2013 meaning the information was readily available. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On top of the mistakes, he uses a confusing mix of\nWade-Giles and Pinyin Romanization for Chinese place names. Pick one!\n\n\n\nWith a little more careful composition and\nresearch Bold Venture <\/em>could have been\none of the most incredible case studies of the China air war to date. Instead,\nwe have a readable, but flawed narrative that I recommend reading with skepticism\nand with deference to the better books he used as reference. \n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bold Venture, by Steven Bailey, is an interesting and engaging narrative about U.S. air operations against Hong Kong during World War II. Bottom line: I think it is worth a read, but not if it is the first or only book you read on this subject. Bailey looks at the American attacks and compares them…<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.forgottensquadron.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.forgottensquadron.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.forgottensquadron.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.forgottensquadron.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.forgottensquadron.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.forgottensquadron.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284,"href":"http:\/\/www.forgottensquadron.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions\/284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.forgottensquadron.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.forgottensquadron.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.forgottensquadron.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}