W. Wolf's "ultimate" A-20 book and others - opinions?

[tempestfan]

Last October, I treated myself (or so I thought) to three of Mr Wolf's "ultimate look" books - A-20, B-25 and B-26. They had a fairly decent price for tomes of their size. But size isn't everything...

First I plodded through the Marauder book. I must say I really liked the introduction giving a lot of context to the book. But I was rather astonished at the section "Was Glenn Martin gay?"... I then left the book alone, not because that put me off, but because I wanted to see what the A-20 books had to say about Bostons in particular.

 

Setup of the A-20 book is similar, and again the historical context including something of a character study of Mr Douglas was very interesting. Of course, his extramarital activities were given some space, but in this case it fit in quite well. What puzzled me somewhat was that his son who succeeded him as president of DAC in 1957 was David on p. 33 and Donald Jr. on p. 34 (twice)... I think Donald Jr. is correct, but this is a case were some proofreading would not have gone amiss.

 

Straight to Bostons. P. 91 photo caption: "The first DB-7A" over LA. The plane shown clearly has a slanted nose glazing. Interestingly, it doesn't have the breathing slots in the cowling that IIRC at least one other early plane pictured over LA had. P. 110: "Boston IIIA" in day camo with full A/A1 roundels. And single exhaust - it was my understanding 3A's were A-20C's with the later exhaust system. P. 111 left "Boston IV", but no turret...?!? Is this nonexistent proofreading or ignorance? OK, you may get the impression I am biased, but then this: P. 103 has  terrible quality drawings of Havoc I and II Turbinlites, that look like they were faxed (you know what a telefax machine is, don't you? Last century technology) to the author 30 years ago. But that can't be, because the publication they were lifted from is not quite as old. Warpaint #32 by R. Caruana, unmistakeably. No source annotated, however. And this publication is not mentioned in the bibliography, at all... The drawing of the Havoc II is not even correct as it is depicted with a "symmetrical" ventral tail fin as on the Boston III and US versions, while it actually had a short leading edge. This is the only real fault I could find with the venerable Alcorn/Bentley drawings after intensively looking at a lot of pictures. It could be considered ironic that what is very likely a copy is copied again without annotation of any kind.

 

OK, rant over. I may be overly critical because an "ultimate" tag raises my expectation to a level where I simply cannot tolerate errors I  spot by casually plodding through. Perhaps this is the burden of someone professionally trained to quickly spot errors and potential problems.

I know at least Mike @72modeler has this book, so I'm very interested in any views of people who may have read the whole tome (or the other two I did not really get to grips with yet). I sincerely hope all is not lost, but confess I lost impetus to reading in detail. If all else fails, they look really impressive in the bookcase.

Edited February 10, 2021 by tempestfan
Ohhh, typos...

[Sydhuey]

Mr Wolfs books are nothing but a collection of info from various sources (usually with no acknowledgment of the source) rolled into one book, look at the piece on RAAF A-20/Boston's he has taken almost word for word the narrative from ADF Serials web site on Boston's in the RAAF and used that in his book (I know I wrote the narrative on ADF serials) , he has numerous contradictions in the book , the section he "Borrowed" from ADF serials explains how the Dutch got DB-7B's diverted to them while they waited for their purpose built DB-7C's , these DB-7C's were never delivered to the Dutch and were build to DB-7B spec and went to Russia he then says in the section on Dutch Bostons that DB-7C's were delivered to the Dutch , so he has no correlation between his stories .  The Warpaint #32 by R. Caruana is still the best most accurate book on A-20 Boston/Havocs and that little paper back gem came out 20 years ago.

I have  the B-25 and A-20 books from Wolf and they are full of other peoples info ,  with lots of mistakes and miss identified photo's. they are not 'Ultimate Books" some good info but they need another editor to fix all the mistakes.

[tempestfan]

Thanks for that very clear assessment - I should have asked before ordering them...

[spruecutter96]

16 hours ago, tempestfan said:

"Was Glenn Martin gay?"... I then left the book alone

What on earth was this subject doing in a book about a particular type of aircraft? It is so far outside the subject matter that it makes the book sound like a joke. Also, if this person did have that particular sexual orientation, why is it even considered worth mentioning? Very weird....

 

Chris.  

[tempestfan]

No objection, myludd.