P-47 Range

[Legioneod]

Interesting vid on P-47 range and the misconceptions surrounding it.

 

Edited June 1, 2020 by Legioneod

[JG4_dingsda]

Another excellent upload from Greg. There are so many interesting and informative videos to be found on his channel.

[Bremspropeller]

And he starts with a very important statement right away:

Writers copying from each other, so a myth gets cast into stone over time - despite only being half the story.

 

That happened a lot in airwar history.

[sevenless]

Writing books based on secondary, tertiary sources or monographies is the root of the problem. So don´t trust any publication without proper bibliography and footnotes.

Edited June 1, 2020 by sevenless

[RedKestrel]

25 minutes ago, sevenless said:

Writing books based on secondary, tertiary sources or monographies is the root of the problem. So don´t trust any publication without proper bibliography and footnotes.

 

I think for 'high level' overview type history, relying on secondary sources is not necessarily a bad thing. Provided those sources are, themselves, pretty reliable - theirin lies the rub, you need to have the critical assessment skills to determine what is and what is not a good source. Most people do not. Especially in pop history, you can cite sources all day and bank on the near certainty that 99% of your readers are never going to check your work. 

I have, rather unfortunately, been involved in quite a few online debates (not flight sim related) where some anonymous person has made a completely ludicrous historical claim and been widely believed and lauded for their analysis. When pressed, they cite a number of sources (often without reading them). As soon as they cite any sources, the people who want to believe  consider the matter closed, since sources have been provided the suitable offerings have been made. The idea of backing something up with sources is firmly entrenched but its just going through the motions in a kind of cargo-cult academia. 

A quick perusal of the sources will almost always reveal one or more of the following problems:

1. The source does not contain much in the way of evidence, and the author makes a much more cautious conclusion as warranted by the evidence;

2. The source provides evidence, but in fact contradicts the conclusion the person has come to.
3. The person citing the source, having no knowledge of the technical language involved in the field, has applied a common-use understanding of a word and missed the fact that within the profession they are dealing with the word means something completely different.
4. The source actually has nothing to do with the subject in question, it only mentions it in the  title or abstract.

What people often do is come up with an idea they think sounds right or should be true, and then find sources that appear to back up that idea, because this is basically how a lot of people get through high school and lower levels of college. Since their teachers rarely check up on the sources they get away with skimming or just straight up not reading the sources at all. 

Some of these people then go on to realize that almost nobody checks sources or reads much at all, and they can make outlandish or unsupported claims and never get caught. By the time they do get caught, their writing is now itself a source that people cite, and in fact it is now three layers deep in the sources of someone else's writing.

This is a huge problem in any historical enthusiast community, where there is a lot of trust for people that make strident, authoritative declarations and sound like they know what they're talking about, especially if it results in something 'cool' or new and interesting being true. 

TL;DR: I will say, don't trust any publication without proper bibiolography and footnotes, and only really trust it after you have examined a sampling of those sources as well, if possible.

[sevenless]

3 minutes ago, RedKestrel said:

A quick perusal of the sources will almost always reveal one or more of the following problems:

1. The source does not contain much in the way of evidence, and the author makes a much more cautious conclusion as warranted by the evidence;

2. The source provides evidence, but in fact contradicts the conclusion the person has come to.
3. The person citing the source, having no knowledge of the technical language involved in the field, has applied a common-use understanding of a word and missed the fact that within the profession they are dealing with the word means something completely different.
4. The source actually has nothing to do with the subject in question, it only mentions it in the  title or abstract.

TL;DR: I will say, don't trust any publication without proper bibiolography and footnotes, and only really trust it after you have examined a sampling of those sources as well, if possible.

 

Yes, seen all that what you listed myself. Both online and "oh wonder" also in academia, where peaople made a fool of themselves citing something which in fact contradicted their own point. It is, as you correctly state, an increasing problem in popular scientific media.

[Dutchvdm]

Nice video. Very interesting. Makes me want to use external fueltanks even more. One question i have though. Was fuel consumption ever an issue for the USAAF when using either the P-47 or the P-51? The fact that the P-51 consumes less fuel should make some difference one would think?

 

Grt M

[Heliopause]

Some info from 1978