"Peter Stickney" wrote in message
...
In article . net,
"Dudley Henriques" writes:

"Peter Stickney" wrote in message
...
In article . net,
"Dudley Henriques" writes:

"Karl-Hugo Weesberg" wrote in message
om...

Planes are EVIL, they are the work of the devil, made to collect
your
souls and to turn you into brainless slaves of hell.

No.......that's WOMEN you idiot, not planes!!!!

There are no Fighter Pilots down in Hell.
There are no Fighter Pilots down in Hell...

I see........ you have never REALLY met any fighter pilots, have
you?
:-))

C'mon Dud, you know me better than that.
Actually, Martin Caiden, in one of his Really Fiction stories,
addressed just this very issue in a short story in Janet Morris'
"Heroes in Hell: series.

Martin C. did indeed have a flare for "fiction". Some of what he
wrote
brought a REAL smile to the lips of Suburo Sakai one evening if I
remember right!! :-)

That's why I mentioned it as one of his "Really Fiction" stories.
Like a lot of Sky-Eyed kids in the 1960s, my introduction to aviation
history and tales of aerial Derring-do came from Martin's books. But
as age, maturity, and experience flowed in, I realized that he
was a Storyteller, rather than a Historian - if research and facts got
in the way of the story, they were, shall we say, malleable.
I've rather mixed feelings about him - I'd never use one of his books
for reference, but he got a generation (mine, for the most part)
interested in finding out what happened to the folks that went on
before. He was an early mover & shaker in the Warbird community,
helping build up the interest in keeping the old birds alive that has
led to such stuff as the recovery and restoration of the early P-38
from the Greenland ice.
Some things I really didn't like - the hatchet job that was done on
"Samurai!" is one of them, and his "Fork-Tailed Devil" needs to be
read with a finely tuned Bogometer (The instrument for detecting
Bogons - the Elementary Particle of Bull****).
But damn - could he tell a story. I wouldn't have wanted him to be on
the staff at the Smithsonian, but I can easily see a bunch of late
nights in some bar just off the airport, buying rounds just to keep
the stories coming.

Somebody at one of the Brit Aero-Anorak magazines once described him
as a "Biker of the Skies". I'm sure that wherever he is now, Martin's
raising his glass and grinning in full agreement to that one.

I think I'm about with you on this Pete. Old Marty was a hell of a story
teller to be sure, and he did manage to get a generation of young people
interested in the warbird scene. I've never really been able to pin down
a positive or a negative on this though, as I liked talking to the
people who asked me questions about my airplane, but didn't particularly
appreciate the ones who stuffed their Teddy Bears into my carb air
scoop!!
:-)
Caiden wrote great stories , from the adventure viewpoint anyway. He did
I think, go a bit astray on the tech accuracy side of things on
occasion.....literary license so to speak, as they say. :-)
He spent some time with the Thunderbirds in 61 doing his "Thunderbirds"
book, and some of the side stories he left behind him at Nellis are
still laughed about at the O club on Saturday nights I think.
I've always sort of thought of him in the same way I view Harold
Robbins, even considering Robbins was a fictional story teller......but
WHAT a fictional story teller he was!!!
Ernie Gann had a quote that really summed up Martin I think.
"Somewhere in the heavens there is a great invisible genie who every now
and then lets down his pants and ****es all over the pillars of science"
God rest his soul! I just hope Sakai doesn't manage to catch up to him
up there in heaven...but then again, Marty might have gone the other way
at that!! :-)))
:-)))
Dudley