90 AIR CLASSICS/August 2022
MISSED OPPORTUNITY
Two books by David W. Braeutigam
were recently recommended to me and
I took the plunge. The books are: A Red
Raider Officer’s Diary during WWII:
A personal diary of 1st Lt. Carroll G.
Henry with the 408th Bomb Squad-
ron in the Southwest Pacific ($14.95)
and Royal Flush and Black Sunday
— April 16, 1944: When the 408th
Bomb Squadron lost Capt. Paschal, L.t
Widsteen, Lt. Giugliano, Lt. Gullion, Lt.
Rehmet, SSG Luckenback, SSG King,
SSG May, SSG Lowery, SGT. Borofsky
and SGT Harm in a plane crash in
New Guinea during WWII ($19.95).
Looking at A Red Raider Officer’s
Diary, Braeutigam bases the book on
the diary of 1st Lt. Carroll G. Hen-
ry who served with the 408th Bomb
Squadron, 22nd Bomb Group, Fifth
Air Force, known as the “Red Raiders.”
Braeutigam certainly did his research.
In the book’s introduction, he mentions,
“This book is a story of my research,”
a bit of information that really should
have been on the book’s cover to help
readers make a buying decision. This is
important because instead of describ-
ing the missions, the author duplicated
various action reports and newspaper
clippings, whether from the original
or from the Fold3.com website. This
is a huge problem as it puts the onus
on the reader to develop the story — if
the documents can be read. A duplicate
copy of a mission report is often poor at
best, and when reduced from 8.5-inches
in width to 4 inches, it is an extreme
challenge to read and/or decipher.
Some pages, for example pages 92 and
93, which describe Mission 102-B to
Hansa Bay on 11 April 1944, show
images of the mission reports and I can
see there is text in the images, but they
are unreadable. So now I’ve missed that
entire story.
Turning a diary into a readable
story is not for the faint of heart when
it comes to authors and this task needs
a good storyteller. A bonus for turning
a diary into a story would be a develop-
ment editor with some aviation experi-
ence. For example: the Army Air Force
rank “F/O” for Flying Officer is referred
to as “First Officer;” feelings that Lt.
Henry had on one day are repeated
two or three days later; and bomb-
ing missions are named by the target
“area” in some places, then the same
mission’s targets are referred to by the
exact geographic location (for example
“Finschhafen area” while the target was
“Gusika Village”) without the author
making the connection between the two.
All very confusing. In addition, some di-
ary entries mingle various thoughts, i.e.,
“The crew welcomed a new pilot... who
replaced Bob Stone. Carroll noted in his
diary that ‘the plane Bob wrecked gave
the big wheels a bad impression.’ ” Wait.
What? What plane did Bob wreck and
when? What do the wheels have to do
with anything written so far? I’m sure
a glance at the mission reports would
provide the details, but the author never
shares those details with the reader.
Royal Flush and Black Sunday is
another missed opportunity, especially
as he follows the crash of B-24 Royal
Flush as well as the discovery of the
wreck and the recovery of the crew. This
could have been an incredible story, but
it is, again, a few introductory para-
graphs followed by endless unreadable
reports and newspaper clippings used to
“tell” the story.
Both books are products of Ama-
zon’s print-on-demand (POD) services.
Unfortunately, Amazon is known for its
POD quality issues. Somewhere in their
system they have high quality printers,
but these books did not come from that
facility. Aside from the POD produc-
tion’s low image quality (and these
books really needed high resolutionimages), 10 April 2022, must have been
a bad day at Amazon’s Las Vegas facility.
When I opened Red Raider Officer’s
Diary to flip through it, the pages came
flying out as the glue used did not hold
the paper to the binding.
I can assure you that author Braeuti-
gam does high-quality research. We just
need him to up his game as a storyteller.
Both books could be re-written and
expanded into engaging true-to-life ad-
venture stories, but until that happens,
save your money.THOSE CORSAIR COCKPITS
Rivet Counter Guide Number 1:
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Author Dana Bell has produced a
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book’s use of perfectly chosen, high
resolution black and white images are
paired with color artwork to make the
text’s dive into the details even deeper.
Bell’s book is important as the
majority of the improvements in early
model Corsairs took place in the fight-
er’s cockpit. Many of the changes had
to do with pilot ergonomics, switch and
lever placement, and the pilot’s external
visibility. The manufacturers expended
a lot of development effort in each area
of improvement and it is amazing how
much was changed from dash number
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The author examines the XF4U-1
cockpit, the evolution from the stock-
framed canopy to the “birdcage”
canopy and windscreen armor, mods
made to the overturn structure, one-
piece plexiglass canopies, blown orLATEST IN AVIATION LITERATURE
BY NICHOLAS A. VERONICO