I suppose it’s possible anyone even superficially scanning this site might get the impression I can be something of a hopeless research geek.
Okay, sure; mea culpa; mea maxima culpa. I admit the detective work which goes into any project is more than half the fun in my view and I relish viewing a finished piece with the assurance that as far as can be ascertained it is a miniature representation of a single moment in reality.
There’s the rub though: “as far as can be ascertained” is the ever present limiting stipulation, proviso and quid pro quo. Big on accuracy I may be but I’m also entirely pragmatic about perfection:
There ain’t no such thing.
Honest researchers live in the shadow of this all-pervading dynamic at every turn. The experienced and rational eventually realize no matter how far they drill down on any particular subject one invariably comes up against the wall of what I term the “Quad-U Conundrum”:
The Unknown, the Unknowable, the Unrelated and Utter Bullshit.
By way of illustration let me digress into another area of interest beyond my beloved Skyraider.
As fascinated as I am with Ed Heinemann’s big spAD I have always been equally inclined to nerd out on anything even remotely surrounding its original Société Pour l’Aviation es ses Dérivés namesake and its milieu.
Since childhood absorbing everything I can about aircraft of the Great War along with reproducing them in miniature in every medium known to modeldom I long ago came to the realization that, except for Darwinesque faux “science”, NOWHERE in any body of research is the Quad-U dynamic more pungently in evidence.
Now, don’t get me wrong; there are some very dedicated, honest and pragmatic archivists, conservators, researchers and builders out there and thank God for them.
Interestingly, though, it is often they who are the first to point out the limitations for resources available to them.
How can they not? Those first three “U’s” lurk around every corner. Destroyed and lost records, lack of color and uncertainty regarding much black and white photography, no extent eye witnesses, poor, contradictory or misleading primary source material, late 19th and early 20th Century recording technology, effects of time on what artifacts we have and so forth make much of the most worthwhile evidence suspect at best.
Taking full advantage of this paucity and fragmented nature of the available data set, empty suits of every stripe from Hollywood to armchair “experts” lurking behind pizza box fortresses in moldering basements rush to fill the void with an overabundance of the bovine fourth pillar of the Uniform quad-set.
Let’s get real; no one really knows or can possibly know what a fresh PC-10 linen finish actually looked like in any given RFC/RAF squadron in 1914-18 any more than we can be 100% sure whether or not Werner Voss’s Triplane cowling was painted yellow, or green or pinkish-chartreus for that matter. Educated guesses and informed suppositions are the absolute best with which we have to work and model builders need to keep this in mind as we craft our miniature masterpieces.
But Pard, don’t you be tellin’ that to some of these hombres; no sirree Bob.
Question the wrong bit of “dogma” and a posse of Neal 2 DaGasbagge Tyson types on both sides of The Pond and beyond will condescend from behind computer screen bulwarks to blackguard your heritage, revile your progeny and kick your dawg.
Your choices will be pilloried and your sanity, ethics and intelligence cast into doubt. Your supply of EZ Line will be confiscated, your stash of Aviattic lozenge shredded and you may well find yourself tied to a stake at dawn if you’re ever heard to so much as hum “Mademoiselle from Armentieres” again.
A few of the more notable of these come to mind who by stint of rising to legends in their own minds manage (or managed) to somehow become established as the last word in a milieu where no one even has half the dictionary. Out of politeness I will mention no names here but rather observe in that world you disagree or fail to defer to them at your peril.
It’s part of a global dynamic; the human condition is such that information vacuums are often voids all too readily filled with the alchemy of ego and agenda. It takes little more than a pie hole or computer for some assumptive loser to set themselves up for an expert and be utterly dogmatic about “facts” which can never be checked, confirmed, or possibly even rank as existent.
There is a name for the phenomenon: it is called “religion”.
Genuine seekers are well advised to avoid such presumptive nonsense like the plague and despise it when revealed. Far more useful is to opt for “faith” instead; trusting in the process of unbiased observation, curiosity, inquiry, research, comparison, logic and common sense.
All of this must be leavened by the healthy dose of the humility it takes to admit despite your best efforts you might be wrong or simply up against something which cannot be known.
Because the fact is even when we are trying to be honest and objectively accurate as possible the road can be rocky and at times will leave us all to seek. Even so called “primary sources” can leave our sketches only drawn to the knees if we’re not careful.
…which brings me back to the Skyraider and a case in point for this blog.
In researching the subject for my recently completed 1/32 Early Korean War AD-4 I adopted this period photo
from the US Navy Archives as my primary inspiration. I will not go into all of the details here, as they are outlined in the forthcoming KLP eBook, but I do want to drive home a point about getting too dogmatic even when relying on presumably well documented primary material.
In the Archive documentation of this official US Navy photo it is dated as being taken on October 19, 1950. “Yeah, so what?” you say. Well, actually, there are a host of ramifications for our impending project.
For instance, what specific airplane is this? Don’t jump too soon there Pilgrim, that big “503”squadron ident on the cowling means exactly bupkis historically. US Navy airframes are permanently identified by Bureau (serial) Number, but aircraft numbers? Ha! Units could change those like their socks.
To underscore this dynamic, so far I have been able to document at least three different VA-115 AD-4 BuNo.’s identified as “V-503” during Philippine Sea’s 1950 Korean deployments. Read that “…at least three,” there could well have been others.
But which is this one? Time frame, then, does become germane because I have to collate what’s in this photo with Navy aircraft service cards if possible. The problem is aircraft service records are organized by BuNo and assignment dates with no reference whatever to numbers assigned by units. Thus, if I want to model this particular airplane with historic accuracy I need that little number on the tail stenciled under “US Navy, AD-4” and my only hope of doing so lies in some match to a time frame for the photo with a service card for cross reference.
As we shall see, even at this actual identification is problematic. In the event I never could ascertain the BuNo of this particular airplane. This is why I chose to model its squadron mate V-507, BuNo 123830 instead since clear photographic evidence taken the same day from another angle as we can see here supplies both the A/C and BuNo.
All cut and dried then; good to go, eh? Ah...not so fast there; we need to dig into this a little deeper…
What about that pesky time period? This is important because configuring the model, especially as to weapons load is going to be dictated by the date. Moreover, since this model will eventually be part of a diorama including several deck crewmen I need to know to represent the figures.
Having CV-47’s cruise reports in hand I find she made two deployments in the summer/fall of 1950 and significantly to my purposes I note different ordinance utilization from one to the other.
“But hey” you object, “didn’t you say the original photo was taken 10/19/1950; what’s your problem?”
No, I said it was documented by some archivist as being shot on that date. Fact is close examination of the photo shows it could be nothing of the kind.
Oops…
Cruise reports indicate on October 19, 1950 CV-47 was in the Sea of Japan off the coast of North Korea attacking targets around Wonsan covering Dugout Doug’s harebrained rampage toward the Yalu, headlines and World War III.
That’s North Korea; mid-October. A quick Google check for the average daytime high temperature for that region and season shows it to be between 45-53 degrees F. Out to sea it’s going to be on the cold side of average and with even a 15 knot wind across the deck 45F is going to feel like 37. 20 knots, not unusual up on an aircraft carrier flight deck, would put the felt temp below freezing.
Okay, now look at those kids in the photo. They look cold to you? They sure should if this is mid-October because they’re dressed like a bunch of surfer dudes at Malibu; skivvy shirts, no gloves, no hats. Not only that, it’s obviously a sunny day and from the look of their clothes not much wind is blowing either.
You really buy is this mid fall in the northern Sea of Japan?
This is also clearly is a combat cruise photo, not a snapshot of some pre deployment workup off San Diego or Oahu, because the ordies are loading live and fused frags, GP’s and nape.
So, then, we need to look a little closer and see if there’s any data which might actually fit what we’re seeing here.
As it turns out an earlier cruise report does tell us CV-47 with VA-115 aboard was involved in operations around Masan during the defense of the Pusan Perimeter beginning August 5, 1950.
Summertime in South Korea. Gets hot in them parts. Don’t know for sure but I’m thinking this time period is probably a better bet for the actual date of that photo.
To muddy things up for us a little more we find later that summer CV-47 moved around to the Yellow Sea to cover the Inchon campaign in September-early October before heading back for a quick layover in Japan. Okay, still South Korea, but a lot closer to the 38th parallel and to fall than they were down south near Pusan in August.
On the other hand the Yellow Sea is more land locked than the Sea of Japan, shallower too…could they have enjoyed some nice Indian summer weather out there? It’s possible I suppose, but I have no way of knowing.
I still think this is August, but the point is my conclusion must necessarily be somewhat arbitrary
So much for blindly accepting “official” documentation at its own face value.
The off fall from this discovery and how it cascades down through the modeling project is beyond the scope of this blog, but suffice it to say it was significant. (Get the eBook when it’s released, it’s all in there.)
One point I will single out however is to observe my decision to model aircraft BuNo 123830 as V-507 is of itself tolerably arbitrary.
Why so? I’ve got a picture and everything, right?
Actually, what I have is the original photo in question and 830’s service card obtained from the Naval Aviation Museum. From these I can document only two things for certain: 1) At the time the pic was shot 830 was VA-115’s V-507 and 2) 830 was aboard CV-47 assigned to VA-115 during the entire period encompassing August-December, 1950.
My model and diorama will represent AD-4 BuNo 123830 during the October cruise off Wonsan because it’s my project and that’s what I want to do.
However, as we have seen, my August 1950 time frame for the photograph is an educated surmise at best. Furthermore, am I certain BuNo 123830 was still aircraft number 507 two and a half months and a turnaround in Sasebo later as I have modeled her?
No, I’m not and never can be and I’m just going to have to live with it. That information is not part of any record extent and as I’ve already mentioned individual aircraft numbers within squadrons could be and were changed ad hoc.
The point of all this is we have to be very, very careful even as we try to do due diligence in careful research. All-knowing dogmatism is seldom warranted because not everything is always as it seems even if promised by or assumed because we’re using “substantive” sources.
At the end of the day at least as much humility as “expertise” is in order because there will always be some questions which remain un or at least only partially answered and it’s entirely possible we don’t actually know as much as we like to think.
Build long, and prosper…
