A site worth surfing.

[old man emu]

I came across this Australian site. Well worth spending some time on.

 

GEOFF GOODALL'S AVIATION HISTORY SITE

 

OME

 

 

[Neil_S]

I came across this Australian site. Well worth spending some time on.GEOFF GOODALL'S AVIATION HISTORY SITE

 

OME

Hi OME,

 

Wow - what a brilliant site! Stacks of amazing old photos and masses of info for each aircraft.

 

Thanks for posting! I could waste hours browsing through it !!

 

Cheers,

 

Neil

 

 

[old man emu]

Here is another place to go looking. About

 

The section that is of most interest to aviaphiles is the War Letters. Some great artwork.

 

OME

 

 

[Lozzer]

Can't seem to find the War Letters part on his site?

 

 

[onetrack]

Click on the "War Letters" heading, it has a drop-down menu that will lead you to the various time periods of the individual letter writings - or double clicking on "War Letters" will open the entire page of War correspondence, in chronological order.

 

War Letters | Pidgeon Post

 

Some great, descriptive and admiring correspondence there - but a little rough in places, and definitely not "PC" (WW2 terms as regards the natives, were not flattering terms!)

 

 

[Lozzer]

Many thanks. Great pics and sketches.

 

 

[old man emu]

definitely not "PC" (WW2 terms as regards the natives, were not flattering terms!)

You can't condemn the colloquial terms used in another age using the criteria for good and bad of your own age. Don't forget that people like WEP grew up in the era of the British Empire when Europeans believed that all others were lesser people. He would have been influenced by the standards of the day. hat is not to say that he invented the terms.

 

At least Australians of that time can say that they did not reject resident non-Europeans who answered the call to the Colours. We didn't segregate Aborigines in our Forces as the Americans did with their non-Europeans.

 

OME

 

 

[onetrack]

Agree - but that won't stop the PC, "offended-by-every-slight" crowd, from doing their best to ban any use of the WW2 correspondence, that contains "highly offensive terms".

 

I recall acquiring a WW2 RAAF publication called "These Eagles" back in the late 1980's, and being quite surprised at the common terminology for any lesser tribes. "Wogs" for middle easterners, during Egyptian sojourns, was just one of the milder descriptive forms!

 

 

[M61A1]

I have most of a collection of RAAF at War books, mostly written in the forties. I doubt that it would survive the PC brigade nowadays, with various non PC terms for the Japanese, and occasionally, the indigenous Australians. Many letters and cartoons of the day, along with some amazing stories of survival and many that didn't.

 

 

[cooperplace]

my grandmother had a huge collection of the WW2 at war books, collected by father (AIF, Darwin, New Guinea) and uncle (RAAF, New Guinea), both teenagers at the time. I spent hours reading them as a kid. I recall a photo of an Australian tail gunner, taken from the cockpit of the following plane in formation. This gunner would have been 18 and looked sh!t scared, and who could blame him. All those books were thrown out decades ago. My uncle who flew Beaufighters said he was terrified for the whole 2 yrs he did it, and my father refused to talk about the war, apart from a few terse recollections, eg: "you wouldn't believe what a direct hit with a bomb does to a man" "a bloke's remains were being hosed out of a Liberator tail turret after it was hit by a cannon shell". Mainly he just said it was bloody awful.