miket@brspyr1.brs.com (Mike Trout) (06/27/89)
From: miket@brspyr1.brs.com (Mike Trout) Did anybody watch MacNeil-Lehrer on Thursday, 22 June? There was a special report on the finding of the WW2 German battleship _Bismarck_. As an introduction to the report, there was a three- or four-minute piece which was a brief look at the career of the ship. Unfortunately, it was an incredibly inaccurate mess that was a disgrace to this otherwise fine program. Stock "battleship" footage was shown which depicted many ships other than the _Bismarck_. It was stated that the Germans were attempting to seize control of the world's oceans. It was stated that when the Royal Navy lost the _Bismarck_ after the _Hood_ disaster, she was finally re-located by a single "seaplane" which fired its "only" torpedo, crippling the battleship's rudder. There was a brief interview with a "Naval Historian" whom I had never heard of; he claimed that the _Bismarck_ had 18-inch guns. Throughout, the statements "world's biggest warship" and "world's most powerful battleship" were casually thrown about. Virtually every sentence used by the normally excellent Christine Hunter-Gault contained at least one error. [ mod.note: Grrr... their "historian" must've been Johnny Horton. 8-) - Bill ] The bulk of the report, which was a live interview with the maritime surveyor who located the ship, was quite good and informative. Is there anyone in net.land who may have taped this report? I would love to watch it again, catalog the hordes of errors, and write a kind but firm letter to MacNeil-Lehrer. Among other things, they should be warned that the "Naval Historian" they were using as a source doesn't know what he's talking about. Replies, comments, flames, etc., should be directed to miket@brspyr1. I can post to but cannot receive sci.military. -- NSA food: Iran sells Nicaraguan drugs to White House through CIA, SOD & NRO. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Michael Trout (miket@brspyr1)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ BRS Information Technologies, 1200 Rt. 7, Latham, N.Y. 12110 (518) 783-1161 "God forbid we should ever be 20 years without...a rebellion." Thomas Jefferson
hhm@ihlpy.ATT.COM (Mayo) (06/29/89)
From: hhm@ihlpy.ATT.COM (Mayo) In article <7778@cbnews.ATT.COM>, miket@brspyr1.brs.com (Mike Trout) writes: > > watch it again, catalog the hordes of errors, and write a kind but firm letter > to MacNeil-Lehrer. Among other things, they should be warned that the "Naval > Historian" they were using as a source doesn't know what he's talking about. > Are you sure it wasn,t Martin Caiden? (-: I started reading The Tigers are Burning last week. The first few chapters were so full of major and minor errors that I took it back to the library. I wonder why sloppy scholorship, that would be intolerable in other fields, seems rampant in military history. Larry Mayo