Re: Skunk Works


Message posted by Peter Merlin on June 10, 2019 at 18:19:00 PST:

It would take more bandwidth that we have in this forum to adequately catalog Jacobsen's journalistic atrocities. Suffice it to say, her Area 51 book was a disaster. It has justifiably been excoriated by expert critics and knowledgeable readers. I, myself, read the book twice, once straight through and again page by page while taking notes. I discovered more than three dozen factual errors before addressing the ridiculous Stalin/Mengele/Roswell nonsense.

With great effort, I will restrain myself to providing a few comments from people who read the book and have a deep understanding of the subject matter:


"Occasional, or even numerous errors, are not necessarily a fatal flaw either. At some point, however there is such a thing as a critical mass of mistakes. Indeed, one repeatedly finds elementary mistakes in the book although the correct information was contained in the sources she ostensibly relied upon."
-- Robert S. Norris and Jeffrey T. Richelson. Norris is a senior fellow with the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, DC. Michelson was a member of Washington Decoded’s editorial board and a senior fellow with the National Security Archive.

"In all our twenty five plus years of working as military aviation historians, we have never come across anything so seriously flawed as Annie Jacobson's book. To know where to start in describing this travesty boggles our minds, as I am sure anyone who had picked up this book will attest. As military aviation historians we know how to research, we have contacts and God knows we know the truth from fiction. Fiction is basically what you have in this book. We have to say that Ms. Jacobsen’s book is not a history in our opinion. With all the the loose cannonballs of information and misinformation flying back and forth, one could get airsick trying to keep up with the many twists and turns of her narrative. Her book is fraught with errors and not recommended reading for anyone serious about Cold War history, UFO and Aviation research, Black programs, and the men and women that participated in them."
-- Jeannette Remak and Joseph Ventolo Jr., Phoenix Aviation Research.

"I am, to put it mildly, sorely disappointed in this book. Any "non- fiction" history of Area 51 that claims the Roswell, NM flying saucer crap as the site's raison d'etre and that the flying saucer itself was the end product of Russia's post-war collaboration with the Horton Brothers isn't worthy of being a door stop, much less an historical resource in my reference library."
-- Jay Miller, aviation historian and author of the official history of the Lockheed Skunk Works.


In Reply to: Re: Skunk Works posted by Joerg (Webmaster) on June 10, 2019 at 17:53:13 PST:

Replies:



[ Discussion Forum Index ] [ FAQ ]