“Truth is the first casualty in war” is a phrase used to describe government lies to the public to justify war and to boost morale during the war. But it’s not just the government pronouncements that you need to be skeptical about. Military reports and press releases often include exaggerations or wishful thinking, especially early in a war. For instance, early in the Ukraine war, there were reports of a Ukrainian fighter pilot who shot down several Russian aircraft. It turns out that hero had been created by the Ukraine media. Air combat is especially susceptible to errors because pilots often report success that is not real. In the Battle of Britain, Royal Air Force pilots claimed many more German bombers than were actually shot down. The military passed these claims on and the press sensationalized them. Such was the case with Colin Kelly.
Colin Kelly, Jr. was born on July 11, 1915. He graduated from West Point in 1937. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, he was stationed in the Philippines as a B-17 pilot. His bomber survived the Japanese attacks that decimated MacArthur’s bomber force. On Dec. 10, 1941, Kelly and his crew were sent on a mission to bomb a Japanese fleet sailing to the islands. Kelly located the fleet and made a bombing run on what he thought was a Japanese battleship. Before the war, the B-17 had the reputation for being an accurate high-altitude bomber. From 20,000 feet, Kelly’s bombardier dropped three 600-pound bombs. One was a near miss and another hit the ship. The crew could see smoke coming from the warship. On the way back to base, Kelly was bounced by several Japanese fighters. One of them was famed Japanese ace Saburo Sakai. Sakai, in his autobiography “Samurai”, described the incident. “I remember having a feeling of tremendous respect for the pilot, who had ordered his crew to escape while he was apparently attempting to save his aircraft.” The Japanese made swiss cheese out of the B-17. Kelly ordered the crew to bail out, but he stayed with the plane until it exploded. His commanding officer reported that Kelly had hit a battleship. The press took that and turned it into a battleship was sunk. Some newspapers reported that Kelly had taken his damaged bomber on a suicide dive into the battleship. Kelly became America’s “first hero of WWII”.
It wasn’t until after the war that historians got the story right. Kelly was undoubtedly a hero, but he was not a successful one. None of the bombs hit a Japanese ship and the target was not a battleship, it was a light cruiser. One bomb was a near miss, which was actually commendable because the B-17 was to prove woefully incapable of hitting moving ships from high altitude. The ratio of bombs dropped to ships hit was astronomical. Kelly does have the distinction of piloting the first B-17 to be lost in combat in the war. It won’t be the last. The moral of this story is when you are following a war through newspaper stories, be aware that those stories are not being written by historians. Some time will need to pass before you get the real story. And if a story sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t accurate.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/b-17-pilot-colin-kelly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Kelly
https://www.historynet.com/b-17-pilot-colin-kelly-remembering-a-fallen-american-wwii-hero/
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