Project Seven Alpha: WWII Historical Fantasy run amuck

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Project Seven Alpha: American Airlines in Burma 1942 by Leland Shanle (LCDR, USN, RET)

While this book has been described as “historical fiction”, it would be better described as historical fantasy.

The promotional material available on this 2008 publication touts it as the “story of this little-known operation in the early days of the Burma Campaign.” The reason is that it is little known is that it never happened!

Ostensibly it is the recounting of how the day after Pearl Harbor, the head of American Airlines (the legendary C.R. Smith, who was a real person who became a key organizer of the Air Transport Command) is summoned to the White House and asked to send civilian airliners from the AA fleet on a dash across the Pacific to provide support for cargo operations in Burma.

Immediately swinging into action, Smith gathered 8 crews, a mix of former WWI fighter pilots and an assortment of untested copilots, and dispatches them across country. One of the pilots brings along his 17 year old son to sit in the second seat. Some how they are all immediately commissioned, complete with spiffy new flight jackets. Leaving the West Coast, they fly to still smoldering Hawaii with the fires of Pearl Harbor guiding them in. (One of the first red flags for accuracty is they are greeted by “shark mouthed” P-40’s…. shark mouth markings were not in use in Hawaii at the time).

Inexplicably, they are then routed to Wake Island, which is under imminent attack from a Japanese task force. Of course they manage to take off just minutes before the Japanese strike. The same happens at their next stop in the Philippines. And then they have to avoid hostile forces to make it across Malaysia.

 

 

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Let’s just stop here a minute. The ultimate destination for this mission is supposed to be Calcutta, India. You don’t have to be much of a student of history to ask why weren’t these highly valuable aircraft and crews routed through South America, across the ocean to Africa, crossing the narrow point of the ocean to Africa, and then over through to India and Burma. With the war raging since the mid 1930’s, such safer routes were already well recognized. But of course this would have made for a much less exciting tale than one of death waiting over every horizon.

There are also other pain points in reading this story. The characters are all stereotypes, recognizable to anyone who reads flight literature. The older pilots are have nerves of steel, push their aircraft beyond rated limits, and apparently never make a mistake no matter how extreme the operating conditions. The younger copilots, who seem to all have the uniformly same lack of experience, are all in awe. Staff officers at various airfields are all stuffed shirts telling the “real” pilots how to do their job while attempting to burden them down with bureaucratic details.

There are even stereotypes of ground troops, including an old school British colonel who goes down with the ship in Malaysia, a younger major who is dispatched away from the Japanese onslaught with a select group of officers and NCO’s to form a line of resistance with a reformed army in Burma, a rock hard Sergeant Major who had both the respect and fear of his men, and a contingent of US Marines who had somehow survived the evacuation of the embassy in Peking and were now eagerly joining the fight. All of these are rendered in movie character shorthand to keep the story moving along.

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The worst aspect of this book is that it steals the title of an actual Project 7-A that came much later in the war. Under this codename American Airline pilots were contracted in 1943 to fly C-87’s (cargo version of the B-24) over the hazards of the Himalayas. This is the real story that should have been told under this title.

If this book has any redeeming values, it is the author’s excruciating attention to detail on how cargo aircraft were flown in the 1940’s. If that is your interest, then this book is for you. The only thing missing is a full and complete take off and landing checklist, but the exhaustive narrative comes very close, along with the details of cross country navigation and communications techniques. Other reviewers have noted that the technical details of the story get very much in the way of the personal story of the characters.

The author is a pilot, with both military and civilian experience, and it shows. However another reviewer noted that he had a tendency to inject modern terms into conversations taking place in 1941. For my view, I thought it was questionable to claim that pilots inexperienced in formation flying with minimal training would be landing cargo aircraft on a rough field within a 3 second interval apparently in order to avoid detection.

My final criticism of this book is that based on the number of four and five star ratings appearing on the internet, it appears a number of readers have interpreted this book to be historical fact rather than fiction. None of the web references that I could find this book have highlighted how historically inaccurate this book is, or have pointed the reader the real story of American Airline pilots operating in wartime. According to other notes, a movie script has been prepared to perpetuate this tale of fantasy. The author and the publisher could have made a better effort to let the reader know exactly what this story is… the product of a fanciful imagination.

 

Continued below...

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Postscript:

 

If you dig far enough, you can find information on the web about the civilian airline pilots who flew the C-87's in various theaters.

 

Most enlightening was pages 205 through 207 of the book The Allied Resuppy Effort in the China-Burma-India theater During World War II

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=LhMBBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA205&lpg=PA205&dq=American+airlines+burma&source=bl&ots=qXOj7QXotI&sig=2SBYF91MlyLu5FX5s0XJfmt4yfQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZkuiy9N_PAhVDOz4KHTIGBxEQ6AEISDAH#v=onepage&q=American%20airlines%20burma&f=false

 

Other links:

 

http://www.joebaugher.com/usaf_bombers/b24_26.html

 

http://flgrube1.tripod.com/id329.html

 

http://www.stinsonflyer.com/sf-99.htm#c87