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			  | el cid again ->  RE: Allied Aircraft (RAF issues item)  (2/7/2006 1:19:59 PM) |  
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 Well, then we have conflicting sources. Just try this site http://www.raf.mod.uk/history/.
 
 It's the homepage of the RAF (historical branch). Not very detailed, but it clearly states that the squadrons you mentioned did not serve in the FE. I would assume that the RAF should know best were its squadrons served (I'm generally sceptical about online sources, but in this case it has some "air of authority")
 
 I know what you mean - in every sentence.  I once decided to look up my name in a database of those who served in Vietnam.  Although I went there three times - official enough I got out of paying taxes and received combat pay - I am not in the database.  So much for web sources.  I know a retired JLSDF captain who works for an official Japanese military history activity.  But there are certain things he won't say - period.  No matter if I have original documents from participants or not, that didn't happen.  And in the 1960s we got so used to press, academic and official stories being unrecognizably different from our on the scene experience we coined the term "real world" to distinguish what actually happened from what was said to have happened.  Nevertheless, I agree that RAF should know where its units were.  I also have evidence that reference books - no matter how comprehensive and detailed - contain errors.  In fact - I sometimes correct them before they get printed!  Once I was doing this for the English edition of Flottes des Combat (Combat Fleets of the World), and I took the proof copy with me on a service call to Adak - a remote naval station in the Aleutians (no longer a Naval base, it also is not quite as abandoned as is officially stated).  While there we had a tiny conflict with Lybia - and two frigates were burning so badly smoke prevented their identification.  A worldwide FLASH message was sent to help 6th Fleet identify them.  I saw this come in at the operations center and told a petty officer I could identify the ships.  The captain came over and asked me about  this.  I explained I had a book over in BOQ which had photographs, and that the radar antennas were above the smoke.  Since only three ships of this class were in the Lybian navy, it had to be two of them.  He said "Let me get this strait:  you have a book that isn't published yet.  But you don't need to look at it, because you have the information in your head?"  He didn't bother to send for the book - he sent off the ID with the comment "If we go to war you are back in the Navy."  Regretfully, one cannot know information in great detail for all periods for all services, and so we must depend on our references.
 
 I have just learned that another point is in error in the same reference - although I am sure it was believed:  Both Blenheim I and IF are listed as being in Malaya in Bloody Shambles - so they did serve in places other than Greece and North Africa after the war began.
 
 I suppose any large data set must contain errors.  And sometimes we don't know if the alleged errors are really errors - or not?
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