January 2011

Critics of the Army Air Forces argued that the strategic bombing campaign was unnecessary. All the production devoted to building bombers and the enormous effort to train men to fly and maintain them could have been better spent on fighters, ground troops, and the Navy. It would also have avoided the worst accusation of all: that the United States used a method of making war that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.

The bombs hit residences as well as factories, deliberately on the part of the RAF Bomber Command’s night bombing, but also from the American precision bombing, for the accuracy of free-falling bombs was far below the accuracy of artillery fire. Most bombs fell considerably outside their targets. Asked after the war, “Did you guys ever hit anything?,” one tail gunner replied, “Yeah, we always hit the ground.”

EVEN IN OUR ERA OF CEASELESS TECHNOLOGICAL REtfinements, the American strategic bombing campaign of World War II remains an effort of almost unimaginable complexity and scope. In his new book, The Wild Blue , Stephen E. Ambrose tells the story of this immense operation through the experiences of scores of those who figure in the subhead of the book: The Men and Boys Who Flew the 6-245 Over Germany . But the author focuses on the z 2-year-old Lt. George McGovern, a young man with a future, who piloted a 6-24 christened Dakota Queen after his wife, Eleanor. The Dakota Queen was part of the 74ist Squadron, 455th Bomb Group, i5th Air Force. McGovern flew out of Cerignola, on the east coast of Italy, and what he experienced during his early missions is emblematic of everything suffered by everyone who served in the B-24S.

Overrated

All world’s fairs are, in a sense, overrated. To lure enormous exhibitors to the site, publicists promise enormous crowds. To lure enormous crowds, publicists promise enormous exhibits. And like theme parks, fairs seldom fulfill the promises of their publicists in any respect except size.

Grover Whalen, New York City’s consummate salesman and civic greeter, put all his energies into promoting the 1939 world’s fair, and, as a result of his ebullient enthusiasm and the balmy claims of his team of architectural designers and urban sociologists, the World of Tomorrow overstated its significance more fulsomely than any gathering in history.

Overrated

Throwing back home runs. So many of our sports traditions seem beyond criticism. There’s nothing “overrated” about harmlessly dopey rituals like Super Bowl week or the homecoming bonfire. Even a relative newcomer that really does deserve scorn, the Wave, does not owe its popularity to good press.

Another modern development, however, while not running riot in our stadiums as the Wave once did, poses a similar threat to baseball and receives a surprising amount of respect from fans and sportswriters alike. It was popularized at beautiful Wrigley Field by the famously patient followers of the Chicago Cubs. Cub fans, who each summer see dozens and dozens of baseballs knocked into their midst by visiting batters, began tossing enemy home-run balls back onto the grass as if they were live grenades instead of once-in-a-lifetime souvenirs. If ticket holders lucky enough to catch four-ply wallops in the stands showed hesitation or ignorance of the custom, the sore loser’s chant would start up, “Throw it back! Throw it back!” until they surrendered the prize.

Overrated

From its sandals-and-jeans beginnings and heated platitudes about saving the earth from rapacious humankind, environmentalism has devolved from a cutting-edge protest movement i to a warm, fuzzy, and suburban issue. Everybody is an environmentalist now, from clearcut developers who preserve a bit of wetlands to sportutility-vehicle owners who recycle their newspapers. And when everybody is green, nobody is green.

Underrated

Two problems arise. The term robber baron is itself the most overrated and misleading phrase in the historian’s lexicon. It is also so vague that the list of candidates is shadowy. That said, I offer two prospects whose achievements still have not received the recognition they deserve despite sympathetic biographies. The first is Jay Gould, one of the archfiends of robber baron mythology; the other is Samuel lnsull, the genius of the electric power industry. Both men did much to define their industries, not only in what they accomplished but also in what they forced others to do. Both also had their reputations tarnished by scandals.

Overrated

In the Roaring Twenties, a Dempsey punch was synonymous with brutal, unleashed power. From July 1919 to September 1926 Jack Dempsey was the heavyweight champion of the universe, after emerging from the hobo jungles of Colorado. But his reputation was based on just two fights, for during his reign he fought infrequently. To win the heavyweight title, he butchered the badly out-of-shape 37-year-old six-foot-six giant Jess Willard in three rounds in Toledo, Ohio, in 1919. In 1911, in the first million-dollar gate in sports history, Dempsey knocked out the dimpled, skinny Georges Carpentier, a French hero of World War I, who weighed somewhere between 15 and 30 pounds less than he did.

But it was the fierce fight that Dempsey had with Luis Angel Firpo, a savage-looking Argentinean, in 1923 that made him into a myth. There were n knockdowns in two rounds, and Dempsey KO’d his man. The result was somewhat tainted, however, by the fact that two journalists had pushed Jack back into the ring after Firpo punched him through the ropes in the opening round.

Overrated

In 1971 the then photography critic of The New York Times , Gene Thornton, wrote a review titled “Why Is Curtis Unknown to Photographic History?” It began: “How can a major American photographer remain unknown for close to 50 years?” Well, often it happens.

Overrated

The obvious candidate —all his rivals pale by comparison—is Henry McCarty, a.k.a. Henry Antrim, a.k.a. William H. Bonney, a.k.a. Billy the Kid.

Overrated

Though it was the largest ship in the world at the time, little besides size distinguished the Titanic from its sister ship the Olympic . Only after it went down did gigantism morph into myth. Suddenly, it marked the end of the old world, signaled our loss of innocence, replaced certainty with doubt, heralded modernism, and triggered World War I. In reality, the only things it changed were shipping regulations. The ship and its fate have become a blank page on which we write our own fables: in 1912, of upper-class male chivalry and female unfitness for equality; in the overblown 1997 movie, of working-class moral superiority. Meanwhile, a Republican candidate accuses his opponent of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic , and a Democratic keynote speaker warns that a continuance of the Reagan-Bush administration is “like the captain of the Titanic calling for more icebergs.” The name has become a tired metaphor. It’s time to let it rest in peace.