Talk:Clay Blair
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[edit] Lockwood or Christy?
"e.g., his recounting of Admiral Charles A. Lockwood's ongoing refusal to accept that the Mark VI magnetic torpedo exploder he helped develop was a total failure"
I think this was Christy, not Lockwood. Christy was deeply involved in developing the Mark VI and Lockwood was deeply involved in finding its flaws.
128.165.87.144 20:20, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] This article lacks credibility
"...like his other works it has a somewhat revisionist aspect."
Uh, am I the only one that thinks this statement needs some sort of proof, or even a citation/reference?
"Blair criticizes many of the submarine captains and admirals who fought during the war."
Uh, again, what exactly is meant by criticism? The failure of many of the peacetime submarine skippers, on transition to war, is well-documented in other sources, as well as in US Navy personnel records. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.59.12.138 (talk) 04:25, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- I agree. Nor is revisionism a bad thing — which this article strongly implies. Many famous professors and academics have made their names on reassessments.
- If the point is that Blair has been criticized for sensationalism or poor scholarship, then that should be explicit (and have references). Just reading off the back of Hitler's U-Boat War, reviewers from The New York Times and The Washington Post are using phrases such as "unmatched panorama", "no overall description ... is better than the one in this book", "far and away the most authoritative". But the tone of this article makes Blair sound like a bad Tom Clancy knock-off.
- 67.169.126.47 (talk) 01:10, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Neutrality questioned
After consideration, I decided the neutrality of this article as a whole should be questioned. This is a systematic attempt to slur without evidence. Phrases such as " Although he had no training in military or naval science or historiography, he vented his personal opinions freely" are disingenuous. Plenty of military professionals write without formal training in historiography. "Vented his personal opinions freely" is subjective fluff. Suggesting that someone who served on a WWII submarine had no training in "naval science"? "Wrote for a popular audience" ... apparently means "not for a knowledgeable, educated audience"? More vague innuendo. Does the editor really imagine that books many hundred pages long are for casual readers??? Saying in the same sentence that Joan Blair co-wrote his books and that she'd been married to him for years suggests...something...he didn't write his own books?...his wife ghost wrote them? ... Calling his writing a "diatribe" is agenda-based, inflammatory language.
Apparently the editor(s?) are familiar with one book which they disagree. There's scant mention of the other 23 he wrote, or the hundreds of articles.
As for being a "revisionist"...what does that mean, really? Is this a "code word" in military speak for someone who doesn't go along with the status quo? Or is it just a way for an editor to say "I disagree with everything this guy writes"? That is, in the one book the editor(s) read.
67.169.126.47 (talk) 02:14, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
