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- MEMPHIS BELLE ........ THE TRUE STORY
-
- Last year, shortly after the movie MEMPHIS BELLE was released, a History
- student from New York University was rummaging through some old files at
- the Pentagon in an effort to gather historical data on World War II for
- her upcoming senior year. Her father, a retired Army Colonel, had
- managed to pull certain strings with high ranking Pentagon Officials
- which gave her a two week access pass to old archive files. Her family
- was in Washington on holidays and she had pleaded with him for a year to
- get the pass for her.
-
- On her fourth day in Washington she met a young Lieutenant who took her
- to dinner and a movie. The movie was MEMPHIS BELLE. The next morning
- she remembered a file she came across two days ago in the Archives. It
- was simply labelled BELLE'S BASTARDS and she paid no attention to it.
- Now with her curiousity aroused she went back to the file and started
- reading about horror after horror. Surely, this must be another Belle.
- Then she came across the words, "And furthermore, I don't feel it proper
- that for the sole sake of good public relations, we should go ahead and
- make heroes out of these Memphis Belle sons-a-bitches just because
- they're the first to complete twenty-five missions. I say we court
- martial the bastards when they get back from Bremin and set them up as
- an example to the rest of the Air Force." It was written by Brigadier
- General Eaker to Major General Spaatz. She quickly photocopied the
- entire file and showed it to her Lietenant friend that evening. He
- took the file from her saying that he wanted to study it further.
- The next day when she asked for her file back he said, "What file?".
- Knowing that she had stumbled onto something serious she rushed back to
- the archives to get the original but there was no trace that it ever
- existed. The following day, her pass was taken from her and her father
- disappeared for three days. When he returned he was very sullen and
- announced to the family that their vacation was over and they would be
- returning to New York that night. He never said a word to her on the
- subject, nor she to him.
-
- The following five flights that you are to fly using SWOTL are simulations
- of the Memphis Belle's last five flights, numbers twenty-one through
- twenty-five as narrated by her to a New York Times correspondent who for
- obvious reasons will not come forward and admit what he heard. Another
- thing that didn't come out in the movie was that the Top Brass kept
- sending them back to Bremin hoping that they wouldn't return. They even
- sent a Hit Squad of three P51's (flight #22) to shoot them down in the
- heat of battle but somehow the Belle Boys managed to be the only ones to
- return. They planted an inside informer in the group (remember the guy
- they wanted to throw out over the channel) but, as you will see, he didn't
- come back either. In fact, nobody came back from Flight #25 but the
- Captain. The crew that paraded to a ticker tape parade back in the U.S.
- were actors and the only true member of the Memphis Belle was the Captain
- who died in a freak traffic accident shortly afterwards.
-
- Believe what you may but these are in actuality the real life, behind the
- scenes experiences of the true Memphis Belle Heroes. Just add them to
- your SWOTL directory and call them up from the CUSTOM MISSION MENU. Be
- sure to fly each mission in order and read the briefing text that comes
- with each flight. That way you'll get a true feel for how history can be
- distorted for political gain. Because of the rate at which the B17 was
- being blown out of the sky the Americans needed heroes so they could get
- more young men to sign up as pilots. They had plenty of planes but not
- enough pilots and what's worse, the only thing they could find that came
- close to a hero was the BELLE BASTARDS.
-