Replies

"Could it do superscripts with reduced font size like in memos 1 and 4?"

Yup, it could. A superscript "th" and "st" were available. They were treated as a single character and were one of the characters above the numbers. It was an option. IBM sold Executive typewriters with a whole range of special characters, for foreign languages, mathematics, etc. You wouldn't believe.

IMO the preponderance of evidence says these were forgeries. Yes, they could have been written on an IBM Executive (and they were certainly produced on a typewriter of some kind; look at the variation in the letter heights and the strike angles.). On the other hand, I've used a similar typewriter, and they are the most colossal pain in the rear except for a very skilled typist; if you type the wrong letter on a proportionately spaced typewriter, and discover it after you type the next letter, you're screwed. Maybe the particular, word-processor like font was available. Maybe the non-standard military abbreviations were used. Maybe Lt. Col. Killian was a hipster and used 'feedback' and 'run interference' in the very modern sense they're used in the Aug. 18 memo. Maybe he had superscripted fonts. But given all these unusual aspects of these memos, what would you say the preponderance of evidence suggests?

It's more a conncordance of small clues, not a smoking gun.

Nonsense.

A USAF officer, writing a supposed "memo" to himself, typing it BY himself (and typing it perfectly - I might add!) would NOT under any circumstances, go around REPLACING typewriter balls to "specially type in" TWO letters in HIS OWN UNIT ID designation for a memo that was NOT TO BE EVER PRINTED OR DISPLAYED AGAIN!

This is a memo FOR HIM to "cover his ass" (CYA - remember?) ... Is he (typing on his own (no clerk initial!) going to go around replacing typewriter balls?)

He (the supposed writer) is a military officer during a shooting war! He is a comabt-retrained FIGHTRE PILOT! I don't even believe ANY FIGHTER SQUADRON COMMANDING OFFICER would go around writing any excess memo's (to himself in particular!) about an officer who is leaving his unit on temporary assignment elsewhere!

And he would definitely not go around do it himself.

Further, the OFFICIAL WAY that Bush's unit designated itself (in all of the "real" documents from that base, at that time, form that office) used "111th F.I.S."

NO superscript! EVER!

Please read reply 198, and tell us now if you think that bizarre and complex procedure was likely to have been used to create proportional spacing on a memo in the TANG in 1972.

Yes, it's "possible" to also hit 18 consecutive holes-in-one, blindfolded.

I don't mind that you're a contrarian. Contrarians keep us sharp and honest. But what you are doing with the IBM Executive option is dishonest, unless you tell folks how bizarre and difficult it was to create proportional type on an IBM Executive, and how remote the chance would be that this would have been done on a memo in the TANG in 1972.

All I'm asking for is intellectual honesty.

A superscript "th" and "st" were available. They were treated as a single character and were one of the characters above the numbers.

In other words, you had to give up one of the symbols normally above the numbers, i.e., those that most people find most useful. I know they made a lot of different elements, but it's hard to believe they'd have two in the same typeface and size but substituting "th" and "st" for, say # and *. Did that one have an "nd" (as in 2nd)?