Tail Gunner Charles

Actor Charles Bronson died recently; he received a grudging obituary from the New York Times. For some reason liberals are addicted to the “chickenhawk” theory, and the Times reporter went to some length to debunk Bronson’s image as a tough guy, including this disparagement of his military record (which also, of course, called Bronson a liar):
“In 1943, he was drafted into the Army. Years later, after he established himself as an actor, his press releases would say he had been a tail gunner during World War II. But one reporter found that Mr. Bronson was assigned to the 760th Mess Squadron in Kingman, Ariz., and that he drove a delivery truck during the war.”
No word on who the anonymous reporter was, but he turned out to be wrong. Thursday’s Corrections section included this admission:
“An obituary of the movie actor Charles Bronson on Sept. 2 and in some late editions on Sept. 1 misstated his military record. Mr. Bronson had indeed been an aircraft gunner during World War II, as his publicity materials said. (His initial assignment, in Kingman, Ariz., involved maintenance and operations of the base messes.) He was a member of the 760th Flexible Gunnery Training Squadron, not the 760th Mess Squadron. In 1945 Mr. Bronson was attached to a B-29 squadron of the 39th Bombardment Group, based in Guam, which conducted combat missions against the Japanese home islands.”
Just another example of the Times’ eagerness to slander anyone associated, even vaguely, with the right, and its consistently bad fact-checking.