HISTORY AND HASHTAGS

At Eduard we consider military history,

especially aviation's, to be a very important part of our work. This is probably quite evident in our magazine INFO in

recent years. From what used to be one

article in a monthly issue, we now publish

three articles or more. Sometimes I wonder whether it is too much for our readers, but I think not.

I'm less sure about social media. We live

in an age in which many people are more

likely to enjoy the graphic part of content

and no longer have the desire or energy

to read. This is probably due to the fact,

that information is literally an avalanche

coming at us from all sides. Some experts strongly discourage longer texts on

social media, and the longevity of any individual post amid the content load tends

to be very low. But history is too rich to

be easily shortened. That's why last November, in connection with the 1/48 scale

A6M2 Zero kit release, we didn't hesitate

to also launch a series of historical posts

on our social media.

We decided to take our Facebook and Instagram followers through the momentous events of the Pacific War. Naturally,

we started with the attack on Pearl Harbor, but the series of posts didn't begin

with the attack itself, but with the formation of the Japanese fleet in the Kuril Islands and its voyage to Hawaii.

Among the events of the fighting in the

Pacific, we also have included those in

June 2022

which Zeros did not take part. They were

simply significant and therefore worthy of

attention. The War in the Pacific involved

many countries and nations, although it

can sometimes give the impression that

it was only Japan against America. It was

also a Dutch war, for example, as was evident in the post about the sinking of the

destroyer Shinonome, or when we wrote

about the Battle of the Badung Strait.

Sometimes, while we were writing the

texts, history surprised us. Thus when fighting against Japanese aircraft carriers

started in April 1942, the airmen who had

taken part in the sinking of the battleship

Bismarck a year earlier went into battle on the RAF side. And of course, they

weren't all British!

The first dogfight engagement for F4F

Wildcats was also somewhat unexpected. It wasn't against Zeros, the US Navy

fighters fought against older fixed undercarriage A5M Claude fighters. But the

course of the battle was not nearly as

clear-cut as one might think! The Wildcats had no armor yet at the time and although they were more robustly built than

the light Japanese aircraft, they were to

some extent similarly vulnerable.

How to find this information? On our Facebook page www.facebook.com/EduardCompany just type the hashtag #eduardasiapacificwar and the posts will appear.

We also use other hashtags, such as

#eduardzero and #eduardwildcat, which

are of course related to our kits.

On the Instagram account www.instagram.com/eduardcompany, texts are sometimes shortened or guide to the Facebook page due to the limits that Instagram

has. We intend to continue these posts

written on the 80th anniversary of memorable events. We will only select the most

important ones so as not to overwhelm

readers.

I understand that some people don't want

to set foot on Facebook. For this group of

readers, we are considering publishing

more historical posts in the INFO magazine. The question is whether we will

implement this, for example, on monthly

basis or every six months. The significant

events of the Pacific War are certainly

worth reading.

Jan Bobek

INFO Eduard

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