King,
I recall reading Gordon Prange's books and later his (+Goldstein & Dillon) reference book that had a lot of recounts of Pearl Harbor and Midway that differed from other writers and the reasons why. I have no way of knowing whether he was right or not, but it did plant the thought with me that history books are just people passing along a story told to them by others who likely heard it from someone else, etc., and there can be a lot of misinformation easily.