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00:00:00Music
00:00:29It's August 17th, 1943, just another day for the men of the U.S. Army Air Corps in England.
00:00:45Dawn breaks over the mist-shrouded countryside of East Anglia to reveal a scene of bustling activity.
00:00:52Ground crewmen hurry about making last-minute preparations for the day's mission.
00:01:03Bombs are loaded, engines are tuned, machine guns are cleaned, while every round of ammunition is checked and rechecked.
00:01:14In nearby Quonset huts, thousands of aviators anxiously await the start of today's briefing.
00:01:22Silently, they pray that they'll be given a milk run, perhaps a rail yard in France, or German airfield in Belgium.
00:01:30But when their grim-faced commanders step before them, they know that today's mission will be a rough one.
00:01:52All this activity centered around one objective, to get the 8th Air Force's fleet of Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses into the air and over their target.
00:02:02The B-17 had become the main American instrument of strategic warfare, a plane dedicated from its outset to lay waste to enemy war industries.
00:02:19The strategic bombing offensive was designed by the Allies as the only way at the time they could get at Germany and try and divert resources away from the Eastern Front and give assistance to the Russians.
00:02:36They weren't prepared at the time to launch a ground invasion of Europe, so they used the bombing campaign to try and get at German industry, reduce their ability to put out equipment, and also to divert weapons and production of weapons to anti-aircraft systems and to fighter production, and also in diverting German aircraft to defense of the fatherland.
00:03:01And all those planes that were flying against the bombers, weren't flying against the Russian armies.
00:03:06It was a modern marvel, armed with 13 machine guns and capable of flying 2,000 miles or more with its load of deadly explosives tucked inside its bomb bay.
00:03:22The world had never seen such power in an aircraft, and only the most advanced nation could have even conceived of such a destructive weapon.
00:03:30Each flying fortress carried aloft six miles of electrical wiring within its metal frame.
00:03:36Its generators could light all the rooms in a good-sized hotel.
00:03:41Each B-17 carried enough steel for 160 washing machines and enough aluminum for 50,000 percolators.
00:03:49The rubber used in its wing de-icers could retread almost 1,000 automobile tires.
00:03:54Each B-17 cost almost a half million dollars, a huge sum for the time.
00:04:01The B-17 was truly an American weapon, complex, expensive, huge, larger than life.
00:04:09And it had been built for a uniquely American role, daylight precision bombing, a role that was hoped would shorten the war by knocking out factories vital to Germany's war effort.
00:04:20And on this day in August of 1943, the B-17s and their crews would set out to prove that they could get the job done.
00:04:33Far from a milk run to France, the targets for today would be the Regensburg Messerschmitt plant and the ball bearing factories around Schweinfurt.
00:04:44Schweinfurt had dozens and dozens of ball bearing plants and factories around the city.
00:04:51In fact, Schweinfurt produced between 30 and 40 percent of all the ball bearings used by Germany and its allies.
00:04:58So the philosophy was if you could knock out the ball bearing factories around Schweinfurt,
00:05:04the German Army and Air Force, actually, and Navy, would grind to a halt because they wouldn't have ball bearings,
00:05:11which was a key component to any mechanical item.
00:05:15The Eighth Air Force would be sticking its head right into the tiger's jaws, and the tiger would be waiting.
00:05:23With the briefing concluded, the bomber crews climb aboard trucks and jeeps with a short drive to their own flying forts.
00:05:33The B-17s are ready to go.
00:05:36The mechanics and armorers have worked through the night to make sure that every bomber is fit to fly.
00:05:42The plan calls for two groups of bombers to coordinate their attacks on Regensburg and Schweinfurt.
00:06:07The fourth bomb wing's 139 B-17s would go in first, hitting the Messerschmitt factory,
00:06:13then flying on to North Africa in an effort to confuse the German defenses.
00:06:22Meanwhile, close behind the fourth bomb wing would come the first bomb wing's 222 flying fortresses.
00:06:30They would sneak in behind the fourth and destroy the ball bearing factories around Schweinfurt.
00:06:36Bad weather ruined the plan.
00:06:40The Luftwaffe almost ruined the mission.
00:06:43The B-17s form up over England before heading out toward Germany.
00:06:51The fourth bomb wing is already 90 minutes late.
00:07:03They'll be lucky to reach North Africa by sundown.
00:07:06As the first 139 bombers cross into Belgium, the second wave of bombers still hasn't even left the ground back in East Anglia.
00:07:20In fact, the first bomb wing would be delayed five hours.
00:07:24The attackers would go in piecemeal and the Luftwaffe would tear them to pieces.
00:07:31The fourth bomb wing is attacked first.
00:07:36Scores of German Messerschmitt 109s and Focke-Wulf 190s rip into the bomber formations.
00:07:43They concentrate on the trailing squadrons in the 15-mile-long bomber stream.
00:07:53The Germans threw something on the order of 300 fighters at these 147 B-17s.
00:07:59And the low group was the most vulnerable.
00:08:02And the 100th bomb group earned its reputation that day that has stuck with them for 60 years, 50, 60 years, as being known as the hard luck outfit.
00:08:14They called it the bloody 100th.
00:08:16Anyway, they went in, Germans went in, made head-on passes at the high boxes, went down through the low boxes, and then just clobbered the 100th.
00:08:24And I think the 100th lost 10 or 11 out of its 21 aircraft on its way to Regensburg.
00:08:30The guys stayed on target, however.
00:08:33I mean, you have to just admire the bravery of the bomber crews.
00:08:38By the time the bombers reach Regensburg, 18 of the 139 bombers are already gone.
00:08:45But the remaining flying ports dropped their bombs with startling accuracy.
00:08:54The Messerschmitt factory is utterly destroyed.
00:09:09Convinced that the B-17s will soon be turning back for England,
00:09:12the Luftwaffe ground controllers scramble every fighter in Northwest Europe.
00:09:17They're surprised when the fourth bomb wing heads south toward Africa.
00:09:21But they have plenty of targets anyway, for right at that moment the Schweinfurt-bound Boeings of the first bomb wing reach the conference.
00:09:29They're set upon by hundreds of German fighters.
00:09:38The B-17s are hacked out of the sky with frightening frequency.
00:09:42One American gunner watches in horror as 12 bombers fall in flames around him, spilling white parachutes all over the sky.
00:10:01One combat wing loses a third of its planes.
00:10:13Entire squadrons are shot up and only the Boeing's inherent rugged durability keeps the disaster from getting any worse.
00:10:20Of the 222 B-17s in the second raid, 196 reach Schweinfurt.
00:10:28So shot up and shocked are the crews that they scatter their bombs all over the city.
00:10:34The ball bearing factories are hit, but not knocked out.
00:10:57The area where the ball bearing industry is located was definitely, for first impression, devastated.
00:11:12But as I walked from the airbase, there was no public transportation in Schweinfurt at that time, to the railroad station.
00:11:21I noticed that certain sections of the big factory, there was still steam coming out, they were still operating, still working.
00:11:37The battered survivors turn for home and fight their way back out of Germany.
00:11:42Those flying forts that still remain in the formations are almost all peppered with holes.
00:11:54Flack has claimed a few bombers, but most have been hit or downed by aggressive fighter attacks.
00:12:06Just before dark, the bombers reach home.
00:12:09The fourth bomb wing straggles into its assigned airfields in North Africa, a spent and demoralized force.
00:12:16Of the 120 B-17s that reach Tunisia, 60 are so badly damaged they will never fly again.
00:12:25The fourth bomb wing has lost 78 of its 139 planes.
00:12:30In England, the sky is filled with battered B-17s limping home.
00:12:41Some of the bombers reach East Anglia with one or two engines out.
00:12:45They crash land on any available airfield as ambulances and fire trucks race toward their shattered hulks.
00:13:00By the dozen, wounded airmen are pulled from the twisted wreckage and carried away to local hospitals.
00:13:17There will be a lot of empty seats in the mess halls of East Anglia tonight.
00:13:30Altogether, the great Regensburg-Schweinfurt raid cost the 8th Air Force 60 B-17s shot down.
00:13:36Over 600 men were killed or captured.
00:13:41Scores more are wounded.
00:13:43Of the remaining B-17s, 147 of them are written off as unrepairable wrecks.
00:13:49Only 40% of the 8th Air Force's bombers are knocked out on August 17th.
00:14:05Precision daylight bombing, the very reason the B-17 had been invented in the first place,
00:14:10had failed in the face of Germany's deadly air defenses.
00:14:14Still, the 8th Air Force's leadership would not give up.
00:14:17The bombers would soon fly again.
00:14:23The bloody losses over Regensburg and Schweinfurt can be traced back to the U.S. Army Air Corps' concept of strategic bombing that evolved during the 1920s.
00:14:34After the brutality and trauma of World War I, military strategists began to look for ways to avoid the horrible stalemate of trench warfare.
00:14:47Air power advocates such as Hugh Boom Trenchard, Julio Duhay, and Billy Mitchell believed that the next war would see another tragic deadlock on the ground.
00:14:57With the land armies trapped in the morass of trench warfare again, the only route to victory would be through the air.
00:15:07Trenchard and Duhay believed that by sending vast fleets of bombing planes to destroy enemy cities, a nation could be forced to surrender.
00:15:18These terror raids would cause civilian morale to break, destabilizing a nation and possibly even causing a revolution.
00:15:27With the enemy government collapsing at home, its armies would not be able to continue the fight.
00:15:32American air power advocates didn't like the idea of randomly killing civilians.
00:15:41Instead, they decided that the best way to victory would be to knock out the enemy's ability to produce the weapons of war.
00:15:48By destroying arms factories, aircraft assembly plants, ball bearing plants, and other such strategic targets, an enemy's army and air force wouldn't have the means to carry on the fight.
00:16:00They would be forced to surrender as their nation's wartime economy crumbled under the weight of this precision bombing campaign.
00:16:08American air leaders fervently believed that such a bombing campaign could bring swift success at a low cost.
00:16:16By throwing everything into such an effort, the attrition of trench warfare could be avoided and total victory could be achieved.
00:16:23It wasn't until 1935 that the Americans developed a bomber capable of carrying out such a grandiose strategy.
00:16:32Well, the B-17 was a four-engine heavy bomber designed in the mid-1930s by the Boeing Aircraft Corporation.
00:16:42And its primary role was to destroy enemy industrial targets through high-altitude precision bombing.
00:16:53And in that role, it was uniquely suited.
00:16:57Turned out to be one of the best aircraft probably ever built for the role that it was designed for.
00:17:01Mainly because, first off, at high altitudes, the B-17 was an amazingly stable aircraft.
00:17:09The reason for that was the fact that it had a very large wing.
00:17:13With a large wing area, the plane was very stable in flight.
00:17:18It was an excellent bombing platform.
00:17:19And most importantly to the crews was the fact that because it was stable, they could fly in very tight formations.
00:17:27So they could stick together.
00:17:32The Boeing Model 299 prototype of the Flying Fortress flew for the first time in August of that year.
00:17:39It would take several more years of development before the first production models reached operational squadrons.
00:17:54But when they did, they were the best and most modern bombers in the world.
00:17:59For its time, the B-17 was huge.
00:18:02With its 100-foot wingspan and 70-foot length, it towered over other late 30s aircraft.
00:18:09Later versions, including the B-17G, came equipped with four light cyclone radial engines that cranked out 5,520 total horsepower.
00:18:23And the fortress needed every bit of power to drag aloft its typical bomb load of 14 500-pound bombs
00:18:30over a distance of 3,600 miles.
00:18:34Top speed was about 290 miles per hour.
00:18:38But in tight formations and heavily loaded, the Boeing cruised at about 170.
00:18:55With its heavy defensive armament of 13 machine guns,
00:18:58the Air Corps believed that the B-17 could successfully fight off enemy interceptors without help from escorting fighters.
00:19:06This was a major issue as the Air Corps didn't have any fighter aircraft capable of flying long distances with the bombers.
00:19:13But since the Flying Fortress had so many .50 and .30 caliber machine guns, such a long-range escort fighters seemed unnecessary.
00:19:23The B-17s would strike their targets alone, flying in tight, mutually protecting formations.
00:19:29In 1943, the Eighth Air Force unleashed its first sustained bombing campaign against Germany.
00:19:39Codenamed Operation Point Blank, the B-17s were sent to knock out the Third Reich's aircraft industry.
00:19:45By destroying the Luftwaffe's production centers, the Eighth Air Force would gain control of the air over Europe.
00:19:53With that in hand, the bombers could be sent against other strategic targets, striking at the heart of the Reich's ability to wage war.
00:20:00Point Blank was the first clash between the American pre-war doctrine and the realities of modern air combat.
00:20:10The results were soon clear, but the Americans doggedly persisted in putting their theories into practice at the expense of thousands of brave young men.
00:20:20About the time we dropped the bombs, we started getting hit real close.
00:20:30One engine got hit, started to lose the oil, waited until there was not enough oil pressure.
00:20:38We couldn't feather the engine.
00:20:41So then they windmill just from the air, and eventually they may twist the shaft off and the prop will come off.
00:20:52God knows where it'll go.
00:20:54Or they can shake a wing loose, I guess.
00:20:59Not a very good situation.
00:21:02And I don't remember if it was in that engine or another one.
00:21:05The fire started.
00:21:07I don't know if they got that one out or not.
00:21:09And apparently the underside of the 17 was pretty well shot up.
00:21:15Sort of dropped out of the formation and started losing altitude.
00:21:20And it wasn't too long until the pilot rang the bailout bail.
00:21:27And that was it for that mission.
00:21:30The most important flaw in the precision daylight bombing campaign was the lack of a long-range escort fighter.
00:21:37Even the B-17's numerous defensive guns could not protect it from determined German fighter attack.
00:21:45The Luftwaffe soon learned to hit the B-17 formations from the front, which proved to be the weak point in the Boeing's defensive systems.
00:21:52Sometimes 40 or 50 ME-109s or FW-190s would swoop down at the bombers in a blazing head-on pass, aiming for the cockpit and engines.
00:22:03Nothing could stop such devastating attacks and the fortresses took appalling losses.
00:22:08Our biggest concern, really, in all honesty, were the young men that were over there before I got there.
00:22:20They had a lot of fighters that they had to contend with.
00:22:25The average mission completions that they had, I think, was about seven.
00:22:34And here we finished 35.
00:22:36So that tells you something right there.
00:22:38If you lost an engine, or if you feathered an engine, that was very apparent to the Germans, and they'd pick on you right now.
00:22:55And they liked to make holes in a formation, and they could knock a plane out of formation.
00:23:03You were definitely crippled.
00:23:06They knew how to do that.
00:23:12Without long-range fighter escorts, the 8th Air Force's B-17 groups lost 40% of their crews during 1943.
00:23:20Only a quarter of the bomb crews were able to fly a full tour, 25 missions, and go home that year.
00:23:29An average crew flew five to seven missions before getting shot down.
00:23:35Some who flew longer usually came home more than once with a shot-up bomber and injured crewman aboard.
00:23:41Randall Jarrell, an 8th Air Force airman, wrote a poem that captured all the horror and intensity he and his fellow flying fortress crews faced,
00:23:53in a piece titled, The Death of a Ball Turret Gun.
00:23:56From my mother's sleep, I fell into the state, and I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
00:24:05Six miles from Earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flack and the nightmare fighters.
00:24:13When I died, they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
00:24:16Such losses had a profound effect on morale and on the emotional health of the remaining B-17 crews.
00:24:24With buddies going down on every mission, the men became fatalistic.
00:24:29They clung to good luck charms and became increasingly superstitious.
00:24:33Others gradually lost their combat edge as battle exhaustion wore them out.
00:24:38In some cases, men broke down entirely and became psychiatric casualties.
00:24:44About 4% of all 8th Air Force losses in World War II were psychiatric cases.
00:24:51These were men who performed their duty admirably till the stress and strain of constant combat finally broke their emotional back.
00:24:59Such men were called flack-happy by their peers or said to have the Baca-Wolf jitters.
00:25:09During the war, the 8th Air Force suffered 50,000, roughly 50,000 KIA, WIA, and MIA.
00:25:17A tremendous amount of guys lost their lives or were physically injured.
00:25:22But also, as the stress and strain of combat began to manifest themselves on these crews, it became clear that the 8th Air Force was going to have to do something about psychiatric casualties.
00:25:36They were starting to lose crews, starting to lose pilots, starting to lose gunners to emotional trauma.
00:25:41And so, one of the things that the 8th Air Force did was they set up a series of rest homes for crews that had been through particularly horrendous ordeals.
00:25:53Or, later on in the war, they were sent there just as a matter of course.
00:25:57These were called flack leaves, and they'd go back to these country manors way out of the way from any military installations.
00:26:04And they would be able to eat and relax, and that actually helped get some of the emotional problems that the crews were suffering under control.
00:26:16Now, this never threatened operations for the 8th Air Force.
00:26:20It was always a very small number of the crews.
00:26:23Wartime reports had it that of every 1,000 men that flew combat with the 8th Air Force, 42 were going to become psychiatric casualties of one sort or another.
00:26:37And they were called permanent psychiatric cases if they were not returned to flight duty within 15 days.
00:26:44During the war, about 4,000 airmen and pilots fell into this category.
00:26:48Through these brutal months, the crews learned to love their B-17s.
00:26:56The Flying Fortress had a ruggedness that sometimes defied imagination.
00:27:02They came home with two, sometimes three, engines knocked out and great gaping holes torn in their aluminum skins.
00:27:11Controls shot away, landing gear ruined, hydraulics blown out, flaps kicked out.
00:27:18They were gone and chunks of wing or tail hacked out by cannon shells didn't stop the rugged Flying Fortress.
00:27:27They came home limping, shattered and ruined, but still able to get their crews safely on the ground one final time.
00:27:35Hundreds of B-17s would return to England never to fly again.
00:27:43They would be dragged off to the boneyards where their broken bodies would be picked clean of spare parts that could be used to keep the other planes flying.
00:27:51To their crews, these faithful planes were utterly beloved.
00:28:05We've flown on two engines, but you're coming downhill, that makes a lot of difference.
00:28:12You don't have fuel, you don't have bombs, and you're coming downhill and go long ways.
00:28:16But the old B-17 was a tough son of a gun.
00:28:23It can just get holes all over it and it's still going to come back.
00:28:29The B-17 just had a great big old slab and it flew real slow.
00:28:33And it wasn't real high compression, so it could take a lot of punishment.
00:28:42One way the crews expressed their deep feelings toward their planes was through nose art.
00:28:50Nose art had some significance.
00:28:53It was a means to personalize a very impersonal weapon.
00:28:58A military aircraft is not a very personable, personal thing, especially when 12,000 of them just like it are flying around in the world.
00:29:07So this was their way, the crew's way, to put their unique stamp on their aircraft and make it their own.
00:29:13And once that happened, that aircraft ceased to become just a collection of metal bolts and welded pieces of aluminum.
00:29:21It became almost a living, breathing part of their integrated crew.
00:29:25And so when you talk to crews who had their own aircraft for an extended period of time, they feel very, very strongly, very passionately towards that airplane.
00:29:36Especially the B-17s that were so faithful and so rugged.
00:29:40And the crews will talk about their aircraft almost as if they were people.
00:29:44With worn out crews and demoralized bomb groups, the 8th Air Force continued to attack targets in Germany even after the August 17th Regensburg-Schweinfurt debacle.
00:29:58While nearly half of the 8th Air Force had been knocked out in that one air battle,
00:30:02the Americans believed that the Messerschmitt plant at Regensburg had been totally destroyed, making the effort worth the cost.
00:30:10Post-war analysis later confirmed that the destruction at Regensburg cost the Germans some 1,000 ME 109s in lost production.
00:30:19What the Americans didn't realize was that the German aircraft industry was expanding at such a tremendous rate that those 1,000 planes were insignificant.
00:30:28Never once during the war did the Germans suffer from a lack of interceptors.
00:30:36In October of 1943, the 8th Air Force launched another concerted effort against targets in Germany.
00:30:45On October 8th, the B-17s bombed Bremen, losing 30 out of 399 planes.
00:30:52The next day, 36 more B-17s were lost, attacking aircraft factories at Achlaum and Marienbad.
00:31:04The missions continued, and the stress on the crews grew even worse.
00:31:09In one week, from October 2nd through the 9th, the Germans shot down or damaged beyond repair over 100 flying forts.
00:31:18The 8th Air Force lost almost 1,000 men, and still the worst was yet to come.
00:31:28On October 10th, the B-17s struck Munster.
00:31:33The Luftwaffe bored in on the bombers, concentrating on the low squadrons of the 100th Bomb Group.
00:31:38Flying a straggly loose formation, the 100th turned out to be easy meat.
00:31:45Within minutes, the entire group was virtually wiped out.
00:31:53Hitting Munster cost another 36 B-17s and over 300 Americans.
00:31:59The lesson from Munster was clear.
00:32:03Flying in loose formations would get many men killed.
00:32:07There was one group that flew pretty scraggly formations, yes, elements or formations.
00:32:16Some of them, consequently, were hit harder than ours.
00:32:19Our group flew good, tight formations.
00:32:24They wanted the wing of the side plane tucked right in behind the wing and in the waist of the other.
00:32:32In other words, tight elements of three.
00:32:36By having those wings all tucked in, concentrating the firepower from all the guns aboard each ship,
00:32:42it was a pretty good deterrent that the Germans wouldn't come in too close and attack us.
00:32:52They liked to go after the disabled planes that had drifted off from them and got back here by themselves.
00:32:59I think one reason that our group didn't have the casualties that some of the groups, some of the squadrons,
00:33:07is we were a little knot up there in the sky.
00:33:13I could always spot our group. It was just, just tight.
00:33:19Then on October 14th, the crews assembled in the briefing rooms to learn they would be going after Schweinfurt once again.
00:33:27The news was received by a chorus of groans and shocked gasps amongst the exhausted crews.
00:33:32Still, they climbed aboard their B-17s to do their duty, knowing that today, many of them would not be coming home.
00:33:41They flew into a holocaust of flak and fighters.
00:33:45The Germans were waiting for them, and as soon as their short-ranged P-47 escorts turned for home,
00:33:51the 109s and 190s attacked.
00:33:53They swarmed through the B-17 formations, blasting the bombers out of the sky with cannons, rockets, and machine guns.
00:34:05Well, we were going into the ball-bearing plant at Schweinfurt, and it was pretty tough going.
00:34:12Heavy flak. He'd shot that from every direction.
00:34:14And I don't really know what happened except some of the people in our squadron that saw us get shot down.
00:34:25They said one of them rockets shot us.
00:34:29It was obviously a lost cause, and the pilot was losing it.
00:34:33And so they jumped out, and I had the last shot that they hit us with, had a concussion that blew me back against the bulkhead,
00:34:48and unplugged my oxygen and my intercom system.
00:34:54And I was a little while, and when I finally come through, I realized I didn't hear anybody, and my oxygen thing wasn't moving.
00:35:03And so we were only 18,000 feet that day.
00:35:07So I went back to the cockpit, and I was the only guy on that airplane.
00:35:13Everybody else would jump out.
00:35:15And so I run back and snap my parachute on and jump out.
00:35:18They had this big thing that they'd been trying to stop, was the Germans were shooting Americans in parachutes,
00:35:28and the Americans were shooting Germans in parachutes.
00:35:31And both sides were trying to stop it.
00:35:34And here come two ME 109s right at me.
00:35:38They kept getting closer and closer.
00:35:40When they got almost up to me, they reared up like that, and circled right tight around me, and both of them saluted.
00:35:46So I saluted, and they went away.
00:35:51And so I just landed in second-growth timber, and it was no harder than jumping off the bed.
00:35:59As the raid drove deeper into Germany, the Luftwaffe responded by throwing everything that could fly into the air at them.
00:36:07Even obsolete JU-87 Stukas attacked the B-17s, dropping aerial bombs into their tight formations.
00:36:17One bomb group, the 305th, lost 12 planes out of its 27 before even reaching the target area.
00:36:24Those B-17s that reached Schweinfurt dropped their bombs as best they could through a growing pall of smoke that partially obscured the ball-bearing factors.
00:36:35Entire groups missed their targets, and their bombs fell all over the countryside.
00:36:39So many German fighters had attacked the flying forts that most of the American gunners were now running out of ammunition.
00:36:47Meanwhile, the German 109 and 190 squadrons were able to land to rearm and refuel in time to attack the bombers again.
00:36:56Low on ammo, the desperate bomber crews turned for home and endured hour after hour of deadly fighter attack and heavy flack.
00:37:06By the time they reached home, the surviving crews were burned out and beyond the breaking point.
00:37:11Of the 229 B-17s sent out that day, 60 were shot down, 7 were written off, and 138 more were damaged.
00:37:22Over 630 men of the mighty 8th were either killed, wounded, or captured.
00:37:28In two weeks of operations that October, the 8th Air Force had lost over 200 bombers, nearly half its total force.
00:37:36Worse, there was little to show for the terrible casualties.
00:37:42Something had to be done, or the Germans would win the air war.
00:37:46The Army Air Corps had learned its lesson.
00:37:49It was time to throw the pre-war book away and figure out a new way to hit the Germans.
00:37:54The war would not be won with a quick knockout blow against Germany's wartime industries.
00:38:00Rather, it would take a long, sustained campaign to meet 8th Air Force's objectives.
00:38:04And to sustain such an operation, the bombers would need long-range fighter escort.
00:38:13Well, initially, the 8th Air Force only had P-47 groups available.
00:38:18And they had a very limited range.
00:38:20They could only get to just about the German frontier and back.
00:38:24So they were not able to escort the bombers all the way to target.
00:38:29That posed an increasing problem as the Luftwaffe caused more and more casualties to the 8th Bomber Command.
00:38:35So, during the summer of 1943, the 8th Air Force began investigating the use of drop tanks.
00:38:42External fuel tanks that could be slung underneath the fuselage and the wings of their P-47s.
00:38:46So they got very large fuel tanks, up to 108-gallon tanks, I believe, was among the ones that they used.
00:38:55And that was actually able to extend the P-47's radius of action by 100 miles.
00:39:01So they were able to actually go inside Germany and actually could get 375 miles out from England and back.
00:39:07So that had a major effect on the air war because the P-47s now didn't have to just turn around over Belgium.
00:39:16They could actually tangle with the Luftwaffe over Germany.
00:39:19But at the same time, after the second Schweinfurt raid, the 8th Air Force began demanding long-range fighters.
00:39:29And, of course, the only one that was available at the time was the P-38.
00:39:34So, in October of 1943, the very first P-38s began escorting the bombers.
00:39:40And while they were not as effective as the P-47 or later the P-51,
00:39:46the 38s could at least provide some protection for the bombers and they could actually go to Berlin and back.
00:39:52With winter closing in, the 8th Air Force flew less frequently in the final two months of 1943.
00:39:59When it did, it confined its attacks mainly to targets outside of Germany.
00:40:03The B-17s would wait for better weather.
00:40:07In the meantime, the 8th Air Force would get new leadership and they would change America's approach to the air war.
00:40:13In October, General Carl Spatz took over command of all strategic bombing operations in Europe.
00:40:19He at once realized that the only way to win the air war was to drive the Luftwaffe out of the sky.
00:40:25The air war would become a battle of attrition, the same sort of grueling, exhausting fighting that the original advocates of strategic air warfare had sought to avoid.
00:40:36By early 1944, the bombing campaign against Germany had been transformed into the aerial equivalent of World War I's Western Front.
00:40:47The reality was, we were looking for trouble. We were not trying to avoid the Luftwaffe by, actually by big week.
00:40:54In February of 1944, the whole nature of the air war had changed. We were no longer trying to avoid the Luftwaffe.
00:41:01The 8th Air Force's primary mission was destroy the Luftwaffe before D-Day.
00:41:06And to do that, we had to draw them out. And the only way to draw them out was to pick targets that the bombers could go after that were significant enough to the Germans to get them to defend it.
00:41:19And so, really, the bombing campaign became less an issue of destroying targets on the ground as it was drawing the Luftwaffe into a fight so the long-range fighter escort could take them out.
00:41:32The flying fortresses had become bait.
00:41:39At the end of February 1944, a five-day break in the winter weather allowed the 8th Air Force to launch attacks deep into Germany against aircraft factories and airfields.
00:41:50The Luftwaffe rose to the defense and waded into the bomber stream with a vengeance.
00:41:55But then the lightnings, thunderbolts, and mustangs protecting the B-17s pounced on the Germans, savaging their ranks.
00:42:04While the bombers took heavy losses, the Luftwaffe's interceptor units were badly mauled during the week-long battle.
00:42:12Two weeks later, the 8th Air Force went after Berlin.
00:42:15On the 6th of March, the Germans managed to down 69 B-17s over Berlin.
00:42:23In doing so, however, the Luftwaffe broke its own back.
00:42:30As they desperately tried to defend the Nazi capital, the 109s and 190s were set upon by American fighters and blasted from the sky.
00:42:39On March 8th, the B-17s returned to Berlin and once again a violent battle raged.
00:42:54When it was over, the German interceptor force had been crippled.
00:42:57Somebody yelled, lightnings!
00:43:02And I looked around, and my gosh, there I saw the lightnings.
00:43:07And they came down, and all of a sudden, I saw a streamer scuba.
00:43:12I said, oh boy, somebody's at my tail.
00:43:15And I went a little lower, and by that time, I heard a loud bang.
00:43:19And he had cut off part of the right wing and just cut and instinctively put her down.
00:43:28When the 8th Air Force returned to Berlin the next day, hardly a German fighter was seen, much to the delight of the bomber crews.
00:43:37For the next three months, the battle of attrition played out in all its bloody finality.
00:43:42The Germans lost more pilots than they could possibly replace, while the American units were reinforced regularly and never suffered from a shortage of crews.
00:43:57It was a race to see which side would die faster, and which side would run out of warm bodies to throw into the fray.
00:44:04It was a race the Germans could not win.
00:44:08From Big Week to the end of May 1944, the Luftwaffe lost 28 of its top aces.
00:44:16During Big Week alone, the Luftwaffe lost 33% of its fighter force and 17.9% of its pilots defending the Reich.
00:44:25March proved even worse for the Germans, as they lost fully 56% of their fighter aircraft and 22% of their remaining pilots while trying to defend Berlin.
00:44:37Such casualties could not be sustained.
00:44:41The Germans started the year with 2,283 available fighter pilots.
00:44:46By May, 2,262 had been killed or wounded, a 99% loss rate.
00:44:53The Luftwaffe was being bled white, and it was the Eighth Air Force that was causing the bleeding.
00:45:02While Allied fighters blasted the Luftwaffe from the sky, the bombers still had targets to hit.
00:45:09Former B-17 crewman Les Hardy takes us on a typical mission deep within the heart of the Third Reich.
00:45:15They'd wake you up probably 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock in the morning, and run you down for chow, breakfast, and we didn't get eggs.
00:45:29Somewhere I read that on a combat day you got real eggs.
00:45:35They missed us. We got those powdered eggs.
00:45:39The cooks did a good job on them.
00:45:41And then by the time you went through briefing and got your flying gear on, your heated suit, you had to wear heated suits.
00:45:52You'd freeze to death up there.
00:45:55And then assembled out at your airplane and got the information from your officers if they had anything.
00:46:05The navigator would usually tell us what the weather was supposed to be over the target.
00:46:12And then we'd form up over England, which was quite often dangerous because it might be going through clouds.
00:46:23It was very foggy. They didn't even attempt it.
00:46:26But it wasn't unusual to have air-to-air collisions while you were forming up.
00:46:33But eventually we'd get formed up and in formation and head across the channel.
00:46:40And you were stuck in that airplane for quite a few hours when you went to Berlin.
00:46:47No, nothing to eat.
00:46:53I think they gave us a candy bar.
00:46:55One time they gave us an orange.
00:46:58That works real good at 28,000 feet, 60 below.
00:47:05We could have thrown those at the enemy.
00:47:08Getting to Berlin quite often we'd encounter flak.
00:47:13Because they had their 88s mounted on rail cars and trucks and they moved them around.
00:47:19And I swear they knew where we were, what our flight pattern was.
00:47:25Because quite often we'd get flak on the way and you just, you didn't dodge around it.
00:47:30You had to stay on your course.
00:47:32But as you approached Berlin, if some other group was ahead of you, the air was black with flak and that's what you had to fly through.
00:47:45On the bomb run, the bombardier, the pilot turned the thing on autopilot so the bombardier controlled the airplane on the flight over the target.
00:47:58Because he's the one that's aiming to spray at the ground.
00:48:03So he just flew through that like that was the only way to go.
00:48:08And it was very exciting.
00:48:12I'd like to have been able to shoot at something, but of course I couldn't do that.
00:48:18I could see plenty good through the top of my radio shack. It was wide open.
00:48:23The two little windows on the side weren't very good for seeing things, but I could see enough.
00:48:30Probably all I wanted to.
00:48:33With the Luftwaffe on its knees, the 8th Air Force turned its attention to supporting the D-Day invasion, subsequent campaign in Normandy.
00:48:42The flying fortresses hit coastal emplacements and other targets along the beaches just prior to the landings, then took part in carpet bombing operations against German troops.
00:48:53One such mission virtually destroyed the German Panzer Lehr Division in July of 1944 and helped pave the way for the American breakout from the beachhead.
00:49:02Once the Allied armies broke out of Normandy and began driving toward Germany, the 8th Air Force turned to new targets in hopes of shortening the war.
00:49:17Up until early September of 1944, the heavy bombers had mainly attacked aircraft factories, U-boat assembly plants or pens, docks and ball bearing factories.
00:49:29In May, the bombers had begun hitting oil refineries and synthetic fuel plants.
00:49:36D-Day delayed hitting any more of these targets until the fall of 1944, but in September, the mighty 8th returned to Germany and systematically destroyed the Reich's ability to process fuel.
00:49:47The attacks were an incredible success. By December, the 8th Air Force had knocked out almost half of Germany's refineries, precipitating a fuel crisis within the German army.
00:49:59Just when the Wehrmacht needed mobility the most, its panzers ground to a halt for want of oil and gas.
00:50:05Desperate measures were tried to get around this problem, including the construction of charcoal burning engines that tanks could use, but they were too little, too late.
00:50:17The Flying Fortress had at last delivered the knockout punch the pre-war bomber advocates fervently believed it could do.
00:50:24At the same time, the 8th's bombers were used to attack marshalling yards and rail centers throughout Germany.
00:50:35Mainly most of my missions in those days were marshalling yards. We were trying to destroy the transportation system so they couldn't move anything around by train.
00:50:45And we did, we really destroyed the area because later on when I went to Germany, it took me five days to go on train because they had to go all over the place because they had to go where the tracks were still left.
00:51:00But that was mainly what we were doing at the end of the war, bombing the tracks, train tracks, marshalling yards, destroying any moving stock.
00:51:09By the end of the war, most of everything that the Germans had was already destroyed. It was really destroyed.
00:51:17The destruction of the Reich's rail net proved to be one of the Flying Fortress's most significant contributions to the war effort.
00:51:25German industry depended on the railroads to deliver raw materials and carry away finished products.
00:51:30By late 1944, the railroad system had all but collapsed under the weight of B-17 borne bombs.
00:51:40Even the barest necessities could not be transported effectively via rail by the end of 1944.
00:51:47Coal, the lifeblood of German industry, piled up near the mines with no way to get it to the factories that so badly needed it.
00:51:54By January, this caused a full-scale collapse of the German economy.
00:52:03And still, even as Nazi Germany twisted in its death throes, the B-17 crews continued to take heavy losses.
00:52:11No longer were German interceptors much of a threat.
00:52:14With thousands of bombers and thousands of fighters ranging across the Reich,
00:52:18the Luftwaffe had been all but swept from the skies.
00:52:23Flak, however, was a different matter entirely.
00:52:26The Germans concentrated hundreds of anti-aircraft batteries around crucial oil targets
00:52:31until some factories were defended by over a thousand heavy guns.
00:52:36Using radar guidance, late-war German anti-aircraft fire brought down thousands of American aircraft,
00:52:42fighters, medium bombers, and even the high-flying B-17s.
00:52:46There was another air raid in the afternoon, and here came the 8th American Air Force.
00:52:54I think it was a multi-effort because I think I counted over 90 planes or 100 planes.
00:53:03B-17s and the German aircraft artillery apparently had them just right.
00:53:09All of a sudden I saw one bomber blow up and p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p, nine parachutes, and another one.
00:53:16And at one time I counted 27 parachutes.
00:53:20shoots. Flak became the worst menace the B-17 crews faced. Our biggest fear was the flak
00:53:31because when I got there, we were really making strides on the ground and we were pushing
00:53:38the Germans back, which time they're bringing all their flak guns back and concentrating
00:53:45them in the cities. So when we started into a target and you looked up ahead, it looked
00:53:53like a piece of white paper with a drop of ink drops down all over the paper. It was
00:53:59just a massive airspace of black flak burst. We were losing a lot of planes because of that,
00:54:07too.
00:54:08It was a milk run, which is supposed to be an easy mission, just across the channel,
00:54:15to a Luftwaffe airfield in, I'm pretty sure it was France. Now, it could have been Belgium,
00:54:23but hard to remember. Anyhow, three airplanes. It was a big mission. And we went storming
00:54:30over there. I think we even left at a decent time in the morning. And as they say, a milk
00:54:37run, that means you're not supposed to have any trouble. But we didn't until we got over
00:54:41the target on our bomb run and they cut loose with very accurate anti-aircraft fire. And
00:54:48there were blasters and stuff all over us. We were flying on the number two spot. The
00:54:53airplane on the starboard side of us took a hit. It must have been oxygen tanks. And something
00:55:00got fired. And of course, fuel by oxygen, it's a holocaust. So we could see the guys, some
00:55:07of them bailing out. I can't remember how many shoots we saw. But what really impressed me,
00:55:15this plane kept flying right along beside us. And the pilot, who I had flown a practice mission
00:55:21with, tall, slim guy, real tall, he crawled out the pilot window. Because of the fire,
00:55:28I'm sure he couldn't get out. I don't know how a guy even got through that pilot window. And
00:55:36reached inside and got his parachute, chest back, and slid off of the wing. And I didn't
00:55:46know whether he got his chute on or not. In fact, it was reported that he did not. Later,
00:55:53a year or so later, I found out he had made it to the ground and no problem.
00:55:58It was unbelievable. I couldn't register what I had seen or hadn't seen. We had our wingman
00:56:05right opposite us. We were in the target area and hadn't been hit ourselves. And all of a sudden,
00:56:15there was something that caught my attention on our right side. I looked over there, and
00:56:22the plane that was supposed to have been there wasn't there anymore. I looked around to see,
00:56:29well, maybe it went up a little higher. And I looked backwards and there wasn't any behind.
00:56:32I looked down and I couldn't find that plane's position. And I looked again and I could see
00:56:38parts of the plane falling and gotten a direct hit. I guess it must have been the whole charge
00:56:45or two from ACAC must have hit him right and blew him up. That was, you know, there it was
00:56:54and there it wasn't. I don't think there was a soul that probably got out of that plane.
00:57:00By the end of the war, over 12,000 B-17s had been produced. The B-17G, with its additional
00:57:15twin-gun chin turret, was the most numerous version, with 8,680 being built. The 8th Air Force,
00:57:23which used the vast majority of the B-17's Boeing cranked out, lost 5,200 bombers during the year.
00:57:31Over 50,000 of the 8th Air Force's pilots, navigators, bombardiers, gunners, and radio operators
00:57:38were killed, wounded, or captured during the course of the strategic bombing campaign.
00:57:44Without the incredible ruggedness of the B-17, these shocking numbers would have been even higher.
00:57:50Was it worth it? For decades, historians have argued the pros and cons of the strategic
00:57:57bombing campaign in Europe. All agree that the B-17 didn't win the war against Germany alone,
00:58:03as the bombing advocates had theorized before the war. But the B-17 still played a key role
00:58:10in the victory over Hitler. The bombers wrecked Germany's oil industry, ensuring the defeat
00:58:16of the Wehrmacht by the Allied armies. More importantly, however, the B-17's drew out the Luftwaffe
00:58:23in the spring of 1944 during Big Week and the Berlin raids. In doing so, the bombers helped achieve
00:58:30complete air superiority over Western Europe, as the German interceptor force ruined itself,
00:58:36defending Berlin from the thousands of flying forces and the fighters the 8th Air Force was able
00:58:42to put into the air. This bloody victory set the stage for the Normandy invasion.
00:58:49For had the Allies not had complete control of the air, D-Day might never have taken place.
00:58:57When the war ended in Europe, the B-17's heyday came to an end. By 1945, the Flying Fortress
00:59:08was a ten-year-old design. Rugged, tough, and always a warrior, the B-17 nevertheless could
00:59:15not survive in a world that would soon see jet fighters, atomic weapons, and guided missiles.
00:59:22The 8th Air Force's 2,000 B-17's were collected together in fields all over England, where they
00:59:29were either flown back to the United States or scrapped on site. And thus, the B-17's last
00:59:36contribution may have been its most significant. These majestic planes were melted down and their
00:59:43metal used to help rebuild Western Europe. The destruction they had once wrought was repaired
00:59:49by their very skins. A noble end indeed. Today, only a few B-17's exist to remind future generations
00:59:58of the air war that raged so many years ago. Each Flying Fortress is a treasure, for they remain
01:00:05lonely scientists of the struggle that once raged in the bloody skies of Europe. Battles on land leave scars
01:00:13in the earth to mark their passage into history. But the sky over Europe reveals no secrets and tells no tales.
01:00:22The sky remains unchanged, unchangeable, as it had for the eons prior to those black-thorn years of World War II.
01:00:32In these skies, titans once clashed. An epic struggle for survival unfolded amidst these clouds with stakes
01:00:41so high, entire nations would be destroyed. Young men by the hundreds of thousands were flung into the maelstrom
01:00:49of this desperate battle as the fighting reached its bitter climax. Over 60,000 young Americans and Germans would never return home.
01:00:59Their lives snuffed out in the air over Nazi-held Europe. In the end, through their courage to clamber
01:01:07aboard their faithful B-17's for mission after mission, these men of the mighty 8th Air Force helped free Europe
01:01:14from the dark tyranny of Hitler's Germany. Their legacy of freedom and of peace will never be forgotten.
01:01:23Think that the above us won from the east on the line start?
01:01:26It's good.
01:01:27This is true.
01:01:28There are three small governments of Europe
01:01:29before you know for European citizens could remain.
01:01:30Letting Est even further do something wrong with yourculus.
01:01:33There are three small governments of Europe
01:01:35if you saw a ganhar sheet into the 97th Air Force,
01:01:37there are three small governments of Europe
01:01:38after one jusqu of Europe and air to 150,000 United States.
01:01:43To the mountain seas to долларов, there are 4 issues filled up whether the right
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