For educational purposes
Dubbed the "Flying Fortress," the B-17 was designed to fight its way to a target, drop its bombs and fight its way back again.
Pilot a B-17 during a deadly raid on "The Big B," Berlin; experience intense wartime footage from the Fortress' cockpit; see one of the few remaining B-17's still flying and hear dramatic stories from surviving members of the 100th Bomb Group.
"The Luftwaffe swept through our group and shot down every plane in the group except our plane... We had two severely wounded waist gunners, we had a rocket hole through the wing. Two engines were knocked out. And we
went to the target alone and dropped our bombs..." – Robert Rosenthal, B-17 pilot
When the 100th Bomb Group first arrived at their new base of Thorpe Abbott, England, they had 30 bombers, 300 aircrew and 3,000 support staff.
Of those original thirty crews, 86% were shot down. It earned the Group the chilling nickname 'The Bloody 100th'.
This is the story of the men of the 'Bloody 100th' and the B-17 Flying Fortresses they flew on some of the most dangerous daylight bombing missions of the war, as told by the members of the 'Lucky Bastards Club' - the few who successfully flew 25 missions and were sent home.
The Bloody 100th took part in Operation Gomorrah against Hamburg, and in the infamous Schweinfort and Regensburg raids.
They were decimated over Munster, spearheaded raids against Berlin and - most controversially of all - were part of the terrible attack on Dresden that caused so many civilian casualties...
Using much rare colour footage (including private home movies), gun camera film and dramatic archive material, this is the story of one of USAAF's most combat-experienced Bomber Groups.
Dubbed the "Flying Fortress," the B-17 was designed to fight its way to a target, drop its bombs and fight its way back again.
Pilot a B-17 during a deadly raid on "The Big B," Berlin; experience intense wartime footage from the Fortress' cockpit; see one of the few remaining B-17's still flying and hear dramatic stories from surviving members of the 100th Bomb Group.
"The Luftwaffe swept through our group and shot down every plane in the group except our plane... We had two severely wounded waist gunners, we had a rocket hole through the wing. Two engines were knocked out. And we
went to the target alone and dropped our bombs..." – Robert Rosenthal, B-17 pilot
When the 100th Bomb Group first arrived at their new base of Thorpe Abbott, England, they had 30 bombers, 300 aircrew and 3,000 support staff.
Of those original thirty crews, 86% were shot down. It earned the Group the chilling nickname 'The Bloody 100th'.
This is the story of the men of the 'Bloody 100th' and the B-17 Flying Fortresses they flew on some of the most dangerous daylight bombing missions of the war, as told by the members of the 'Lucky Bastards Club' - the few who successfully flew 25 missions and were sent home.
The Bloody 100th took part in Operation Gomorrah against Hamburg, and in the infamous Schweinfort and Regensburg raids.
They were decimated over Munster, spearheaded raids against Berlin and - most controversially of all - were part of the terrible attack on Dresden that caused so many civilian casualties...
Using much rare colour footage (including private home movies), gun camera film and dramatic archive material, this is the story of one of USAAF's most combat-experienced Bomber Groups.
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LearningTranscript
00:30More than 12,000 B-17 bombers were built during World War II.
00:45Fewer than a dozen still fly.
00:48The Flying Fortress was designed to fight its way to the target, drop its bombs and
00:53fight its way back home.
00:57Today, the bomb bays are empty, the guns are silent, the crews long gone, except for a
01:06lucky few.
01:08Isn't that a beautiful aircraft?
01:14It's like a piece of sculpture.
01:17Well, this looks familiar.
01:21Robert Rosenthal was a B-17 pilot and is a survivor of 52 missions.
01:29You're coming in here with your parachute on and your Mae West and it was a little tight.
01:34Of course, I was much thinner at that time.
01:44By 1943, America's 8th Army Air Force began to fly bombing missions to Germany.
01:54Robert Rosenthal flew with the 100th Bomb Group.
02:08These are the controls for the four engines and you see there each one can be manipulated
02:15separately.
02:16And you try to adjust the engines so that they're all synchronized.
02:29Forty bombers from 41 bomb groups were stationed in Great Britain.
02:36The B-17 was slow, it was unpressurized, it was unheated.
02:48As a result, it was difficult to operate.
02:52That being said, nobody else had anything much better.
02:57The 100th Bomb Group became operational in June 1943 and was based just north of London.
03:04It gives me great pleasure to accept the station on behalf of the United States Army Air Force.
03:13Thirty B-17s and their crews were posted there.
03:17They were made up of 300 young airmen, supported by 3,000 other personnel from ground crews
03:23to officers and pilots.
03:34This base became a temporary home, a base whose sole objective was to bomb Germany.
03:44One of the original crewmen of the 100th, Harry Crosby, aimed to become a pilot but
03:50eventually became a navigator.
03:57On the one hand, it was glamorous to be part of the original and on the other hand, it
04:05was not habit-forming.
04:06Of the original crews who went over, only 14% got the 25 missions, 86% were shot down.
04:18By the end of World War II, the 100th Bomb Group suffered great losses after dropping
04:23some 20,000 tons of bombs on Nazi Germany.
04:37Inevitably, as time moves on, there are fewer to remember bygone days.
05:01Some of the 100th gather to look back and identify old photographs.
05:26In just eight missions, the 100th Bomb Group lost more than 80 crews, earning the nickname
05:32the Bloody 100th.
05:50The B-17 originally had been foreseen as a bomber that was fast enough to be able to
05:55outrun any enemy aircraft.
05:59Of course, by 1940, 1941, 1942, the aeronautical revolution had spread to fighters and they
06:05were now fast enough to catch the B-17.
06:21Bombers like the American P-47 Thunderbolt and British Spitfire protected the bombers,
06:27but couldn't fly further than the German border.
06:30Without these escorts, the B-17s were extremely vulnerable to the German air force, the Luftwaffe.
06:36The only solution was to put machine guns on them and then this B-17 now became the
06:42Flying Fortress with 13 .50 caliber machine guns bristling.
07:01Each gun has a range of 1,500 meters.
07:07Most of the crewmen on a B-17 spent a part of their time in the air as gunners.
07:16There were two waist gunners, a ball turret gunner, a tail gunner and the top turret gunner
07:29who was also the crew chief.
07:34The navigator also doubled up as a gunner.
07:37The radio operator had a top gun and the bombardier had nose guns.
07:49To recruit gunners, the army air force commissioned the actor Clark Gable to make an enticing
07:55We have the privilege to meet General Aker.
07:57Commanding General ain't there for us.
07:59Captain Gable, our gunners are already the best in the business, but if they were all
08:03a 10% better, it'd cost the Germans another 100 fighters a month.
08:09General Aker frequently pushed for better bombing.
08:16Unlike the British, who bombed at night believing it was safer, the Americans bombed during
08:21the day when industrial and military targets could be seen and hit with some precision.
08:31But Churchill wanted the Americans' assistance during night bombing raids.
08:36However, it was decided that both air forces couldn't fly in the same airspace at the same
08:42time, and continuous bombing would give the German defenses no respite.
08:49So in a mutual agreement, it was decided that the Americans and the British would bomb
08:53Germany around the clock.
09:16The Americans were confident that daylight precision bombing would work because they
09:21had the Nordam bomb site packed with gyros, motors, and gears.
09:33The Nordam site took into account wind, temperature, and drift.
09:39Everything was planned about dropping bombs accurately, and if you screwed that up, there
09:44was no point of going.
09:46You were exposing people to danger without accomplishing anything.
09:50So the crucial part of the mission was those last minutes as you approached the target,
09:56and we would turn the plane over to the control of the lead bombardier.
10:07Every squadron of 100th bombers had a lead plane with a lead bombardier who had a Nordam
10:13bomb site.
10:15At the crucial moment, the bomb site took over and flew the B-17 on the bomb run, straight
10:21and level to the target, holding speed at 240 kilometers per hour.
10:27I remember the way the bombardier sat up in front of me and was hunched over that, and
10:33I remember every time when he dropped the bombs, he'd raise his hand, his left hand,
10:39and say, bombs away.
10:45When the lead plane dropped its bombs, it was the signal to the others to toggle their
10:49bombs away.
10:53And then somebody always said, well, let's get out of here.
11:06Airmen claimed that the Nordam bomb site was astonishingly precise.
11:21The Americans were counting on pinpoint accuracy to defeat Hitler without the horror of trench
11:26warfare.
11:37In a combined effort, the British and the Americans launched the first round-the-clock
11:42bombing of a German city, Hamburg.
11:49The mission was called Operation Gomorrah.
11:56The British targeted the areas where the workers lived, and the Americans aimed for the shipyards.
12:03The so-called precision bombing came to nothing, however.
12:06A huge firestorm totally destroyed 25 square kilometers of land, killing 50,000 people.
12:23Three weeks later, anxious to prove that precision bombing could work, the Americans decided
12:29to attack the target highest on their list, the town of Schweinfurt.
12:37It was here that 50 percent of Germany's ball bearings were made.
12:46It was thought that without them, the Nazi war machine would grind to a halt.
12:57Schweinfurt was well beyond the range of the fighter escorts.
13:05In an effort to confuse the Luftwaffe, a double strike was planned.
13:10Two hundred and thirty bombers would hit Schweinfurt.
13:17One hundred and forty-six aircraft, including 21 from the 100th, were to bomb the Messerschmitt
13:22factory at Regensburg, then fly on to North Africa.
13:46The Germans had some very competent fighters in the war, ME-109s and FW-190s.
13:58They also had some very good pilots, who were responsible for downing many Allied fighters.
14:15We used to get tail attacks sometimes when we had heavy contrails.
14:21They'd sneak up in the contrails, you wouldn't even know they were there, and they'd shoot you up then.
14:36Tail gunner Bruce Alshaus, nicknamed Curly, volunteered for gunnery service, not fully
14:42appreciating the dangers of aerial combat.
14:48They always said there was no atheists in the foxholes.
14:50I don't think there are any atheists in the airplanes.
14:57On the Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission, Crosby's crew found it particularly difficult to stay
15:02on course, and deposit the 225 kilo bombs on the Messerschmitt factory at Regensburg.
15:24In response, the Luftwaffe fighters swarmed around them for more than two hours.
15:37They used up three boxes of shells, so as the shells came out of the belt, and the spent
15:41cartridges came out, they were all over the floor, just, you couldn't walk.
15:48It was murder, and we just got hit all the time.
15:51Our plane was really hit badly.
15:57The 100th lost nine planes, but Crosby's and six others escaped south across the snow-covered
16:04Alps and the Mediterranean Sea to the sands of North Africa.
16:17These home movies show a group of carefree young men, far removed from the recent aerial
16:22fighting.
16:28But the painful reality is that the double-strike mission cost both air forces dearly.
16:39Of the nearly 400 fortresses dispatched, 60 were lost, 600 men gone, their fate unknown.
17:00Precision bombing is a relative term.
17:04In World War II, a bomb landing within 300 meters of the aiming point is on target.
17:13Typically, a group of B-17s dispatch their bombs at the same time, leaving a carpet of
17:22destruction on the ground.
17:39World War II entirely altered previous attack strategies.
17:44The ancient art of war, soldier fighting soldier at close range, was disconnected by miles
17:51of altitude.
17:57We were fighting in an arena we had virtually no information on, other than the few experimental
18:02test pilots who'd been up there.
18:04And these guys were up there all eight, nine, ten hours at a time.
18:17There was no heat in these airplanes.
18:20These were freezing to death, minus 50, minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit up there.
18:27The prime combat casualty of World War II among army air forces personnel was frostbite.
18:38Despite these shortcomings, the B-17, with its 1,000-horsepower Wright Cyclone engines,
18:43could carry 1,800 kilos of bombs to a range of nearly 3,000 kilometers.
18:50Unfortunately, most airborne time was spent in hostile airspace, unescorted.
19:01After the losses on the Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission, night missions by the Americans were
19:06once more considered.
19:14Replacements for the 100th were needed for the 90 men missing in action.
19:19One of the newcomers was relatively old, at the age of 24.
19:26Robert Rosenthal, also known as Rosie, had recently finished a law degree.
19:32He was vehemently opposed to Nazism.
19:34I would sometimes lie in bed looking up at the stars at night and wonder if I would survive.
19:44And I prayed that I would survive and live to be the ripe old age of 45 years.
19:54As the Allies prepared for D-Day, control of the seas became increasingly crucial.
20:01This made the port city of Bremen, crammed with ship and U-boat yards, an obvious target.
20:15On October 8th, the men of the 100th flew a routine flight northeast over the North
20:20Sea, anxiously watching for signs of attack.
20:41When nature called, condoms were put to imaginative use.
20:45We used to use the helmet liners.
20:49It'd freeze it up, and then when you were letting down over England, you'd crack it
20:52against the bulkhead and throw it out the window.
20:55That's not funny.
20:56Not if you got hit yet.
20:59We throwed it out over Germany and we called them blivet bombs.
21:09Space was severely restricted, especially for the gunner in the tail.
21:13Well, it was a lonesome feeling, it was, there's no doubt about that.
21:23Several times I'd get a hold of somebody to make sure that all the engines were functioning
21:27correctly because I had my back to the front of the aircraft.
21:31You had a couple of little pads to put your knees on, on each side.
21:37You sat on like a bicycle seat.
21:40I had twin .50 caliber Browning machine guns mounted on one mount, and I had a piece of
21:48armor plating in front of me, probably about that wide, and I had to reach around that.
21:56And that's the position you were in for, well, sometimes seven or eight hours in that same
22:04position without moving.
22:08Every B-17 had its place in the bomber formation, beginning with its V of three.
22:15Two V's made a squadron.
22:19Three squadrons made a group.
22:22One leads, one high, one low.
22:29Three groups made a combat wing.
22:32Fifty-four planes or more spread out more than a kilometer wide, each wing following
22:37the next at four-minute intervals.
22:42A thousand bombers took two hours to cross a single point.
22:47Flying the tight formations these guys flew was extremely dangerous.
22:52You're absolutely glued with this guy a few feet away.
23:00And you're jockeying the throttles, and you're moving this wheel, which takes about fifty
23:03to a hundred pounds of force to move.
23:06You're very, very tired.
23:08Secondly, you can run into that guy.
23:10And there were many mid-air collisions, many, many, many, where you just ran together.
23:15Then you had the friendly fire problem.
23:18The guy would be excitedly tracing a 190 coming through, and he'd stitch the guy next to him.
23:26Close and friendly fire were serious threats to survival.
23:30Over Bremen, the fighters and flak were even worse.
23:35You could just walk on the flak, and there were just these black poppings of these missiles,
23:43and you'd see them, and there'd be a hole there, and a hole there, and a hole there,
23:47and you'd maybe be a fragment there, and you'd think, how on earth did I escape this?
23:51What's that, flak?
23:52What happened?
23:53We're excited.
23:54What happened?
23:55Some pilots had a knack for dodging flak.
24:00One such man was John Luckardew, nicknamed Lucky.
24:05His fortress survived Bremen.
24:07Seven others were not so fortunate.
24:13We were in the Purple Heart Corner, the low squadron of the low group.
24:19Any flak coming up from the ground, we would be more vulnerable to it than people higher
24:24up in the formation.
24:26Secondly, the fighters were prone to try to pick off the fringes of the formation.
24:34The position where you start your attack is very important.
24:38Out of the sun, out of altitude, all things like that.
24:41But you are not always able to select the position because you were attacked.
24:49The battle for air superiority was being fought in the skies over Germany.
24:54Luftwaffe pilots were now forced to defend their homeland.
25:01The fighters were pressing their attack even through their own flak, which we had never
25:09experienced before.
25:11It was such a desperate attempt to drive us off the target.
25:27The Germans tried every angle in search of any weakness they could exploit.
25:39Eventually rammings occurred, the result of either frustration or selflessness.
25:47I myself rammed.
25:49The ramming was the last resort, I want to say.
25:53The last resort.
25:56Certainly for the pilots it was the frustration of your guns not working and so you rammed.
26:05You lost your head.
26:06You didn't think and you only saw your goal.
26:11I came down in my parachute and said to myself, you'll never do that again.
26:21The loss rates at the worst part of the bombing campaign hovered just below 50%.
26:30And the time you average it all out, it comes somewhere around 10%.
26:35The infantry loss rates were under a percent.
26:43Two days after the raids on Bremen, Münster was targeted.
26:48Breakfast at three, briefing at four.
26:55Rosenthal and his crew were tired, having flown a 13-hour mission the day before.
27:01Münster was their third mission in as many days.
27:18At the briefing, crews were told that they're to target the homes of railway workers.
27:24Many airmen have seen the indiscriminate German bombing of London.
27:29Now Americans will bomb civilians.
27:37A pilot remembers, I was disappointed.
27:41The smug assertion that we aimed only at military targets was comforting.
27:50Others held very different views.
27:55The B-17s went off to war with this idea that war can be short, it can be quick, it can
28:05be relatively bloodless.
28:07And yet what they found in the skies over Europe was just as awful as the trench warfare
28:12in World War I.
28:17When we arrived into Germany over occupied France, we were hit by waves of fighter planes
28:26that kept coming at us.
28:27There were several hundred of these planes there.
28:35This B-17 that I attacked burned fairly quickly, and I didn't expect anyone to still be alive
28:41in there.
28:42But in the middle of what we call the cheese cover, the gunner sitting in the top bubble,
28:48there were two or three meters that weren't burning yet.
28:52And since I was only 20 meters away, the gunner turned his guns on me and fired so much my
28:58plane started burning too.
29:05I had to do what a German pilot, no, any fighter pilot should never do.
29:10I had to bail out at 24,000 feet.
29:13Look, he's bailing out.
29:15Don't yell on that intercom.
29:18The Luftwaffe swept through our group and shot down every plane in the group except
29:25our plane.
29:28The bloody 100th lost 12 planes over Münster.
29:33We had two very seriously wounded waist gunners, had a rocket hold through the wing, two engines
29:40were knocked out, and we went to the target alone and dropped our bombs.
29:50And as we left the target, a whole gaggle of German fighter planes started to queue
29:56up.
29:58I did various maneuvers of Shandells and Lazy S's and some violent maneuvers to get them
30:05away and when they left us, I ordered the crew to throw everything overboard, to lighten
30:11the plane.
30:15And we fired flares as we landed to alert the ground crews that we had wounded on board.
30:24The ambulances came and took our wounded away.
30:32The 100th was severely depleted.
30:35120 crewmen were dead.
30:46There was an eerie silence there.
30:49Nobody seemed to approach us.
30:54Some of the members of the crew were pretty shaken up by the experience and I tried to
31:01comfort them and we went on with our lives after that.
31:09The bombing of Münster left 500 civilians dead and 25,000 homeless.
31:15By the end of the war, as many as 600,000 Germans died in bomb attacks, along with 30,000
31:23American airmen.
31:25It made us all give second thoughts as to what our chances of survival individually
31:32might be.
31:34Remember we were 19, 20, 21 year old lads who were into something that we didn't really
31:42know how to cope with.
31:47Morale was a big problem and so the minute any time anybody was shot down, they immediately
31:53cleared the barracks and brought another crew in.
31:57Literally, it was this abrupt.
32:01Just bang, you never saw an empty bed, you never saw an empty spot.
32:11By the end of 1943, the American bombing campaign was in crisis.
32:19Bomber losses were too high and the Luftwaffe was getting stronger.
32:26The Americans decided to wait for the new long range escorts, the P-51 Mustangs to arrive.
32:34The Americans took this opportunity to regroup.
32:42It was about the same time the order was sent out that we're not supposed to try to camouflage
32:51the aircraft anymore.
32:52We want them shiny aluminum so that the Germans can find us.
32:56If the bombers aren't there, the German Air Force has no reason to come up and fight because
33:01only the bombers can do damage on the ground.
33:03So in a way, they're bait.
33:11Formations increased from several hundred bombers to more than a thousand.
33:22This attracted the Luftwaffe, but the Mustangs were there to greet them.
33:36A little friend would come up and say, big friend, I'm with you.
33:41They had wing tanks and you'd be watching them and if you could see a glitter of the
33:46light, you knew that they were dropping their wing tanks, which means that they saw bogeys
33:52and we'd tune in on them and we would hear them yell with glee as they'd go after those
33:57guys.
34:11The bombers were relentless.
34:25The Americans were desperate to achieve air superiority, believing that without it, any
34:30land invasion was doomed.
34:38On the morning of March the 4th, 1944, a new target was announced.
34:50When they had the briefing and they pulled the curtain back and the tape went all the
34:55way to Berlin, to Big B they call it, first it was just stunned silence and then just
35:02a shout, glory, that they were going to go to Big B.
35:13Berlin was protected by thousands of flak guns, operated by boys.
35:21Hans Ring was just 15 years old.
35:37It was an incredibly impressive picture to see the American combat boxers approach with
35:44the contrails trailing behind them and you could hear the endless sounds of the American
35:51engines when they came.
35:59It was amazing.
36:15It was a rough mission. That scared me half to death.
36:34We got shot up pretty bad on the way back. There were a lot of holes.
36:45Fortunately, there was none in the tail.
36:53We fired about 150, 200 shots per cannon and were lucky enough to have participated in
37:00the shooting down of three American bombers.
37:07We set up 31 that day and we lost 15 out of 31. We had 16 back.
37:14I was glad it was my last mission.
37:19Bruce Olshaus, Kearney, earned his membership in the lucky club.
37:23Men, now that we've been the first ones to Berlin, how would you like to go back again?
37:31Two days later, Rosenthal bombed Berlin on his 25th mission.
37:39Some of the crew urged me to buzz the airfield in celebration if we returned.
37:46I decided, well, they had a rough tour and I was going to give them a buzz job.
37:53The plane was really lower than the top of the tower and I could see the people observing
38:00the tower hit the deck.
38:07When we landed, somebody said, did you know that General Hugglin, who was the wing commander,
38:12was up in the tower and he hit the deck and he messed up his uniform.
38:16I said, oh, Rosenthal, you've really screwed up this time.
38:21And there was General Hugglin walking toward me and my heart sank.
38:27He came over and grabbed my hand and he said, one hell of a buzz job, Rosie.
38:35Instead of going home, Rosenthal signed up for a second tour.
38:41The Americans had been running daylight bombing raids for more than a year.
38:49By the spring of 1944, the bombing was routine, though hardly precise.
38:57The Allies had gained air superiority.
39:10They invaded Normandy and advanced upon Germany.
39:27But Hitler stood firm.
39:40Rosenthal signed up for a third tour.
39:43On September the 10th, 1944, on a mission to Nuremberg, his plane was hit over the target.
39:50And three engines conked out.
39:56We looked around for a field to crash land and there was a very small field out there and we chose that.
40:06Struggling to fly on a single engine, Rosenthal's B-17 crashed in France.
40:13And I just remember waking up in a hospital in Oxford, England.
40:20You could lose three engines and get home.
40:23You could lose half of your vertical stabilizer on the tail and get home.
40:27You could lose one of your airlines and get home.
40:29You could literally have a hole in the fuselage that you could have a whole bunch of people walk through and still get home.
40:36Upon being discharged from hospital, Rosenthal was transferred to a ground job in command headquarters.
40:44But Rosy wouldn't have any part of that.
40:46He insisted that they put him back and give him another crew, give him another airplane, and he'd go on flying his tour.
40:53Most guys didn't have any part of that.
40:56They just had to fly.
40:59They put him back and give him another crew, give him another airplane, and he'd go on flying his tour.
41:05Most guys, all they want to do, like me, is fly your missions, go home, you know.
41:13And Rosy, he wanted to keep on flying, keep on keeping on.
41:21By now, Germany was on the brink of collapse, but would not surrender.
41:27On February the 3rd, 1945, the Americans delivered a massive air raid upon Berlin in hopes of ending the war.
41:40The bloody 100th was selected to lead the 3rd Division.
41:44Rosenthal flew in the lead for the 100th.
41:48And I remember going there and the sun was shining and I almost dozed off.
41:53No problems at all.
41:56On the way to the target, we were hit by flak.
42:04The plane caught fire.
42:07I thought it might blow up at any time.
42:12When the entire crew had bailed out, I decided I'd better get out myself.
42:19I decided I'd better get out myself.
42:23And when I left the controls, the plane went into a spin.
42:33According to the official log of the 100th,
42:36Major Rosenthal went down today over Berlin on his 52nd mission.
42:41Rosenthal is a legend here. The entire base feels bad about it.
42:47And I pushed my way out of the front hatch and cleared the plane and opened my chute.
42:55I hit the ground very hard and broke my arm again.
43:00I was in a state of shock from hitting so hard.
43:05And I looked up and I saw three soldiers coming at me with guns.
43:10One of the soldiers raised his gun and was about to strike me.
43:15And I noticed the Red Army symbol.
43:18And I yelled, Amerikanski, Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola,
43:26Lucky Strike. And they recognized me as an American.
43:30And they then embraced me.
43:36The capital of the Third Reich was ruined.
43:39But aerial bombardment did not win the war.
43:43Running out of targets, the Allies decided to crush German morale
43:47by attacking one of its most beautiful cities.
43:51Dresden was full of refugees fleeing the advancing Russian army.
43:56On the eve of Ash Wednesday, 1945, the British attacked twice with incendiaries.
44:03Ten hours later, the Americans launched their bombs into the firestorm.
44:10The old American idea of marksmanship, of aiming for a target,
44:14no longer applied to the bombing of Germany.
44:20That's what makes the bombing of Dresden.
44:23If you want to talk irony, there's the real irony that a nation
44:26so committed to precision bombing would turn to area bombing.
44:30It was a terrible stand over all of Dresden,
44:33of burning and ashes and burned corpses.
44:37It was horrible.
44:42Up until 1945, I feel that the Allied bomb offensive
44:47was completely justified, also morally.
44:53But in 1945, after the war was lost,
44:58to even then drop all those bombs like maniacs on civilians
45:03was absolutely incorrect.
45:10I don't believe anyone placed the blame on the people flying the planes.
45:17I believe the people blamed the whole war.
45:27As the Second World War drew to a close,
45:30Major Rosenthal reached Moscow.
45:34He cabled the 100th, saying,
45:37''Hold my job, or I'll shoot you.''
45:41Our intelligence officer said,
45:44''Rosenthal, you stupid...''
45:47He said, ''If you hadn't come home,
45:50''you would have had the Congressional Medal of Honour posthumously,
45:54''but now you're not going to get it.''
45:56General Order No. 93,
45:58''Bombing of Dresden.
46:00''Bombing of Dresden.
46:02''Bombing of Dresden.
46:04''Bombing of Dresden.
46:06''Bombing of Dresden.
46:08''Bombing of Dresden.
46:10''Bombing of Dresden.
46:12''Incorporated to 8th Congressional Command.''
46:14Instead, Rosenthal was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
46:19After Germany surrendered,
46:21he stayed in Europe as a prosecutor for the Nuremberg trials.
46:33The bloody 100th, disbursed.
46:36This airplane flew over 100 missions.
46:38Most survivors never flew the B-17 again.
46:50I was very relieved, ready to go home.
46:53Well, you couldn't go in a bar and buy a drink.
46:57Somebody would buy you a drink every time.
47:01Of course, with every drink, you'd shoot down a couple more fighters.
47:08The B-17 is now on the way.
47:38The B-17 is now on the way.