5 Myths About WWII FIGHTER PLANES

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operons welcome back to another episode of generation films my name is Alan today we're going to continue our series looking at World War 2 myths and films by looking at the most interesting aspect of combat which is aerial combat since our last video on tank myths mainly focused on the European theater in this video we'll be heading over to the Pacific and it's honest reporting for duty to that interview we're gonna try to be amazing we can certainly use you now we're always talking about the Mitsubishi zero on our other channel generation tech that's because we like to relate it to the galactic empires TIE fighter another extremely maneuverable and lightly armored fighter that was well respected by its enemies but Hollywood has this very extreme way of portraying the zero it's either God's gift to man or a flying coffin doused in gasoline the truth was a bit more complicated than that how are you I'm a izaki in my opinion the best animator to ever have lived is widely known for his fantasy adventures like spirited away or Nausicaa valley of the wind oddly enough he also made a film solely based on a life of the zeros main architect Jiro horikoshi while the movie takes many liberties when it comes to heart akashi's life it does give us a surprisingly in-depth look at how the a6m zero came to be the Mitsubishi zero was a result of Japanese ingenuity and also limitations the Japanese military had very high demands for this aircraft from the way beginning first it had to be able to accompany long-range bombers all the way to China at the same time they wanted a fighter that could outmaneuver its opponents and also be able to climb high enough and fast enough to engage enemy bombers is because of these incredibly challenging demands along with the engines available that Jiro horikoshi realized in order to make it all work he had to make the planes incredibly light now many people criticize the zero for its lack of safety features mainly the lack of cockpit armor and also a self-sealing fuel tank but this criticism is a result of hindsight at the time of the zeros development very few planes actually had these safety measures it wasn't until the extremely brutal Battle of Britain in the early 40s that plane designers on both sides started incorporating the safety measure besides the Japanese were known for their warrior like spirits so a lot of pilots early on in the war refused to even carry a parachute because parachutes for pussies thankfully the Japanese military is not putting up with their nonsense and eventually forced all the pilots to wear parachutes although it should be noted that bailing out of an airplane before ejection seats were invented was incredibly dangerous usually involved slightly tilting the airplane over and trying to let gravity take over and remembering that if he put his foot on the edge of the cockpit his spring would raise him too high into the slipstream as a matter of fact that's how the late George was senior our former president almost died he bailed out of his Avenger aircraft and hit the tail of his airplane with his head probably going close to 100 miles per hour they just don't make politicians and the same stuff nowadays the zero also featured some pretty impressive design choices it was one of the earlier planes that had a canopy that gave the pilot a 360 view of the battlefield which was extremely advantageous during a dogfight you see the majority of dogfights were actually won by the individual who saw the other pilot first the 0 also featured flush rivets which meant that every fastener on the surface of the plane was flattened and didn't disrupt the aerodynamics something that's kind of obvious now that we look back at it but was actually not widely practice in aircraft manufacturing it also used in advanced aluminum alloy similar to today's aircraft grade aluminum as a result you had an incredibly maneuverable aircraft that also had an incredibly long range that kind of had the structural integrity of a paper airplane now from the beginning the zero was designed to use external fuel tanks and then the a6m2 zero which attacked Pearl Harbor had an impressive range of 2,600 kilometers in the 1930s reports of the Japanese era were so one-sided that the American military thought it was just propaganda in one incident 13 Japanese 0 shot down 27 Soviet biplanes piloted by the Chinese in just under 3 minutes not gonna light the American military was slightly racist they thought that the Japanese were just not capable of making something that advanced so when the first Japanese fighters encountered American fighters the American aviators were in for a surprise the nimble a6m zero was able to out climb in turn the heavier p-40 Warhawk sand f4 wildcats also the japanese pilots ranks weren't completely depleted like they were at the end of the war American products were even trained not to engage the more nimble zeros in a dogfight instead their strategy was used a heavier American plane superior diving speed to swoop in on the zeroes for a quick slashing attack but as the war went on America's manufacturing power kicked in at full gear and we started upgrading our fighters until we completely outmatched the Japanese we introduced aircraft like the f6f hellcat and the f4u corsair extremely heavy well armored and powerful planes with engines pushing 2,000 horse powers the Japanese did try to upgrade the a6m zero but they were fighting a losing battle by this point as the war continued to drag on the Japanese were short in war materiel their factories were being bombed to hell and they're losing pilots at a much faster rate than they could replace the zero was a true work of arts created by a true artist and for a time it dominated the Pacific but just like Japan as a whole the Zero's never really resilient enough to last the entire war against America's manufacturing might the longer the war went on the more apparent it became that the zero and Japan was outclassed by American Muscle [Applause] now in the movie Pearl Harbor which we'll be talking about a lot Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett take two p-40s up into the air during the middle of the Pearl Harbor raid and managed to shoot down over 20 enemy aircrafts including several zeros now this scene is actually based on a true story featuring two Army aviators called George Welch and Kenneth Taylor these two men also took to p-40s from an auxiliary airfield the actual story is just as heroic as the movie just more realistic in reality the pair only shot down a confirmed six planes most of them being vows which were two-man dive bombers this makes a lot more sense because as far as records show most of the zeros launched during Pearl Harbor were due to pilot error or ground fire and not from air-to-air combat the slower dive bombers not only made easier targets there were more important targets because they were attacking the ships in airfields around Hawaii and Welch and Taylor weren't the only aviators that made into the air that day another dozen pods also made into the air flying a variety of different types of airplanes from smaller airfields around Pearl Harbor lieutenant Phil Rasmussen of the Army Air Corps probably deserves a movie of his own upon hearing Japanese aircraft overhead the pilot strapped the 45 to his pajamas got into his older P 36 and merely took off he was one of the only pilots that successfully engaged a6m zero and take it down during this battle the lieutenant eventually had to return to base because let's just say his airplane stopped working its tail wheel was completely missing and its brakes and rudder were either not working or completely shut off i'm volcanic also reports seeing around 500 bullet holes in the fuselage of his plane you see American planes put a higher priority on pilot safety just like the Rebel Alliance did okay that's the last Star Wars reference promise the Doolittle Raid was an actual thing it was completely crazy and very American FDR wanted to improve public morale after the Japanese quick advance across the Pacific mr. president with all respect sir what you're asking can't be done do not tell me it can't be done so the Navy came out with his ludicrous idea to lunch army bombers off of an aircraft carrier a few hundred miles off the coast of Japan the bombers were supposed to attack Tokyo and other industrial cities in the Japanese heartland it was also kind of a reminder to Japan that hey we're here and we're gonna kick your ass now after the bombers completed their mission they didn't have enough fuel to return to the carrier group which would immediately return once they launched the Bombers so they were supposed to the kind of land in Chinese airfields and somehow linked up with Chinese resistance soldiers everyone knew that was gonna happen this was completely a one-way suicide mission so the way Pearl Harbor portrays this mission showcases a problem a lot of films have just because your protagonist is the protagonist doesn't mean he has to take part in almost every important historical event that has ever happened in this case Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett and the surviving members of their Fighter Squadron keyword is fighter are selected to pilot the b-25 bombers on the Doolittle Raid this makes no sense why would they take fighter pilots and assign them to a bomber task force that is trying to attempt to do something that no bombers have ever done before which is fly off of an aircraft carrier just because Ben Affleck and Josh Hornet wanted revenge didn't mean the army was gonna completely ignore protocol and assign them to this mission now this is all in poor taste because 80 extremely brave and crazy Airmen actually did this in real life three members of the duo raid were killed in action and another eight died in POWs camps which actually considering that all 16 airplanes were lost is not terrible get your facts right Michael Bay honor these people who actually took part of this incredibly dangerous mission by getting the details right or at best why not just make a separate movie I mean you don't need to have Pearl Harbor the Doolittle Raid in one movie they easily have enough content for separate movies from New Zealand from Canada and even from the United States apparently nothing in World War 2 aviation is safe from Michael Bay another a random Side Story which is designed to create this love triangle between Ben Affleck Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale is when Ben Affleck joins the RAF for a brief stint in the famous Eagle squadron now this was also a real thing Eagle squadron was a volunteer outfit for American pilots who wanted to enter the war before America entered the war is a pretty successful squadron and did its partner in Balham Britain and was eventually transferred to the US Air Force when America joined the war so Ben Affleck scare achter not only serves at Pearl Harbor joins the Doolittle Raid and bangs kbecque and so he also popped his combat cherry during the Battle of Britain fighting for the RAF as a member of the Army Air Corps he later become the first American astronaut to kill an alien except he could not the alien part but fighting in the RAF you see as an American officer ben affleck could not join the RAF because that would void America's neutrality in the war those Americans who did serve in Eagle squadron were mostly civilians many of whom had no prior military experience of course these guys had a 300 hours of flight time but they're usually only given four or five hours to familiarize themselves with a Spitfire hurricane and then thrown into the air it's kind of an incredible story until Ben Affleck came along and ruined it now Ben Affleck really wanted to join the Eagle squadron he would have to give up his American officer title now let's go back to Pearl Harbor once again in the film tora tora tora Admiral Yamamoto in charge of the Japanese sneak attack is informed that the flattop ships or carriers are not in the harbor and you could see that the Admiral is visibly worried about this but continues to launch the attack anyway now in height so we all know how important the aircraft carriers were in world war ii and even today in modern combat but at the time the Japanese name his main target was actually the battleships docked at Pearl Harbor they were the core of the Pacific Fleet a 1941 naval doctrine was still center around battleships and cruisers and their gigantic guns aircraft carriers were still relatively new technology and had only been invented in the latter years of World War one they rose in popularity due to the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty which put a limit on the tonnage of new ships being produced so that meant a lot of battleships were way too heavy now and were switched over to aircraft carriers so before Pearl Harbor the aircraft carrier was still quite an experimental weapon that only been tested in theory and naturally balanced ested is mainly used to ferry around aircraft and also served as an escort ship for battleships now my main problem with movies like Pearl Harbor is very similar to the criticism that I have for movies like the Red Tails which we covered in our previous myths video Pearl Harbor was an actual event with real heroes and real people who made sacrifices when you make a movie about Pearl Harbor that's that specific and actually looking at actual events that happened it's probably a good idea to include the actual people that did those tasks and not replace them with Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett well guys I hope you enjoyed today's episode don't forget to subscribe and check out the rest of our myth series we talked about samurai what else Knights I think Ben's doing one on Vikings soon too so make sure to check out all that and as usual thanks for joining us today my name is Alan and life is movie and you are the protagonist

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Channel: Generation Films

Views: 816,292

Rating: 4.5866027 out of 5

Keywords: Myths WWII FIGHTERS, World War II Fighter, World war 2 aircraft, Japanese Zero, mitsubishi zero, a6m zero, P40 Warhawk, Pearl harbor, pacific fleet, sneak attack, battleship, Hawaii, Pearl harbor movie, George Bush Avenger, George bush crash, eagle squadron, Doolittle raid, Where were the aircraft carriers pearl harbor, Japanese airforce, Japanes army, Yamamoto, The wind rises, jiro horikoshi, f4f, f6f, f4u corsair, japan vs united states, world war II myths, 5 tank myths

Id: 6cjFEaEdLPI

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Length: 13min 28sec (808 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 26 2018

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