How The 8th Air Force Ruled The Skies Over Europe | Battle Honours | War Stories

in the deadly Skies over war-torn Europe one unit LED America's fight with Hitler he lost over half of their aircraft and hundreds of the air crew members [Applause] daring aerial warriors who sacrificed all to destroy the Nazi war machine I also saw some of them going nose down I didn't know if the pilots were dead Germany was ready for it and they made it rough relentlessly attacking deep into the heart of the Reich no matter the odds or cost bombs away got an engine that's struggling it's on fire it explodes nine men gone just that good they are the eighth US Army Air Force the Mighty Eighth [Music] an extraordinary War demanding extraordinary soldiers well we were good we were very good the best there was forged into Elite bands of Brothers who are fighting for your buddy you didn't want to let them down by facing the trials of War together they attacked us up through the vapor trails and butchered us up pretty good stories of the second world War's most famous fighting formations and their journey through tragedy and Triumph the German Commander said I've never seen any people as Brave as yours to earn their battle honors by late 1943 the tide of War had begun to turn in the Allies favor except in the air over Europe for months hundreds of b-17s battled to penetrate Hitler's defenses during the daytime paying a terrible price in men and machines the lashes were terrific in the first raids they lost over half of their aircraft and hundreds of the air crew members so you can imagine how bad it was not protected by fighter escorts and under Relentless attack they often failed to destroy key targets we had two plans to collide in midair we lost two planes at Bonnie the mighty 8th would learn brutal lessons until one week in February 1944 when everything changed and the battle for air superiority took a decisive turn [Music] the eighth U.S Army Air Force was activated on the 28th of January 1942 in Savannah Georgia and as eighth bomber command they gradually deployed to Great Britain that spring the U.S air forces were still part of the American Army and not yet independent when we talk about the Mighty Eighth we're talking about the U.S Eighth Air Force which really carried the heavy end of the stick in bombings of Nazi Germany and german-controlled territory in World War II along with the Royal air force bomber command hundreds and then thousands of men quickly trained to master heavy bombers such as the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress I guess there's no way they can prepare a young man for combat history hit is a streaming platform that is just for history fans with fantastic documentaries covering fascinating figures and moments in history from all over the world from the Battle of Trafalgar and the revolutionary era right through to the second world war if you are looking for your next military history fix then this is the service for you we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and War Stories fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code War Stories at checkout we didn't have the remote this idea what would be headed into [Music] one of the captains told us anything well we can teach you everything here except the extreme cold at altitude [Music] revolutionize Warfare during the second World War and the mighty eight would eventually take things to an epic new scale of Destruction it was something that took a while of trial and error to determine that the aircraft could actually be an instrument of war and be a very powerful one in less than four decades aircraft had gone from a glorified kite to fragile Fighters and then a weapon of mass destruction they brought the full devastating power of Modern Warfare to ordinary people's front doors [Music] Hitler's bombers first terrorized Continental Europe and then from 1940 into 1941 blitzed British cities killing more than 43 000 civilians [Applause] the evolution of aerial Warfare had given War another dimension it meant that you could hit the enemy Far Far Behind the front line the factories that made the tanks that made the planes that made the bullets and if you could choke that off you could hopefully end the war early from mid-1942 the eighth started to arrive in Britain and a trickle became a flood as RAF stations joined the union with Uncle Sam this is the new Battlefront the airfront from which we seek out the enemy the power behind the German Lust For Conquest the steel mills and refineries shipyards and submarine pens factories and Munitions plants pinpoints on the map of Europe which mean rubber guns ball bearings shelves engines planes tanks targets targets to be destroyed one Airbase became schools by 1944 spreading from the English Midlands to East Anglia and a handful of squadrons eventually became three bombardment divisions the first and the third divisions were B-17 the Flying Fortress and the second division was primarily b-24s the two bombers uh were different yet similar each bomber had a crew of ten of the B-24 could carry more bombs and fly a little bit farther than the B-17 the 17s could fly higher and could take a lot more damage in the air than the B-24 could we'll be hitting the wheel but eight months after Pearl Harbor the eights b-17s had still not dropped a single bomb in anger on the 17th of August 1942 that would change with a planned attack on ruan's Railway marshaling yards in northern France the eighths bomber Commander Brigadier General Ira eka flew in one of the Dozen b-17s but this initial mission was not about destruction it was the first test of the American strategic Doctrine daylight Precision bombing our Theory the day bombardment is feasible is about to be tested when man's lives are put at stake we made landfall at precisely the point indicated in our flight plan our planes were in excellent formation but perhaps not quite as tight as would have been ideal for protection against enemy attacks the conditions on a B-17 on a mission were at best terrible once you get up into altitude you have no oxygen so everybody's on an oxygen bottle they have a mask on it's very cold 40 50 degrees below zero fahrenheit everybody is wearing in the early stages of the war a leather jacket that's fleece lined and it's very heavy and they've got heavy fleece-lined gloves and heavy fleece line boots there was no bathrooms on the plane so the crews were furnished with a relief tube you can stand next to somebody and Shout in their ear and you will not hear them so all the crew were hooked into headphones and microphones [Music] the most vulnerable aircraft was always tail end Charlie and the worst job in the air was being its rare Gunner [Music] Sergeant Adam Jenkins watched as his nightmare approached [Music] there were eight of them in v formation Elita waggled his wings and came for us when they were about 300 yards away uphold the trigger and it looked like the end of his wings came off major Paul Tibbetts piloted one of the pioneering aircraft he would later pilot another to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima REM was reasonably good but you couldn't describe it as pinpoint bombing we were no longer novices this terrible Game of War we had braved the enemy in his own skies and were alive to tell about it they all returned safely partly because four squadrons of RAF Spitfires provided a close escort [Music] but this American Plan horrified the British who had already rejected daylight bombing because of the terrible losses [Music] the RAF had been bombing the Reich for well over two years but largely at night with the Advent of the U.S Eighth Air Force the bombing campaign became more of a around-the-clock campaign the British RAF would bomb at night and in the daytime the 8th Air Force would come over Churchill is the prime minister was okay how can I assuage public opinion in the UK and hit back at Germany how can I do that fighting North Africa is so far away from Germany the only way is by dropping bombs on German soil the British bomber boys led by Sir Arthur bomber Harris aimed to destroy industry and morale but their Nighthawks forced the inaccurate area bombing of cities however the Americans advocated the Precision targeting of factories which required daylight they argued that the heavily armed B-17 could defend itself it was after all named The Fly Fortress the b-17s bristled with up to 13 Browning machine guns below above at the sides and to the rear but the huge weight of all that Firepower often limited their practical payload to two tons far less than the regular drop of RAF lancasters over 12 000 were built in another production miracle foreign the whole idea was that the B-17 could fly unescorted by Fighters and that it would get relatively quickly to any Target within Europe be able to protect itself drop its payload and then get back home Theory meant brutal reality as the flying fortresses confronted the most terrifying Air Force ever seen the luftwaffe 42 the luftwaffe still was a very powerful force they pretty much ruled the Skies over Europe and the Germans were very skilled in their tactics in the air they knew the best places to attack the bombers [Music] then in late November 1942 the lotwafa Unleashed a terrifying new tactic their Fighters flew straight and level directly into the front of the b-17s targeting the vulnerable perspex nosco the German flag of wolfer fighter paleges firing his 20 millimeter cannon at the aircraft trying to knock out the cockpit and kill the pilot and co-pilot these in-air strikes further reduced their very limited impact on one key Target the Fortified U-Boat pens while the worsening winter weather now canceled many of the planned Ops [Music] stuck on the ground the American aviators turned to the little bit of home they had brought with them the base PX shop Trevor Hewitt runs the new Farm Aviation Heritage group and is particularly proud of one of their Museum's exhibits behind me on the wall here we have the Post Exchange sign or the PX shop sign the sign itself has the Eighth Air Force winged eight sign in it post exchange was a very important place on the base because it's where they got together the PX shop was well stocked cigarettes and candy and various tins and pizzas and other things mainly American brands and stuff so it was it was Comforts from home for them in the PX shop a vital piece of the infrastructure of the Airfield we are of a great belief that this was actually produced and painted by a local civilian w Cook [Music] this PX sign is evidence of the bonds forming between these amiable Invaders and the locals a friendless soil of England whose people have defended their Island's freedom for over a thousand years but today their Countryside has changed today their island has been converted into a gigantic bomber field a super aircraft carrier anchored off the shores of Fortress Europe with hangers and machine shops one of the most romanticized views of the war is the perception of the Flyers enjoying a bucolic lifestyle surrounded by Charming Farms picture-perfect Villages cute churches and flights of passing young women for some perhaps many of the American Airmen the reality was somewhat different the living conditions when we got in there there were poor you know and not much Transportation a few bicycles around for some people on the way to get around we lived in Nissan Huts there was no heat in there to speak of one of the amusing things about the arrival of the Americans was the the phrase overpaid oversexed and over here there was I think a lot of resentment they remained two Nations divided by a Common Language and different currencies remember one pound is not one dollar but four dollars and that equals 20 Shillings they had nice times there to tell you the truth you know I used to go to the pub and we'd play uh cribbage and we play diets we'd bring them eggs and butter and we trade that for they do our laundry for us and they were lovely the people were just lovely people of course Americans had more money than the British soldiers were being paid they were seen as kind of the the Glamorous group that had come in and they were stealing the the English girls away from their boyfriends but when the English people saw the casualties that the Eighth Air Force was taking I think the attitudes changed during their first 10 months the eighth lost 188 bombers and 1900 men [Music] any Crews that survived 25 missions could return to America later this was raised to 35. in 1943 they had less than a one in four chance one of the first to qualify were the crew of the Memphis Belle praised by Hollywood the top brass [Music] and the crown [Music] but the pressure still piled on to hit the Nazis harder and far more often foreign 1943 prime minister Churchill and President Roosevelt met in Casablanca and eventually confirmed round-the-clock bombing [Music] the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military-industrial and economic system and the undermining of the morale of the German people the later point-blank directive prioritized aircraft production and luftwaffe Fighters which meant bombing Germany but this created a huge problem for the eighth as their chubby P-47 Thunderbolt escorts could only fly as far as the German border exactly one year after their very first raid on ruach the eighth faced their greatest Challenge on the 17th of August 1943 now with over 30 times as many planes in action 376 b-17s Mast to attack two key industrial areas deep inside Germany [Music] but this huge Force faced a mountain of obstacles an exhausting flight duration layers of anti-aircraft guns and numerous squadrons of interceptors try and even up the odds the Americans made an elaborate plan using two bombardment wings targeting Regensburg and Schweinfurt the B group would closely Shadow the a group for Mutual protection once a bombed wagensburg they would unexpectedly Escape South to Allied bases in North Africa but after B had hit Schweinfurt they would have to battle their way back to Britain [Music] all right two dodos let's go this is it the crews awoke at 1 30 in the morning to be briefed on the bad news a massive Mission through Hitler's Heart of Darkness [Music] this will be your combat Wing assembly line you'll leave the coast confirming the route Rendezvous points and the weather the temperature at farming altitude minus 26 degrees Centigrade [Music] some looked for divine protection others put their faith in flak aprons and their manganese steel plates [Music] position their names mottos and good luck symbols were proudly displayed and freshly repainted the pressure was on to prove American strategic bombing capabilities and deliver a knockout blow to Hitler [Music] this would be the beginning of the end of the German war machine or so we were informed by our S2 intelligence officer each man was pondering the odds of returning from a raid so deep into the Third Reich [Music] heavy missed delayed departure before the fourth bombardment wing broke through to find blue skies but the flights of P-47 escorts quickly peeled away over Belgium [Music] Regensburg was still 480 kilometers ahead they were on their own but only briefly as the skies now filled with a hail storm of diving and spinning luftwaffe Fighters [Music] site was fantastic and surpassed fiction I fought an Impulse to close my eyes and overcame it I knew that I was going to die and so were a lot of others I'm on them I was very lucky as you can see we went on a lot of tough missions there was a plane right next to me it just blew up was gone it was scary and the only time you would stop the thing is when you see the plane going down you know and then you were counting the parachutes you know and hoping that they would get out see any parachutes I also saw some of them going nose down and I didn't know if the pilots were dead and um it was an ugly looking thing [Music] we're coming in Scotty and then water it out you might even be shot by one of the neighboring b-17s that you know their belly Gunner that might be tracking a German fighter Miss and put a few rounds into you and all of this while being tens of thousands of feet in the air it must have been a truly horrifying experience [Music] deeper rigid formation for Mutual protection but it was broken up by the mounting losses after 90 minutes under constant attack they reached reagensburg I knew that our bombardiers were Grim as death while they synchronized their sights on the great messerschmitt's shops laying below us our bombs were away on the regular raids the anxious ground crews could only sweat out the mission in Britain flares would signal the return of damaged planes and those carrying casualties we were over Germany and the pilot says we have to avoid the mission of having trouble with the engines we had to get rid of our bombs so we dropped them we didn't know we were going to get home till we got over the channel and we were flying very low and we were being shot at you know quite often but on the 17th of August the bad weather further delayed takeoff for the first bombardment wing [Music] their target was wine third but rather than entering German airspace with the Regensburg Strike Force as planned they were hours behind allowing the lutwaffe's best to land rearm and intercept them now with about 300 Fighters one o'clock on any Mission they also faced an equally dangerous threat anti-aircraft fire or flag we were in the lead ship of the 60 airplane group and they had me flying in the waist and the flag was so heavy I I threw it on on the other phone I think and we're gonna we're gonna catch it this time and we did I looked out before we got there at Target and you could see the flag was so heavy up there it looked like a big Thunder head that was flat I stole my gun and just as I turned I heard it pop I had been looking out the window right above it and right where my head was was a hole about four inches in diameter it would have taken my head off [Music] involvement Wing lost 36 b-17s before starting their bomb run on the crucial schweinfeld plants these factories produced about half of the Nazis ball bearing supply vital paths for panzers and the luftwaffe when you're getting close to your target you really can't take any evasive action your Bombardier using the northern bomb site is now controlling the airplane he's flying it and he has to fly it pretty much on a straight course so there's about 30 seconds there where the Gunners on the ground have a chance to zero in on you because you can take no evasive action [Music] the shrine felt survivors Lim tow often struggling to stay airborne arriving randomly at the nearest base as the ground crew scrambled their ambulances and treat the wounded and recover the Dead [Music] good the crews heard that both targets had been hit hard production at Schweinfurt fell by over a third several weeks [Music] most of the b-17s bore scars bullet holes broken engines and busted tails it was a miracle some of them returned many would never fly again scores were damaged 60 were lost along with about 660 men nearly one in five [Music] they had shot down 47 Nazi Fighters that day suffering all those casualties was the major turning point the Air Force had it proved to them that their idea of sending b-17s unescorted on a deep penetration just was not valid thank you more unsustainable losses came with a second huge raid on schweinfeld in October 1943 another 60 planes were lost and over 120 damaged unescorted raids deep into Germany were largely canceled for months when they used radar for blind bombing only about three percent of bombs fell within 300 meters of their targets at schweinferte around 7 hit using an optical bomb site when the bomb site was developed and put into American bombers the claim was that it could drop a bomb in a pickle Barrel from twenty thousand feet and maybe that's true if the pickle Barrel was maybe five miles in diameter the complex gyroscopic M4 Nord and bomb site could not see through or deal with bombers dodging flag or Fighters straight bomb runs with targeting by veteran Crews only made some limited improvements throughout the war the Americans insisted on the efficacy of precision daylight bombing even though the the evidence for it really wasn't there [Music] losses of one in five were not sustainable and took a huge psychological toll on those who did return to base many of the air crew were very pessimistic about their chances of seeing the end of the war or making their 25 missions if they made five missions they were feeling that their their luck was about to run out levels of alcoholism nervous shakes and undiagnosed trauma escalated it was the pills that got a lot of the guys through pills that put them to sleep pills to keep them awake pills to kill the depression [Music] [Music] as a result of these immense combat strains pilots and air crew traditionally get all the glory but they were useless without their mechanics and armorers don't be ready for a major I don't know dude let's get the fans turning similarly the B-17 steals all the glory from the many B-24 liberators that also flew with the eighth as epitomized by one notable aircraft witchcraft was a b-24h liberator which was a very very famous B-24 of the Eighth Air Force in the fact that it flew 130 missions it suffered quite a bit of battle damage um the growing crew was one of the best grown crews in the Eighth Air Force there was a Chinese there was a Dutchman an American they actually called them the League of Nations because there were so many nationalities in that grown crew but they were very uh diligent and took great pride in looking after Witchcraft and it was their aircraft and they only lent it to the air Crews it was their airplane foreign but it would take a new aircraft to win air superiority a Sleek new fighter [Music] as 1944 dawned the Western allies had one key priority D-Day The Liberation of nazi-occupied Europe success depended upon the eradication of the luftwaffe this is a must destroy the enemy Air Force wherever you find them in the air on the ground and in factories and the key to success was the Disposable drop tank its extra fuel allowed new little friends to accompany the bombers deep into Germany the P-51 Mustang had arrived be the Holy Grail a long-range fighter that could still beat Hitler's best at any altitude and the Miracle ingredient was adding the Spitfires Rolls-Royce Merlin engine which transformed an emu into an eagle over 15 000 Mustangs would eventually prove decisive the P-51 Mustang was a game changer in World War II aerial Warfare as far as escorting the bombers to and from their targets the P-51 was unbeatable 3 1940 the Allies planned a sustained all-out attack big week its aim to end the luftwaffe's ability to defend Nazi airspace and when air superiority for D-Day [Music] the eighth assembled over 800 heavy bombers and as many fighters initially targeting the messes Schmidt plant near Leipzig [Music] going to be a combined bomber offensive by both the American Eighth Air Force and the RAF bomber command and the primary objective of this was to degrade as much as possible the German aircraft manufacturing industry heavy flight Suits now came with electrical Heating and a thermos of coffee if horse signal flares coordinated the launch of this massive air Armada across Europe your bomb is five thousand pounds gas load naturally maximum don't start your engines before you have to you'll need all the gas you have the eighth offensive Firepower grew with new generations of Fighters but sometimes old Tech was the best way to keep things handy the increasing flood of P-51 Mustangs joined the Sleek twin-engine P-38 lightnings but the majority remained updated p-47s all with the vital long-range drop tanks they realized if they could Target where the Germans were actually producing their Fighters their bombers their ground attack aircraft they could they could deal a real killer blow to the luffa and they could do this in particular by forcing them to face them in the sky [Music] and one key Innovation the U.S Fighters were now Unleashed no longer just tied to the close protection of the bombers ordered to hunt and kill turning the tables on the luftwaffe interceptors [Music] [Music] we really hit hard he exploded when I was about 50 yards behind him with his tail and wings separating from the rest of the plane and went down spinning foreign [Music] Thunderbolt fashion ripped through their scattering ranks and began to chop up the second echelon I was determined I would go wherever he went do whatever he did I wanted a victory attack takes on technology combined as they now bounce the unsuspecting luftwaffa nailing 61 for the loss of just four on the first day hundreds of American bodies with lies scattered across the continent but hundreds upon hundreds of Jerry Fighters would drop from the Flaming Skies to rest in ruin as complete as that of many of the factories from which they came [Music] numerous industrial areas were hammered that week forcing Hitler to divert more resources to defend them whereas you know the Americans could replace those losses both in machine and Men the Germans simply couldn't in total the Nazis lost over 250 fighters in the air that week but the eighth paid him blood as about 20 percent of their Heavies still fell from the skies in the run-up to D-Day these new tactics began to devastate the luftwaffe as the prowling American fighters embraced more missions outlined by the eighth's new Commander Major General Jimmy Doolittle and we peel off as many fighters as possible ground Target [Music] waves of strike Fighters sought out targets of opportunity particularly airfields packed with warplanes but also key pieces of infrastructure roads and Rail lines loaded trains and bustling marshalling yards foreign [Music] barges oil tanks and flag Towers all vital to Nazi troop tank and Munitions movements and now weakening Hitler's iron grip on occupied Europe the introduction of the long-range P-51 Mustang fighter was essential to Victory the presence of the p-51s was really the thing that that broke the Germans back in terms of being able to defend itself from the air this was further proven in March 1944 when the eighth also started to raid Hitler's Capital Berlin but somehow the more the Americans bombed the more the Nazis produced by mid-1944 the Mighty Eighth numbered 200 000 people with over a thousand Fighters and more than 2 000 heavy bombers but death stalked them as soon as their engines started it had the nickname of the bell of Boston um it was a bit of a war weary old war horse they lost an engine on takeoff just shortly leaving the end of the runway the pilot Lieutenant Kingsley couldn't climb and he mushed along for about a mile and a half till he hit one big old English oak tree which ripped the wing off where it exploded and disintegrated and of the 10 young men on board six slides were taken and enforced survive they were rescued from the crash site by my late father and my late grandfather with the neighbor we have a burnt golf ball the top of it is burnt I actually found out on the crash site in amongst the bits and pieces of wreckage and it was quite an unusual item to find when they were waiting for Mission take off they had time to pass Lieutenant Arthur Doyle's little thing he used to do was he had a bag of golf balls and he would drive golf balls down to Perimeter track to pass the time and obviously one of two were left in the aircraft and this was one of Lieutenant Doyle's golf balls foreign most operations now focused on preparations for D-Day in June the eighth had to hit vast areas of France to help disguise the true location of The Landings and destroy the Nazis infrastructure we were flying almost every day dropping bombs in there trying to eliminate opposition for the land we flew up the coast of France and in the to our Target that was the greatest sight I've ever seen the air was full of aircraft and all descriptions every boat that would move was in that channel taking troops across on D-Day itself they failed to destroy the Normandy Beach defenses but had achieved a great victory hardly appeared the Allies had finally won air superiority over the battlefield their record against the Nazi economy is far more mixed as aircraft production actually grew until September 1944. but without the bombing it would have increased far more and freed up the luftwaffe and anti-aircraft artillery for the front lines the bombing campaign was quite effective against industrial targets the Germans were forced to disperse their manufacturing facilities a lot of the German armaments production went underground and they also destroyed another vital part of the Nazi war machine oil production now artificially squeezed from coal in huge refineries its ability to drive a modern mechanized war machine was reliant on the the supply of the black stuff and when the Eighth Air Force hit these refineries in a very short period of time the shortages of fuel for the German war machine were crippling foreign [Music] has been criticized for causing civilian casualties as they increasingly bombed German cities often within centuries [Music] but they did make a decisive contribution to the Allied Victory destroying the luftwaffe and much Nazi infrastructure [Music] Aid an appalling price with 26 000 dead an extraordinary loss of air crew over a thousand more fatalities than the far bigger U.S Marine Corps suffered in the whole Pacific Campaign which is incredible if you think about the ferocity of the fighting in the Pacific Tarawa Saipan Iwo Jima Okinawa and yet here were air crews in a supposedly safer sphere of fighting in the air War suffering more in the end air power had proven to be Hitler's critical weakness and the Allies greatest strength where technology industry and sacrifice combined to ensure victory over the Nazis [Music] the life that the air Crews had to go through and endure was some of the most harrowing of any combat soldier in World War II thank you

Channel: War Stories

Views: 130,790

Keywords: America's WWII history, America's air supremacy, US air power, WW2 aviation, War Stories, air combat tactics, battles in the sky, bravery in battle, combat footage, documentary series, historical conflicts, historical documentaries, historical reenactments, historical retellings, military courage, military honors, military service tales, wartime bravery, wartime experiences, wartime heroes, wartime reminiscences

Id: 1BxGPYUifWo

Length: 52min 23sec (3143 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 10 2023