From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. This is a battlefront. A battlefront like no other. In the long history of mankind's wars. This is an air front. The working day begins as it will end, with the ground crews. As much a part of the fortress as her wings. If you're a mechanic, you've got your own bomber. You get attached to it, but you know when your ship goes out on a mission, you may never see it again. So you do your work as well as it can be done perfectly, because you wouldn't want anything to go wrong. That would be your fault. Today, the bombs will be taken from these bomb dumps somewhere in England and delivered to specific points in Vilhelmshaven, Germany. To deliver them is the job of the 8th Bomber Command, just a hauling job, yet one of the most difficult and complicated of military operations. General purpose demolition bombs impact velocity as high as 750 miles an hour. Pierce five inches of armor plate, destroy a factory. Briefing at 0800 Pilots, bombardiers and navigators take their places. The group commander, Colonel Stanley Ray, steps up to the target map, and for the first time, you learn where you're going. Sometimes your face turns white when you find out. Sometimes the feeling you won't come back tightens your insides. Not so long ago, you were sitting like this in a college or high school classroom, not listening too hard, perhaps even a little sleepy. But you listen here, and as you listen, you don't have time to think of yourself. Fear fades. You concentrate on the mission, type of formation, Assembly point. 0 hour, route to target, weather, enemy fighters, enemy flak, route back home. If forced down in enemy territory, destroy equipment if taken prisoner, give no information. Name, rank and serial number. That's all. These are the passengers with one way tickets and this is the crew of the Memphis Belle 324th Squadron, 91st Heavy Bombardment Group. Just one plane and one crew in one squadron in one group of one wing of one Air Force. Out of 15 United States Army Air Forces. Well, fellas, we've never had an easy ride over there yet, and today won't be any different. No escort except unfriendly. So keep your eyes peeled. Don't get excited and yell when you're talking on the intercom. Save your ammunition and make your shots count. And let me know what goes on back there Quinlan. Yes, Sir. Stay on the ball gang and she'll bring us back like she's always done. Okay, let's go. They have completed 24 missions in this the toughest theater of air war, the big league of sky fighting. Their experience is priceless, and so if the Memphis Belle comes back this afternoon, they will be sent to bring the vital lessons they have learned to thousands of aircrew men in training at home. Home is America. This is a battlefront like no other in this or any war. No monster armies, no booming cannon, only the roaring engine sound of the bombers pounding through the quiet English countryside. This is an air front. The wheels of the Memphis Belle leave the soil of England for the 25th time. The friendly soil of England with its ordered farms and rural Hamlets, its country estates surrounded by formal gardens and well kept parks. The England these Americans knew only from the classics they had to read in school, the England of the towns and cities. Whose people have defended their islands freedom for over 1000 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 with hundreds of dispersal points, perimeter tracks and concrete runways. This is England in its fifth year of war. And this is the new battlefront, the air front from which we seek out the enemy. Not his infantry or his artillery, not his panzer divisions, but the greater menace, the industrial heart of his nation, the foundation on which the Nazi empire and its army stand, the power behind the German lust for conquest. Steel mills and refineries, shipyards and submarine pens, factories and munitions plants, pinpoints on the map of Europe, which mean rubber, guns, ball bearing, shells, engines, planes, tanks, targets, targets to be destroyed. And these are the destroyers, each with a Belly full of bombs and 10 men like the crew of the Memphis Belle. Pilot Captain Robert Morgan, Industrial engineer from Asheville, North Carolina. He's flown this ship across the Atlantic. The other pilot, Captain Jim Verinis, Business administration student at the University of Connecticut. Radio operator and Gunner Sergeant Bob Hanson, construction worker from Spokane, Washington.. Navigator Captain Chuck Layton, chemistry student at Ohio Wesley engineer and top turret gunner, Sergeant Harold Locke from Green Bay, Wisconsin. He used to be a stevedore Besides keeping the Belle in order, he covers the sky above. Tail gunner Sergeant John Quinlan of Yonkers, New York, clerked for a carpet company, but he quit December 8th, 1941. Bull Turret Gunner Sergeant Cecil Scott, Pressman for a rubber company in Rahway, New Jersey. Pilot to crew 10,000 put on oxygen. They're climbing higher now. 300 feet a minute. The strain on the plains and on the men is mounting. The rest of the crew Bombardier Captain Vincent Evans operated a fleet of trucks in Fort Worth, Texas. Waist Gunners. On the right, Sergeant Bill Winchell, chemist for a paint company in Chicago. And on the left, Sergeant Tony Nastal used to repair washing machines in Detroit when he was a kid. Now he's 19 and has two Nazi fighters confirmed. It takes all of a pilot's strength to keep a 30 ton fortress in tight formation, but the formation is the bomber's best defense against enemy fighters. The planes are deployed to uncover every gun. Stepped up and down. Echelon to the right and left, arranged to overcome the danger of Gunners firing into friendly ships arranged so concentrated cones of fire from the caliber, 50 machine guns cover the sky for 1000 yards in every direction. The friendly coast of England slips by below. It doesn't look like much now, but in a few hours when you come back, if you come back, this will be the most beautiful view in the world. Higher and higher climbing to reach your best operational altitude 25,000 feet. Five miles straight up, so high you can't be seen from the ground with a naked eye. So high that after one minute without oxygen you lose consciousness. After 20 minutes, you're dead. From now to the target, you go about your routine duties, plot your course, check your equipment and wait and think. Higher and colder. Temperature 40 degrees below 0. Take off your glove and you lose some fingers. You look out at the strange world beyond, Reflections in plexiglass like nothing you ever saw before outside of the dream. Higher and higher into the lifeless stratosphere until the exhaust of the engines, mixing with the cold thin air, condenses and streams the heavens with paper trails. To the men in the ships, they're far from beautiful, for they point like beckoning fingers to the formation signposts in the sky for the enemy to spot us. For these bombers to accomplish their mission, a plan is needed, carefully worked out, time to the minute. The job is to bomb Wilhelmshaven effectively and economically. The enemy is strong, skillful, determined to stop us. Here are his defenses, air drones well dispersed. Each plane indicates a stoffel or squadron of fighters. Heavy antiaircraft, highly trained and accurate all along the coast and defending his vital installations. Radar to warn him of our coming. Here is our plan to divide his defenses and weaken his opposition at 1330 hours shortly after takeoff. Six groups of planes will be heading toward the enemy coast from six directions. The Blue Force one hundred B-24 Liberator four engine bombers. The White Force three hundred B-17 Flying Fortresses. The Green Force three hundred B-17s with an escort of six squadrons of P-47 Thunderbolts, A force of B-26 Marauders. Twin Engine medium bombers with six squadrons of RAF Spitfires escorting. Almost 1,000 planes and over 8,000 men in the air. The enemy alerts all his air drones. But which is our main force? What are our targets? Where should the Nazi controllers send their fighters? It's our job to make them guess and guess wrong. A half hour later at 1400 hours, the Blue Force will be heading east across the North Sea with the white force following. These enemy fighters are tied down waiting to meet them. And will not be able to attack the Green force. These fighters must come up to attack the Green Force and thus will be no threat to the Blue and White forces. The B-26s and Spitfires will bomb and strafe a key rail junction, diverting these six stuff on and preventing the enemy from concentrating too many fighters on the Green Force which is scheduled to bomb an aircraft factory at Hanover. At 1430 hours, the Blue Force will threaten this entire coastal area of northwestern Germany. Which target Will it be Flensburg, the Kiel Canal? Or will it turn suddenly in Bomb, Hamburg, Vegesak or Emden? Actually, it carries no bombs at all. It's a decoy and keeps the fighters from the northern area busy while the White Force the main effort heads for the submarine pens of Wilhelmshaven. At 1500 hours while the White Force is over its target, only a fraction of the available German fighter strength of the area can intercept it because of the Blue Force diversion and the simultaneous bombing of Hanover by the Green Force. This is the plan of battle for today, drawn up by the Combined Operations Planning Committee and approved by the commanding general. The White Force lead group Low Squadron. We've crossed the invisible line of enemy radar the Hun is expecting us. Steel helmets go on. Watchful eyes strain tight. Formations are held tighter still, tense Gunners more alert. Because here it comes. The enemy coast from up here it looks the same as any other houses, roads, green fields, factories, waterways. They are the houses and fields of those who invade and oppress. They are the factories and roads of the people who twice in one generation have flooded the world with suffering, suffering in such quantity as the history of the human race has never known. Brought torment and anguish into countless American homes. Gold stars and telegrams from the War Department. The first flak just harmless looking silent puffs of smoke only. Each puff is a shell exploding, throwing shrapnel around the sky. Exactly the range. Accurate flak by radio prediction five miles down. Nazi antiaircraft batteries have calculated the altitude, speed and course. Where will the next one hit you? Try not to be there. The docks and submarine pens of Wilhelmshaven approach to the target starts. No smokescreen can protect it. Now the enemy knows the path of your approach and walls that path with a Flak barrage, but you fly right through it. Flaks so thick you can get out and walk on it. Morgan changes course every 15 seconds. Evasive action to confuse the flak batteries. Bombsights set for correct altitude and speed. Bomb bay doors open. The bombing run begins. Pilot to Bombardier. OK then, you've got it. Now Evans flies the Memphis Belle, controlling it through the bomb site. And now we are most vulnerable. Committed to our bombing run, we can't dodge flak or fighters. Here's the first. Top turret fires at it. Evans must ignore the battle. crosshairs lined up on target adjustments for wind drift made. two more fighters diving from 9:00 Flak now has the range, too. They've hit this fort, but he keeps on his bombing run. As lead Bombardier, Evans's aim must be good. Every other ship in the group will drop its bombs when he drops his. Now one pointer on the bombsight moves toward another stationary pointer. Instant they touch bombs will release. They touch. Bombs away. The first half of the mission is over. The easy half. Now to get home. The Flak stops. That means fighters out there somewhere. A stoffel lurking behind that cloud or hiding up in the sun with a glare blinds you. And you can't see them waiting to dive down on you. Fighters at 6:00. O'clock. This is what a gunner sees. A speck in the sky. That's a fighter. And then a blink. That means he's firing at you 2300 rounds a minute. In a running battle, one of the most important instruments is the interphone. There's four of them, one o'clock high. They're coming around watch them Too fat at 6:00. O'clock up, coming in Dire 90. B- 17 in trouble out at 2:00 o'clock watching. There's an. Engine on fire. There's two more Dimes for the 94. Three Planes 9:00 o'clock coming around. Keep your eye on, boy. Coming around at 10, watch them. So keep your eyes open, yeah? Breaking at 11, Breaking at 11. I got them. two o'clock. Watch them, Scotty. I got my sights on them. Check out B-17 Chuck 3:00 o'clock. Motor smoking. fighter at 1030 coming around. are those 10:30 Upper lower? here the. Sun. P-17 out of control at 3:00. O'clock. Come on, you guys. Get out of that plane. Bail out. There's one he come out of the Bomb bay and I see him. There's a tail. Gunner coming out? Watch out for fighters. Keep your item, Bill. See any parachutes Quinlan? two parachutes open. So flag at 9 o'clock eight men still in that B-17. Come on, get out of there. There's. Three more shoots. Flag 11:00 o'clock. Fighter 6:00 Me109 at 3:00 o'clock. Keep after him Winchell. I see him. I'm on him. Come on, you. I got him. Quinlan Confirm that fighter he got him. Chief, look, he's bailing out. Don't yell on that Intercom. Fighters 10:00, o'clock. Watch those two or 12, then they're coming in. They're coming in Scotty. Get that ball turned on them. Save the ammunition. As much. As possible. Watch that fighter coming in the 3:00 o'clock. He's coming in and a half roll. Pull her. Up, chief. Pull her up. This fortress is hurt. Engine on fire, losing airspeed and altitude, drifting into the flak, alone and helpless. A straggler. In a minute, Nazi fighters will swarm in like buzzards for the kill. You can watch, but you can't go down to help. You keep your formation. Here too, the mission is being flown nonetheless real for being in the minds and hearts of these men behind. Ask anybody who's been to a field in England or anywhere else our bombers are based, and he'll tell you that there's drama here, too, waiting to see who's coming back. To watch them you might not realize how tense these ground crews are. But they are tense and plenty worried. In Air Force talk, this waiting is known as sweating out the mission. These men know the flight plan. Their watches told them when the bombers were running into enemy Flak, when they were over the target, when they left the enemy coast. And now their watches tell them the bombers should be nearing the field. Every ear strains for the first sound of the engines. And then somebody hears them, and somebody sees the first faint specs in the distant sky. Every face turns to sea and count the watches. Try to read the numbers on the ships. These planes have priority to land first. The colored flares mean wounded aboard in the hospital window. These watching men know what that means. They know what it feels like to lie on a bouncing fortress floor for hundreds of miles through the frozen stratosphere, in great pain, with the other men and your crew fighting to keep you alive until they hit the field, the field home. It'll be okay then, because there'll be medical care the best as soon as the wheels of your plane stop rolling. Head wound. Concussion. 20 millimeter cannon Shell exploded in his radio compartment. Shock. Internal injuries. He'll be all right though. Flak burst scattered flying shrapnel. He's full of steel splinters. This pilot's leg is not a pretty sight. Neither are the docks in Wilhelmshaven. These men will all get the Purple Heart and this man too posthumously. A transfusion right in the plane. This gunner is too weak to be moved. The new life giving blood flowing into his veins might be the blood of a high school girl in Des Moines. A minor in Alabama. A movie star in Hollywood. Or it might be your blood. Whosever it is. Thanks. 36 planes left this field this morning. Now six more arrived. That makes 20 home. And this one's 21 more wounded aboard. 22 Coming in with his left inboard engine dead. 23 With a feathered prop on his left outboard engine. 24 Southern Comfort with a chunk of tail gone. 25 They flew home on their luck. 26 Not a scratch. The control tower learns that two more landed at a British field to the South. One a crash landing. Crew safe. That makes 28. 29 A rough landing, but her pilots badly hurt, it's a wonder he brought her back at all. 29 planes back. So far. 29 out of 36. Our losses were heavy, but the enemies were far heavier. We destroyed a German aircraft factory, a rail junction, submarine, pens, docks and harbor installations. That's specific. Known damage. But who can tell the number of German torpedoes that will not be fired, The number of our convoys that will get through now, The soldiers and seamen's lives that will be saved, or the battles that will be won instead of lost. Because of what these bombers and airmen did today. Pilot and tail gunner, they can laugh now. Fire on the inboard engine did this. Flames streaked back and burned the stabilizer too. Another crew luck brought back. Here's Old Bill, a pretty good airplane when it took off, lost its nose, lost its navigator, Bombardier wounded, top turret gunner and pilot hit. Hydraulic system shot out, No breaks, no flaps, but old Bill came back. Now among the returned crew members, talk flows like a river. talking out every detail of the mission. These are the faces of combat, faces of Americans who have watched their comrades die. Faces that can never forget the enemy and They're in no mood to have they're picture taken. In the control tower. Colonel Ray, the group CO is still watching and waiting and then he spots the last flight. Three more planes and one of them is the ship everyone has been pulling for. The Memphis Belle. The last few miles of this trip have been a joyride. The strain is over. They can leave their guns now. Now they know they're going to go home to Spokane, Green Bay, Asheville, Detroit, Chicago, Fort Worth and Yonkers. The Bell comes in for a landing, but first, Morgan buzzes the field cuts the grass with a giant fortress. It's against the rules, but this is a special occasion. The wheels of the Memphis Belle come back to the soil of England for the 25th time. This is a day they will never forget. Another great day soon after. Brigadier General Hansel visited the field and presented the Distinguished Flying Cross to every member of the crew. And then there was another day. Their Majesty's The King and Queen of England. Johnny Quinlan never thought anything like this would happen to him. When he left Yonkers. The ground crew were a little self-conscious about being dressed in fatigues. But the Queen thought they were very nice. Finally, two more visitors came. General Eacre, commanding the 8th Air Force, and General Devers, US commander of the European Theater. The Bell crew received them in flying clothes as General Eacre read the order for what he called their 26th and most important mission, returned to America to train new crews and to tell the people what we're doing here, to thank them for their help and support And tell them to keep it up, so we can keep it up. So we can bomb the enemy again and again and again until he has had enough. And then we can all come home. To the men of the 8th Air Force who are now flying deep into Germany, bringing destruction to targets almost 1000 miles from their bases, destruction like this, and who have never once been turned back by the enemy. For those men, this film is gratefully dedicated. This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.
