Secret Allied Aircraft Of WWII

it is august 1941 a pilot in the british royal navy lieutenant robert everett has volunteered for a bizarre and dangerous mission he is about to test in combat a wild invention that could defeat marauding nazi u-boat and save england from starvation the world's first rocket boosted fighter the pilot is going to be under a great deal of stress this mission is without doubt the most difficult he will ever have faced in his combat career everett is flying a one-way mission in the middle of the atlantic ocean he is putting his trust in the work of a secret band of maverick scientists recruited by the allies it is a desperate bid to match the superior technology of the nazi regime vertical takeoff rocket power [Music] stealthy flying wings this is the untold story of these secret allied aircraft and the men and women who imagine tomorrow [Music] in the summer of 1940 britain's prime minister winston churchill is confronted with a major crisis nazi germany has unleashed a new secret weapon against convoys bringing food from america to the starving people of britain it is the fock-a-wolf condor the first military aircraft able to fly within range of the united states eastern seaboard churchill christens the condor the scourge of the atlantic the condors wreak destruction on a massive scale in a matter of months they sink nearly 1 million tons of allied shipping the condor crews are the elite of the luftwaffe they mount daring bombing attacks at low altitudes but the condors have another even more sinister role to play the condor served two roles for the german navy it was a bomber attacking allied ships but it also became the eyes and ears of the u-bolt fleet able to spot oncoming convoys and signal their presence to the u-boat commanders there were areas in the atlantic where the allies could provide their merchant convoys with no protection against german reconnaissance and bombing aircraft that meant in those areas that the the germans could send either long-range bombers or long-range reconnaissance aircraft to spot and to direct the u-boats into those areas and it was those areas that the ubers had freedom of movement to attack the convoys the alliance between condors and u-boats threatens to bring britain to her knees winston churchill admits it is his greatest concern desperate for a solution churchill suggests a daring plan british and american battleships are equipped with steam-powered catapults that launch spotter planes could such a catapult device be installed on the decks of merchant ships to launch fighter aircraft but no existing catapult is powerful enough to launch a heavy fighter like the hurricane [Music] so churchill seeks help from a top secret research unit called the royal aircraft establishment located in farnborough england the scientists respond in just one week with an incredible way to launch a hurricane from the deck of a cargo ship it was decided to use a rocket sledge in order to get the hurricanes airborne and if you think about it it's the only way you're going to get a fully fully armed and fully fueled hurricane fighter aircraft airborne off the deck of a merchantman in a very short space the catapult is powered by a cluster of 13 solid fuel rockets it is the biggest slingshot in military history since the time of the romans but will it work in combat launching the hurricane from a ship by a rocket-powered catapult is not as easy as you think first of all the rocket had to reach a speed instantaneously that was sufficient to get the plane off the deck otherwise it would drop into the sea equally the kick of the rocket couldn't be too fast otherwise the acceleration might break the pilot's neck the first manned test flight is successful but there is one major problem with the catapult idea once launched there is no way the pilot can return to the ship the principal reason for the introduction of the hurricane was essentially as a stop-gap measure this is a one-way mission and possibly a suicide mission the modified hurricanes called hurricanes will be flown only by volunteers the first battle between a hurricane and a condor is on august 3rd 1941. the hurricane pilot is a former jockey and winner of the grand national robert everett it is the ultimate test of this new tactic and the most daunting mission everett has ever faced i would feel very anxious not only just getting airborne off that kind of rocket-powered contraption but then engaging out very heavily on bomber and then knowing that even if you weren't shot down you're going to ditch in the sea anyway that kind of mission profile fills me with anxiety high in the clouds above the convoy the patrolling german condor does not see the rocket fire from everett's launch the german pilot is taken by surprise but still manages to damage the huracan with his gunfire whenever it closed with a condor he discovered a problem the condor was bristling with defensive armament it carried eight machine guns and a heavy cannon and those soon took a toll of his aircraft knowing he is all that stands between the convoy and its destruction everett fires the last of his ammunition into the condor's cockpit the nazi bomber goes down in flames the first to be destroyed by a hurricane but everett is not yet out of danger in a situation like this you know that if you make one false move you're not going to survive if you don't find the convoy they're certainly not going to find you you're 40 or 50 miles away and you could be anywhere as far as they're concerned in any direction so unless you find that convoy you're almost certainly dead his luck holds everett nurses his aircraft to an altitude of two thousand feet and spots the convoy he lands on the water near the british ships but his huracan quickly begins to sink the hurricane was a very dangerous aircraft to try and land in the sea it tipped over very easily and that's what happened to everett as soon as he hit the water the plane flipped over on its back and began to sink and down he went with it he had to fight very hard to get the cockpit canopy open and he was very lucky to manage to struggle to the surface [Music] king george vi awards ever the distinguished service order for shooting down the condor everett is killed the following year while on active service but the hurricane ships have turned the tide against the condors i think the principal success of the haracats was the deterrent effect it had on german reconnaissance aircraft in that after they were intercepted and after the first one was shot down the germans were less and less inclined to press home attacks or reconnaissance missions against convoys meanwhile on the other side of the atlantic an engineer's out of this world imagination takes flight in early 1943 citizens of stratford connecticut report sightings of strange saucer-shaped objects flying overhead this flying saucer is america's first near vertical takeoff aircraft and just might be the answer to the problem of providing ships at sea with fighter cover nicknamed the flying flapjack it is the brainchild of a maverick genius charles h zimmerman charles zimmerman typified the kind of engineer that we saw in the united states emerging and working in the field after the 1920s america discovered that she was very far behind the european countries in the development of high performance fighter aircraft charles zimmerman was one of the people who led the drive to make up that deficit in 1933 zimmerman joined the naca the national advisory committee for aeronautics the predecessor of today's nasa the naca was an extraordinary organization in that it rebuilt the technical excellence of american technical work the naca created for example a far better understanding of how one should design wings at naca zimmerman's objective is to find the perfect wing shape as a result he will design an aircraft that is still way ahead of its time he is fascinated by the notion of developing an airplane that has a tremendous speed range that on one hand would have a very high end top speed on the other hand would have a very low end landing speed an ordinary aircraft wing has a wingspan from root to tip in order to create lift this is called a high aspect ratio wing [Music] the way an aircraft wing works is by creating different areas of pressure what this means is that we have the wing here and as the airflow hits the leading edge it has further to travel from there to there as it does from there to there this creates low pressure here and high pressure here as the air tries to get from the high pressure area to the low pressure area it pushes the wing up but an ordinary aircraft wing has a great drawback the wide high aspect ratio wing creates a drag effect against the airflow which slows the aircraft down but charles zimmerman has an answer to this problem the idea was why don't i have a much smaller wing a much lower aspect ratio wing a narrow wing creates less drag allowing for faster speed but it too is problematic when the spill happens over the side of those short stubby wings as happens on all wings the as the air moves from the low to the high pressure it causes turbulence on the edge of the wing and theref therefore reduces lift and increases drag now the effect that has overall on the wing is greater on short stubby wings as opposed to long wings to force its way through this turbulence the aircraft burns more fuel but charles zimmerman is the first man to discover a solution to this concern zimmerman's solution to the problem is breathtakingly simple to stop the air from spilling out under the wingtips he decided to move the engines to the wingtips so that the spinning blades of the propellers push the air back under the wing with the turbulence problem solved the narrow wing allows for less drag and greater speed but the new design has another revolutionary property vertical takeoff what he's looking at is something in many ways that's akin to what we would consider the tilt rotor today his idea basically is to develop what we would call a super stole a super short take off and landing airplane zimmerman discovers that the unique characteristics of the low aspect ratio wing combined with the wingtip propellers means the aircraft literally floats off the ground vertically in a stiff breeze in 1939 as war clouds gather over europe and the pacific the u.s navy orders a prototype fighter based on zimmerman's revolutionary concept it is called the v170 it has a wingspan of only 23 feet minuscule by today's standards to save time on the test design a fixed undercarriage is used the tall legs set the aircraft at the best angle to ensure immediate takeoff the cockpit extends under the aircraft providing a more extensive view like a helicopter the v-173 flies for the first time on november 23rd 1942 with vos chief test pilot boone t guyton at the controls on the very first flight boom guyton had some real problems the aircraft almost went out of control but it flew so slowly got it back on the ground there they discovered that the problem wasn't in the design of the aircraft itself it's simply that the controls have been wired up incorrectly the v173 like many experimental airplanes was an airplane that was not really suited for production itself it demonstrated the basic concept that zimmerman was trying to achieve the fact that you could develop a controllable aircraft that had a reasonable range between low speed and high speed that had all the attributes of a stall aircraft after some adjustments the flying flapjack soon performs as zimmerman predicted facing into a 25 mile per hour wind the v-173 literally takes off vertically the v-173 was an aircraft that was a challenging machine to fly but having accepted its limitations the pilots who flew it were really quite astounded by the high degree of control effectiveness they did have over this configuration there were occasional accidents during the test flight program on one occasion the fuel line of the 173 was blocked and it came down on lordship beach in connecticut much to the surprise of the local sunbathers but the plane flew so slowly almost like a helicopter that it came down gently on the sands and was undamaged meanwhile in the pacific the united states faces the difficult task of capturing island bases and building airstrips a vertical take-off fighter could solve these problems the us navy orders a full-scale fighter version of the flapjack this new fighter aircraft is designated the xf5u with a take-off and landing speed of just 40 miles per hour it can reach a top speed of 500 miles per hour phenomenal for any fighter of its day the speed and agility of the xf5u could match any jet fighter in service the xf5u is powered by two powerful pratt and whitney twin wasp engines it is armed with six browning machine guns and can hold two one thousand pound bombs [Music] but other engineers are also exploring the saucer-shaped wing in nazi germany work has begun in secret to develop a prototype aircraft nicknamed the flying beer tray the germans were intrigued by the low aspect ratio wing but they never actually made the breakthrough that zimmerman had towards putting the engines on the side of the wings the prototype fighter version of the flapjack is finally rolled out of the factory on june 25th 1945 but things are quickly changing in the world of aeronautics we were undergoing a radical paradigm shift in aeronautics and that paradigm shift was from the era of the propeller driven piston-powered airplane to the error of the turbojet the imperative to develop jet engine technology at the end of world war ii was very very strong piston engine aircraft design and technology had just about reached the end of the road in 1946 the xf5u was finally unveiled to the public but stories began appearing in the media speculating that the unusually shaped plane is just a cover for a top secret flying saucer program this does not endear zimmerman's flying flapjack to the conservative military by 1947 zimmerman had solved all the problems and the aircraft was ready for its first flight then suddenly the united states navy canceled the entire project and ordered the prototype to be scrapped what is incomprehensible to me is after having gone to all this trouble and investing the sums of money necessary to bring this aircraft to fruition the aircraft would be willfully destroyed before first flight because it would have been very very valuable to the subsequent history of stall aircraft development and uh subsequent use and employment of stalled aircraft if we had the data from an aircraft such as the xf5u1 to place alongside the data from the v173 zimmerman's pursuit of a vertical takeoff fighter was not forgotten but it was not until the 1970s that the u.s military finally acquired this type of aircraft britain's harrier jump jet ultimately zimmerman's flapjack was sidelined by the united states interest in a new technology jet power in august 1939 two weeks before the nazis invaded poland a unique visitor arrives in america for a special demonstration of the latest u.s military planes he's ernst udette the man in charge of aircraft development for hitler's new air force the luftwaffe udette isn't impressed by the latest american planes he sees and he knows that germany has already begun to build a plane that is light years ahead of america's best the world's first jet fighter the heigl 280. the story of the united states and the jet engine is a story of acute national embarrassment we had several governmental commissions as late as 1939 indeed after the time period when the first jet airplanes were flying that actually made pronouncements that the trebuchet airplane was an impossibility yet some imaginative engineers were already thinking about jet propulsion despite official opposition to the idea lockheed had a reputation as a company that was willing to undertake bold and innovative design in the second world war lockheed applied this to the turbojet revolution lockheed had for many many years a very unique engineer named nate price nathan price he was one of the paper inventors of jet engines he became a believer in jet engines in the time period where nate was working on the engine where we were examining it and everybody that could follow his notes examined it and we could find nothing wrong with what he was doing we designed an airplane to go around two of those engines a fighter we had never had a supersonic airplane by that time and we were reasonably sure that this airplane would probably be capable of supersonic speeds the aircraft designed by nathan price and willis hawkins is america's first attempt at a jet fighter plane called the lockheed model l-133 it is designed around a canard layout meaning the control fins used to climb and dive are located at the front of the aircraft the l-133's revolutionary features make it an aircraft well ahead of its time it had in its original concept an afterburner and nobody had ever talked about an afterburner in great britain or in the united states or germany that i know of but the l-133 is never built before the bombing of pearl harbor united states military was not convinced that jet aircraft are feasible but a trip to great britain by a senior u.s officer changes everything in april of 1941 hap arnold who was the the chief of the army air corps at that time soon to be the army air forces goes to england he says to his hosts in effect you know some of my technical people are telling me as odd as this may sound that perhaps we should be looking at gas turbines and the answer he gets is absolutely do you want to see our airplane arnold is shown the gloucester whittle prototype the first british turbojet airplane [Music] arnold is stunned having ignored nathan price and willis hawkins united states is now years behind arnold makes the bold decision to seek out america's long-ignored aviation geniuses and offer them lucrative research contracts [Music] his mission to put the us on the cutting edge of aviation technology one of the first to accept the challenge is jack northrup from newark new jersey jack northrup is an absolutely extraordinary individual if you looked at the individuals who transformed american aviation in the 1920s and 30s and you considered all the engineers and all the scientists you would have to recognize that the designer and industrialist who did the most to make this transformation reality was jack northrup like charles zimmerman northrop sees the design flaws of conventional planes he questions the use of a heavy fuselage for longer range missions why not simply have a flying wing saving weight and fuel northrop presents half arnold with a design for a flying wing bomber that can fly non-stop from the continental united states to berlin a round trip of 6 000 miles arnold immediately orders a test plane it is called the n9 these are the days before computers and no one has designed a flying wing that is stable in flight jack northrup has the answer he attaches special slats to the leading edge of the wing if the plane flips over the slats deploy automatically to regain balance ground testing of the n9 begins december 20th 1942 one year after pearl harbor the first flight takes place in the mojave desert on december 27th [Music] northrop's flying wing is a success he now approaches hap arnold with another bold idea fit the n9 with a rocket motor to make it capable of taking on the new german jets the first prototypes reveal yet another northrop innovation like the right flyer the pilot lay on his stomach controlling this aircraft to give it absolutely minimal frontal profile on july 5th 1944 america's first manned rocket plane called the xp-79a makes its first flight now northrop had wanted to power this aircraft with a very exotic rocket engine called the rotojet but the rotor jet was so incredibly dangerous and its development was so torturous that instead the decision was reached powered with two westinghouse jet engines the army calls this version the xp 79b embodying another revolutionary idea it will be a flying chainsaw the xb79 sometimes called the flying ram was an airplane that was armored with four 50-caliber machine guns and it also had reinforced leading edges on his wing because it was hoped that it could actually ram and survive a ramming of an enemy aircraft typically an enemy bomber by september 1944 it becomes clear that construction of the new jet engine is behind schedule the army decides to cancel jack northrup's revolutionary fighter but northrop knows his flying wing is the future of aircraft he continues the project using his own money on september 12 1945 only a month after japan surrenders the powered xp 79b is ready for its maiden flight the pilot is harry crosby on its first flight crosby demonstrated that the airplane could fly successfully and then unfortunately toward the end of that flight he had a flight control problem caused by an air inlet valve on one wing not functioning properly the airplane went out of control crosby was unable to escape it and was killed in the ensuing crash with the destruction of the seoul xp 79 jack northrup abandons the fighter project and focuses on his flying wing bomber what we see with the northrop flying wing is a vehicle that's ahead of its time it's imagineering at its very very best unfortunately the technology you needed to make it a success the flight control technology primarily was simply not available at that time while northrop is experimenting with his radical flying wing hap arnold remembers lockheed's early studies in jet propulsion with the l-133 the united states must scramble to build an american jet fighter to take on the germans lockheed is the obvious choice a team of 50 of its best engineers begins building the new plane under the leadership of clarence kelly johnson some like willis hawkins worked on the earlier l-133 project kelly had promised that the airplane would be flowing in 160 days from signing on the contract and the air force had signed the contract and so we had quite a rule to hold the army air force calls the new plane the p-80 shooting star to save time the p80 is a much simpler design than the l-133 but many features from the earlier project including its wing remain [Music] the first flight takes place on january 8 1944. we must have had 20 lockheed executives for one sort or another and we all had to sit on the sand dunes there was no place to stand around the only paving was the runway and off he went and he put on a real magnificent first flight including a high-speed pass right back in front of the dune and it was pretty thrilling but that's how the f-80 was born the p-80 is the first u.s aircraft to exceed 500 miles per hour in level flight much faster than northrop's xp 79b america has finally entered the jet age but the p80 is not designed for naval warfare the us navy must have a jet of its own to take on the japanese in the pacific this would change aviation history [Music] by 1944 allied naval fighters such as the corsair have reached the limits of their developmental potential in speed and firepower but u.s intelligence sources know japan is seeking to build versions of the revolutionary german jet and rocket planes the u.s navy realizes it will need its own jet fighters the main difficulty in deploying the early jets on carriers is to do without speed you need a bigger boost off the deck and it's a much trickier landing at a shallower angle and a higher speed on a very small strip then the navy got an idea why not develop an aircraft that would have the gentle coming aboard characteristics if you will of a conventional propeller driven airplane and yet on the other hand would have the performance potential of a jet airplane and out of this came the ryan fireball the fr1 which had a small radial piston engine in the nose and then a small turbojet engine in the tail cone of the aircraft fed by two wing route air inlets as the u.s navy raced to introduce the fireball british scientists were working on an even more radical solution to these problems the impetus for their effort was the imminent invasion of the japanese home islands the one thing that the british lacked was big aircraft carriers and therefore they would lack air cover for any potential invasion fleet the answer was an aircraft unique in aviation history a jet powered flying boat fighter it is nicknamed the squirt its test pilot is captain eric brown it was big for a fighter but it had um good performance it had two axial flow engines and um well armed maneuverable it had everything in fact that you would could expect from such a design despite its ugly shape the squirt could reach speeds of over 500 miles an hour and because it did not need a heavy undercarriage or complicated landing gear it was very maneuverable in the air but operating from water was dangerous it was a very pleasant aircraft to fly but i had a a problem occur on landing i touched down and i was running along at about 100 miles an hour quite smoothly when there was a tremendous crash brown had struck a piece of wood floating in the water it shot out like a cannon and struck one the floats knocking the float clean off the starboard float and the aircraft cartwheeled over the cockpit of course was upside down in the water of the state brown was lucky to escape the sinking plane i got out of it all right and uh when we looked at the hull after we found that a hall about four feet squared and been cut in the hull by this mast hidden among the palm trees on a pacific lagoon the squirt could swoop up to escort attacking allied bombers or defend invasion craft from japanese jets i would say it was a sound concept and if the japanese or the far eastern war hadn't concluded when it did i think it had been a very useful legend to our forces there but the american fireball and the british squirt are overtaken by advancing technology in late 1945 a pure jet fighter successfully lands on a carrier for the first time it is flown by the scorch test pilot eric brown however the plans for an invasion of japan include more than just new jet fighters to fight an aerial war over intercontinental distances allied scientists make a technological leap that defies the imagination the biggest man-made machine ever devised and it's made out of ice [Music] in 1942 an unexpected guest pays a visit to prime minister winston churchill at his official residence in the english countryside he is lord louis mountbatten churchill's chief of combined operations as it happens church was in the bath but that doesn't stop mountbatten he goes in and he drops into the water of the bath a block of what looks like ice church was a bit surprised by this but he notices the ice is not melting it's a very special kind of ice it's called pykrete pykrete is essentially ice mixed with wood slurry the effect the wood slurry has on the ice is it doubles the tensile strength of ice pykrete is a super ice as strong as concrete mountbatten plans to build giant iceberg aircraft carriers out of this new material pykrete was the invention of a very eccentric english scientist by the name of jeffrey pike he discovered by trial and error that if you mixed ordinary ice water with of all things sawdust it slowed down the rate at which the ice melted the result was a kind of ice concrete in the cold waters of the atlantic or the northern pacific a ship made of pykrete could remain stationed out to sea for years at a time mountbatten wanted a fleet of ice carriers to extend allied power across the globe the advantages of a pie creek carrier would be that it provides in essence a floating airfield a whole airfield where you can put squadrons of aircraft maintenance levels are low and the stuff is so dense they are virtually indestructible but the pycrete carrier would not simply be an iceberg which would melt over time it will be designed to last indefinitely the design concept was called habakkuk or hms habakkuk and this was to be a floating block of ice which was 2000 feet long and 300 feet wide constructed out of 40 feet blocks of pie crate the pie creek aircraft carrier was essentially a giant refrigerator it was composed of blocks of ice but through the middle rand pipes and through these pipes run coolant several times larger than the statue of liberty habakkuk would have been the largest floating construction ever built by comparison the biggest ship afloat at the time was the luxury liner queen mary which weighed in at 86 000 tons the habakkuk would weigh 2 million tons after mountbatten's visit churchill writes a memo on december 7th 1942 he writes the advantages of a floating island or islands even if only used as refueling depots for aircraft are dazzling the memo is stamped in red action this day but american help is required to undertake this vast construction project [Music] in august 1943 senior allied commanders meet at the hotel frontenac in canada mountbatten plans to sell his vision of using pycrete to admiral king head of the us navy during one session of the frontenac conference mountbatten brings in two blocks of ice one is ordinary ice the other is pycrete suddenly mountbatten takes out his revolver and he fires into the ordinary ice which just kind of splinters everyone is completely confused by what mountbatten is up to and he takes his revolver and he fires at the pike unit which is so strong of course that the bullet bounces off in fact it ricochets into admiral king and and nick's leg fortunately admiral king is unfazed and impressed by this unorthodox demonstration the americans agree to help build a prototype of habakkuk driving down from the aleutian islands a fleet of habitats could launch both fighters and giant b-29 bombers against japan building the habakkuk and its sisters ships would negate the need to capture japanese-held pacific islands for allied air bases [Music] tens of thousands of allied lives would be saved from jungle fighting but the ice ships are never launched the money and resources needed to build them are diverted to other projects the project was eventually cancelled for a number of reasons i think the first of which was because the war was at that stage being won by more conventional methods a lot of conventional aircraft were coming on stream and so the tide was turning against germany and also against japan by the time the prototype of the pie creek aircraft carrier was ready the war had moved on america was already building the atomic bomb it already started to build large numbers of new aircraft carriers in effect time had run out for pykrete the day of the maverick inventor was drawing to a close the need to develop revolutionary new technology took second place to winning the war with less risky methods america's vast industrial powerhouse was churning out thousands of conventional planes every month and small escort carriers could be mass produced by the hundreds giving the allies the vital platform they needed to dominate the seas but the ice ships although never launched have not been forgotten since world war ii there have been numerous proposals to build commercial ships or indeed floating islands made out of pykrete the latest idea is to build such an island that would house what would be an independent community free of other governments in the world and free of any kind of taxation world war ii saw the birth of a whole range of radical new technologies in the frenzy of innovation not all projects were successful some failed through lack of support or resources some because of technical limitations and some were simply too far ahead of their time many of these secret allied aircraft projects didn't make it into combat but that's not the point they were the products of great minds willing to think outside the obvious and that's what creates the spirit of progress these are individuals that are facing real world crises and challenges when you understand what they were trying to do sometimes these design choices as flawed or as odd or as weird as they may be start to make a lot better sense and it is very surprising sometimes when you see how these return in very dramatic form many years later in much more successful fashion charles zimmerman's original flying flapjack didn't really take off but his dream of vertical takeoff has inspired aircraft designers ever since when you take a look at the tilt rotor that you see today with the v22 or the xv15 that preceded it these are really the technical errors of the kind of approach and work that we first saw undertaken by charlie zimmerman with the b173 another world war ii maverick who lived to defy the odds was jack northrup after the war he tried to build more fantastic planes for the military including the xb35 flying wing bomber originally slated to bomb berlin but the military remained skeptical of flying wings that were difficult to control without the existence of computer technology after world war ii northrop built a large flying wing bomber and this proved very successful yet again though it was too radical for the military so it was never put into production and that cost northrop a lot of money as a result he lost control of his company but jack northrup would have the last laugh before he died he was taken to where northrop was working on the b2 and he looked at the assembled individuals there who included a galaxy of northrop designers and engineering personnel and he said now i know why god has let me live so long northrop's world war ii flying wing is the forefather of the b-2 spirit stealth bomber which flies over the mojave desert today just as its predecessor did when it first ventured into the skies the b-2 will still be in service on the 100th anniversary of the legendary xp-79 in the end northrop and his fellow mavericks proved one thing genius is the ultimate weapon

Channel: Mike Guardia

Views: 297,344

Rating: 4.6556406 out of 5

Keywords: allies, axis, world war ii, wwii, france, usa, american, britain, battle, war, wings, aviation, aircraft, air war, pilot, aviator, flight, simulator, history, military, discovery, channel, war thunder, fighter pilot, red flag, top gun, maverick, naval, air force, nazi, germany, raf, luftwaffe, trump, white house, pentagon, russia, dc

Id: 6b0yaWrr6YU

Length: 44min 34sec (2674 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2020