The Dark History Of Naval Warfare [4K] | Angle Of Attack | Spark

[Music] el centro california young naval pilots come here to learn how to drop bombs [Music] the first couple flights that you do it's almost like a head explosion because there's so much going on you're learning a dive bombing pattern which is what they would use in world war ii and korea you roll 135 degrees inverted roll out and start screaming towards the target [Music] you get wrapped up in this oh my gosh this thing can go so fast and is so cool to look at but you're forgetting the reason why they were built and why they exist and why we're trained to fly them this is the story of a weapon of war naval aviation ever since world war ii aircraft launched from the sea have played an outsized role in america's wars you are a part of a lineage of people that have been witness to the biggest events of the 20th and now 21st century [Music] but this lineage has been precarious as warfare evolved the fortunes of naval aviation seesaw more than once it was written off as impractical too dangerous or simply obsolete this is a story of repeated challenges in engineering and human moral challenges as well it won't be easy to think oh i'm just gonna go out and drop a bomb and if it kills somebody it's okay that took some time and definitely some reflection and i'm ready the human in the cockpit but how long will he or she even be there [Music] should automation be allowed to replace these pilots the last fighter pilot's been born someone might say that naval aviation the machines and the people in 100 years story and an argument without end [Music] [Applause] hmm [Music] in the teens and twenties only a handful of daredevils and visionaries could imagine that flimsy biplanes and makeshift wooden decks would one day change the nature of war [Music] hundreds of young aviators risked their lives to bring this technology to the fore [Music] within 20 years they'd created a super win [Music] in world war ii carriers proved decisive in every major battle in the pacific [Music] naval aviation ends world war ii at the top of the warfare mountain they've gone from nowhere to being the biggest and baddest weapon in the world or so they think [Applause] [Applause] the bombs that destroyed hiroshima and nagasaki also destroyed established military doctrine soon after the u.s created a new independent air force and placed it front and center the air force was assigned the mission for delivering atomic bombs they were the only ones who had the capability so that was the logical assignment the navy could see that if wars of the future were going to be atomic and we the navy didn't have a capability we were going to be extinct the navy staked its future on a massive new carrier the first since the war a whole new design abruptly the secretary of defense stopped construction there's no reason for having a navy he declared the air force can do anything the navy can do this was a blow to the heart a dagger to the heart of naval aviation [Music] the people who support the big bomb aboard the big bomber run by the air force think they've got it knocked they think they've won the great bureaucratic war they've they're going to be the dominant service and then there is korea [Music] on june 25th 1950 communist north korea invaded the republic of korea to the south korea came as a complete surprise to us the bases that we had planned to use for the air force in south korea were overrun and captured by the north koreans almost immediately just a sliver of land remained in south korea's control the u.s military stared at its options now its nearest air bases were hundreds of miles away and nuclear weapons what use were they if north korea's ally the soviet union also had the bomb the situation in korea is so critical that we in the navy must give the eighth army the maximum practical support i direct that the commander of the seventh fleet the commander of carrier division 15 he directed to provide the maximum possible air gunfire support make it move [Music] in a striking reversal the military brass dusted off four of its world war ii carriers and rushed them to the korean peninsula the carrier was back [Music] the navy starts building one super carrier per year forestall saratoga independence ranger kitty hawk constellation for the next decade we add eight more super carriers to the fleet the korean war fought mile by mile with conventional weapons lasted 37 long months the navy and marine corps lost over 500 planes i lost 22 of the guys in my squadron when i went to korea 22 you never forget that you come back from a tour you've been the commanding officer there's the single mother the only thing she had in her life was her son he was 23 years of age he was entrusted to you you were to get him ready take him over there bring him home and you didn't they got to go visit her you gotta sit on a park bench you gotta let her hold your hand you just gotta sit there and go through it [Music] during korea a new aircraft was flying off carriers the helicopter ideal for rescue missions in the winter of 1950 a helicopter would join the effort to save the life of a 24 year old pilot named jesse brown jesse brown had packed a lot into his 24 years he'd had to as the first combat aviator to breach the navy's color line jesse grew up in hattiesburg mississippi his father was a sharecropper he always wanted to be a naval aviator but he gave up the idea because blacks were not accepted into aviation he got a scholarship to ohio state university and a navy lieutenant took a liking to jesse and encouraged him to put in for it which jesse did and he was accepted into the navy's flight program he arrives in pensacola florida which is very much a southern city the entire navy establishment from you know the officers club to you know standing in line for a meal he was alone there was no one like him yet when he's in the airplane he generates a certain amount of freedom only to have to land again and and face the social inequalities that that existed as part of america in 1948 jesse earned his wings and joined a squadron on the uss leyte on the carrier the atmosphere seemed different there's a sense of acceptance amongst aviators who share a common goal and a common capability it was in the tight quarters of the carrier that jesse brown got to know fellow aviator thomas hudner jesse was a very friendly person they joked that he by far got more mail than anybody else on the ship which was probably true and he was just a person we all admired and loved on december 4th 1950 hudner and brown were assigned a reconnaissance mission by all appearances routine it was cold [Music] we had six aircraft in our flight going up for armed reconnaissance [Music] one of the pilots in the flight saw that there was some vapor coming out of jesse's airplane and shortly after that jesse called out that he was losing oil pressure he couldn't stay airborne was going to have to make a crash landing [Music] he landed with such force that there's no question the mind of any of us but that he had perished in that crash we circled around there and we saw that jesse had opened the canopy and he was waving to us but for some reason he didn't get out of the airplane [Music] i felt that the chances were reasonably good to pull him out of the cockpit and save his life so i made the decision to make a crash landing that's a wheels up landing close enough to him when i got to jesse's plane i could see that the reason he didn't get out was the way the aircraft had buckled it his knee was caught in there and it just couldn't move [Music] he lapsed in and out of consciousness i tried to reach in to do something but there's about two feet of snow on the ground i couldn't do anything without holding on with one hand and doing my best to keep my balance when i heard the helicopter it was like manna from heaven but when he saw jesse his jaw dropped between the two of us we couldn't get a firm footing on anything jesse was pinned in so badly that we couldn't move him now is about 3 30 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon temperature is about five or ten above zero and with darkness coming he was going to get a lot colder a lot faster the pilot said that he couldn't fly that helicopter in that area after dark it didn't have instruments and he said it was suicide for me to have stayed there i've always felt bad about the decision but there was really no choice i like to think that he was not conscious at that time [Music] when we left jesse it was a farewell really and unspoken farewell [Music] there's a new magic in the air it's called jets and jets change the game for carriers as much as they do for land-based air power maybe even more jets assured in a futuristic world where man travel through the stratosphere at twice the speed of sound [Music] but they were not built to land on a deck the transition to jet aircraft almost killed aircraft carriers [Music] flying jets in the early days off of carriers was at best difficult and at times near suicidal [Music] the brunt of the transition would be borne by the pilots it was hairy we didn't have a lot of experience i took command of a jet fighter squadron i had one hour of jet time one hour in a jet aircraft when i took command of a squadron that was going to deploy i had people reporting to me who had never been in one of those airplanes they gave me a handbook and said when you're ready come down and i'll give you a plane so i read the book i got in the plane i started it and the guy gave me an up check and i took off i was a jet pilot the navy was slow to recognize the new problems posed by jets when a propeller plane comes aboard a carrier the pilot takes away the power the engine stops turning so the plane settles on the deck a jet comes in and it takes something like 35 seconds for the spindle to unwind we were going faster there was no radar there was not enough room on the carrier so he hits the deck and he bounces and he goes over the barricade float over the barriers land in this pack pakover i've seen seven or eight aircraft on fire in september of 1951 on the uss essex a banshee twin jet fighter missed its marks and drove into a pack of planes on the forward flight deck seven men were killed [Music] naval aviation during these early days of jets was actually worse in some ways than it was during the golden age of wooden airplanes and iron men in the 20s and 30s a lot of people died if pilots couldn't get jets aboard carriers and make them work well that carrier part of naval aviation was gone but what looked like impossible problems turned out to have elegant solutions we see three great things come along which make jets practical on aircraft carriers the first is the angled deck the landing section of the deck is slightly canted all of a sudden you're not crashing into a deck load of airplanes in front of you you get another chance another thing that they got the first automated landing system this is a stabilized system that would provide them an optical landing cue of when they were in the right flight path to come in on that angled deck and then finally the british came up with a steam catapult by the mid-1950s we're finally producing our first new aircraft carriers the four ships of the forestall class by the late 1950s the fastest highest flying most heavily armed most powerful airplanes in the world are amazingly fighter bombers flying off of aircraft carriers more than ever the field was a magnet for the brightest the cockiest it was naval aviators in 1959 who crowded into america's new space program liftoff and the great white rocket with its human cargo astronauts alan shepard john glenn scott carpenter wally schirra later neil armstrong they had all learned their craft as test pilots developing the fighting capacity of jets in the midst of the cold war these planes and their pilots were emblems of american swagger crisp modern and increasingly lethal [Music] we were struggling with the problem of trying to get a nuclear weapons capability then we developed the capability with jets we could take an aircraft that we'd specially designed put that two thousand pound package under it launch it off the carrier [Music] and that weapon had the explosive yield of a million tons of explosives one million tons the very nature of carrier aviation its mobility would make it for years the most feared element in the nuclear standoff the important thing was it impressed the soviets i don't think we appreciate yet the concern that the soviets had about those aircraft carriers the soviets knew precisely where our nuclear bombers were based they knew precisely where all of our nuclear weapons in europe were located they knew where our intercontinental missiles in the united states were located but they didn't know where the carrier was they could be any points they could be in the indian ocean they could be in the north atlantic it could be in the mediterranean north pacific south pacific china sea wherever and the soviets couldn't keep track of them all and so that became a threat to them on the open sea the cold war played itself out as a string of cat and mouse games deadly serious but with a touch of the absurd the soviets would play a game with you they would come out and intercept the carrier to test the defenses we the pilots used to like to go up and fly up next to the bear airplane and they had these big cockpits and we're in a little like little cockpit so i got up next to this guy and he looked at me and i looked at him and we're probably uh 100 feet away maybe something like that and the guy gave me the finger like that and i gave him the finger back and then i gave him two fingers and and we had and then he gave me two fingers and the next thing we were kind of smiling each other and the next thing i knew the guy and it was long ways away but i could say he held up a playboy and and there was a centerfold in there so while the missions were dangerous on a certain level on a certain basic human level uh sometimes i think well we're all kind of the same nuclear weapons were folded into the routines of carrier life day after day the men followed their procedures rehearsed for the unthinkable then on october 21st 1962 the unthinkable became less remote i get a call on a sunday about noon it says get down to your ship get it underway and head for the caribbean i said all my sailors are in new york you know they're up there chasing girls around which is what they're supposed to be doing and i hope they're having a good time i said no get underway right now so we head for the caribbean i am carrying a hundred nuclear weapons that are to be a backup support for an aircraft carrier that's there that has a hundred nuclear weapons [Music] we were pretty serious that we'd make a nuclear weapons attack against cuba [Music] in the dramatic days that followed carriers would share the stage with another less celebrated branch of naval aviation reconnaissance is where we have our roots and in the cuban missile crisis naval reconnaissance was incredibly important routine surveillance had produced strong evidence that the soviets were building nuclear missile sites in cuba if operational they could strike the united states within minutes president kennedy ordered a blockade of the island but he also fixed his sights on a row of prefab buildings in jacksonville florida home to a naval unit whose jets were equipped with cameras uniquely designed for low-flight high-resolution photography commander william ecker received his brief and in the early morning of october 23rd took off with his wingman in minutes they could see cuba they make their runs over the missile sites and they see incredible things going on underneath people running in every direction they see the missiles on trailers they see the launch pads they see the supporting equipment you name it they get pictures of it as ecker landed back at the base the crew was waiting to rush the film to the lab [Music] on october 25th at the u.n ambassador adly stevenson pressed his soviet counterpart do you ambassador zoran deny that the ussr has placed and is placing medium and intermediate range missiles and sites in cuba yes or no [Music] until hell freezes over if that's your decision the soviet ambassador to the u.n denied that they were placing ballistic missiles in cuba and here hadley stevenson motions and income few people from the cia with these boards [Music] and echo to his amazement sees the photos that he and his men have been taking suddenly being presented to the world as the best evidence in the court of world opinion [Music] just three days after the showdown at the u.n the soviets agreed to remove the missiles from cuba [Music] the cold war equilibrium was restored but it would not hold for long [Music] a lot of bombs were dropped on targets that had already been destroyed many times over the pilots were getting the heck shot out of them and every now and then one of them is a skipper what are we doing in this crazy war it was a real real time in the wilderness for everyone involved in that conflict but certainly naval aviation the vietnam era a time of turmoil and discontent would be one of naval aviation's lowest points for the pilots the discontent came early in 1965 they were tasked with a massive bombing campaign but with important targets off limits the bombing campaign in the north was called rolling thunder the pilots referred to it as rolling blunder they really hated it because the white house in fact the president himself would mark up the targets and we must only approach in this direction because if you come in this direction you fly over a public school president johnson was waging war by proxy against the communists in vietnam and indirectly the soviets he was treading gingerly to avoid a wider war ifong was a port city in in north vietnam and haifang had a four mile circle around it that was a no-fly zone but i could look down and what did i see ships soviet ships materials being unloaded and unloaded and unloaded could we get it no the answer is no is this the way to fight a war well not when you're on the tip of the fracking spear and the lead's coming up at you are you going to survive or are you not going to survive are you going to survive or is that guy down there shooting at you going to survive and and it's black and white there's no gray there's no lawyers there's no politicians none of that [ __ ] it's he dies or you die and so you make your decision and to me that's war it's nasty business it's brutal business it's why if we're gonna go to war you better get it right to start with to make matters worse the tools of war were still crude [Music] could take dozens of bombs to hit one target the munitions used in those days were were not gps or laser guided you're dropping iron bombs at that time [Music] and there was a lot of collateral damage that went along with that kind of low tech that existed back in the vietnam era the u.s would rain down more tonnage on the small nation of vietnam than it had dropped in all of world war ii [Music] back home many americans recoiled what they saw [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] by the early 70s anger about the war had merged with other deep-seated resentments [Applause] [Music] [Applause] when the uss kitty hawks set sail for vietnam in february of 1972 it carried on board all of america's racial divides naval aircraft carriers are a microcosm of america there's a class society that exists on the ship the captain is the king and the ruler and the officer corps are the directors of things that go on enlisted men are there working-class individuals and that's where most of our african-americans existed [Music] you would just end up being a mess cook for a while or you clean compartments for a while [Music] if you try to get out of mess cooking for over 90 days try to quit cleaning toilets you might had a long struggle [Music] by october the crew of the kitty hawk had been deployed for over 200 days working around the clock eight hours on four hours off [Music] on october 11th the workload was lighter more time for stories to spread about the brawls that had broken out between blacks and whites during a recent shore leave midday sailor perry pettis made his way to the deck with two other african americans as we three were walking across the flight deck a couple of marines approached us and said you blacks quote you blacks can't walk in over twos we're thinking yeah right kept on walking made the comment again please i'm gonna have two marines tell me i can't walk with two other friends next thing i know my neck is under a night stick with my body up on an e6 aircraft with a night stick under me what the heck [Music] when captain marlon townsend learned of the incident he quickly overruled the marines and apologized but it was too late all hell broke [Music] i hate to say it but it was blacks against whites it was an all-out riot [Music] people being beat up for no particular reason just because you happen to be of a difficult [Music] that was an ugly night that was a ugly night [Music] it took 12 hours to end the fighting and it would prove a turning point in naval history it shook the the entire guts of the entire navy i don't think the navy had a choice it was long past overdue to make some changes in equality equal treatment equal rights equal access [Music] after vietnam the number of blacks in the navy both enlisted men and officers rose steadily and more change was coming if there are women who want to go to sea and to serve their country in that capacity and we can find a way to make it possible for them to do so rosemary mariner was one of the first women to enter navy pilot training and years later to land a jet on a carrier deck there were some who were adamantly opposed to this including the head of naval air training he made it very clear to us that this was not his idea and others were very supportive [Music] one of the most important figures in my career was my first commanding officer captain ray lambert who was one of a handful of black men who were naval aviators who had flown tactical aircraft and when i first reported to the squadron he sat me down in his office he says rosemary you're always going to have a tough time because you're short he was a big man and he said i used my size to help me establish myself in naval aviation you're going to have to figure some other way [Music] you cannot out guy the guys so most women develop their own style i happen to have attended catholic girls schools and i adopted the mother superior style keeping a straight face most of the time and trying to not overreact mariner was 40 and a senior officer by the time the law that barred women from combat was repealed in 1993 [Music] by the turn of the century it was no longer unusual to see women pilots in fighter jets even though in my day we had these overt restrictions on us i often thought that black men were having a more difficult time than women were it was still rare to see a black man get it all the way to the top naval aviation is the hardest circle to break into a majority of african-americans have been in patrol plane or helicopter aviation and so when you go down to the jet training basis you see very few african-americans we need to fix that [Music] the attacks on the world trade center on 911 would usher in a new and difficult military mission as much about winning civilian hearts and minds as defeating an enemy and that mission would be aided by a common tool gps global positioning which was transforming the craft of naval aviation and the expectations riding on its pilots after the 911 attacks carriers rushed to the persian gulf and have remained a constant presence since eric doyle has flown many missions in iraq and afghanistan i wanted to be a pilot since i knew what flying was early on it was just the pure thrill of flying it wasn't until flying the f-18 in training that those realities of actually going to war dropping bombs on an enemy start to become a reality doyle flew one of the first missions in the iraq invasion of 2003. his memory of that night offers a window into the recent air wars of the middle east [Music] we had a pretty idea that shock and awe was was about to happen and then at some point we did know we were contemplating how many aircraft we thought we would lose or if we'd lose any how many would it be folks from our squadron and it could be me you take your person out of it you take yourself and you use aircraft and pilot you don't say me eric or you stand [Music] [Applause] on the second night me and three other aircraft were going after a missile production facility carrying multiple gps guided weapons so we're pushing into iraq we have our target that's you know number of miles out in front of us and we're seeing all this fire coming our way it looked like somebody spraying a water hose then we'd also see surfstair missiles being launched and you know talk about some of them their size of telephone poles and it's just a very strange you know kind of out of body experience you're so focused on what you're trying to hit that all the philosophical thoughts about what i'm doing why i'm doing it why are we here that's honestly out the window do everything in your power to absolutely have pretty darn close to 100 certainty that bomb is going where it needs to go or that piece of ordnance and that's where i think we stay you know emotionally involved i dropped four two thousand pound weapons at once and all four hit their intended targets [Music] and now the now the reality that i've been airborne for five hours i need to find my way back to an aircraft carrier and land on it now that whole threat starts to seep back in your brain when you're flying an airplane at night over the water it's black just to the point there are no visual references out there it's like flying inside a basketball it's 100 trust not only to find the ship but which way is up and which way is down because it's all unknown my heart rate was probably as high as it was when i was in country [Applause] it's definitely still regardless of what you're doing one of the more if not the most intense things you do just trying to land that plane [Music] it isn't until after you land back aboard the ship does the adrenaline slowly drain out of your system and that's when you really start to look back on what happened and i think you go through you know every emotion you can imagine it isn't uh the jumping out of the jet high-fiving everybody it's it's sobering [Music] you're the one hitting that button to you know send a 2000 pound bomb into the air it's a sobering experience and it should be [Music] no one knows how many civilians were killed from the air in iraq and afghanistan it is far fewer than in the days of iron bombs before laser guidance and gps [Music] still each was a human loss and a propaganda loss in the struggle to win over hearts and minds 2011 marks the tenth year of war in the middle east fought village to village house by house once the conflicts shifted to the ground carrier jets had to get used to a support role much of it routine [Music] you may fly your six to nine hour mission and never really communicate with the soldier level guys you may never drop a weapon you may never do anything at all that is really uh a tangible act in support of them i'm not going to lie to you it'll be it's a drudgery after two long draining ground wars the costs of naval aviation make it a likely target for cuts add in a revolution in technology and its future seems once again wrapped in questions it's very possible within a matter of a decade or so that naval aviators will fly strike missions and never leave the ship [Music] uav is unmanned aerial vehicle basically it's a model airplane the air force uses them for reconnaissance and strikes which are controlled five six thousand miles away easily from nevada right now there's a functional limit of about nine to 11 g's that an airplane can pull you take the human being out and the need to keep his fingers toes and eyeballs still attached and suddenly you can make airplanes that might take 15 20 30 g's and eventually we won't have to have a pilot at all you could have some really good video gamer who's 18 19 years old at the controls [Music] my recent experience in afghanistan there's unmanned uh uavs out there flying around with us in the same area it always kind of seemed like something that that'll eventually be there it's something from the movies and then actually talking to the operators hundreds if not thousands of miles away is interesting it's uh surreal maybe a better word an experienced combat aviator is going to think twice before he or she pulls the trigger and there is that possibility that when you remove the human from being on position over the target area that decision to squeeze the trigger and release ordnance you divorce yourself and your your feelings away from what happens in combat [Music] kingsville texas the naval training center where a new generation of pilots is being prepared for combat they seem prepared also for the revolution coming their way you can't hide the fact that unmanned aerial vehicles are definitely the future uh the capabilities the the ability for them to stay you know aloft for hours and hours they have better eyes than we do they have longer legs they don't have a bladder if you take the emotion out of it they're going to make as military us a lot stronger i think we're close i think it's uh we've got the coolest plans we can make and after this it's going to be uh the robots and nobody else [Music] there's a sense that you know they're making the last cowboys here kind of kind of feeling and maybe we'll get to tell our grandkids that you know we went ripping around the sky back in the day in fighters and that was that was a lot of fun i think it's a great chapter in american history but manned flight might be coming towards towards its end [Music] i'm generally an optimist when it comes to naval aviation basing options for the united states are in decline worldwide and the ability to operate from the sea is a capability that we're going to need more of not less but if you're one of those young men and women who is getting ready to go into the navy or the marine corps and wants those wings of gold do you really want this job is it going to go away on you in the middle of your career there has been jokes in the past you know hey the last fighter pilot's been born but the threat is always going to drive the show and there is going to be a demand you can't do everything with a robot or a computer [Music] the pilot is held accountable for a decision that's made on scene it's difficult to imagine when we can get to a point where we can hold a computer a piece of software accountable for a life and death decision we are moral beings and at least machines at this point in time are not roughly 10 miles that's what i would miss the most if airplanes went the way of drones that there the opportunity for that kind of personal excellence and that sense of human excellence as expressed in controlling the technology in a moral sense will be lost we're a part of a pretty rich history and you guys are part of that and you're gonna you're gonna make history i ask you to embrace that feel proud of it and uh do us proud [Applause] [Music] it's a hundred years since a foolhardy pilot set out to land a plane mid-ocean on an improvised wooden deck the pilots with the gold wings inherit a history that's turbulent [Music] and if the years ahead are the same that can hardly come as a surprise [Music] you

Channel: Spark

Views: 235,691

Keywords: naval aviation, history of naval aviation, angle of attack, military history, us navy, aircraft carrier, drones, the navy, world war ii, vietnam, battle footage, war, aerial battles, strike missions, navy men, navy women, fighter planes, fighter pilots, aviation, aviation documentary, military documentary, navy documentary, aircraft documentary, history documentary, history lovers, navy history, air planes, blue angels, Flyboy, special air service

Id: IcSU0YIGGTE

Length: 53min 36sec (3216 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 31 2021