WWII Air Force Expert Rates 8 Dogfights In Movies | How Real Is It? | Insider

what's up he's just you know kind of looking side to side but uh not really doing anything if you know those bad guys out there and you know they're shooting going on the first thing you're going to do is at least just change direction hi Matt Zeeman I'm an instructor at the Air Force's area University at Maxwell Air Force Base I've been a pilot for 26 years today we'll be looking at World War II dogfight scenes from movies to determine how real they are [Music] we actually did get a couple of airplanes airborne and uh I mean those are all Amazing Stories the guys that are Loosely depicted in this scene Welch and Taylor they were out partying the night before all night poker game and they had just gone to bed like about an hour beforehand they heard the bombs going off they were still wearing tuxedo pants they jumped in a car going about 100 miles an hour getting shot at along the way true story so if you've got a plane chasing another one in level flight those bullets are going to be shooting out way ahead they're not going to be splashing down on the water right in front of it competition aerobatic planes and you know modern Fighters can kind of do a knife edge pass like that but uh you know a P40 couldn't do that if you're on its side flying through a basically a canyon of buildings like that uh you're you're gonna end up flying into the buildings the Japanese did fly extremely low so uh I guess there's some realism there but there were multiple accounts of guys seeing planes that were either scraping the belly fuel tank or uh uh you know scraping the the tips of their propellers Welch and Taylor and the other guys that actually did get in dogfights were up at higher altitudes not flying at Treetop level oh [Music] come on so mid-airs do happen in air combat when you got a lot of planes flying around the sky but to have that kind of coordination you know do a head-on pass and and you know cut right at the last second so that the the zeros would fly into each other is uh quite a bit of fiction [Music] um so that's one thing that I think Hollywood uh pretty often gets wrong in showing uh just this unlimited Firepower it's limited to begin with which is why you fire short bursts you don't waste your ammunition or Welch and Taylor didn't even have a full load of their guns when they got airborne [Music] he looks like a kid in an arcade game with both hands on the stick you know going left and right you don't do that uh your left hand's on the throttle the only time you really use both hands on the stick is you know if you're pulling back in kind of a brake turn I give it about a four enemy Fighters using a hand microphone like that if you're not wearing an oxygen mask that has a microphone in it uh guys will wear throat mics that uh it would kind of pick up the vibrations in your vocal cords and if you think about it you fly an airplane with your right hand you're definitely not uh gonna have time in the middle of combat to pick up a microphone and talk into it and put it back and then take control of the airplane that's uh completely unrealistic oh we call that a snapshot you know it's just kind of a quick Target of opportunity as bad guys pass in front of you the SBD dauntless it's a scout dive bomber but actually did pretty good air to air it had a about a three to one kill ratio so it actually shot down three enemy airplanes for every uh dauntless that got shot down by an enemy airplane so there's two kinds of enemy fire against aircraft there's barrage fire which are Flack which are shells that explode at kind of a predetermined altitude and then there's kind of the aim fire you know typical machine gun the Flack is those black bursts that are happening and those bursts are falling all the way down the die that's not terribly realistic you know that would be kind of blanketing a certain altitude and then you would have the machine gun fire that would be you know tracking the guy through the dive he's releasing later than they they really would so you would roll into that near vertical dive and and uh typically release the bomb at about 2000 feet to recover around 500 feet the reason they do dive bombing is because if you're in a level dive and you you know drop a drop a bomb there's a lot of error that can happen the steeper your dive is the more you're basically just dropping straight down it minimizes a lot of those those errors because they're in that vertical dive you don't want that bomb to be going right through your propeller Arc and hit your blade so they had a little trapeze when you would release the bomb it would swing the bomb outside of the the diameter of the propeller Arc uh to to be clear of the aircraft he does a decent job of kind of showing the g-forces as you pull out from a dive you're pulling pretty aggressively there foreign that is a fairly valid tactic you can't really see in the cloud so uh disappear into the cloud may fly around a little bit pop out a different side and hope that the bad guy doesn't find you and saying for the zero to just be right at that point in time as he comes out of the cloud to be right in a shooting position a little unrealistic the idea to you know kind of haul back with both hands is pretty accurate some guys would even black out call it g-lock g-induced loss subconscious but the idea was hey if if I'm still holding back on the stick the nose is is going up so I'm at least you know flying away from the ground and you know even if I pass out or release the stick the blood flow will start coming back and and I'll wake up but uh but yeah that defies the laws of physics you know to to release it you know about 200 feet there and and recover just skimming the deck of the carrier all right [Applause] that guy out in the water that's a Anson George gay he was the only guy to survive from his Squadron the entire Squadron got shot down but he watched the entire Battle of Midway bobbin in the water there uh and was eventually rescued but uh quite a quite a witness to history so he's jinking there which are you know doing kind of rapid changes in Direction so the Gunners can't track you easiest way to get killed is just fly in a straight line and be a predictable Target but you would not fly straight at an enemy ship like that and fly right at the guns I'd give this about a three and a half very accurate the the Brits operate in a what they call a three ship Vic uh at least early in the war and the idea was the two guys on the wings just follow the leader and you know he focuses on the target once they engage then everybody you know can start firing for this time period that's extremely accurate if anything that might be a little bit wider so they're not uh just you know close formation the whole time fuel for this one and two very accurate for lead to ask for a fuel check the wingmen uh burn more gas than lead does so leads making sure that they've got enough gas and the Spitfire didn't hold a lot uh just a little bit over an hour of flight time so to take off from an Airfield and in southeast England and get over to the French Coast uh you didn't have a whole lot of play time before you'd have to have to come back so very accurate consideration there even feel shall come out of the sun that's still a valid tactic today where you know try to get the sun behind you because it's really difficult to see from World War one until now that is still uh you know a a dominant tactic to try and you know come out of the Sun the only downside out of this one is uh you're not terribly effective patrolling down at you know wavetop level below 500 feet normally these guys are going to be up uh quite a bit higher you know 10 000 feet maybe even higher Spitfire doesn't carry a whole lot of ammo you're pretty limited so you want to do short bursts of about two seconds or so so he's doing a good job there he's missing the target though because he's not leading it to hit a point in space you've got to shoot out ahead of it so that you know the bullets and the target meet at the same point in time bad guys don't always just explode into a ball of flames it's pretty common you know if you damage the engine or the flight controls it'll just kind of be a gradual descent as opposed to you know the airplane just exploding or a wing coming off thank you so cool shot a little unrealistic you know our uh our our fearless Spitfire pilot has run out of gas which is not inaccurate for the amount of fuel the Spitfire carried and you know if you're engaged in combat over the coast planes do glide you know once the engine is out uh Spitfire can go about two miles for every uh thousand feet of altitude and I'd say he's at about a thousand feet so he can maybe go two miles so at that altitude he's got probably less than a minute that's a Stuka dive bomber and the stuke actually have Sirens installed on them they were air air powered that makes that very distinctive sound and they use that for psychological purposes but it's funny how you know any movie will show just about any kind of airplane that's in a dive will be making that screaming sound foreign to turn around and engage a fighter you're bleeding energy any turns that you make and you're you're just you're going down quicker so the ability to turn back shoot a guy and then turn back down the beach it's a little bit of a stretch I mean the guns work regardless so uh so theoretically yes it is possible to uh to shoot a guy down you know with the engine off um famous fighter pilot Robin oils got a kill in World War II he uh he forgot to switch fuel tanks and right when he was lined up on a bad guy and and uh so the engine quit but he was in a shooting position he took the shot he he uh he shot down the bad guy and then switched his fuel tanks and and was back in business you'd want to torch the plane so it doesn't fall on enemy hands the Spitfire was you know Britain's most advanced fighter at the time and you never want to let that technology fall into enemy hand so they can you know either reverse engineered or figure out how to negate the spitfire's advantages so definitely uh that was pretty realistic to torch the plane we still do that these days it just looks like the propellers on a stick mounted to the rest of the plane it ignores this entire you know V12 metal engine block that would be uh filling up that space so you were so close yeah I'd say overall I'd probably give Dunkirk about a 7.5 there's a lot that's really good love the fact that they use real airplanes [Music] we go lightning right behind Red Tails talks about the Tuskegee Airmen it was a all-african-american uh Fighter Group Amazing Story they train right here in Alabama and due to segregation at the time they they had to fight really two battles there was the battle against the Germans and there was the battle against segregation and and racism so the fact that the guys fly in straight and level he knows there's Fighters out there and he's just you know kind of looking side to side but uh not really doing anything you're just a Sitting Duck the easiest way to be a Target is fly in a straight line so if you know those bad guys out there and you know they're shooting going on the first thing you're going to do is at least just change direction so you're not a predictable Target low [Applause] planes don't do kind of little hockey stops like that uh rolling in behind somebody the Mustangs are keeping up with the the Jets which is completely unrealistic let's get some altitude [Music] gaining altitude to be able to get uh you know more of a energy differential was was pretty common but you wouldn't do it uh just by doing a loop right there you're you're trading in that uh kinetic energy for that potential energy so ideally if you see the enemy from a distance you're able to maneuver and start kind of a gentle climb so you get up above them I'd give Red Tails a three the only redeeming value is telling the story of the Red Tails which is a is an important story to tell so the Bombardier is actually flying the airplane on the bomb run when he's got control with the uh with the gun sight the corrections the the gun sites basically you know flying the plane on autopilot and so no matter what the the Bombardier is doing that will actually you know Steer the aircraft and uh the bombardier's got control on the bomb run oh zero inbound 10 o'clock level going to call zero ten o'clock that was uh you know accurate clock position sometimes in movies they'll they'll call a clock position you know like enemy Fighters three o'clock and they're looking to the left side but three o'clock is off to your right so head-on attacks were not uncommon they would actually fly kind of in a wall inverted uh to get as close to the bomber as possible and then you know use gravity to your advantage so you could you know pull back on the stick and just dive away and the Japanese did that as well because they knew that the the front side of the bomber was the the least defended so there you see kind of the catastrophic hit sometimes it's it's just a matter of uh you know hitting a fuel tank on the wing or hitting the engine or maybe even just killing the pilot uh where you don't necessarily get that pretty big Fireball overall this is a a pretty accurate clip I'd say they do a pretty good job with this I'd probably give it a a nine you see the brass shell casings coming out of the Wings that's pretty realistic a lot of people don't think they just think about the bullet coming out of the barrel but not all the brass that's uh that's uh getting expelled ramming the plane that did happen if you have a mid-air collision at those speeds that force uh it's just gonna it's just gonna be a cloud of of pieces and parts in that clip the zero you know looks relatively unscathed that's complete fiction [Music] if you cut off the tail of the plane the plane's not going to spin out of control it's just basically going to fall straight down because the tail gives it its stability in Pitch a few too many airplanes for a Navy Fighter Squadron at that time but what they're doing they're dropping their external fuel tank so to try and maximize range you would carry external fuel tanks that you would jettison once you make contact with the Enemy because they gave you extra gas but they're going to slow you down they're extra drag and extra weight pretty unrealistic attack run it's not a dive bomber you know typically the kamikazes were coming in at you know a lower angle for him to pitch up like that uh call it a pop-up attack at the top of the Apex you know when you uh pitch over and dive back down you're pretty slow right there at the at the peak when you're pitching over and extremely vulnerable because you're you're going so slow usually for the Kamikaze guys they're going to come in low and they're going to stay fairly low or they're going to start off higher and just have all the extra energy to do that dive to begin with but not do a kind of a pop-up and Diving attack they've got you know a couple very small attention to detail of the brass shell casings coming out but everything else just uh pretty terrible uh give it about a 1.5 St Paul's Cathedral there and Battle of Britain you know those highest two dog fights were leaving contrails that were just swirling masses over the skies that were visible by people of London and the English Countryside it was kind of unique in in Warfare to to watch these dog fights going on uh overhead [Music] you know take a hit in the engine oil starts spewing out covering the the windscreen that is uh that's pretty real you don't have windshield wipers so you're just kind of stuck with a black screen in front of you [Music] that's a really good job showing what it's like bailing out of a World War II fighter you know you slide the canopy back unhitch your your harness [Music] that guy's got a line twist you can't plan for that uh but that was a minor malfunction and he's he's a kind of bicycle kicking his legs to try and get a kind of a gyroscopic effect to unwind the the parachute Riser so that's that's extremely realistic one of the greatest things about this movie was how many airplanes they used the fact that they use real airplanes uh it was one of the greatest Parts about this movie they joked that they were one of the world's largest Air Forces when they did this this is one of the best ones out there I give this a solid nine go get him little friends that's accurate the bomber guys called the fighters Little Friends although the fact that they have p51s p-51s weren't in combat in uh at this point in 1943 they came along a lot later [Music] the Americans operated in a four ship formation you still got that Mutual support you'd be in a flight of four aircraft with two elements or two sections each one with a you know a lead and a supporting wingman so that that's pretty accurate [Music] so this we would call a high aspect merge where you go head to head and merge with the Enemy a head-on shot like that again is a really difficult shot those Fighters are very small and to try to hit those targets at those closing speeds are are pretty difficult but when they show the merge and the and the Mustangs kind of go up and engage them uh that's it's pretty good and they're in a loose enough formation that they can you know the wingmen are able to keep sight of lead but also engage uh the enemy themselves as opposed to just just flying tight formation Fighters aren't really flying that close uh you have to do that just for you know cinematography purposes to get both aircraft in the frame Gunner what's wrong I'm running out of and this is where it departs from reality there is no way that the co-pilot would leave his seat you know in combat and go take the place of of a tail Gunner [Music] but the fact that you can't control when when a plane you know goes out of control that it might you know fly into a another aircraft or a bomber like that stuff like that did happen so again when you have that many airplanes in uh in that uh you know relatively small piece of Sky stuff happens I'd probably give it about a seven and a half say my favorite World War II dogfight movie is probably the Battle of Britain they're using real airplanes and telling a pretty accurate story if you enjoyed this video click the link above for more

Channel: Insider

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Length: 19min 46sec (1186 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023