World War II with Tom Hanks (2026) s01e12 Episode Script
Battle for The Skies
1
Sub extracted from file & improved by
In 1942 and into 1943,
hundreds of thousands of Americans
descend on the east of England
to live, fight, and maybe die
in the joint effort to defeat
Nazi Germany from the air.
Combat at 25,000 feet
and 300 miles per hour
has never been attempted before.
The physical, mental,
and emotional challenges
will be unique.
Victory in World War II
will be largely determined
by who controls the skies,
the German Luftwaffe or
the Allied Air Forces.
[suspenseful music]
All wars changed the world,
but none of them changed the world
like the Second World War did.
Japan's on the march,
Germany's on the march.
[suspenseful music]
No one can imagine the nightmare
they're about to unleash,
the most destructive
war in human history.
Suddenly, the world
is turned upside down
and all hell is let loose.
The West is stunned by
the speed of the advance.
[dramatic music]
You get the Allies
led by the big three:
Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin,
men who are dealing with
immensely complicated questions.
It's the biggest military
operation of human history.
The Allies have to come together,
not just militarily,
but industrial scale.
It's a global perspective.
They have to fight in every climate,
from the Arctic to the
jungles of the Pacific,
to the deserts of Africa,
and the depths of the ocean.
[dramatic music]
But there was no certainty of victory.
It was going to be a
horrific bloodbath.
We see humans at their absolute worst,
how they treat other human beings.
And we see them at their absolute best,
willing to give their lives
that others might live.
World War II was a struggle
in which there could be one victor
and one vanquished.
[dramatic music]
[explosion booming]
[siren blaring]
[suspenseful music]
[Tom] 1942, the Third Reich
is building elaborate
coastal defenses in Europe.
As they continue to battle
the Soviets in the East,
the Germans know that
it's only a matter of time
before Britain and America
attack from the west.
From the English channel
to the plains of Russia,
Germany controls most of Europe.
[dramatic music]
Hitler has turned Europe
into an apparently
impregnable fortress.
But as people said at the time,
yes, but he forgot to
put a roof over it.
And the Allied bombers are
going to take advantage of that.
[pensive music]
[Tom] In the First World War,
both sides bombed each
other to little effect.
But as aviation evolves,
a new concept of warfare
develops in the 1920s and '30s
strategic bombing.
Its proponents are a group of officers
from the US Air Corps Tactical School.
They come to be known
as the Bomber Barons.
[Robert] The theory is
we'll use this novel weapon in a
novel way,
not to attack the enemy's armies,
to attack the enemy's homeland,
his factories,
his infrastructure,
destroying his economy,
and thus making it
impossible for the enemy
to make war.
These air power advocates
say this is a better way to fight war.
No need for that horrible trench
deadlock from World War I.
That's the old way.
The new way is strategic bombing.
[pensive music]
East Anglia is the England
of little churches,
hedges, fields, medieval buildings,
and it's turned into one gigantic
aircraft carrier.
[Tom] In the spring of 1942,
the US Eighth Air Force
begins construction
on dozens of air bases,
transforming a quiet
corner of East England
into one of the most vital fronts
of the entire Second World War.
[dramatic music]
[Dan S.] It's flat, it's
perfect for airfields.
[propeller whirring] [dramatic music]
So you get this massive, massive
influx of American bombers
carrying the most destructive
weapons ever produced,
and just as strikingly,
young American airmen.
[suspenseful music]
They all had grown up dreaming
of flying above the clouds
at over 300 miles per hour,
something their parents
and grandparents
could never imagine.
And all of a sudden,
here's this opportunity.
The English used to
complain, they're oversexed,
they're overpaid, and
they're over here.
[dramatic music]
[plane engine rumbling]
[Tom] The Royal Air Force
has been striking the German
homeland for two years.
Take off, off you go, off you go, over.
[bomber rumbling]
[Tom] Prime Minister Winston Churchill
understands how important such
raids are for British morale.
But the RAF pays a grievous cost.
In these early months of the war,
there were raids with hardly
any aircraft coming back.
And the most important
lesson they took away from it
is that daytime bombing
was a very hazardous
thing to undertake.
[pensive music]
[suspenseful music]
[Dan S.] Arthur Harris is
the man put in charge
of Britain's Bomber Command.
And it's his idea to
switch to night bombing,
to use night as a cloak to
protect these bomber forces
so that they can drop their bombs
and they have a better
chance of making it home.
[explosions banging]
[Robert] So what they're doing
is merely area bombing.
They're flying over
German cities at night
and letting loose their bomb loads.
And that means civilian casualties.
[dramatic music]
[Dan S.] There's a lot of retribution
in this British strategy.
The Blitz had smashed
British cities and factories
in the winter of 1940-41.
And the Brits plan to smash
German society so badly
that it knocks them out of the war.
They sowed the wind,
and now they are going
to reap the whirlwind.
[pensive music]
[Tom] Meeting in Casablanca,
President Roosevelt, Prime Minister
Churchill and their staffs
strategize how to continue
the Allied assault
on the Third Reich.
[Robert] One of the major outcomes
of the Casablanca Conference
is the Allies declared
unconditional surrender
as their war aim.
But something else happens
at Casablanca as well,
an argument on air strategy
between the British and Americans.
[suspenseful music]
[Tom] The US Army Air Force,
particularly its commander,
General Henry Hap Arnold,
insists that daylight precision bombing
on critical wartime industries
will be more effective.
[Robert] And as so often
in World War II,
American expectations come up
against British experience.
Churchill is gonna go
to FDR and tell him that,
"Look, your daylight precision
stuff, it's not gonna work.
We tried it, it didn't work.
That's why we are doing
bombing operations at night.
And that is the way forward."
Well, Hap Arnold gets wind of this.
[dramatic music]
Arnold's a pioneer in aviation,
taught by the Wright
brothers how to fly,
and he is a believer
in strategic air power.
And when the British say,
"Hey, you guys should bomb
at night just like we do,"
he says, "No, no, air power
could be used in a better way."
[Tom] The American plan
rests on a cutting-edge device,
the Norden bombsight.
[pensive music]
The Norden bombsight
is an analog computer.
You punch in various data:
wind speed, altitude,
wind direction, air pressure,
and it correlates all
those things together
and tells you exactly
when to drop the bomb.
According to the advertising slogans,
it can drop a bomb in a
pickle barrel at 18,000 feet.
[Tom] Americans claimed
the Norden bombsight,
which requires daylight
and clear weather,
promises greater precision
and therefore fewer
civilian casualties.
[A.J.] So Henry Arnold and his
advisors come up with this plan,
the Combined Bomber Offensive,
which means the British
bombing at night
and the Americans bombing
precision targets
during the day.
[Col. Douds] The Americans
are gonna sell it as this
round the clock bombing.
And this utterly appeals to Churchill,
with the idea that his adversary
will never catch a break.
[dramatic music] [plane rumbling]
[Tom] Attacking an
enemy from 25,000 feet
presents unique challenges.
[bomber rumbling]
Temperatures dip below
50 degrees Fahrenheit.
If an airman's supply of oxygen
is cut off for more than 60 seconds,
he will die.
[suspenseful music]
[Robert] You look out the
window as a crewman on a B-17
and you begin to see black puffs.
[suspenseful music]
And they might not look too dangerous.
[explosion banging]
Until one actually makes contact.
[Martin] The most infamous
German weapon of them all
was the Flak 88 millimeter gun.
[anti-aircraft gun firing]
It's capable of sending
29-pound explosive projectiles
to altitudes approaching 30,000 feet.
[suspenseful music]
[anti-aircraft gun firing]
[Col. Douds] The dilemma with flak is
you can't maneuver to avoid it,
so the best you can do is sit
tight and grit your teeth.
[suspenseful music]
Once the flak stops, there's silence.
It's a deathly silence because
they know what's coming.
[Pilot] There's four
of 'em, one o'clock high.
[Gunner] They're coming around.
[suspenseful music]
[John] German fighter pilots
are seasoned combat veterans.
Many of them have hundreds of kills
'cause they've been engaged
in this war since 1939.
[Col. Douds] The best way to
kill a German fighter
is to send Allied fighters
to shoot them down.
But when the United States
starts to bomb Germany proper,
their fighters don't have the range
to be able to escort bombers
all the way to a target.
[suspenseful music]
[Robert] So the B-17 is
bristling with machine guns
around the fuselage of the aircraft.
[bomber rumbling]
[Pilot] Three planes,
nine o'clock, coming around.
[machine gun firing]
[suspenseful music]
[Pilot] Too fast, six
o'clock up, coming in.
[machine gun firing]
[John] It really is a flying fortress.
[machine gun firing]
[A.J.] Bomber crews were these
interdependent societies
in which every person was dependent
upon the person sitting next to 'em
and the person sitting behind them.
[Pilot] Breaking 11, breaking 11.
[Gunner] I got him.
[machine gun firing]
[suspenseful music]
[Pilot] B-17 out of
control at three o'clock.
C'mon, you guys, get out
that plane, bail out.
Come on, get out of there.
[suspenseful music] [bombers rumbling]
[John] A few miles from
the actual target,
the bomber will start
what's called the bomb run.
It's all done visually.
You have to hold
altitude, hold air speed,
and hold heading so the
bombardier can dial in
on the Norden bombsight.
'Cause if you don't hit the target,
you gotta come back again.
[machine gun firing]
[fighter planes roaring]
[Robert] War sometimes breaks down to
individual moments of terror.
[suspenseful music]
[fighter plane roaring]
[machine gun firing]
You're watching other planes
being literally blown out of the sky.
And you have to drop
the bombs with precision
and then make it out
again on the way home.
[Bombardier] Bombs away!
[bombs whistling]
[explosions booming] [bombers rumbling]
[pensive music]
[Tom] In combat conditions,
the accuracy of the Norden bombsight
is not as precise as
the Air Force predicted.
The casualties are
greater than they feared.
[pensive music]
[plane rumbling]
These missions would come
back with 10, 20% losses.
And of course the pilots
are highly trained,
highly technical people that
are very difficult to replace.
[dramatic music]
[Dan S.] No one in history has
ever tried strategic bombing
on this scale before.
As generals, and
strategists, and air marshals
are working out the future of air war,
these man are guinea pigs.
[dramatic music]
[suspenseful music]
[Tom] Mission by mission,
the Eighth Air Force
slowly develops the methods
needed to damage their
intended targets.
But Adolf Hitler's
attention remains fixed
on his battle with the Soviets.
[Martin] He had seen the
German losses back in 1940
when the Luftwaffe
was attacking England.
And to him it looked
like strategic air power
doesn't win wars,
ground forces win wars.
So Hitler's viewpoint
about an air force
is that it exists to
support the ground troops.
[pensive music]
[Tom] With the loss at Stalingrad,
including the capture
of his entire 6th Army,
Hitler is focused on the Eastern Front.
But the Allied raids
do alarm Luftwaffe air
marshal Hermann Göring.
[pensive music]
[Robert] Göring is hearing
from his local
and regional Luftwaffe commanders
that they really need
more fighter aircraft.
But in a sense, Göring's trapped.
If he detaches air power
from the Eastern Front,
a situation that is already critical
is soon going to turn mortal.
[dramatic music]
[John] The Germans now are
gonna streamline procedures
and make things more efficient.
They start producing more
aircraft, more armaments
in the middle of the
Combined Bomber Offensive.
So from 1943 on, there's
an exponential increase
in German industrial output.
[Robert] With German fighter
production on the upswing,
the Allied government is
becoming increasingly concerned
and they're getting a little tired
of hearing their airmen say,
"We can bring Germany to its knees,"
when they don't see any
evidence that that's true.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] In May, Churchill
and Roosevelt meet
to finalize plans in the Mediterranean.
They also commit
to a cross-channel invasion of France.
[Robert] Since America came
into the war,
they've had a strategy
to land a gigantic force
somewhere in Northwestern France
and then driving straight
into the heart of Germany.
[Tom] Code named Operation Overlord,
the attack is scheduled for
spring of the next year.
Achieving air supremacy
over occupied Europe
is crucial to the
success of the invasion.
[Col. Douds] At this point,
everybody recognizes amphibious
operations can't happen
unless you control the seas
and have control of the air.
So the top commanders all agree
that the number one priority
is destroying the Luftwaffe.
[Dan S.] And that means the
bomber force is given the job
of smashing the infrastructure
of the Luftwaffe on the ground,
so that when the Allies land on D-Day
and in the ground
fighting that follows,
there'll be no German
aircraft interfering.
[suspenseful music]
[Tom] The RAF and Eighth
Air Force join efforts
for what they term Blitz Week,
attacks on various
cities across Germany.
Their first joint target is
a busy port with dockyards,
submarine pens, and manufacturing.
It's also a home to
over a million people.
[suspenseful music]
[Dan S.] Hamburg is a real
center of aircraft production.
So for the Americans,
there's lots of specific
military industrial targets
they can attack.
But the Brits look at the
types of housing there
and they think they're
very vulnerable to fire.
So they're going to burn neighborhoods.
They're gonna de-house German people.
And that means workers
are gonna be killed,
factories will grind to a halt,
supply chains will break down
[Tom] It's codenamed
Operation Gomorrah,
after the Old Testament city
that was destroyed by fire from above.
[Col. Douds] This is gonna be
eight days and seven nights of
pounding the city of Hamburg.
[Robert] It's very carefully planned.
First, there are high
explosives to blow out windows,
to blow out roofs, to
knock down buildings.
And they'll drop incendiaries,
smaller bombs, that just
burn like firecrackers.
And with these roof tiles gone,
the wooden structure of
the roofs is exposed,
and these little incendiaries
will land in those roofs
and just set fires.
[Robert] The British want
revenge on Hamburg for the Blitz.
The Americans have been singing
the strategic bombing song for years,
and now they can show
the destructive nature
of the Combined Bomber Offensive
to wipe a city off the map.
[pensive music]
[Tom] In the summer of 1943,
Allied air forces launched Blitz Week,
the largest series of
raids on Germany to date.
[Robert] The British and
American air forces
have supposedly been working together,
the British bombing by
night, the US by day.
But they haven't been bombing
the same target cities.
That changes in the summer of 1943.
[suspenseful music]
[Tom] The Allies' first joint target
is the city of Hamburg.
On the night of July
24th, the raids begin.
[suspenseful music]
The RAF drops incendiary bombs.
[explosions banging]
But in the following days,
American B-17s are unable
to hit their targets.
[dreary music]
[Robert] The Americans intended to bomb
aircraft factories,
but the use of incendiaries
created so much smoke
that the Norden bombsights
were essentially blinded.
[Col. Douds] They can't
actually see their targets.
So they're almost reduced
to doing area bombing,
not unlike the British.
[bomber roaring]
[Tom] On July 27th, a heat
wave sends temperatures soaring
as the RAF returns for a
fourth night of strikes.
[suspenseful music]
[John] It's very hot,
it's very dry, and the
meteorological conditions
are ripe for firestorm.
[fire blaring]
This time the fires burn so hot
the oxygen that these fires
demand causes a windstorm.
Winds are over 150 miles an hour.
[Dan S.] The firestorm works a
little bit like a blast furnace.
It's a localized weather system
that will see that fire spread
at the speed of a galloping horse.
[suspenseful music]
[Robert] A gigantic updraft results
that robs people cowering
in their shelters of oxygen
and leads to death by asphyxiation.
[suspenseful music]
[Dr. Grant] Temperatures go up
to a thousand degrees Celsius.
[fire blaring]
It's the most devastating firestorm
that's ever been created.
[Dan C.] Stories are of people
trying to run out of shelters
with children near them, burning,
with their hands and feet
stuck in melting asphalt,
with the buildings falling
down on top of them.
[Dan S.] The city of Hamburg
is devastated.
[pensive music]
[Tom] Operation Gomorrah
kills over 40,000 civilians.
Almost 2/3 of the city's houses
are burned to the ground,
leaving a million residents homeless.
[Dan S.] Churchill is worried about
the human cost of what they're doing.
He's worried about how
history will look at it.
[Dan C.] And there's a line
from Churchill supposedly,
where he looks at some
of the movies of Hamburg,
and goes, "Are we beasts?"
The striking thing about air power
is it makes all of us combatants.
It's not just about the battlefield.
The battlefield is actually
civilian populations.
[Tom] The destruction
stuns Nazi high command.
[pensive music]
One of Hitler's ministers tells him
that "Hamburg put the
fear of God in me."
But Hitler refuses to visit the city
or receive a delegation of civilians
who had saved lives during the fire.
Hamburg is a shock to the
entire German war effort.
Göring has told Hitler repeatedly
that he had this bomber
problem under control,
and now here lies the second
largest city in Germany
in ashes.
[Tom] Accounts of
the bombing of Hamburg
spread throughout Germany.
Hitler begins to transfer
German fighter planes
from the Eastern Front
and the Mediterranean
to the fatherland.
[planes rumbling]
[pensive music]
[Robert] In addition, the
Germans ring their major cities
with these gigantic
monumental flak towers,
150-feet tall, 11-foot
thick concrete walls,
bristling with guns.
Not only are they highly effective
against incoming bombers,
their guns barking the sound and fury
remind the people that Hitler
is looking out for them.
[anti-aircraft gun firing]
[fighter plane roaring]
[pensive music]
[Dan S.] Back in Britain,
there was big disagreement at the time
with how the raid on Hamburg goes.
From Harris's point of view,
this is a war-winning strategy,
that if you hit people hard enough,
you can cause a breakdown
of their will to fight.
[Robert] But for Arnold,
Hamburg was not a success.
It proved the inefficiency
of area bombing.
He wants to strike precise targets,
the factories that are keeping
the Luftwaffe in the air.
[pensive music]
[Col. Douds] Henry Arnold thinks
strategic bombing can work.
We just need to do it harder.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] The combined American-British
raid on Hamburg levels a city
but does little
to destroy the Luftwaffe
before the invasion of Europe.
By August of 1943,
the Eighth Air Force is receiving enough
planes and personnel to launch
the large formations required
to decimate German aircraft production.
Bomber Baron theory is about
to be put into practice.
What is keeping the
Luftwaffe in the air
are the factories behind it.
That's what Arnold wants to strike.
And he thinks the way to do that
is to double down on
daylight precision bombing,
more planes, more raids, more
attacks on the same target
until the Germans break.
[suspenseful music]
[Tom] Arnold now demands maximum effort
from the Eighth Air Force.
[plane roaring]
[planes rumbling]
Normally there are planes
that are being worked on,
or repaired, or air
crew that are resting,
so that every now and
then they get a day off.
But now when you go maximum effort,
it means you put everything
in the air every time.
[Tom] Previously, around 90
B-17s would fly each mission,
but that number will
soon double and triple.
[dramatic music]
The Americans are obsessed
with this view of the German economy
as a series of interconnected
hubs and spokes.
So if they hit the right
domino, they'll all come down.
[Dr. Grant] These are called
bottleneck industries,
industries where just a
few plants and locations
control all the production.
[Robert] Bombing bottleneck targets
seems to be a more efficient
use of your air force.
One big raid, one factory destroyed,
a crucial sector of the
German war economy crippled.
[Col. Douds] Probably the
most consequential
bottleneck industry with
regards to the Luftwaffe
is ball bearings.
[pensive music]
Anything that moves
needs a ball bearing.
Anything that turns
needs a ball bearing,
including German aircraft engines,
propellers turning, landing wheels,
and also all the machines and machinery
that build those products.
So it's a twofer.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] On August 17th,
one year to the day
from their first attack
on occupied Europe,
the Eighth Air Force
launches a dual raid.
The first strike on Regensburg
is meant to draw off German fighters
so that the rest of the force
can hit the primary target,
Germany's largest ball bearing
factory in Schweinfurt.
Three weeks later,
the Eighth strikes another
plant in Stuttgart.
In these raids alone,
the Eighth loses
nearly a hundred planes
and a thousand crew killed or captured.
Ball bearing production is interrupted,
but only temporarily.
[Robert] The Allies are always
surprised at how rapidly
the Germans rebuild their
cities and factories.
[dramatic music]
But they do so with this almost
inexhaustible supply of slave labor.
Prisoners of war in the
hundreds of thousands.
They're barely fed.
When one dies, they
can be simply discarded
and another one put in their place.
[Tom] Forced laborers
from occupied countries
are ordered by the Nazis to
reconstruct German factories.
[Col. Douds] They also dispersed
the German aircraft industry
so that it can't be taken
out in any one strike
'cause it's not all in one place.
And they put it underground.
They used old salt mines.
They used old quarries.
[Martin] Now you can't hit it.
Now you can't bomb it.
There is nothing you can do
because you can't bomb a
facility when it's underground.
[Col. Douds] This ultimately
means German aircraft production
will continue to increase.
[Tom] By the fall of 1943,
the Eighth Air Force is bombing targets
deep inside the Reich
and returning to ones
they've already hit.
[bombers rumbling]
In early October,
they fly a
series of maximum effort raids,
including a second strike
on the plant in Schweinfurt,
all in a single week.
[pensive music]
[Robert] There is a limit
to how much the human psyche can take.
And on many occasions, bomber
crews reach that limit.
[suspenseful music]
You're five miles up and you're
braving death every second.
[explosion booming]
Fighters, flak, fighters, flak.
[explosion booming]
An adrenaline rush overloading
your nervous system.
[machine gun firing]
[explosion booming]
And then you land.
And it's quiet.
You're back at a base in East Anglia.
You have a hot meal.
You sleep in a comfortable bed.
And then maybe you'd
do it again tomorrow.
[suspenseful music] [bombers rumbling]
- More fighters, more flak.
- [explosion booming]
You think you were gonna die
10 times in the course
of this bomb raid.
[bomber rumbling] [explosion booming]
And that night you'd be
drinking scotch with a couple
of friends at the commissary.
It was almost impossible to reconcile.
The longer you did it,
you would become more and more aware
of how vulnerable you were.
[pensive music]
[Tom] By the end of the month,
the Eighth Air Force has
endured horrific losses.
The men call it Black October.
[Robert] If you're an American airman,
you have a 20% chance of being killed
on any mission you undertake.
One in five, that is forbidding math.
Adding to that,
they don't appear to be
having an appreciable impact
on the German war effort,
leading to an incipient
collapse of airman morale.
[Col. Douds] They start to see
the losses around them and go,
"We're just gonna fly
until we're dead."
[bomber rumbling]
[explosion booming]
[machine gun firing]
[explosion booming]
[dramatic music]
[Tom] A series of American
raids in Black October
shows the cost of daytime
precision bombing.
[John] The loss rates,
the limitations of
the Norden bombsight,
the weather, all these
things play in the factor
in how ineffective the
bombing campaign is in 1943.
You could easily say that the Luftwaffe
still owned the skies over Germany.
[Tom] In the late fall,
bad weather forces the Eighth
Air Force to suspend missions,
giving ground crews the winter
to patch battered planes.
[pensive music]
[bombers rumbling]
But the RAF launches its
largest campaign yet,
a sustained assault on Berlin.
[Col. Douds] These are gonna
be massive raids,
16 of them in the heart of Germany.
[plane engine rumbling]
[Robert] The British goal over Berlin
is to destroy German morale.
That's the way to beat Germany,
not to destroy individual factories.
Harris thinks these Berlin raids
will cost 4 to 500 bombers,
but they'll cost Germany the war.
[suspenseful music]
[explosions booming]
[Tom] The RAF winter raids to Berlin
push the limit and stamina
of British air crews,
with modest results.
[gun firing]
[explosions cracking] [gun firing]
[explosion booming]
[ominous music]
[Col. Douds] Harris is
presciently accurate.
They lose 400 to 500 aircraft
and almost 5,000 airmen.
[Robert] The Berlin bombing
campaign is an epic effort
but unfortunately an epic failure.
Both air forces are finding their plans
are not corresponding with reality.
They're having almost no
impact on the Luftwaffe at all.
They're simply getting more
of their plane shot down
and more of their crewmen
killed or captured.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] After months of heavy losses,
the Eighth Air Force
is at a crossroads.
[Dr. Grant] Arnold realizes
the bombers can't do it alone.
If he wants these bombers to
make a difference in this war,
he's got to send fighters
to the target with them.
[bomber rumbling]
[Martin] The Allied air forces
have the P-38 Lightning
and the P-47 Thunderbolt,
two absolutely excellent
fighter aircraft
capable of dog fighting
just about as well as
anything else in the sky.
- [fighter planes rumbling]
- They only had one limitation
and that was range.
[fighter planes rumbling]
[John] At the time,
aeronautical engineers
believed having an
aircraft that could fly
almost a thousand miles
into Germany and back,
with enough firepower,
enough maneuverability,
enough engine power,
is an engineering impossibility.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] But a new fighter
is already being produced
by the United States for the British,
the P-51 Mustang.
[John] And the Brits test
fly it, and they go,
"Thanks, it's okay."
[fighter plane rumbling]
Below 15,000 feet, it's fine,
but we're looking for
something higher altitude.
[fighter plane rumbling]
Then we get the idea of putting a
Rolls-Royce Merlin engine in this thing.
So you have a British-made
engine, an American airframe,
made it together, and it's gangbusters.
[fighter plane rumbling]
[Col. Douds] That's when it
turns into this magical machine.
[fighter plane rumbling]
It's fast, it flies high.
It's so efficient that
it could escort a bomber
all the way to downtown
Berlin and back.
It's the equivalent
or better than anything
the Germans have.
[suspenseful music]
[Robert] The Americans and
British are allies,
but in many ways they've been
working at cross purposes,
especially in the air campaign.
But now the US and British war efforts
come together to produce an aircraft
that is greater than
the sum of its parts.
It's the embodiment
of the Anglo-American
coalition in World War II.
[fighter plane rumbling]
[Anand] The P-51 is a game-changer,
but it requires, mind you,
an entire rethink of
American aerial doctrine.
[suspenseful music]
[Dan S.] Allied planners realized
that if they threaten targets
that are essential to
the German war efforts
and they force the Germans
to send up fighters to
protect those targets,
the P-51s can pounce
and shoot them down.
[machine gun firing]
[explosion booming]
[Dr. Grant] The Allies have
started out thinking B-17s
will destroy the German
air force on the ground.
By early 1944, they realized the P-51
is going to destroy the
German Air Force
in the air.
[suspenseful music]
[Tom] Knowing that command
of the air is crucial
to the upcoming cross channel invasion,
Allied air forces launch
Operation Argument,
a five-day series of bombing
raids over major German cities.
[dramatic music]
[bombers rumbling]
[Dr. Grant] This is the critical hour
for the Combined Bomber Offensive
because the Allies now know
that they're approaching the
time for the D-Day landings.
- [fighter planes rumbling]
- They need to draw up the Luftwaffe
so that the P-51 can
destroy it in the skies.
[fighter planes rumbling]
The plan is to send
thousands of bombers
knowing that the Luftwaffe
will have no choice
but to send everything
it has up in the skies
to defend the homeland.
So in a way, the bombers are the bait.
[suspenseful music]
[Tom] Fitted with extra
fuel tanks, the P-51 Mustangs
are capable of penetrating
deep into Germany.
[fighter planes roaring]
Their primary mission has
been protecting the bombers.
Now they're ordered to actively
pursue German fighters,
even if it leaves the
formations vulnerable.
[fighter planes rumbling]
[John] The mission of the
American fighters
is to be aggressive
and go after the Luftwaffe
in the air to kill them
in any way, shape, or form.
[machine gun firing]
[suspenseful music]
[Tom] Operation Argument,
known as Big Week,
begins a battle of attrition
between the Allied air
forces and the Luftwaffe.
[machine gun firing]
[explosion booming]
[machine gun firing]
[explosion booming]
The success of the upcoming invasion
hangs in the balance.
[explosion booming] [pensive music]
[John] The United States is gonna lose
about a quarter of the Eighth
Air Force in that fight.
The Germans are gonna lose
about a third of their fighter force
and 18% of their fighter pilots.
This is something the
Allies can sustain,
the Germans cannot.
[suspenseful music]
[Robert] From the US perspective,
this is a war economy
that is churning out hundreds
and hundreds of heavy bombers
every day of the year.
Young men are signing up in droves.
And so the cold-blooded calculation
is that no matter how
heavy US losses are,
America can replace
its planes and pilots.
[suspenseful music]
[machine gun firing]
[explosion booming]
[Tom] In the month after Big Week,
American fighters down more
German planes over Europe
than in the previous two years.
[suspenseful music]
The Luftwaffe is being
destroyed in the air
and on the ground.
[Col. Douds] It's really this
symbiosis.
Mustangs, they're
killing German fighters,
which means the bombers
can now be more accurate,
which means they're doing a better job
of attacking the German
aircraft industry.
[explosions booming]
It's a cycle that's
destroying the Luftwaffe.
[machine gun firing]
[explosion booming]
[Tom] By June, 1944,
there are few experienced
Luftwaffe pilots left alive.
[John] By the time the D-Day
comes, the Allies own the air.
That's why you see very
few Luftwaffe fighters
over the beaches of
Normandy on June 6th, 1944.
[bombers rumbling]
[pensive music]
[Tom] Control of the air
is decisively established.
The Luftwaffe will be incapable
of opposing the upcoming
Allied invasion.
But again, the cost is high.
[somber music]
Fewer than a quarter of British
and American bomber crews
survive the campaign.
[Robert] The tragedy of the
air war is that the bomber crews
were essentially testing
out an unproven theory.
[Dan C.] Anytime you're
talking about high technology
and cutting-edge weaponry,
there is an element of
experimentation involved.
And some of the ways, unfortunately,
that you learn in war is by dying.
Sometimes in wartime, there's
no other way to learn.
[Robert] When both the British
and American air
forces worked together,
bombers and fighters together,
they proved to be the most
effective aerial instrument
of war in history.
[dramatic music]
The battle in the air over Europe
isn't won by B-17s or P-51s.
It's won by the men who
fight in those planes
and the men and women who
support them on the ground.
What they accomplished,
the destruction of
the German Luftwaffe,
will make possible the greatest
land and sea invasion in history.
Sub extracted from file & improved by
In 1942 and into 1943,
hundreds of thousands of Americans
descend on the east of England
to live, fight, and maybe die
in the joint effort to defeat
Nazi Germany from the air.
Combat at 25,000 feet
and 300 miles per hour
has never been attempted before.
The physical, mental,
and emotional challenges
will be unique.
Victory in World War II
will be largely determined
by who controls the skies,
the German Luftwaffe or
the Allied Air Forces.
[suspenseful music]
All wars changed the world,
but none of them changed the world
like the Second World War did.
Japan's on the march,
Germany's on the march.
[suspenseful music]
No one can imagine the nightmare
they're about to unleash,
the most destructive
war in human history.
Suddenly, the world
is turned upside down
and all hell is let loose.
The West is stunned by
the speed of the advance.
[dramatic music]
You get the Allies
led by the big three:
Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin,
men who are dealing with
immensely complicated questions.
It's the biggest military
operation of human history.
The Allies have to come together,
not just militarily,
but industrial scale.
It's a global perspective.
They have to fight in every climate,
from the Arctic to the
jungles of the Pacific,
to the deserts of Africa,
and the depths of the ocean.
[dramatic music]
But there was no certainty of victory.
It was going to be a
horrific bloodbath.
We see humans at their absolute worst,
how they treat other human beings.
And we see them at their absolute best,
willing to give their lives
that others might live.
World War II was a struggle
in which there could be one victor
and one vanquished.
[dramatic music]
[explosion booming]
[siren blaring]
[suspenseful music]
[Tom] 1942, the Third Reich
is building elaborate
coastal defenses in Europe.
As they continue to battle
the Soviets in the East,
the Germans know that
it's only a matter of time
before Britain and America
attack from the west.
From the English channel
to the plains of Russia,
Germany controls most of Europe.
[dramatic music]
Hitler has turned Europe
into an apparently
impregnable fortress.
But as people said at the time,
yes, but he forgot to
put a roof over it.
And the Allied bombers are
going to take advantage of that.
[pensive music]
[Tom] In the First World War,
both sides bombed each
other to little effect.
But as aviation evolves,
a new concept of warfare
develops in the 1920s and '30s
strategic bombing.
Its proponents are a group of officers
from the US Air Corps Tactical School.
They come to be known
as the Bomber Barons.
[Robert] The theory is
we'll use this novel weapon in a
novel way,
not to attack the enemy's armies,
to attack the enemy's homeland,
his factories,
his infrastructure,
destroying his economy,
and thus making it
impossible for the enemy
to make war.
These air power advocates
say this is a better way to fight war.
No need for that horrible trench
deadlock from World War I.
That's the old way.
The new way is strategic bombing.
[pensive music]
East Anglia is the England
of little churches,
hedges, fields, medieval buildings,
and it's turned into one gigantic
aircraft carrier.
[Tom] In the spring of 1942,
the US Eighth Air Force
begins construction
on dozens of air bases,
transforming a quiet
corner of East England
into one of the most vital fronts
of the entire Second World War.
[dramatic music]
[Dan S.] It's flat, it's
perfect for airfields.
[propeller whirring] [dramatic music]
So you get this massive, massive
influx of American bombers
carrying the most destructive
weapons ever produced,
and just as strikingly,
young American airmen.
[suspenseful music]
They all had grown up dreaming
of flying above the clouds
at over 300 miles per hour,
something their parents
and grandparents
could never imagine.
And all of a sudden,
here's this opportunity.
The English used to
complain, they're oversexed,
they're overpaid, and
they're over here.
[dramatic music]
[plane engine rumbling]
[Tom] The Royal Air Force
has been striking the German
homeland for two years.
Take off, off you go, off you go, over.
[bomber rumbling]
[Tom] Prime Minister Winston Churchill
understands how important such
raids are for British morale.
But the RAF pays a grievous cost.
In these early months of the war,
there were raids with hardly
any aircraft coming back.
And the most important
lesson they took away from it
is that daytime bombing
was a very hazardous
thing to undertake.
[pensive music]
[suspenseful music]
[Dan S.] Arthur Harris is
the man put in charge
of Britain's Bomber Command.
And it's his idea to
switch to night bombing,
to use night as a cloak to
protect these bomber forces
so that they can drop their bombs
and they have a better
chance of making it home.
[explosions banging]
[Robert] So what they're doing
is merely area bombing.
They're flying over
German cities at night
and letting loose their bomb loads.
And that means civilian casualties.
[dramatic music]
[Dan S.] There's a lot of retribution
in this British strategy.
The Blitz had smashed
British cities and factories
in the winter of 1940-41.
And the Brits plan to smash
German society so badly
that it knocks them out of the war.
They sowed the wind,
and now they are going
to reap the whirlwind.
[pensive music]
[Tom] Meeting in Casablanca,
President Roosevelt, Prime Minister
Churchill and their staffs
strategize how to continue
the Allied assault
on the Third Reich.
[Robert] One of the major outcomes
of the Casablanca Conference
is the Allies declared
unconditional surrender
as their war aim.
But something else happens
at Casablanca as well,
an argument on air strategy
between the British and Americans.
[suspenseful music]
[Tom] The US Army Air Force,
particularly its commander,
General Henry Hap Arnold,
insists that daylight precision bombing
on critical wartime industries
will be more effective.
[Robert] And as so often
in World War II,
American expectations come up
against British experience.
Churchill is gonna go
to FDR and tell him that,
"Look, your daylight precision
stuff, it's not gonna work.
We tried it, it didn't work.
That's why we are doing
bombing operations at night.
And that is the way forward."
Well, Hap Arnold gets wind of this.
[dramatic music]
Arnold's a pioneer in aviation,
taught by the Wright
brothers how to fly,
and he is a believer
in strategic air power.
And when the British say,
"Hey, you guys should bomb
at night just like we do,"
he says, "No, no, air power
could be used in a better way."
[Tom] The American plan
rests on a cutting-edge device,
the Norden bombsight.
[pensive music]
The Norden bombsight
is an analog computer.
You punch in various data:
wind speed, altitude,
wind direction, air pressure,
and it correlates all
those things together
and tells you exactly
when to drop the bomb.
According to the advertising slogans,
it can drop a bomb in a
pickle barrel at 18,000 feet.
[Tom] Americans claimed
the Norden bombsight,
which requires daylight
and clear weather,
promises greater precision
and therefore fewer
civilian casualties.
[A.J.] So Henry Arnold and his
advisors come up with this plan,
the Combined Bomber Offensive,
which means the British
bombing at night
and the Americans bombing
precision targets
during the day.
[Col. Douds] The Americans
are gonna sell it as this
round the clock bombing.
And this utterly appeals to Churchill,
with the idea that his adversary
will never catch a break.
[dramatic music] [plane rumbling]
[Tom] Attacking an
enemy from 25,000 feet
presents unique challenges.
[bomber rumbling]
Temperatures dip below
50 degrees Fahrenheit.
If an airman's supply of oxygen
is cut off for more than 60 seconds,
he will die.
[suspenseful music]
[Robert] You look out the
window as a crewman on a B-17
and you begin to see black puffs.
[suspenseful music]
And they might not look too dangerous.
[explosion banging]
Until one actually makes contact.
[Martin] The most infamous
German weapon of them all
was the Flak 88 millimeter gun.
[anti-aircraft gun firing]
It's capable of sending
29-pound explosive projectiles
to altitudes approaching 30,000 feet.
[suspenseful music]
[anti-aircraft gun firing]
[Col. Douds] The dilemma with flak is
you can't maneuver to avoid it,
so the best you can do is sit
tight and grit your teeth.
[suspenseful music]
Once the flak stops, there's silence.
It's a deathly silence because
they know what's coming.
[Pilot] There's four
of 'em, one o'clock high.
[Gunner] They're coming around.
[suspenseful music]
[John] German fighter pilots
are seasoned combat veterans.
Many of them have hundreds of kills
'cause they've been engaged
in this war since 1939.
[Col. Douds] The best way to
kill a German fighter
is to send Allied fighters
to shoot them down.
But when the United States
starts to bomb Germany proper,
their fighters don't have the range
to be able to escort bombers
all the way to a target.
[suspenseful music]
[Robert] So the B-17 is
bristling with machine guns
around the fuselage of the aircraft.
[bomber rumbling]
[Pilot] Three planes,
nine o'clock, coming around.
[machine gun firing]
[suspenseful music]
[Pilot] Too fast, six
o'clock up, coming in.
[machine gun firing]
[John] It really is a flying fortress.
[machine gun firing]
[A.J.] Bomber crews were these
interdependent societies
in which every person was dependent
upon the person sitting next to 'em
and the person sitting behind them.
[Pilot] Breaking 11, breaking 11.
[Gunner] I got him.
[machine gun firing]
[suspenseful music]
[Pilot] B-17 out of
control at three o'clock.
C'mon, you guys, get out
that plane, bail out.
Come on, get out of there.
[suspenseful music] [bombers rumbling]
[John] A few miles from
the actual target,
the bomber will start
what's called the bomb run.
It's all done visually.
You have to hold
altitude, hold air speed,
and hold heading so the
bombardier can dial in
on the Norden bombsight.
'Cause if you don't hit the target,
you gotta come back again.
[machine gun firing]
[fighter planes roaring]
[Robert] War sometimes breaks down to
individual moments of terror.
[suspenseful music]
[fighter plane roaring]
[machine gun firing]
You're watching other planes
being literally blown out of the sky.
And you have to drop
the bombs with precision
and then make it out
again on the way home.
[Bombardier] Bombs away!
[bombs whistling]
[explosions booming] [bombers rumbling]
[pensive music]
[Tom] In combat conditions,
the accuracy of the Norden bombsight
is not as precise as
the Air Force predicted.
The casualties are
greater than they feared.
[pensive music]
[plane rumbling]
These missions would come
back with 10, 20% losses.
And of course the pilots
are highly trained,
highly technical people that
are very difficult to replace.
[dramatic music]
[Dan S.] No one in history has
ever tried strategic bombing
on this scale before.
As generals, and
strategists, and air marshals
are working out the future of air war,
these man are guinea pigs.
[dramatic music]
[suspenseful music]
[Tom] Mission by mission,
the Eighth Air Force
slowly develops the methods
needed to damage their
intended targets.
But Adolf Hitler's
attention remains fixed
on his battle with the Soviets.
[Martin] He had seen the
German losses back in 1940
when the Luftwaffe
was attacking England.
And to him it looked
like strategic air power
doesn't win wars,
ground forces win wars.
So Hitler's viewpoint
about an air force
is that it exists to
support the ground troops.
[pensive music]
[Tom] With the loss at Stalingrad,
including the capture
of his entire 6th Army,
Hitler is focused on the Eastern Front.
But the Allied raids
do alarm Luftwaffe air
marshal Hermann Göring.
[pensive music]
[Robert] Göring is hearing
from his local
and regional Luftwaffe commanders
that they really need
more fighter aircraft.
But in a sense, Göring's trapped.
If he detaches air power
from the Eastern Front,
a situation that is already critical
is soon going to turn mortal.
[dramatic music]
[John] The Germans now are
gonna streamline procedures
and make things more efficient.
They start producing more
aircraft, more armaments
in the middle of the
Combined Bomber Offensive.
So from 1943 on, there's
an exponential increase
in German industrial output.
[Robert] With German fighter
production on the upswing,
the Allied government is
becoming increasingly concerned
and they're getting a little tired
of hearing their airmen say,
"We can bring Germany to its knees,"
when they don't see any
evidence that that's true.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] In May, Churchill
and Roosevelt meet
to finalize plans in the Mediterranean.
They also commit
to a cross-channel invasion of France.
[Robert] Since America came
into the war,
they've had a strategy
to land a gigantic force
somewhere in Northwestern France
and then driving straight
into the heart of Germany.
[Tom] Code named Operation Overlord,
the attack is scheduled for
spring of the next year.
Achieving air supremacy
over occupied Europe
is crucial to the
success of the invasion.
[Col. Douds] At this point,
everybody recognizes amphibious
operations can't happen
unless you control the seas
and have control of the air.
So the top commanders all agree
that the number one priority
is destroying the Luftwaffe.
[Dan S.] And that means the
bomber force is given the job
of smashing the infrastructure
of the Luftwaffe on the ground,
so that when the Allies land on D-Day
and in the ground
fighting that follows,
there'll be no German
aircraft interfering.
[suspenseful music]
[Tom] The RAF and Eighth
Air Force join efforts
for what they term Blitz Week,
attacks on various
cities across Germany.
Their first joint target is
a busy port with dockyards,
submarine pens, and manufacturing.
It's also a home to
over a million people.
[suspenseful music]
[Dan S.] Hamburg is a real
center of aircraft production.
So for the Americans,
there's lots of specific
military industrial targets
they can attack.
But the Brits look at the
types of housing there
and they think they're
very vulnerable to fire.
So they're going to burn neighborhoods.
They're gonna de-house German people.
And that means workers
are gonna be killed,
factories will grind to a halt,
supply chains will break down
[Tom] It's codenamed
Operation Gomorrah,
after the Old Testament city
that was destroyed by fire from above.
[Col. Douds] This is gonna be
eight days and seven nights of
pounding the city of Hamburg.
[Robert] It's very carefully planned.
First, there are high
explosives to blow out windows,
to blow out roofs, to
knock down buildings.
And they'll drop incendiaries,
smaller bombs, that just
burn like firecrackers.
And with these roof tiles gone,
the wooden structure of
the roofs is exposed,
and these little incendiaries
will land in those roofs
and just set fires.
[Robert] The British want
revenge on Hamburg for the Blitz.
The Americans have been singing
the strategic bombing song for years,
and now they can show
the destructive nature
of the Combined Bomber Offensive
to wipe a city off the map.
[pensive music]
[Tom] In the summer of 1943,
Allied air forces launched Blitz Week,
the largest series of
raids on Germany to date.
[Robert] The British and
American air forces
have supposedly been working together,
the British bombing by
night, the US by day.
But they haven't been bombing
the same target cities.
That changes in the summer of 1943.
[suspenseful music]
[Tom] The Allies' first joint target
is the city of Hamburg.
On the night of July
24th, the raids begin.
[suspenseful music]
The RAF drops incendiary bombs.
[explosions banging]
But in the following days,
American B-17s are unable
to hit their targets.
[dreary music]
[Robert] The Americans intended to bomb
aircraft factories,
but the use of incendiaries
created so much smoke
that the Norden bombsights
were essentially blinded.
[Col. Douds] They can't
actually see their targets.
So they're almost reduced
to doing area bombing,
not unlike the British.
[bomber roaring]
[Tom] On July 27th, a heat
wave sends temperatures soaring
as the RAF returns for a
fourth night of strikes.
[suspenseful music]
[John] It's very hot,
it's very dry, and the
meteorological conditions
are ripe for firestorm.
[fire blaring]
This time the fires burn so hot
the oxygen that these fires
demand causes a windstorm.
Winds are over 150 miles an hour.
[Dan S.] The firestorm works a
little bit like a blast furnace.
It's a localized weather system
that will see that fire spread
at the speed of a galloping horse.
[suspenseful music]
[Robert] A gigantic updraft results
that robs people cowering
in their shelters of oxygen
and leads to death by asphyxiation.
[suspenseful music]
[Dr. Grant] Temperatures go up
to a thousand degrees Celsius.
[fire blaring]
It's the most devastating firestorm
that's ever been created.
[Dan C.] Stories are of people
trying to run out of shelters
with children near them, burning,
with their hands and feet
stuck in melting asphalt,
with the buildings falling
down on top of them.
[Dan S.] The city of Hamburg
is devastated.
[pensive music]
[Tom] Operation Gomorrah
kills over 40,000 civilians.
Almost 2/3 of the city's houses
are burned to the ground,
leaving a million residents homeless.
[Dan S.] Churchill is worried about
the human cost of what they're doing.
He's worried about how
history will look at it.
[Dan C.] And there's a line
from Churchill supposedly,
where he looks at some
of the movies of Hamburg,
and goes, "Are we beasts?"
The striking thing about air power
is it makes all of us combatants.
It's not just about the battlefield.
The battlefield is actually
civilian populations.
[Tom] The destruction
stuns Nazi high command.
[pensive music]
One of Hitler's ministers tells him
that "Hamburg put the
fear of God in me."
But Hitler refuses to visit the city
or receive a delegation of civilians
who had saved lives during the fire.
Hamburg is a shock to the
entire German war effort.
Göring has told Hitler repeatedly
that he had this bomber
problem under control,
and now here lies the second
largest city in Germany
in ashes.
[Tom] Accounts of
the bombing of Hamburg
spread throughout Germany.
Hitler begins to transfer
German fighter planes
from the Eastern Front
and the Mediterranean
to the fatherland.
[planes rumbling]
[pensive music]
[Robert] In addition, the
Germans ring their major cities
with these gigantic
monumental flak towers,
150-feet tall, 11-foot
thick concrete walls,
bristling with guns.
Not only are they highly effective
against incoming bombers,
their guns barking the sound and fury
remind the people that Hitler
is looking out for them.
[anti-aircraft gun firing]
[fighter plane roaring]
[pensive music]
[Dan S.] Back in Britain,
there was big disagreement at the time
with how the raid on Hamburg goes.
From Harris's point of view,
this is a war-winning strategy,
that if you hit people hard enough,
you can cause a breakdown
of their will to fight.
[Robert] But for Arnold,
Hamburg was not a success.
It proved the inefficiency
of area bombing.
He wants to strike precise targets,
the factories that are keeping
the Luftwaffe in the air.
[pensive music]
[Col. Douds] Henry Arnold thinks
strategic bombing can work.
We just need to do it harder.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] The combined American-British
raid on Hamburg levels a city
but does little
to destroy the Luftwaffe
before the invasion of Europe.
By August of 1943,
the Eighth Air Force is receiving enough
planes and personnel to launch
the large formations required
to decimate German aircraft production.
Bomber Baron theory is about
to be put into practice.
What is keeping the
Luftwaffe in the air
are the factories behind it.
That's what Arnold wants to strike.
And he thinks the way to do that
is to double down on
daylight precision bombing,
more planes, more raids, more
attacks on the same target
until the Germans break.
[suspenseful music]
[Tom] Arnold now demands maximum effort
from the Eighth Air Force.
[plane roaring]
[planes rumbling]
Normally there are planes
that are being worked on,
or repaired, or air
crew that are resting,
so that every now and
then they get a day off.
But now when you go maximum effort,
it means you put everything
in the air every time.
[Tom] Previously, around 90
B-17s would fly each mission,
but that number will
soon double and triple.
[dramatic music]
The Americans are obsessed
with this view of the German economy
as a series of interconnected
hubs and spokes.
So if they hit the right
domino, they'll all come down.
[Dr. Grant] These are called
bottleneck industries,
industries where just a
few plants and locations
control all the production.
[Robert] Bombing bottleneck targets
seems to be a more efficient
use of your air force.
One big raid, one factory destroyed,
a crucial sector of the
German war economy crippled.
[Col. Douds] Probably the
most consequential
bottleneck industry with
regards to the Luftwaffe
is ball bearings.
[pensive music]
Anything that moves
needs a ball bearing.
Anything that turns
needs a ball bearing,
including German aircraft engines,
propellers turning, landing wheels,
and also all the machines and machinery
that build those products.
So it's a twofer.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] On August 17th,
one year to the day
from their first attack
on occupied Europe,
the Eighth Air Force
launches a dual raid.
The first strike on Regensburg
is meant to draw off German fighters
so that the rest of the force
can hit the primary target,
Germany's largest ball bearing
factory in Schweinfurt.
Three weeks later,
the Eighth strikes another
plant in Stuttgart.
In these raids alone,
the Eighth loses
nearly a hundred planes
and a thousand crew killed or captured.
Ball bearing production is interrupted,
but only temporarily.
[Robert] The Allies are always
surprised at how rapidly
the Germans rebuild their
cities and factories.
[dramatic music]
But they do so with this almost
inexhaustible supply of slave labor.
Prisoners of war in the
hundreds of thousands.
They're barely fed.
When one dies, they
can be simply discarded
and another one put in their place.
[Tom] Forced laborers
from occupied countries
are ordered by the Nazis to
reconstruct German factories.
[Col. Douds] They also dispersed
the German aircraft industry
so that it can't be taken
out in any one strike
'cause it's not all in one place.
And they put it underground.
They used old salt mines.
They used old quarries.
[Martin] Now you can't hit it.
Now you can't bomb it.
There is nothing you can do
because you can't bomb a
facility when it's underground.
[Col. Douds] This ultimately
means German aircraft production
will continue to increase.
[Tom] By the fall of 1943,
the Eighth Air Force is bombing targets
deep inside the Reich
and returning to ones
they've already hit.
[bombers rumbling]
In early October,
they fly a
series of maximum effort raids,
including a second strike
on the plant in Schweinfurt,
all in a single week.
[pensive music]
[Robert] There is a limit
to how much the human psyche can take.
And on many occasions, bomber
crews reach that limit.
[suspenseful music]
You're five miles up and you're
braving death every second.
[explosion booming]
Fighters, flak, fighters, flak.
[explosion booming]
An adrenaline rush overloading
your nervous system.
[machine gun firing]
[explosion booming]
And then you land.
And it's quiet.
You're back at a base in East Anglia.
You have a hot meal.
You sleep in a comfortable bed.
And then maybe you'd
do it again tomorrow.
[suspenseful music] [bombers rumbling]
- More fighters, more flak.
- [explosion booming]
You think you were gonna die
10 times in the course
of this bomb raid.
[bomber rumbling] [explosion booming]
And that night you'd be
drinking scotch with a couple
of friends at the commissary.
It was almost impossible to reconcile.
The longer you did it,
you would become more and more aware
of how vulnerable you were.
[pensive music]
[Tom] By the end of the month,
the Eighth Air Force has
endured horrific losses.
The men call it Black October.
[Robert] If you're an American airman,
you have a 20% chance of being killed
on any mission you undertake.
One in five, that is forbidding math.
Adding to that,
they don't appear to be
having an appreciable impact
on the German war effort,
leading to an incipient
collapse of airman morale.
[Col. Douds] They start to see
the losses around them and go,
"We're just gonna fly
until we're dead."
[bomber rumbling]
[explosion booming]
[machine gun firing]
[explosion booming]
[dramatic music]
[Tom] A series of American
raids in Black October
shows the cost of daytime
precision bombing.
[John] The loss rates,
the limitations of
the Norden bombsight,
the weather, all these
things play in the factor
in how ineffective the
bombing campaign is in 1943.
You could easily say that the Luftwaffe
still owned the skies over Germany.
[Tom] In the late fall,
bad weather forces the Eighth
Air Force to suspend missions,
giving ground crews the winter
to patch battered planes.
[pensive music]
[bombers rumbling]
But the RAF launches its
largest campaign yet,
a sustained assault on Berlin.
[Col. Douds] These are gonna
be massive raids,
16 of them in the heart of Germany.
[plane engine rumbling]
[Robert] The British goal over Berlin
is to destroy German morale.
That's the way to beat Germany,
not to destroy individual factories.
Harris thinks these Berlin raids
will cost 4 to 500 bombers,
but they'll cost Germany the war.
[suspenseful music]
[explosions booming]
[Tom] The RAF winter raids to Berlin
push the limit and stamina
of British air crews,
with modest results.
[gun firing]
[explosions cracking] [gun firing]
[explosion booming]
[ominous music]
[Col. Douds] Harris is
presciently accurate.
They lose 400 to 500 aircraft
and almost 5,000 airmen.
[Robert] The Berlin bombing
campaign is an epic effort
but unfortunately an epic failure.
Both air forces are finding their plans
are not corresponding with reality.
They're having almost no
impact on the Luftwaffe at all.
They're simply getting more
of their plane shot down
and more of their crewmen
killed or captured.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] After months of heavy losses,
the Eighth Air Force
is at a crossroads.
[Dr. Grant] Arnold realizes
the bombers can't do it alone.
If he wants these bombers to
make a difference in this war,
he's got to send fighters
to the target with them.
[bomber rumbling]
[Martin] The Allied air forces
have the P-38 Lightning
and the P-47 Thunderbolt,
two absolutely excellent
fighter aircraft
capable of dog fighting
just about as well as
anything else in the sky.
- [fighter planes rumbling]
- They only had one limitation
and that was range.
[fighter planes rumbling]
[John] At the time,
aeronautical engineers
believed having an
aircraft that could fly
almost a thousand miles
into Germany and back,
with enough firepower,
enough maneuverability,
enough engine power,
is an engineering impossibility.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] But a new fighter
is already being produced
by the United States for the British,
the P-51 Mustang.
[John] And the Brits test
fly it, and they go,
"Thanks, it's okay."
[fighter plane rumbling]
Below 15,000 feet, it's fine,
but we're looking for
something higher altitude.
[fighter plane rumbling]
Then we get the idea of putting a
Rolls-Royce Merlin engine in this thing.
So you have a British-made
engine, an American airframe,
made it together, and it's gangbusters.
[fighter plane rumbling]
[Col. Douds] That's when it
turns into this magical machine.
[fighter plane rumbling]
It's fast, it flies high.
It's so efficient that
it could escort a bomber
all the way to downtown
Berlin and back.
It's the equivalent
or better than anything
the Germans have.
[suspenseful music]
[Robert] The Americans and
British are allies,
but in many ways they've been
working at cross purposes,
especially in the air campaign.
But now the US and British war efforts
come together to produce an aircraft
that is greater than
the sum of its parts.
It's the embodiment
of the Anglo-American
coalition in World War II.
[fighter plane rumbling]
[Anand] The P-51 is a game-changer,
but it requires, mind you,
an entire rethink of
American aerial doctrine.
[suspenseful music]
[Dan S.] Allied planners realized
that if they threaten targets
that are essential to
the German war efforts
and they force the Germans
to send up fighters to
protect those targets,
the P-51s can pounce
and shoot them down.
[machine gun firing]
[explosion booming]
[Dr. Grant] The Allies have
started out thinking B-17s
will destroy the German
air force on the ground.
By early 1944, they realized the P-51
is going to destroy the
German Air Force
in the air.
[suspenseful music]
[Tom] Knowing that command
of the air is crucial
to the upcoming cross channel invasion,
Allied air forces launch
Operation Argument,
a five-day series of bombing
raids over major German cities.
[dramatic music]
[bombers rumbling]
[Dr. Grant] This is the critical hour
for the Combined Bomber Offensive
because the Allies now know
that they're approaching the
time for the D-Day landings.
- [fighter planes rumbling]
- They need to draw up the Luftwaffe
so that the P-51 can
destroy it in the skies.
[fighter planes rumbling]
The plan is to send
thousands of bombers
knowing that the Luftwaffe
will have no choice
but to send everything
it has up in the skies
to defend the homeland.
So in a way, the bombers are the bait.
[suspenseful music]
[Tom] Fitted with extra
fuel tanks, the P-51 Mustangs
are capable of penetrating
deep into Germany.
[fighter planes roaring]
Their primary mission has
been protecting the bombers.
Now they're ordered to actively
pursue German fighters,
even if it leaves the
formations vulnerable.
[fighter planes rumbling]
[John] The mission of the
American fighters
is to be aggressive
and go after the Luftwaffe
in the air to kill them
in any way, shape, or form.
[machine gun firing]
[suspenseful music]
[Tom] Operation Argument,
known as Big Week,
begins a battle of attrition
between the Allied air
forces and the Luftwaffe.
[machine gun firing]
[explosion booming]
[machine gun firing]
[explosion booming]
The success of the upcoming invasion
hangs in the balance.
[explosion booming] [pensive music]
[John] The United States is gonna lose
about a quarter of the Eighth
Air Force in that fight.
The Germans are gonna lose
about a third of their fighter force
and 18% of their fighter pilots.
This is something the
Allies can sustain,
the Germans cannot.
[suspenseful music]
[Robert] From the US perspective,
this is a war economy
that is churning out hundreds
and hundreds of heavy bombers
every day of the year.
Young men are signing up in droves.
And so the cold-blooded calculation
is that no matter how
heavy US losses are,
America can replace
its planes and pilots.
[suspenseful music]
[machine gun firing]
[explosion booming]
[Tom] In the month after Big Week,
American fighters down more
German planes over Europe
than in the previous two years.
[suspenseful music]
The Luftwaffe is being
destroyed in the air
and on the ground.
[Col. Douds] It's really this
symbiosis.
Mustangs, they're
killing German fighters,
which means the bombers
can now be more accurate,
which means they're doing a better job
of attacking the German
aircraft industry.
[explosions booming]
It's a cycle that's
destroying the Luftwaffe.
[machine gun firing]
[explosion booming]
[Tom] By June, 1944,
there are few experienced
Luftwaffe pilots left alive.
[John] By the time the D-Day
comes, the Allies own the air.
That's why you see very
few Luftwaffe fighters
over the beaches of
Normandy on June 6th, 1944.
[bombers rumbling]
[pensive music]
[Tom] Control of the air
is decisively established.
The Luftwaffe will be incapable
of opposing the upcoming
Allied invasion.
But again, the cost is high.
[somber music]
Fewer than a quarter of British
and American bomber crews
survive the campaign.
[Robert] The tragedy of the
air war is that the bomber crews
were essentially testing
out an unproven theory.
[Dan C.] Anytime you're
talking about high technology
and cutting-edge weaponry,
there is an element of
experimentation involved.
And some of the ways, unfortunately,
that you learn in war is by dying.
Sometimes in wartime, there's
no other way to learn.
[Robert] When both the British
and American air
forces worked together,
bombers and fighters together,
they proved to be the most
effective aerial instrument
of war in history.
[dramatic music]
The battle in the air over Europe
isn't won by B-17s or P-51s.
It's won by the men who
fight in those planes
and the men and women who
support them on the ground.
What they accomplished,
the destruction of
the German Luftwaffe,
will make possible the greatest
land and sea invasion in history.