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00:00I don't think very many of the air crew knew what strategic warming really meant.
00:18We as boys from school joined the Air Force because there was a war being fought and there was a bit of glamour attached to the Air Force.
00:24If you couldn't get the kraut in his factory it was just as easy to knock him off in his bed and if old granny Schicklgruber in the street next door got the chop that's hard luck.
00:39There are a lot of people who say that bombing can never win a war.
00:45Well my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet and we shall see.
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01:58After the Battle of Britain,
02:20the Royal Air Force had cause to celebrate.
02:23Fighter Command had shown how difficult it was for bombers to destroy a country which
02:32could defend its own airspace, a lesson the air staff apparently neglected to teach itself.
02:46Lord Trenchard had founded the service as a force of strategic bombers, fighters for
02:52defense for secondary.
02:58Long range bombers, Ibras argued in the 30s, could win wars without costly land battles.
03:03They would bomb the industrial heart out of an enemy and totally demoralize his civilian
03:08population.
03:12In 1939, the RAF was not really equipped to put this thesis to the test.
03:17But after Dunkirk, it was the only force capable of attacking Germany, and the British public
03:23desperately needed an attack.
03:29The British Empire is building up a tremendous bomber force designed as the offensive air
03:33weapon to smash the heart of Germany.
03:43The first daylight raids were disastrous.
03:46Bombers fell easy prey to the Luftwaffe.
03:49Bombers fell in the 30s, could win.
04:03Still the RAF persevered, though losses mounted.
04:06Heavy casualties forced bomber command to start flying at night.
04:13The controller said, how can you miss them?
04:16And I leave you to guess what I said.
04:20OK, chaps, here we go.
04:23Hello, Mr. Stoyer, hello, Mr. Stoyer.
04:27Hello, Mr. Stoyer, hello, Mr. Stoyer.
04:57For air crews trained to attack in broad daylight, night flying had its problems.
05:07To find a target in Germany in the dead of night, in any average weather conditions,
05:15was quite far beyond the task of any bomber crews.
05:20We're over the Dutch coast. Too much cloud to see where.
05:28Patriotic films had no difficulty in giving the impression that plucked determination
05:33and a diet of raw carrots could overcome the law that says you cannot see in the dark.
05:38Can't be anything else but the right.
05:40I hope it's not the down here.
05:42Keep on going. You may be having to pick up something different later on.
05:46If you could get visual pinpoints en route, you could get within five or seven miles of the target.
06:00Bomb doors open. Teddy.
06:02Of course, once the target was reached, it was a piece of cake.
06:06Bomb's gone.
06:11Provided you were just blowing up a studio model.
06:16I hope we haven't kept you waiting, sir.
06:20Good Lord, now. Come and sit down.
06:25Well, how'd you get on?
06:26Caused a hell of a great big fowl. Buckets of smoke.
06:30Visible, ooh, fifty miles away.
06:33Well, little boy, how about some bacon and eggs?
06:36The truth was different.
06:46In fact, in those days, and it's proved, it's been proved since,
06:51three bombs in every hundred got within five miles of the aiming point.
06:57In this dorm room were killed nine children and five severely injured.
07:08Inaccurate bombing could be embarrassing.
07:13The German propaganda ministry was quick to capitalize on the destruction of this children's hospital.
07:18That's the victims of British murderers who have committed this stupid crime very clearly.
07:23It will be unerbittlich.
07:25But the war cabinet's view was that Germany had to be bombed.
07:32And this was the only strategic bombing Britain could then undertake.
07:37Coventry and Liverpool indicated that German industry would suffer if its workers were bombed out.
07:43Professor Lindemann was advising Churchill that de-housing one-third of German workers would bring industrial production to a halt.
07:51And there was popular pressure to avenge the Blitz.
07:55We ask no favors of the enemy.
08:00We seek from them no compunction.
08:08On the contrary, if tonight the people of London were asked to cast their votes
08:16as to whether a convention should be entered into to stop the bombing of all cities,
08:23an overwhelming majority would cry.
08:26No.
08:28We will mete out to the Germans the measure, and more than the measure.
08:33They have mete it out to us.
08:34The Germans were now mete it out to the British bomber.
08:57By the end of 1941, Britain had lost 700 aircraft.
09:04The Navy and the Army were demanding bombers for the Atlantic and the desert.
09:21Bomber command stood to be put out of business.
09:25In the face of mounting losses, the cabinet ordered bombing operations to be cut down to save the bomber force.
09:32During the respite in February 1942, Sir Arthur Harris took over as commander-in-chief bomber command.
09:42He was determined to succeed with new tactics and new bombers.
09:46The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else, and nobody was going to bomb them.
09:57At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put that rather naive theory into operation.
10:10They showed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
10:15I put them onto the North German ports in the Baltic, because having flown quite a bit at night myself, I realized that the easiest targets to get hold of, of course, were always the ones on the coastline.
10:31Because if you can see anything, you can see a coastline.
10:36And if you can see a coastline with its odd shapes, you can find your way along to ports and recognize them.
10:43Lübeck and Rostock were the first major targets.
10:48As ports, they were easy to find, and they burned well.
10:54In March 1942, 230 bombers destroyed half Lübeck.
11:02In April, Rostock was bombed into flames.
11:06The style was set, night area bombing.
11:11This was to become the pattern for the next three years.
11:15It was terrifying. It was indiscriminate.
11:19But as far as bomber command was concerned, there was no alternative.
11:24On how many occasions, looking out of the window, or walking out in the garden, could you see up to 18 or 20,000 feet?
11:33Maybe on two or three days at most.
11:36On how many occasions can you guarantee, if you could see up to it here, that you could see down to it,
11:42four or five hundred miles away in the other end of Europe?
11:46That was the situation.
11:48There's no possibility of hitting individual targets, consistently small targets,
11:56until we'd got the navigational electronic aids that would show those targets up in the dark or through clouds.
12:06The first electronic aid to navigation now came into service. It was called G.
12:13Three radio transmitters in England sent out an invisible grid of signals across Western Europe.
12:19By monitoring the signals and plotting them on a map, a navigator could tell where his aircraft was.
12:32G was first used at Cologne.
12:36Here Harris threw in every bomber he could scrape up for a monumental prestige attack.
12:42In your hands lie the means of destroying a major part of the resources by which the enemy's war effort is maintained.
12:56Press home your attack. If you individually succeed, you will have delivered the most devastating blow against the very vitals of the enemy.
13:05Let him have it right on the chin. Send that message to all groups and stations.
13:15Well, I was trying to show then what could be achieved with something approaching an adequate force,
13:21and that it would be achieved without abnormal casualties.
13:26The hours of darkness over Hitler's Germany are about to be made hideous.
13:34The men of bomber command know well what they have to do.
13:38A calm, moonlit night.
13:41Everything ready and waiting, from planes to carrier pigeons.
13:45They seem to know the ops are on. Come on, fellas, get cracking.
13:48Round the clock with the RAF.
13:59At station after station, there are heavies, including Lancasters, the heavy bomber of the moment, ready for tonight.
14:06For tonight is going to be very, very interesting.
14:10A thousand bomber night.
14:12On that night, the 30th of May, 1942, one thousand and forty-six bombers took off for Cologne.
14:35We heard the drone of the approaching bombers and guessed that it was a heavy formation.
14:57And soon after, the first bombs fell around us.
15:00We were all shaking with fear. Some people nearly fainted. Many of the patients were crying.
15:07The roaring and crashing came closer and closer.
15:11We really thought all hell was breaking loose.
15:17Our part of the city was in flames.
15:20People were running out of cellars and out of houses.
15:23Some were buried in the rubble. Others were caught by the falling masonry.
15:26Many people actually caught fire and were running around like living torches.
15:35We really didn't expect in 42 that such a heavy rate would take place.
15:41We were only used to smaller attacks.
15:44And when I got the news that about a thousand bombers were attacking Cologne, it was incredible.
15:59The morale of the people was not shattered too much.
16:03It was more like a short shock which passed away.
16:07German industry remained resilient, although the Ruhr, the industrial heartland, was under attack throughout 1942.
16:18Damage was extensive, but there was still some slack in the economy to be taken up in more war production.
16:23The Nazi war machine was skilled at orchestrating civilian morale.
16:29It was often �omring civilian morale.
16:32The North of the Hitler 하면.
16:36It was once.
16:38The Usually-time, military or f� deh to the Jews.
16:44The coups were not groot.
16:46The Emilian Zusammen.
16:49And the Germans could give as well as take.
17:17The Luftwaffe was acutely aware of the lesson radar-controlled RAF fighters had taught it during the Battle of Britain.
17:26Air Defence Chief General Cam Huber evolved a most efficient system.
17:31Across the North Sea coast stretched an early warning radar grid, the Cam Huber Line.
17:36This grid was divided into boxes. In each box was a night fighter waiting like a spider for the fly.
17:44We overtook the plane on the side, so he thought, ah, he hasn't seen me.
17:53He still did some corkscrewing or waving.
17:57I just banked slightly to give the gunners a good view underneath.
18:02I moved off maybe ten degrees to port and starboard during this manoeuvre, but it wasn't violent in any sense at all.
18:10And then I was shooting this way and diving directly.
18:17Or with the, what we said, schräge musik, two centimeters cannons, the same, only flying underneath and waiting.
18:32The moving, very easy, we did the same parallel to the other one, shooting and between the motors.
18:41You had about 5,000 liters of gasoline and that was burning very easily.
18:47The advent of the Cam Huber Line and all that went with it was a startling sort of thing to be confronted with.
18:57Because they took, the German night defences took a terrible toll of British bombers.
19:04But now the RAF was no longer alone.
19:14Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
19:21And the skies are not cloudy all day
19:27Hiya fellas, here's your bird seat for Hitler, come and get it.
19:40Throughout 1942, the United States 8th Army Air Force had been building up in England.
19:49The American air chiefs believed they could succeed in daylight without suffering the losses the British had done.
19:56They were convinced they could bomb accurately by day.
20:01There's Charlie doing his quarrel again.
20:03Wish I had something like that to play with.
20:05You guys wouldn't know what to do with a turret if you had one.
20:08Took six months to teach you how to pull a trigger.
20:10Why don't you pull us anywhere?
20:12All right folks, we'll carry the swarms while you need the intercom open.
20:19Their aircraft were very heavily armed.
20:21Some carried up to twelve machine guns.
20:24And they were trained to fly in close formation.
20:28Formation flying was really the name of the game as far as the 8th Air Force was concerned.
20:34There's never anything like it happened before or since.
20:41They actually were sort of making their own rules up as they went along because it was just a brand new concept.
20:53You made it possible to have a more concentrated firepower from the gunner's positions of all your airplanes.
21:02The fact that you could depend on good formation, tight formation, not only helped you in defense of fighter attack,
21:16It made your chances of achieving good bombing results much better.
21:25Because if your bombing squadron of airplanes was bombing and the pattern was a good tight pattern,
21:31Your results were bound to be good.
21:38Early raids into France seemed to bear out the American optimism.
21:46Later, over Germany, it was a different story.
21:50But we found that at first, yes, the bombers could cope pretty well with the fighters
21:55And take acceptable losses if the penetrations were not too deep.
21:59And the bombers kept good formation and they had the supporting fire one from the other.
22:04But as time went on, the Germans were learning too.
22:07And so they learned how to make their attacks and they learned how to penetrate the formations.
22:11Then they started the head-on attacks, which would try to get the leader and spread out the formation.
22:17And once they got the formation spread out, then they could pick the bombers off at will, more or less, anyway.
22:29But it was too early to admit defeat.
22:45At night, the British bombers flew on, hundreds at a time, but each on its own.
22:51When we used to see them go over in the early evening, one by one in trail,
22:56I would not have changed places for them.
22:59And I'd much rather have the close formation, the firepower, than go over the way they did.
23:07Where we were flying with the RAF, you were single, Charlie.
23:11Just after we crossed the Dutch coast, I had felt a terrific bang in my face.
23:17And the windscreen was shot away and been wounded in the forearm and the head and the shoulder and the head.
23:24And the plane went out of control temporarily.
23:27So I didn't see any sense in saying, you know, that I'm wounded in case they all thought, you know,
23:36he's going to pop off any minute now.
23:38The cannon again exploded in the front of the plane, up beside us,
23:44and the shell hit the engineer who stood beside me in the forearm.
23:48And I had bits of my leg and the skin of my hand.
23:55The port elevator had been shot off the plane.
23:57That's the elevator that keeps the plane straight and level on each side of the till.
24:01And the port one had been shot off.
24:03And this meant that you had to hold the stick back, right back as if you were going to climb like this,
24:08to keep the plane straight and level.
24:10So the bombing had to help push this back as well because my shoulder was,
24:14and this arm was pretty weak, my shoulder being hit.
24:16And it was a matter of keeping the stick back by holding my hands in front.
24:21And the engineer held it with his other hand, his good arm.
24:24So we held this combined back to keep the plane straight and level.
24:29And it wasn't a sort of press on the guard this feeling.
24:32It was just a fact that the four engines were still flying.
24:37If any engine cut had a thought right away, well, we can't get any further.
24:42But another factor here was that had a turn back,
24:46we have another six or seven hundred planes that are more or less in the same track
24:50and spread with something like eight or ten miles broad
24:53and maybe four to six thousand feet deep.
24:56And you're turning back right into them,
24:59and you're heading right there and through this lot to get back.
25:01And then again, had a turn of, say, 90 degrees,
25:05to try and avoid them, you're still turning across quite a number.
25:10And then I watched for the target indicators and opened the bomb door
25:14and kept the plane as steady as I could on the target indicators
25:17and then just kept a straight level.
25:18And I think this is probably one of the things that made the fuss about,
25:21that we had a picture of the actual target, you know, after all this happening.
25:24But as soon as we had a picture taken, I turned off to head for base.
25:29One of the things that I always remember feeling in this particular trip was that we had to get back
25:35because I knew we were wounded.
25:38None of the other members could fly it, you know, even normal straight and level.
25:42So to fly it at night with one elevator gone and having to stick back in your belly
25:47and no instruments, as it were, would have been pretty well impossible.
25:52And we were shot at a few times on the way back, but we weren't hit again.
25:56And eventually we did come over England when I saw these beacons flashing.
26:00As it touched down, the legs of the undercarriage collapsed and were along the belly for maybe 50 yards or so.
26:15And came to a stop, switched off engine to keep the fire hazard down.
26:20It was then only that I knew the navigator was killed because it slid forward beside me.
26:26And by how many enemy fighters did you see?
26:45I couldn't keep track of them, sir, but I counted by 60 packs.
26:48I stopped trying to count when I got to 50, sir.
26:51I think it was generally understood that the combat tour was 25 missions
26:56because you'd be dead by the end of that time.
26:59So there wasn't any point in asking you to stay around any longer.
27:03Bomber crews lived a curious war.
27:06One day in action, the next on the town.
27:09When our group wasn't flying, they'd usually go into London, spend the day in London.
27:16And sometimes if they had some money left, they'd call up to find out whether or not there was a mission going the next day.
27:25And if not, they'd stay over.
27:27Black will be heavy, probably accurate.
27:30You've been through worse before.
27:32Remember that your biggest enemy is still a single-engine fighter plane.
27:44I recall one evening in the officer's club, our operations officer was pouring scotch into a one-armed bandit.
27:52You know, these things that you put quarters in trying to persuade the machine to deliver a jackpot.
27:59But I guess it was a kind of an eat, drink and be merry a sort of life.
28:07You're going to be rough.
28:21You're going to have to bow your neck in there and stay in there and pitch every minute.
28:26You're going to have to bow your neck and sit while there.
28:54I think that flying is so impersonal, that is to say combat flying,
29:00that you don't get that intimate sense of loss if you see an airplane get shot down
29:05that you'd have if your buddy on a battlefield had his head blown off right within arm's length.
29:17Young men came from Britain, America, occupied Europe and the British Commonwealth
29:22to fight and die in the most determined air offensive yet waged.
29:28In January 1943, at Casablanca, Churchill and Roosevelt decided to combine
29:33the British and American bombing efforts in preparing Nazi Europe for D-Day.
29:40U-boat yards, aircraft plants, armament factories, oil installations and transport
29:50were deemed priority targets for round-the-clock precision bombing.
30:00But precision bombing at night was still impossible for Harris.
30:05An attempt to pick off the Ruhr dams with specially designed bombs
30:08was only partially successful and cost the lives of some of the best air crews.
30:13Though the raid led to improved accuracy later on, not all the dams were hit.
30:31Ruhr arms production was unaffected.
30:34Harris believed that only the mounting onslaught of night area bombing
30:38would crush German industrial capacity.
30:41At this time, we were getting better aircraft.
30:45The Lancaster was coming out in great numbers.
30:47We were losing the lesser efficient Stirling and Halifax.
30:53We were getting better radar devices.
30:55And we had extremely good navigators, selected navigators.
31:01And this was the essence of the whole thing.
31:03And these navigators were able to get much closer to an aiming point than we had previously.
31:11Then we laid great lanes of flares, hundreds of flares.
31:15Even if we missed the aiming point, we would identify some very positive feature on the ground,
31:25like a lake or a bend in the river.
31:28And from there, we could then creep onto the target and put flares down,
31:33different colored flowers.
31:35And then later on, we got target indicators.
31:39And these were, just imagine, a great bunch of incandescent grapes
31:45falling from 2,000, 4,000, wherever we wanted them to detonate from.
31:52At the end of July, 1943, Harris deployed his improving technology
31:58with devastating effect on Hamburg.
32:01The effectiveness of the first Hamburg raid
32:04was due to us at last getting permission
32:10to use something we'd had in the bag for a long time,
32:13which was known as window,
32:16which was the dropping of clouds of aluminium paper strips,
32:21which completely upset not only the German location apparatus,
32:28but also their gun aiming apparatus.
32:30None of us, neither civilians nor firemen,
32:54knew what happened in this night.
32:56It was a very heavy raid,
32:59but we had almost the same one year before.
33:05We were not prepared for the firestorm,
33:09which broke out half an hour after the raid.
33:16The effect of the bombing, combined with the summer heat wave,
33:20was to create a man-made tornado of flame,
33:24a firestorm.
33:25I went to this area, near the docks.
33:36It was crossed by canals.
33:38People tried to leap down into them,
33:40out of the flames,
33:42but the water was on fire.
33:43It's difficult to explain why the water was burning.
33:54There were many ships, small ships,
33:58moored in the canals.
34:00They had exploded,
34:02and burning oil had been released onto the water.
34:04And the people who were themselves on fire jumped into it,
34:12and they burnt, swam, burnt, and went under.
34:18Most people were killed by the fierce heat,
34:46not burned,
34:47not burned, or suffocated, or poisoned by carbon monoxide.
34:54We think that in some places,
34:56the temperature reached 1,000 degrees centigrade.
35:06The British night attacks and American day raids lasted nearly a week.
35:1030,000 died.
35:13In Hamburg, we really found out the first time
35:20that the morale of the German people can be shattered so much
35:25that the work for industry,
35:29the work in the armaments industry,
35:31would collapse.
35:33At the time, Speer said that six more raids like that
35:43would have finished the war.
35:49The Allies did not have that capacity.
35:55The shock passed.
35:56At the same time,
36:02the 8th Air Force had stepped up
36:04the intensity of its daylight raids
36:06against precise targets.
36:08The 8th group will bomb
36:10from an altitude of 13,000 feet.
36:15We feel that this low altitude
36:17will be equalized by the element of surprise
36:19which is weather.
36:20Two weeks after Hamburg,
36:26they planned to deal their knockout blow
36:28against German industry.
36:30Lights, please.
36:33This group of buildings here is your target.
36:37This building will be the aiming point.
36:40If your bomb pattern is concentrated in this area,
36:44it should very effectively
36:45knock out the factory.
36:48The target was the ball-bearing factory.
36:50The factory is at Schweinfurt,
36:52producing a major part of Germany's needs.
36:54The military is a major part of Germany's needs.
37:20The attacking force was to be split into two.
37:43The first wave would fight to a secondary target,
37:46the Messerschmitt aircraft plant at Regensburg.
37:49Then, it would fly on unhindered to North Africa.
37:53The second wave,
37:54ten minutes behind the first,
37:56would then arrive at Schweinfurt
37:57whilst the German fighters were on the ground refueling.
38:01Their battle would be during the trip home.
38:03We went in.
38:07I went in without any fighter escort at all
38:09and flew clear across Europe
38:12without fighter escort
38:14with about 125 airplanes
38:17that I had in the division at the time.
38:19The astonished German air defense staff
38:24plotted the path of the first wave
38:25as it flew further and further into Germany.
38:31They could not tell the plan was going wrong.
38:34British weather helped to upset the Americans' careful plans.
38:38Unexpected low cloud delayed the takeoff of the second wave.
38:41The result, the Luftwaffe, refueled and rearmed,
38:44was waiting for them.
38:46Well, we didn't expect an attack
38:48coming that far into the country
38:51without fighter escort.
38:53And we were all very astonished.
38:56Next up to number 10...
38:59which will be seven years later
39:0110 to see.
39:02Premier, Victor!
39:05Victor, Victor!
39:11Victor!
39:21Victor, Victor!
39:23Victor, Victor!
39:24Victor!
39:25Victor, Victor!
39:26Victor, Victor!
39:26Victor, Victor!
39:26Victor, Victor!
39:26Schweinfurt has been the result of very good conditions in favor of the German fighters
39:35and the fact that we could bring about all our fighters in operation to intercept the
39:41bomber stream, this all together has favored our results.
39:47Twenty-one flying fortresses were lost before the first bomb fell on Schweinfurt.
40:06First division coming in later had heavier losses because they had to go back out in addition
40:12to coming in, though I think we wound up today by losing about 60 airplanes, which doesn't
40:20make anybody very happy.
40:42The cost was high, but ball-bearing production was disrupted for six weeks.
41:02When you hit Schweinfurt first, it was a nightmare getting through.
41:13But then I had a very good representative, Kessler, and he did with all means not only the repair,
41:21but also the replacement of ball-bearings with other devices, which could do the job not
41:31as good as a ball-bearing, but it could be done.
41:39In the two-wave attack, over 120 aircraft were lost or damaged beyond repair.
41:46To prove their point at Schweinfurt, the Americans would have to go back.
41:50Naturally, I was keenly disappointed, largely because in sending my crews back, I knew they
41:58would sustain additional losses.
42:00And if we had done the job right in the first place, we could have avoided these losses.
42:06But nobody who fires a gun hits his target every time.
42:12We went back because we got a period of good weather, and it was our highest priority target.
42:17And that's why we returned.
42:21On the 14th of October, some 300 bombers were marshalled over England.
42:27There were airplanes climbing all over England, and England was just an airport, really.
42:32And this, I think, was real difficult.
42:39It took some time to group a large number of heavy bombers into a tight formation.
42:45These complicated maneuvers gave ample warning to the Luftwaffe of the strength and direction
42:50of an attacking force.
42:52Two-thirds of all German fighters were now concentrated against the 8th Air Force.
42:57Well, the fighter, he was the boogeyman.
43:01The fighter had eyes, and in a great many instances, the fighter had a pretty confident
43:10follow up at the controls.
43:15And when he latched onto you, you were in trouble lots of times.
43:22And I was that close that I could really see the rear gunner, and I saw him frightened
43:30as I was.
43:32They'd call the positions of the fighters out over their intercom, you see.
43:40And sometimes they'd get so frightened that they'd continue to hold the microphone down,
43:45and keep hollering into the microphone.
43:48And they started by 1,000 meters almost with their tracing ammunition in order to frighten
43:59us.
44:00And I told my younger pilots, who had no experience, to close their eyes attacking from behind.
44:14Well, it wasn't very much time to think.
44:16You just put that gun sight on what kept waving your head around in the sky, looking for enemy
44:22fighters, and kept the gun sight on them.
44:27Right before we hit the target was the worst part of the ride.
44:34We got picked up by fighters that were taken into the target, and then they left, and we
44:39dropped the bombs, and they picked us up after the target.
44:46More than 60 percent of all ball bearing production at Schweinfurt was destroyed.
44:53The Americans had lost more than 60 flying fortresses.
44:58If you would have repeated those raids shortly afterwards, and wouldn't have given us the
45:03time to rebuild, then it would have been a disastrous result.
45:08But could you take the losses that the forces took, when you didn't know whether you were
45:12going to accomplish it or not?
45:13When you thought ball bearings were coming in from Sweden, and possibly through Switzerland?
45:17So you didn't know.
45:18So you don't go on with those things.
45:20So the strategy swung back from pinpoint targets like Schweinfurt to another night area offensive,
45:29Berlin.
45:30With American support, Harris believed he could wreck Berlin in six months and win the war.
45:37But the depleted 8th Air Force were not now able to join him.
45:42He sent the most amazing signals, and one that I'll always remember, and this is the
45:47sort of thing you read out to your crews at briefing.
45:52This one went on to say, tonight you go to the big city, that's Berlin.
45:58You have the opportunity to light a fire in the belly of the enemy and burn his black heart out.
46:05Well, when crews after stopped cheering, a thing like that, they didn't want aircraft.
46:18They would just fill their pockets with bombs and point them towards Berlin, and they'd
46:23take off on their own.
46:28Bomber command had to go on, on its own.
46:32It was a long way, and the weather at the end of 1943 was particularly bad.
46:38But each night, the bombers fought their way to Berlin and other cities deep in Germany.
46:45Berlin is getting a real taste of total war.
47:01The terrific weight of the RAF assaults on the capital of Nazi land has set the Hun reeling.
47:06How he must regret the ruthless attacks he made on Warsaw, Rotterdam, Belgrade, London, Coventry, and the rest.
47:12The day and night of reckoning is here.
47:15Well, what do you think of it, Keith?
47:17Well, I think Jerry definitely had it this time.
47:19Certainly was a wizard praying.
47:21Yet, many of Berlin's offices and factories managed to go on working.
47:36In my experience, people rather got numb.
47:44They were going through the streets like shadows, but they were still working like automats.
47:52I was born in his office.
47:57But what do you think of it?
48:01It's a weird one of the 2 – some of them at 6th time.
48:04It's a weird one of them.
48:06It's a weird one of them, and it's amazing.
48:08It's also a weird one of them.
48:13But as long as they are, you know, in the region,
48:16one of them.
48:17You must not get you.
48:19We had very little trouble in getting there, but one thing I did notice was the vicious
48:36way in which every German town now seems to throw up flak indiscriminately.
48:44The technological advantages which prevailed over Hamburg no longer apply.
48:49The German air defense had leapfrogged ahead once more.
49:01Berlin looked as if it would indeed remain Berlin.
49:04By early spring 1944, Harris had not totally destroyed the city.
49:20By early spring 1944, Harris had not totally destroyed the city.
49:27Berlin
49:51bomber command had been savagely mauled by the Germans in those four months in raids against
50:07Berlin and other targets a thousand aircraft the command's first-line strength were lost
50:14but Harris did not and does not concede defeat the casualties in the Battle of Berlin
50:21were no more than we would have suffered if we'd gone anywhere else in Germany deep into Germany
50:28people seem to forget that bomber command thought it fought a thousand battles during the war you
50:36can't succeed in everyone I'm not saying the Battle of Berlin was a defeat or anything like a defeat
50:41I think it was a major contribution towards the defeat of Germany there were thousands of anti-air
50:50heavy anti-aircraft guns millions of of ammunition for it and hundreds thousands of soldiers which
51:00were torn away from our fight in the Eastern Front so I should say this air attacks on Germany you had
51:10in an early state from 43 on really so called a second front despite all the devastation the Germans
51:23carried on German industry was still supplying the armies fighting fiercely in the east and in Italy
51:29the strategic bombing thesis remained as yet unproven
51:33the lessons of Schreinfurt had been well learned by the Americans re-equipped they joined the RAF over
51:46Berlin in March 1944 but now they were escorted by the mustang a remarkable airplane which was to change
51:52it had a bomber's range of the fighters performance the German day fighter had now met its man
51:59by the end of spring 1944 the German day fighter had lost whether Spitfire and Hurricane had won the
52:13Americans had finally beaten the Luftwaffe over daylight Europe with their long-range fighters and we had nothing
52:21of the same effort and I think they frightened us quite a bit I think the main concern was the quantities
52:32which they show were showing up
52:34the Germans had lost control of their airspace in daylight from now on the Allies would be able to launch day raids
52:49over Germany at will
53:01but in March 1944 both bomber forces were placed under Eisenhower's overall command to prepare for D-Day
53:10there would be six months respite before the Allied bombers could set out once more to break the will of the German people
53:18the German people
53:48and the George
54:02who's sure that we catch up with the noticeable
54:05to the German people
54:08ever had strange
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