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00:00¡Suscríbete al canal!
00:30For the first time, naval battles play out in three dimensions.
00:33On the surface, under the water, and in the air.
00:38Aircraft carriers allow navies to strike targets hundreds of miles away.
00:42Well, if this thing is coming very fast down, no one is well prepared for that.
00:48It's a very, very deadly weapon.
00:51In the Atlantic, the contest between allied navies and German U-boats
00:55leads to both new ways of attacking and new ways of defending.
01:00Submariners under attack have less than a minute to perform a crash dive to avoid enemy fire.
01:08If one of the 45 men on board failed, then we would all die.
01:13Today, some of the last survivors recall the horrors of war.
01:17We looked at the armada, and it was huge.
01:21You're looking out into eternity.
01:24You think this is the end of life.
01:28These participants tell their stories of the epic battles
01:31and their life aboard the warships in the deadliest war in history.
01:35They're there.
01:41They're definitely missing.
01:43Danielle Cran, USA
01:45or anything.
01:45They're there.
01:50You're joining us.
01:51They're there.
01:52They're there.
01:56They're there.
01:57Get out there.
01:58¡Suscríbete al canal!
02:28Spring 1919, Scapa Flow, Scotland.
02:33For six months, the guns of the Great War have been silent.
02:40But here, 74 German ships and their crews are still being held prisoner.
02:46Under the watchful eyes of the British, they wait to discover their fate.
02:51On board his torpedo boat, Commandant Friedrich Ruge is tired of his British keepers.
02:58The situation was unbearable.
03:02They refused to deliver us provisions for payment, as is laid down in the rules for internships.
03:07Need led us to start fishing.
03:09They are completely isolated.
03:14They're not allowed to come off the ships.
03:16The ships have been disarmed.
03:18The war isn't over.
03:19It's an armistice.
03:20It's not the end of the war.
03:22So at any point, fighting could break out again.
03:24A few weeks later, on June 21st, 1919, the rear admiral in command of the German fleet sees the British Navy depart on exercises.
03:36He had learned that the interned ships would be awarded to the Allies as war reparations.
03:46Believing his government will refuse this demand, he sends an order to the interned fleet.
03:52The German sailors are to scuttle their own ships.
03:54Everything seemed to go according to plan.
03:57Nevertheless, I went through the whole ship to convince myself.
04:00Everywhere it splashed loud and audible.
04:05They wanted, at all costs, to stop their ships falling into enemy hands.
04:09The sailors in all ships open the seacocks.
04:15These are valves, through which seawater flows into a pipe system in the ship.
04:19The sailors smash these pipes, and the ships begin to fill with water.
04:25Friedrich Ruger and the other German sailors abandon ship.
04:31When their British guards return, it is already too late.
04:34Some of the ships the British are able to board and reverse the process,
04:40but most of them go down in deep water,
04:42and there's absolutely nothing the British can do except watch them sink.
04:48Of the 74 German vessels, 52 now rest on the seabed.
04:53It is the biggest scuttling of warships in history.
04:56The German navy, once the second largest in the world, is no more.
05:00A page is turned in Europe, and the resulting resentment will fester for years.
05:08Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, a new power is rising.
05:18The decades after the Great War redefined naval power.
05:22Superior technology, not just superior numbers, is the key to naval strength.
05:27The British Royal Navy is still the world's largest fleet.
05:32But the United States is determined to challenge for the title.
05:36And so is a relative newcomer, the Empire of Japan.
05:42And the Japanese were tutored in naval affairs by England by design.
05:48They looked to see who they thought was the best at it, and they were right,
05:52and they tried to learn from them.
05:54But they are also experimenting with a new kind of warship, the aircraft carrier.
06:09Using ships to launch airplanes could be the key to dominating the Pacific.
06:18Nobody's used them in action.
06:19It's untested.
06:20The quality and capability of the aircraft hasn't really caught up with the carrier.
06:26So nobody really sees these things as a threat.
06:28At best, they're seen as auxiliaries that can do useful things like scout.
06:34Early flight decks are very short and installed above the ship's guns.
06:42Other models use up to three flight decks for planes to take off and land.
06:46The technology is far from perfect, but the Japanese are convinced of its potential.
06:57A plane launched from a ship can reach targets hundreds of kilometers away.
07:02One of the pilots training for combat in this fledgling naval air force is Mitsuo Fuchida.
07:07When he enters the Imperial Naval Academy in 1921, he is just 18 years old.
07:14Here, he is taught who the next enemy will be.
07:17The Naval Academy's cadets were full of vigor and arrogance.
07:21We were taught that our future enemy would be America.
07:25Every effort was made to influence the hatred of the nation against her.
07:28Japan, as a victorious allied power during the First World War, and by virtue of the Treaty
07:36of Versailles, has taken over German possessions in the Pacific.
07:40It now poses a threat to the American sphere of influence.
07:44So you have the Americans pushing westwards across the Pacific, and you have the Japanese
07:48pushing out to the eastwards, and what they want to be is the dominant power in the Pacific.
07:53And Japan is not the only country that is turning to military conquest.
08:01Since January 30th, 1933, Adolf Hitler has been Chancellor of the German Reich.
08:07He has big plans for the future of Germany's navy.
08:10A veteran of the scuttling at Scapa Flow 16 years earlier, Commander Friedrich Ruger witnesses
08:15this rebirth.
08:17The changeover to a navy which was no longer subject to the discriminatory provisions of the
08:22dictate of the Treaty of Versailles, finally began.
08:25Skirting the peace treaty, Germany begins building new warships.
08:31Engineers focus on innovation and new technology.
08:36For example, armor is welded together instead of riveted, as in the past.
08:46Riveting is the process of attaching armor steel plates to the hull of a ship.
08:50With welding, the hull is formed by fusing steel plates together.
08:56This saves weight.
08:58Welded ships are up to 20% lighter than riveted ones.
09:04Lighter, and therefore faster.
09:09The German navy progresses to open defiance.
09:12They plan a powerful war fleet for Hitler.
09:19Ten battleships, eight aircraft carriers, 166 smaller warships, 249 submarines.
09:28They call it the Z-Plan.
09:30They start the Z-Plan process, and they get as far as laying down Bismarck and Tirpitz,
09:36the two super battleships.
09:37Those are the first ships of the Z-Plan navy.
09:41At 251 meters long, Bismarck and Tirpitz are the largest battleships ever constructed in Europe.
09:47It was incredibly fast at 30 knots, that's 55 kilometers per hour.
09:52The rest of the Z-Plan fleet, including even larger battleships, is scheduled for completions by 1948.
10:00But Hitler isn't willing to wait.
10:04Germany is led by a man who is 100% self-declared land animal and doesn't really understand navies,
10:09or how navies work, or what you use them for, all the amount of time it takes to build them.
10:15By 1939, the Z-Plan fleet is only 20% complete.
10:20It consists mainly of submarines, destroyers, and cruisers.
10:25It will have to be enough.
10:32September 1st, 1939.
10:34Just before sunrise, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opens fire on Polish positions.
10:45At the same time, German ground troops begin the invasion of Poland.
10:50It is the beginning of the Second World War, and the end of the navy laid out in the Z-Plan.
10:56Even more than 1914, all that money is going to go to the army, so the navy gets nothing.
11:02Hitler's Wehrmacht conquers Poland in five weeks.
11:06Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands follow.
11:11On May 10th, 1940, Germany begins its invasion of France.
11:17I wasn't 17 years old until October, but I enlisted in the navy to go to war because we were very patriotic in those days.
11:25To me, Germany was the enemy.
11:28And when war broke out, I signed up right away.
11:36Leon Gauthier is an apprentice gunner on the battleship Courbet, a relic of the First World War.
11:43She is now only useful as a naval artillery school to train sailors for the Atlantic.
11:47After the German invasion, Courbet is reactivated to defend the port and city of Cherbourg.
11:58But at sea, its chances of success are slim.
12:03German ground troops advance faster than expected, and by early June, they threaten French ports.
12:09We saw the German planes when they came to bomb the port of Cherbourg.
12:15Naturally, we opened fire on them, but with the rapid advance of the German army, we left for England.
12:20A number of French ships cross the channel and seek refuge in the ports of southern England.
12:29Leon Gauthier and Courbet sail into Portsmouth on June 20th.
12:33Two days later, France signs an armistice with Hitler's Germany, which now control France's Atlantic ports.
12:40The British fear that the Germans will get their hands on the ships of the French Navy, the world's fourth largest fleet.
12:47Leon Gauthier and other French sailors seeking refuge in England find themselves in a precarious position.
12:54I remember one morning I was asleep in my hammock, because we still had hammocks back then,
13:00and I was woken up by a British soldier poking my butt with his bayonet.
13:05Get up, he said.
13:06And we all got up and were led out onto the deck.
13:10It is July 3rd, 1940.
13:13Leon Gauthier and his fellow sailors are forced to abandon the Courbet to the British.
13:18At the same time, the British attempt to seize the bulk of the French fleet,
13:22based at Mer-el-Kabir in French Algeria.
13:25The French refuse to hand over their ships.
13:28The British sink them, rather than see them go to the Germans.
13:31The attack kills 1,297 French sailors, who just a few days earlier, had been allies.
13:37Sailors like Leon Gauthier are given a choice.
13:45The first thing they asked us was if we wanted to stay in the Royal Navy.
13:49I said, no, of course.
13:50They put us in a camp, and that's where we heard that de Gaulle was forming an army and would keep fighting the Germans.
13:58So I joined de Gaulle on July 13th, 1940.
14:01In London, a handful of volunteers joined General Charles de Gaulle and his free French forces.
14:11Their fight is just beginning.
14:13In Germany in 1940, many people believe that the war is already almost won.
14:24Nazi propaganda stokes nationalistic fervor throughout the country.
14:27Haro Altenberg is fascinated by the stories of his classmates, who are soldiers returning from the front.
14:42Students returned to high school with medals from the war against Poland, or the war against France.
14:56And we said, these guys took part in a campaign and had, oh, this is a Bavarian expression, murderous fun, which means they had a lot of fun.
15:07At 17, Haro is too young to take part in the murderously fun war, but he has always wanted to join the Navy.
15:19On May 19th, 1941, the battleship Bismarck sails on her first mission.
15:25It is sent to destroy British supply convoys in the Atlantic.
15:29Britain has always been dependent on global trade to survive, as it is today.
15:35It's all the sinews of war, the most basic products.
15:39Britain needs it all.
15:42To counter Bismarck, the Royal Navy dispatches its warships, led by the pride of the fleet, the battlecruiser HMS Hood.
15:52On the morning of May 21st, 1940, the British find their target.
15:58The British fleet opens fire on the Bismarck.
16:05The German super battleship fires back.
16:09A salvo from Bismarck hits HMS Hood.
16:15The British ship explodes.
16:17Of 1,421 men on board, only three survive.
16:28Furious, the Royal Navy mobilizes an armada of 42 ships to stop the Bismarck, including two aircraft carriers.
16:35Once the attack starts, you're not thinking you're going to be killed, you're thinking you're going to hit the Bastard.
16:53To drop their torpedoes, Allied planes must first get through the battleship's anti-aircraft guns, a highly dangerous maneuver.
17:08The flak is bursting over our heads.
17:10The small arms fire is pretty well all around us, but we get in to drop the torpedo.
17:14A torpedo hits the Bismarck's stern.
17:24One of its giant rudders wedges in one of its propellers.
17:29The super battleship can only go in circles.
17:33Her commanding admiral, Gunther Lutyens, knows that Bismarck is lost.
17:37He could give the order to abandon ship, and thus save the more than 2,000 men on board.
17:43But instead, Lutyens sends a radio message to Hitler.
17:47We shall fight to the last man in confidence with you, my Fuhrer, and with rock-solid trust in Germany's victory.
18:00The next day at dawn, the British fleet pounds Bismarck into a burning wreck.
18:07Of 2,311 men on board, the British save only 111.
18:17For the first time, an aircraft carrier had demonstrated its usefulness in battle.
18:25But the so-called Giant of the Seas has been sunk without sinking a single enemy convoy ship.
18:37This task now falls more and more to Germany's submarines.
18:44Their predecessors had almost managed to torpedo Britain into submission in 1917.
18:54In 1941, they are ready for all-out war.
18:58The Nazis are confident this is the weapon that will win the battle of the Atlantic.
19:17There is no shortage of volunteers.
19:20With his parents' permission, Haru Altenberg finally enlists in the German Navy.
19:24The only thing that mattered was the on-board camaraderie and friendship.
19:34We wanted to get to know the world.
19:37I thought, I don't care about the risks.
19:40I just want to be on a U-boat.
19:42Period.
19:42I think that's a huge deal.
19:45Germany's Type 7C submarines are armed with five torpedo tubes, four fire forward, one aft.
19:53Underwater, they travel with battery-powered electric motors.
19:57On the surface, they run on diesel and recharge their batteries.
20:01The crew of 45 men lives together in a very confined space.
20:05La semana pasada tiene un objetivo único,
20:19a la escala de los mercados británicos de los británicos.
20:24De sus bases en el norte del norte del norte,
20:27se descanse hunderte de船 cada mes.
20:29Y luego fue solo la Comunidad y la Comunidad,
20:32Pero la Comunidad no estaba en ninguna fuerza.
20:35Los japoneses, por supuesto, admiraron Britán.
20:41Pero el objetivo de los japoneses era llegar a los europeos de Asia.
20:47En 1941, la batalla de la Atlántica parece que se vuelve a favor de los japoneses de U-boats.
20:53En el otro lado del mundo, los japoneses de aeropuerto están en un gran impacto en el Pacífico.
21:02Japón y Alemania han hecho un pacto para dividir el mundo.
21:06Alemania va a controlar Europa, Japón, el Pacífico.
21:09Japón aproximadamente 2,000 elite naval aviadores son los mejores en el mundo.
21:14Están preparando a la batalla de su enemigo, la U.S. Navy.
21:18Pre-war training leads them to enter the Second World War
21:21with probably the highest trained, best trained, most elite carrier aviation force in the world.
21:28Mitsuu Fuchida es uno de los mejores pilotos de Japón.
21:30He will be a commander in the upcoming attack.
21:34He trains his men aboard the flagship of the Japanese aircraft carrier fleet, the Akagi.
21:40Akagi was initially laid down as a battle cruiser, but then converted to an aircraft carrier.
21:45The ship has three hangars that can hold a total of 66 active aircraft.
21:50To bring the planes to the flight deck, Akagi has three elevators.
21:53For Fuchida and his men, taking off from this deck is always dangerous.
22:02Runways on land are usually at least 1,000 meters long.
22:06Akagi's flight deck measures only 260 meters, normally too short to start an aircraft.
22:11The airplane will take off when enough air is flying fast enough.
22:15Well, so how do you make it flow fast enough?
22:18One way is you roll down an airstrip or a deck, you pick up speed, eventually you're fast enough, you're up.
22:25Whether an airplane can take off depends primarily on how fast the air moves over its wings.
22:30With small propeller-driven aircraft, 60 knots, or 100 kilometers per hour, is sufficient.
22:37An aircraft carrier itself makes 30 knots and launches into the wind.
22:41This creates strong headwinds, giving the plane enough lift to take off from a short flight deck.
22:47For three weeks, Fuchida and his men have trained for their secret mission.
22:50On December 7, 1941, off the coast of Hawaii, they are ready to launch.
22:58The zero hour had arrived.
23:01The carriers swung into the wind.
23:03And at 0600, the first wave of the 353-plane attack force, of which I was in overall command,
23:10took off from the flight decks and headed for the target.
23:16A rehearsal for it was extremely elaborate.
23:19It's probably the most elaborate thing they ever did.
23:24The target is the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
23:27Here, 185 U.S. warships lie at anchor.
23:33Among them are eight battleships, the core of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
23:37The Japanese thought they were weak.
23:41So did the Nazis, actually.
23:43The Americans are self-indulgent, weak, stupid hedonists, devoted to pleasure movies and nothing else.
23:49And so, boom, if we can hit them hard enough early on, they can't take it.
23:58They can't take the hit, and they'll negotiate a settlement.
24:01Japan's attack comes without a declaration of war and catches the U.S. base completely unprepared.
24:27A wave of torpedo bombers head straight for the mighty battleships.
24:34They are followed by dive bombers.
24:36A bomb penetrates the deck of the U.S. battleship USS Arizona.
24:52There was a colossal explosion.
24:55A huge column of dark red smoke rose to 1,000 meters.
24:59The shock wave was felt even in my plane.
25:01All of the American battleships are sunk or damaged.
25:132,403 U.S. personnel die.
25:161,177 of them on Arizona alone.
25:19Mitsuo Fuchida lands his torpedo bomber, tailcode AI-301, back on the Akagi Talauda claim from the other Japanese sailors.
25:34He is convinced he has delivered a death blow to America.
25:36In Europe, Hitler celebrated the victory of his Japanese ally.
25:52Four days later, he also declares war on the United States.
25:56In the Atlantic, his submarines seem to have the upper hand.
26:00But the Royal Navy has a new weapon.
26:03ASDIC, an eco-location device.
26:05ASDIC is a sonar system.
26:17So it's a sound-based submarine detection system.
26:19It's that famous ping that you hear in Hollywood so much.
26:24You generate a pulse, which sends out and reflects back, bounces back off a submerged submarine.
26:30And you get that ping, and the time between the pings tells you how far away the submarine is.
26:35In the Bay of Biscay, it was very difficult to not confuse the song of the dolphins with ASDIC, the machines.
26:49The underwater tracking devices, which, when they hit metal, made a sound like tip, tip, tip, tip, geben.
27:02But if the waves from the ASDIC device hit our boat, the sound would change to a sound like pebbles bouncing over a metal plate.
27:22Then you knew for sure that the enemy destroyer was in the immediate vicinity.
27:35But ASDIC has a weakness, which the German U-boats take advantage of.
27:42It can only detect submarines ahead of the ship.
27:45But they can only be attacked once the ship has passed, with depth charges.
27:49The best defense, you dive as deep as possible, as fast as possible.
27:54This is because the shockwave of an explosion in the water travels mainly upwards.
28:01Below the explosion, the submarine is relatively safe.
28:05A well-trained crew can execute this maneuver in as little as 30 seconds.
28:09Each crew member had to understand that his work was for the whole 45 people on board, not just for himself.
28:29If one of the 45 men on board failed, it was over.
28:34In the first six months of 1942, German U-boats sank almost two and a half million tons of naval and merchant shipping.
28:44More than the Allies are able to replace.
28:47The United States' entry into the war changes that.
28:53After the attack on Pearl Harbor, America mobilizes its entire economy.
28:59Factories that once built children's toys, cars and household appliances are now working for the war.
29:04Because so many men have been called up, women take their place on the assembly lines.
29:15But until reinforcements arrive in the Pacific, the U.S. Navy has to rely on its carriers.
29:22During the attack on Pearl Harbor, they were safely at sea.
29:24Using those carriers operationally immediately after Pearl Harbor makes them realize that it's going to be a carrier war.
29:32So that's when they focus on building a carrier fleet.
29:35In the six months following Pearl Harbor, Japan conquers a large part of the South Pacific.
29:43Now Japan prepares for what it hopes will be the decisive battle that will destroy the U.S. Navy.
29:48In June 1942, Commander Mitsuo Fuchida and his pilots receive orders to plan for a new attack.
29:57But on the eve of battle, Fuchida wakes up with a stomach ache.
30:00The ship's doctor diagnosed appendicitis.
30:04I had to be operated on immediately.
30:06At 3 a.m. I was lying in the sick room listening to the roar of the aircraft engines.
30:11Akagi started their planes for the attack on Midway.
30:20Japan's target is the U.S. base Midway.
30:22Roughly midway between Asia and North America.
30:26Japan's plan is to bomb Midway first with aircraft carriers.
30:30Then Japanese troops are to conquer the islands.
30:34Japanese battleships are to ambush any U.S. carriers that come to Midway's defense.
30:40Carrier war is almost a much more cerebral, thought-through process than a battleship action.
30:45It's fought over the horizon between fleets that never see each other.
30:49There's probably as much effort that goes into timing airstrikes and finding the enemy as actually fighting the battle.
30:55But U.S. codebreakers have deciphered the Japanese plans.
31:03From Midway, U.S. planes take off to attack the Japanese fleet.
31:08The U.S. Navy has three aircraft carriers already near the islands.
31:12The most modern aircraft in the U.S. arsenal are their dauntless dive bombers.
31:18At 10.25 a.m., 47 dauntless dive bombers attack the four Japanese carriers.
31:23Six minutes later, three of the Japanese carriers are in flames.
31:52Mitsuha Fuchida is saved at the last minute.
31:57More than 3,000 Japanese sailors and pilots are killed.
32:03You can get the ships back and you can get the aircraft back,
32:06but you can't recreate those years of training that pre-war trained pilots had.
32:12So that is that the elite Japanese carrier arm is lost from that point.
32:20On the American side, it took only 30 pilots to win the Battle of Midway.
32:2530 American pilots, but to get there, they had to have the aircraft carriers, the Navy, the industrial base, and the financial base behind them.
32:42And that's the way Americans like it.
32:45The advance of the Japanese Empire comes to a halt in 1942.
32:54Meanwhile, the war for control of the Atlantic continues.
32:57In these waters, Germany still has the upper hand.
33:05It has broken the code the Allies used to coordinate their convoys.
33:09Its packs of submarines need only lie in wait for ships to get within torpedo range and then pick them off one by one.
33:16With a conventional torpedo, scoring a hit involves an incredibly complex process of calculating the speed and bearing of a ship
33:26and lining up and knowing the precise angles.
33:28It's a real skill to know when to fire your torpedo.
33:33Then comes the thriller.
33:37Then the whole crew is sitting there, usually somehow lying down or holding with their arms,
33:48then waiting for the seconds and the minutes when the torpedo has to hit.
33:59And when it comes, it's like you scored a goal in football.
34:03It's horrible to say, but that's the way it was.
34:12In 1942, U-boat attacks were so successful that Great Britain is quite literally running out of fuel.
34:19However, in November 1942, a new Allied anti-submarine weapon records its first kill.
34:26The so-called Hedgehog is a grenade launcher that spreads up to 24 projectiles over a large area of water.
34:33These sink and detonate on contact with the submarine.
34:38What makes the Hedgehog unique is that it fires ahead where Aztec can locate submarines.
34:42You lose that weakness where you lose contact with the submarine before you can attack it,
34:54because you can ping it and you can continue to ping it and then you can shoot at it before you get to it.
34:59And when that's first introduced, that's an absolute shocker for German U-boat captains.
35:03Thanks to a series of breakthroughs, the Allies destroy a quarter of Germany's U-boats in May 1943,
35:12German high command and submarine operations in the North Atlantic.
35:17From then on, Allied forces prepared for their main objective,
35:21to land at the beaches of occupied Europe and defeat Hitler's regime.
35:24The spring of 1944, after four years of fighting with the free French forces,
35:36Leon Gauthier, the young gunner from the battleship Courbet,
35:40is training for his most important mission.
35:43He has become a commando, an elite naval infantry specialist.
35:47We French lads knew we would land before the British.
35:53We practiced landing, getting back in, landing, getting back in.
35:58That's what made us realize.
36:00We said, we're preparing for D-Day.
36:06June 6th, 1944.
36:08Operation Overlord, the largest seaborne invasion in history, begins.
36:13The aim is to retake occupied France.
36:17Landing craft carrying over 150,000 Allied soldiers head for the beaches of Normandy.
36:26We looked at the armada and it was huge.
36:30All those ships, all those landing craft, it was immense.
36:34We said to ourselves, no way will we lose.
36:41We look back on it now and we see this success.
36:44And hindsight tells us, oh, it was always going to be a success, but it was a genuinely fearful moment.
36:50Winston Churchill was terrified of it, never wanted to do it.
36:54Eisenhower had definitely second thoughts about, you know, the risk.
36:58So nobody assumed it was going to work.
37:00It was a hugely risky undertaking.
37:01Leon is one of 177 French commandos to land on the beaches.
37:08They begin clearing a path through German mines.
37:12I have no memory of being soaked through, although of course I was, like everyone.
37:17But we had our orders not to stop.
37:19If one of your pals fell, you mustn't stop to see to him.
37:22You must keep going.
37:23The landing in Normandy was above all an organisational feat of the Allies.
37:36It was clear that they were vastly superior in number.
37:38They simply had incredible superiority in terms of available material and much more manpower.
37:44Leon Gautier survives, but 10,500 Allied soldiers die that day.
37:49After taking the beaches, another challenge faces the Allies.
37:54How to unload the men and material needed to advance.
37:58If you can't capture a port, then there's a British idea, actually, to take the port with you.
38:04So they come up with this idea of the Mulberry Harbour,
38:07which is basically taking a port the size of Dover and building it off the beaches.
38:12That involved sinking caissons offshore, sinking some ships as part of the breakwater,
38:19building roadways that would rise and fall with the tide.
38:25From June 14th, the prefabricated Mulberry Harbour at Aromanche handles 12,000 tons of equipment a day.
38:34Leon Gautier fights on for another 78 days before being wounded in action.
38:39And in the Pacific, too, Allied forces are also steadily advancing.
38:48In 1944, the U.S. Navy has over 3,000 warships.
38:52Aboard one of them is a Marine who has just turned 20.
38:56His name is Edgar Harrell.
38:59I'd already registered for the draft, but my number hadn't come up.
39:03But knowing what was happening in the Pacific, I wanted to be a Marine.
39:11Edgar Harrell's ship, USS Indianapolis,
39:14is a heavy cruiser that had been at sea when Pearl Harbour was attacked.
39:18In June 1944, it is part of the American fleet fighting to take control of the Philippine Sea from the Japanese.
39:25On June 19th, 1944, U.S. pilots receive orders to take off.
39:34They know that since the defeat at Midway two years ago,
39:37Japan has been furiously rearming,
39:39planning to challenge the Americans to a decisive battle.
39:42More than 20 American and Japanese aircraft carriers face off in the biggest carrier versus carrier battle in naval history.
39:53It is a monumental victory for the U.S. Navy.
39:55But Japan refuses to admit defeat.
40:11It still has plenty of airplanes and volunteers.
40:15On March 31st, 1945,
40:19USS Indianapolis is preparing to invade the Japanese island of Okinawa.
40:23Edgar Harrell is on guard duty
40:29when Japanese planes are sighted.
40:36A suicide plane managed to get in,
40:39and I can see it today
40:40when it was in its dive.
40:43I jumped on a 40-millimeter
40:45and loaded it,
40:47and it never did even get raised
40:49all the way up,
40:50and the plane hit.
40:52Suicide pilots,
41:06known as kamikazes,
41:07are Japan's last desperate hope.
41:10But Indianapolis is built to take a punch.
41:13Heavily damaged,
41:14she makes her way to San Francisco for repairs.
41:16On the other side of the world,
41:29an increasingly desperate Germany puts its fate not in suicide squads,
41:33but in technology.
41:35The Type 21 submarine.
41:37They hoped that the Type 21 would be more than a last resort,
41:44that it would prove to be a miracle weapon
41:46that would change the course of the war.
41:48Because from 1943 on,
41:49it was fairly clear in the minds of the German Navy
41:51that they could no longer win.
41:53And so this new, technically superior submarine
41:55was supposed to bring about a big change in fortunes.
41:58Type 21 submarines have batteries
42:00three times as powerful as older models.
42:02They can stay underwater for 75 hours on a single charge,
42:06a record at the time.
42:08They also have snorkels to run the diesel engine underwater.
42:12This means that the Type 21 can stay submerged
42:15even when being recharged.
42:17The snorkel device is a game changer for U-boats.
42:21That allows them to use their diesel engines underwater,
42:24which prolongs their range
42:25and also makes them faster underwater
42:28and means they never have to surface to recharge their batteries.
42:32But it is too little too late.
42:35Allied troops are already invading Germany.
42:38On April 30th, 1945,
42:41Adolf Hitler dies by suicide in his bunker.
42:46May 8th, 1945,
42:49Germany surrenders unconditionally.
42:52After five years, eight months and seven days,
42:55the war in Europe is over.
42:58I was on leave and just married,
43:06and we heard that the war was over.
43:08Everyone was screaming and crying in the streets.
43:14But while Europe celebrates,
43:16the war in the Pacific continues.
43:19The Americans know Japan will not surrender.
43:21July 16th, 1945,
43:27after its repairs,
43:29USS Indianapolis is sent back to the Pacific Ocean
43:31on a secret mission.
43:33On board, a mysterious cargo,
43:36closely guarded by two officers day and night.
43:39Ten days later, we'd gone 5,300 miles,
43:43delivered a top-secret cargo.
43:45We didn't know what we had.
43:49Indianapolis delivers this cargo to the island of Tinian.
43:53Then, she heads for the Philippines.
43:55It is supposed to be a routine voyage.
43:58On the night of July 29th, 1945,
44:01Edgar Harrell sleeps on deck of the warship.
44:04I'm sleeping down on the deck,
44:07put my head in the arch of my shoe, covered up.
44:12Shortly after midnight,
44:14two torpedoes strike Indianapolis.
44:17They were fired by one of the few Japanese submarines
44:20still in the area.
44:21I can remember so vividly
44:29hanging on to that rail,
44:31looking out into eternity.
44:33You think, this is the end of life.
44:36And I'm praying.
44:38There's a certain brunette
44:39that said that she would wait for me.
44:45Of the 1,195 men on board,
44:48almost 900 make it into the ocean alive.
44:51But the ocean is teeming with sharks.
44:56Because Indianapolis' mission was top-secret,
44:58she is found before anyone realizes she is missing.
45:02It takes nearly four days.
45:04By then, only 316 men are left.
45:08It is the biggest shipwreck
45:09in the history of the U.S. Navy.
45:13After his rescue,
45:14Edgar Harrell is sent to a hospital on land.
45:19Indianapolis's secret cargo
45:20has changed the course of the war.
45:26Inside the crates were parts of the first atom bomb.
45:31On August 6, 1945,
45:34it destroys the city of Hiroshima.
45:38It is followed by a second bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
45:41These weapons usher in a new era.
45:47They change the world in naval warfare forever.
45:54Edgar and his brunette are married for almost 72 years.
45:58Friedrich Ruger helps found the post-war German armed forces.
46:08Mitsuo Fuchida converts to Christianity
46:10and settles in the U.S.A.
46:14Haro Altenberg establishes a retail business.
46:17Leon Gautier works as a car mechanic in France,
46:21Great Britain and Cameroon.
46:24This film is dedicated to him.
46:25The
46:29The
46:29The
46:32The
46:43The
46:48The
46:52the
46:53Gracias por ver el video.
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