- 1 week ago
For educational purposes
At the outbreak of the war, the Nazis had the finest air force in the world, just five years later it was a broken fleet. Why?
James Holland takes a seat in the cockpit of the ME 109 fighter plane, He discovers how the Junkers JU 88 was ruined by Hitler's obsession with dive bombers.
Also decodes why internal squabbles in the German high command contributed to the downfall of the Third Reich.
At the outbreak of the war, the Nazis had the finest air force in the world, just five years later it was a broken fleet. Why?
James Holland takes a seat in the cockpit of the ME 109 fighter plane, He discovers how the Junkers JU 88 was ruined by Hitler's obsession with dive bombers.
Also decodes why internal squabbles in the German high command contributed to the downfall of the Third Reich.
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LearningTranscript
00:03I'm James Holland, and one of the things that's always really fascinated me about the Second
00:08World War is the interplay between man and machine. In this series, I'm going to go inside
00:15the Nazi war machine. Travelling across Europe, I'll explore the extraordinary machines they
00:21produced and uncover rare archive to understand who built them, how they evolved, and why
00:27their technically brilliant designs were militarily flawed. The magnificent fighter
00:35planes no rookie could fly. You know, the first time you fly a Messerschmitt 109, you just have to take
00:41that leap of faith. The power of the panzers. If I had come up against this, I would have been
00:46terrified. But I'm about to learn one of the biggest cons of them all. The weapons that couldn't cope
00:52with mud or sand. Wow. It's got so little kick on it. And you hit the target, I'm proud about
00:59you.
01:00The U-boats that were floating bombs. That was a suicide command. Absolute horror. A journey through
01:08the heart of the Nazi war machine by the outbreak of the Second World War. The Luftwaffe was without
01:21doubt the finest air force in the entire world. Just five years later, it was no longer an effective
01:32fighting force. I'm going to uncover the secrets of the Luftwaffe machine.
01:40The devastating jet fighter that Hitler insisted be turned into a bomber.
01:44This is the most insane decision ever. The infighting between the top Nazi design teams.
01:50The aircraft designers had just been running amort and they were doing whatever they liked.
01:55The wonder weapon that cost more than the creation of the atomic bomb.
01:59The cost of this is just absolutely staggering. How the Nazis turned exquisite engineering
02:08into combat disaster. And hubris led them to downfall and defeat.
02:29In early 1935, Adolf Hitler announced the birth of the Luftwaffe in defiance of the Treaty
02:34of Versailles. It was a symbol of its technological advancement and modernity.
02:40Meanwhile, with the advent of Hitler, the German air force came back to life. Glider clubs for
02:45Hitler youth were fostered throughout the fatherland. For the bigger boys, flying sports clubs were
02:50flying to the attraction. Then Hitler gave Air Minister Goering the green light to go into mass production
02:56of fighters and bombers.
02:59And airfields like this at Oldenburg were springing up, bristling with aircraft, control towers, hangars,
03:07and shiny new accommodation blocks. A symbol of their growing military might.
03:15And so although by 1939 Britain and Germany were virtually neck and neck in terms of aircraft
03:21production at around 8,000 per year, the Luftwaffe had been producing those kind of figures for
03:26way longer. And so by the eve of war, the number of Luftwaffe airplanes was roughly double that
03:34of the RAF.
03:44Their principal fighter was the Messerschmitt 109. It made its first flight in 1935. With
03:52its innovative low-wing monoplane design and heavy armament, it was the ultimate in modern
03:58fighter technology, created by one of Germany's most renowned designers, Willy Messerschmitt.
04:07Better known today as the ME109, it was powered by a V12 Daimler-Benz piston engine. This
04:13was inverted to give the pilot better visibility. It was armed with two machine guns and two cannon
04:19with an optimum rate of fire of 1,200 rounds a minute. Between 1935 and 1945, 34,000 variants
04:28of the aircraft were produced, making it one of the most numerous designs in aviation history.
04:34By the start of the war, the Messerschmitt 109 had developed into the E version, the
04:38M-IL, and it was the finest fighter aircraft in the world at the time. It could climb faster
04:43than any other fighter. When it got to the combat zone, it could pack a bigger punch. It
04:48had 55 seconds worth of ammunition with its machine guns. And it could die faster than anything
04:55else. And those were the three things you really needed for air-to-air combat by the start of
05:01the Second World War.
05:15It's just a beautiful machine to watch in the air.
05:27This one is a post-war Bouchon, built in Spain with a British Rolls-Royce Merlin engine,
05:33but absolutely born of the original ME109. It's being flown by an old friend of mine, Richard
05:42Grace. He restores these magnificent machines based at Cywell Aerodrome in Northamptonshire.
05:51I'm just still so struck that, you know, in the mid-1930s, most of the world was still
05:55making biplanes and biplane fighters, which just look at two generations earlier, don't
06:00they? And then this, I mean, what must the German people and what must the world have thought
06:05when suddenly the Luftwaffe is announced in 1935 and they've got these hurtling across?
06:11Yeah.
06:11I mean, it's just amazing, isn't it?
06:12It would just be unbelievable. But I mean, Germany was ahead the whole time, wasn't it?
06:17With the design school. I mean, they obviously just, the people driving the slide rules over
06:22there were very clever. I think that's the crux of it. But I think to come up with the
06:26production techniques so early on is the cleverest bit from where I'm sat. I mean, I think they
06:32were building 109s in about 4,500 man-hours, whereas Spitfire's, you know, 13,500 man-hours
06:39was as short as we got it, I think.
06:41Is that so?
06:42Yeah. So it's just a tremendous difference in production methods and techniques.
06:47The Germans are often accused of over-engineering everything, wasting valuable time and money
06:52on unnecessary detail. But that's not Richard's experience with the 109.
06:58Obviously, someone very clever somewhere developed a school of thought that if you build things
07:02in two halves and then join those two halves together, it's going to take half the time.
07:06And they're quite right, because you've got the fuselage, as I said, which is, you know,
07:09simply riveted together top and bottom once it's built. The tailplane's the same. The
07:13tailplane has got a piece of piano hinge down the leading edge. You make it in two halves,
07:17you put the two halves together, and then you just slot a pin down the middle of it. Ta-da!
07:21One tailplane.
07:22Wow.
07:23Same with the fin. It's exactly the same. It's just got a piece of hinge down the leading edge.
07:26It's genius.
07:30The 109 is certainly an impressive aircraft, but it's not something a rookie pilot can just
07:35climb into and pull back the control column.
07:38Getting it into the air takes a fair bit of skill, as Richard can attest.
07:43As far as flying it goes, I mean, the take-off and landing is definitely the hairy bit.
07:49The take-off can be just as bad as the landing, it can be just as exciting.
07:52And you've got to treat it with kid gloves. Fundamentally, there's a very small envelope
07:57from being stationary to being airborne that you need to keep the aeroplane within.
08:02And if you drift outside of said envelope, the effects can be exciting.
08:08And many have discovered it. I mean, I've had a couple of exciting take-offs in it myself.
08:13So, yes, it's got some charm, shall we say.
08:16So what are the fundamental issues?
08:19The fundamental issue is too much torque for not enough control.
08:23That's the basics.
08:24Right.
08:24So, in layman's speak, that is just too much power, the prop's going round.
08:30Too much.
08:30It's wanting to go that way.
08:31It's trying to roll the aeroplane the other way.
08:33Yes.
08:33That very narrow track undercarriage.
08:36So that just means it's not very stable on the ground.
08:38That's it.
08:38And it wants to literally roll.
08:40It's not trying...
08:41Most aeroplanes will try and be divergent laterally.
08:44This is literally trying to roll itself.
08:46To turn itself over.
08:47Yeah.
08:48OK, so you're in the cockpit.
08:49The brake's released.
08:51Flottle open.
08:51Yep.
08:52Hurtle down the runway.
08:53How are you stopping it from rolling?
08:55What you need to do is get the tail up and reduce the angle of attack on the wing.
08:59Right.
08:59Which will therefore reduce the lift.
09:01So the aeroplane will take off at a higher speed.
09:03Right.
09:04Then once it takes off at a higher speed, of course, you've got more aileron control
09:07because the ailerons are reliant on aerodynamics.
09:14So just say, I'm a young recruit.
09:16I'm on a grass airfield.
09:18There's a bit of a ridge or a bump.
09:20You know, it's not beautifully rolled or anything.
09:22Yeah, that's your worst nightmare, then.
09:25I mean, get so...
09:25You know, so you're coming along, dun-dun-dun, boom.
09:27Yep.
09:28And it's just a tiny job.
09:30That's the worst.
09:30That's the most dangerous thing that could ever possibly happen, would be getting bumped
09:34off the ground at low speed.
09:35Um, because then you've got all of the torque.
09:39You've got no reference point.
09:41What you really need to do is keep the wheels on the ground.
09:45The wheels are really helping you not roll.
09:48Um, and certainly if it starts going wrong, you actually put it back on the ground to level
09:51it out again so that it will speed up some more.
09:54So, yeah, certainly getting bounced off the ground and then attempting to fly off that bounce
10:00is about the most dangerous thing you could do in the aeroplane.
10:04The Allies shot down many 109s, but astonishingly across the course of the war, the Luftwaffe lost
10:10nearly 60% of its fleet to accidents rather than combat, many in take-offs and landings.
10:19So what would a new recruit feel like in the cockpit of one of these machines?
10:25The agility of a man who's done this many times.
10:32Certainly not the most comfortable of location, but, you know, the first thing that would
10:36strike anyone is that it's just the field of view.
10:39It's really shocking, isn't it?
10:40It's such a small cockpit that they've just had to put everything everywhere, you know,
10:44just to try and fit it all in.
10:48I just keep thinking about that young recruit, mid-war, 90 hours in his logbook,
10:53getting into one of these for the first time.
10:54It would just be frightening.
10:56I mean, as I say, if nothing else, just sitting in it like this
10:59and shutting the canopy would just be frightening.
11:07And then, of course, you've got people shooting at you.
11:10You know, as if flying it isn't bad enough, all of a sudden the bullets start flying.
11:14And you can't see much?
11:15Yeah, knowing you're sitting on a fuel tank.
11:17I mean, the fuel tank is under me and behind me.
11:21So is that why so many of these things just blow up?
11:22Yeah, absolutely.
11:23And it would just, all of the fuel you have, which is about 390 litres,
11:27is directly behind you and underneath you.
11:31And there is a wafer-thin bit of aluminium between you and it.
11:54You know, the first time you fly a Messerschmitt 109, you just have to take that leap of faith.
11:59You can do all your notes, you can be told what to do, but ultimately you've got to get in
12:03that cockpit and you've just got to fly it.
12:08At the start of the war, a new pilot would be reaching his staffel, his squadron, with about 150 to
12:15170 hours in his logbook.
12:17By the beginning of 1944, that's probably only about 90 to 100 hours in his logbook.
12:23And that is not enough to fly a beast like this first up.
12:28At the same time, Allied fighter pilots in the RAF and in the US Army Air Force, they're coming to
12:34their squadrons with around 350 hours in their logbook.
12:38So the disparity is just getting wider and wider and wider.
12:42This is not the plane to reduce the hours of a new pilot. It really isn't.
12:51During the Blitzkrieg years, the ME 109E was undoubtedly the world's best fighter.
12:57But as the war progressed, its mid-30s airframe and Daimler-Benz engine lacked the power of the RAF's upgraded
13:04Spitfires.
13:07Phase one of the Nazi plan called for the RAF to be knocked out of the air.
13:11But the men of the RAF hadn't read the Nazi plan.
13:18A new fighter, faster, more manoeuvrable and more stable was vital if the Luftwaffe was to dominate the skies.
13:29Designing aircraft for the Nazi war machine was a highly competitive business.
13:35Heinkel, Dornier, Focke-Wulf and Junkers were all vying with Messerschmitt for lucrative contracts from Reichsmarschall Goering.
13:43Professor Willy Messerschmitt, here on Goering's left, was a loyal Nazi and Hitler favourite, so few other companies bothered to
13:51take him on.
13:52The exception was the design team at Focke-Wulf.
13:55They challenged Messerschmitt's monopoly with what is undoubtedly one of the best fighter planes of the war, the Focke-Wulf
14:02190.
14:04German fighters take off to attack the enemy's supply lines, announces the commentator.
14:10This is a rare story of tactical Luftwaffe action on the Western Front.
14:18When the Spitfires of the RAF first came up against this, the Focke-Wulf 190 in August 1941, they were
14:24in for a shock.
14:25Suddenly they were up against a machine that was more manoeuvrable and faster.
14:29And unlike the Messerschmitt 109, this was a firmer gun platform and much more stable on the ground.
14:39Powered by a potent BMW radial engine, its superior handling gave it an edge in the hands of even less
14:46experienced pilots.
14:48The A model also carried considerably more armament than the ME 109.
14:53Four 8mm machine guns and two 20mm cannons.
14:58On their first combat appearance, they shot down three of the latest variant Spitfires,
15:03besting anything the 109s had managed, and transforming the dynamic of the air war.
15:09The Luftwaffe has here, in the highest amount,
15:12led to the enemy to attack the enemy and destroy the enemy.
15:18But even the production of this aircraft was dogged by the kind of Machiavellian infighting that Goering encouraged.
15:24While Phil Marshal Erhard Milch was in day-to-day charge of the Luftwaffe,
15:28he was in for an absolute shock because he realised that the aircraft designers,
15:50and Professor Willie Messerschmitt particularly, had just been running amok.
15:54There was no control over them whatsoever, and they were doing whatever they liked.
15:57And it wasn't what Milch wanted, or what the Luftwaffe needed.
16:01Based on the performance figures for the FW 190 that UDET had been claiming,
16:07Milch decided to prioritise its production over that of the ME 109.
16:11Only afterwards did he realise that UDET's office had actually falsified the performance figures for the FW 190,
16:19that actually, despite its dramatic entry into the war,
16:22the BMW engine had all sorts of overheating problems,
16:26and it simply wasn't ready for the kind of production figures that Milch wanted.
16:31The flaws in the BMW engine were to prove critical,
16:36delaying production and forcing the engineers to cut costs as materials became impossible to obtain.
16:42Towards the end of the war, the plane was being just too hastily assembled.
16:47I think what's so amazing about this particular model is that this came out in 1944,
16:53and you can see how the quality standards have really dropped.
16:57I mean, look at that there. That is just not a straight line.
17:03This is still being handmade, but not with the same attention of detail and quality.
17:08Look at that. Just doesn't fit. And look at this up here.
17:11This is, you know, for the extra quantity that Milch wants by the beginning of 1944,
17:17some 2,000 single-engine fighters every single month,
17:22you're getting a massive qualitative drop.
17:25And that's the price you're paying.
17:27As it is, this isn't up to speed compared to the latest marks of Spitfire.
17:32This is below that in terms of performance, and they're just churning these out as quickly as they can.
17:39But in doing so, they're cutting all sorts of corners, and you can see that on this.
17:44You really can. This is not the high-spec you would expect from
17:49Wolfgang Dirk technique of German engineering.
17:56Fighters above at high altitudes. Fighters on both sides.
18:01Fighters in the front and in the rear. Fighters weaving in and out of the bomber formation.
18:07The Luftwaffe was, of course, made up of much more than its fighters.
18:13Its bombers, Heinker 111s and Dornier 17s, delivered the Blitz bombing campaign to Britain's cities and ports.
18:21German long-range bombers lay in wait to spot the convoy and keep them under surveillance
18:27until short-range dive bombers could strike.
18:30The most iconic of these was the Junkers 87, the Stuka dive bomber.
18:37With its gull wings and infamous Jericho trumpet, it screamed out of the skies, traumatising all in its path
18:45and becoming a mainstay of Nazi propaganda.
18:51Carrying both a pilot and navigator air gunner, more than 6,000 Stukas were built between 1936 and 1944.
19:00The anti-tank variant carried two 37mm cannons in underwing gun pods,
19:06with two six-round magazines of armour-piercing ammunition.
19:11It could carry up to five bombs, sank more Allied ships than any other aircraft
19:18and destroyed a record number of enemy tanks.
19:26I've come to the Technic Museum at Sinsheim, south of Frankfurt,
19:29where it's still possible to see the remains of one of the very few surviving Stukas.
19:39Well, this Stuka was pulled up out of the Mediterranean.
19:42It's in a bit of a sorry state, but look at this here.
19:45You can still see the Junkers signs on the exhaust stubs.
19:49And the iconic gull wing that was such a feature of the Stuka dive bomber.
19:55You know, this really was the spearhead of Blitzkrieg.
19:58You know, the screaming banshee wail as it was diving down, terrorising the people below.
20:03And that wailing sound that it made was 100% deliberate.
20:07It was there as a psychological weapon to terrify people.
20:13It's absolutely fine in the early stages of the war, you know, in Poland, in Scandinavia, in France and the
20:19Low Countries,
20:19because the Luftwaffe is dominating the skies.
20:22The moment you lose that air superiority, however, this becomes a big problem.
20:27Because as it comes out of its dive, it's almost at a standstill.
20:32And anyone waiting above, a Spitfire or a Hurricane of the RAF, for example,
20:37can pounce on it like a hawk, and it's goodbye to this Stuka.
20:40And that's exactly what happened.
20:42The problem for the Luftwaffe is, by that stage, it was too late to do anything about this,
20:46because they've already gone down this route of trying to focus on dive bombing with their new generation of aircraft.
20:56The Nazi love affair with dive bombing seriously affected the long-term development of the Luftwaffe.
21:03Despite the sustained attacks on Britain during the Blitz,
21:06they completely failed to develop a coherent strategy for their bomber fleet.
21:13Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the decisions they made over the Junkers' Ju-88.
21:19It was originally conceived as a fast, long-range medium bomber,
21:24potentially the most versatile aircraft of its day.
21:28I'm returning to the RAF Museum at Cosford, near Wolverhampton,
21:32where there's one of them on display.
21:35Well, I've got to say, the thing that really strikes me about this being so close to a Junkers' 88
21:40is just how big it is. It's a real beast.
21:43And then you remember, of course, that this was originally designed
21:45as a long-range Snell bomber, fast bomber.
21:50You know, it was designed to go kind of 350 miles an hour,
21:53have incredible range,
21:54and have a payload roughly equivalent to that of the Heinkel 111 and the Dornier 17,
21:59which were the kind of standard bombers just at the beginning of the Second World War.
22:06The Ju-88 had two 1,200 horsepower Jumo engines.
22:11It could carry two 500-kilogram bombs under each wing
22:15and 28 50-kilogram bombs stored inside.
22:19Its four-man crew had an extensive array of machine guns for defensive purposes.
22:26Its original design promised a great deal.
22:42But the early success of the Stuka meant the Luftwaffe High Command
22:46insisted that their exciting new bomber should also have dive-bombing capabilities.
22:53The problem is, is they suddenly go, hang on a minute, we've got this amazing new bomber,
22:57this Junkers 88 that's being developed, why don't we give that dive-bombing capabilities as well?
23:02And the good folk at Junkers sort of do lots of teeth-stucking and say,
23:05well, okay, we can, but that's not the original spec.
23:09The original spec is to have a Schnell bomber, a fast bomber,
23:12that can fly at over 350 miles an hour and have a range of 1,000 miles.
23:16And they go, no, no, we don't care, we want to have dive-bombing capabilities.
23:20And so they go, okay, but it's going to cost you.
23:23It's going to cost you in terms of time.
23:25It's going to cost you in terms of money.
23:27And it's going to cost you in terms of performance.
23:30And by the time the Junkers 88 finally starts reaching frontline squadrons,
23:35it's just half the plane it used to be.
23:43So what starts off being something really special and really rather wonderful ends up being incredibly average.
23:53Attempts to silence British artillery by JU88 ended in disaster for the enemy.
24:00Watch one of the Junkers crash near the battery which shot it down.
24:05As the war progressed and the Luftwaffe lost its dominance of the skies,
24:10so a new strategy was developed, that of the vengeance weapon, the Wunderwaffen as it was known.
24:16A wonder weapon that would strike such fear into the enemy that all resistance would collapse.
24:23The first of these was the V-1, the doodlebug.
24:30It was the sudden silence as it dropped from the skies that was especially unnerving.
24:37London is doomed, said Dr Goebbels.
24:39The first attack on Britain came at dawn on the 13th of June, 1944.
24:46Adolf Hitler's intuitive propaganda experts claimed that in its first few days of attack, V-1, the buzz bomb,
24:54had almost entirely removed the city of London from the war-scarred face of the earth.
25:01The Allies quickly learned ways of combating this pilotless plane.
25:06Anti-aircraft fire was knocking the terror weapons down in hundreds,
25:10often before they reached the coastline.
25:19But something more devastating was to come.
25:22The world's first ballistic missile ever to be used in combat.
25:30The V-2 unmanned rocket.
25:36The V-2 offensive against England was launched on the 8th of September, 1944,
25:41killing three civilians that first day.
25:45More than 2,500 Londoners were killed in the following six months.
25:57Well, I'm on Kynaston Road in Orpington, in Kent, in sort of south-east of London.
26:03And just along here was the site of the last ever V-2 to land on England.
26:09The 27th of March, 1945, so just before the end of the war.
26:13I've got this photograph here, and I'm trying to kind of sort of marry it up.
26:17It's one of these ones.
26:18Yeah, this is it.
26:1988.
26:21So here we are.
26:22This is the spot.
26:23So this building here is this one.
26:27And there's that gaping hole, look.
26:29And this was also, tragically, where the last civilian to be killed in England lost their life.
26:36Ivy Miller Champ, 34, newly married, was in number 88, in the kitchen, when the V-2 landed.
26:49I've met up with Barry Newman, who was a 13-year-old schoolboy living nearby at the time.
26:55And it was at about five o'clock in the evening, and...
26:59So you were back from school?
27:00Oh, yes.
27:02And having tea with mother and sister...
27:05Yep.
27:06..when I heard two explosions.
27:14And I rushed outside as a 13-year-old would.
27:17Yeah.
27:18And saw this column of smoke rising in the air.
27:21And I thought, well, that's Court Road.
27:25I'll run down there and see what's happened.
27:32It was a huge crater and debris and damaged cars and rubble and a mountain of stuff.
27:41And it was then that I found out a lady had been killed in that explosion.
27:48This was Ivy Miller Champ?
27:49Ivy Miller Champ, yeah.
27:51Great tragedy.
27:53But so many lives were lost through that campaign of their V-weapons.
28:01What do you think they were trying to achieve?
28:03They were trying to achieve the destruction of our morale, the British morale.
28:07And how did it affect your morale?
28:10Well, it put our backs up, didn't it?
28:12Instead of that, it was quite the reverse.
28:16We were more defiant than ever.
28:35The V-2 rocket was the brainchild of Wernher von Braun, who, post-war, would become a pioneer of aerospace
28:42technology in the United States.
28:45He'd been working on rocket design since at university in the early 1930s, and supervised the V-2 development at
28:52the research facility at Pinamunda, until it was obliterated by RF bombers in 1943.
29:00A new underground production facility was established at Mittelwerk, where, between September 1944 and February 1945, some 5,000 V
29:11-2s were made, using slave labour from a specially created concentration camp.
29:17They were powered by a volatile mix of liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol, which, by this stage in the war,
29:24was being distilled largely from potatoes.
29:26Each rocket could hurtle 50 miles high and 200 miles downrange.
29:35There's a surviving V-2 at the RAF Museum at Cosford, alongside other rockets that Nazi scientists have been developing
29:43from as early as the 1930s.
29:45To help me understand its history and its impact on the post-war world, I've been joined by Richard Osborne,
29:52who is a rocket scientist.
29:55I mean, you look at it, it's, A, it's enormous, but B, it looks comic book, but I suppose we
30:00realise it looks comic book.
30:01I mean, it looks like something out of Tintin or Dandere, because that's where Tintin and Hergé and Dandere are
30:07getting their inspiration from, right?
30:08Exactly, and aerodynamically...
30:09So actually, this comes first, rather than the comic book.
30:11Very much so, because aerodynamically, there's only certain shapes that you can adopt if you're designing a rocket.
30:19Right.
30:19You need a pointy end up the front.
30:21Yeah, you need fins.
30:23You need fins, and you need all the hot stuff coming out the back.
30:28And generally, you don't want to vary that too much, because if you do, the rocket generally doesn't go the
30:35right way.
30:38Britain had also been developing rockets since before the war.
30:42By 1940, anti-aircraft defences on both land and sea were deploying rocket technology.
30:49But these were small, short-range weapons relying on solid fuel to power them.
30:54Quite unlike the liquid fuel being developed by the Germans.
30:58Off D-Day, for example, there's landing craft stuffed full of rockets.
31:02That's right.
31:02But they are rockets, right?
31:04But they're solid fuel rockets.
31:05Those are solid.
31:06So they're short-range.
31:07Unguided.
31:08Yeah, much smaller warheads.
31:09Yes.
31:09They weren't as efficient as something like the V-2.
31:14Why does solid or liquid fuel have a difference on the size?
31:17With a solid, you've got a lot of thrust in a very compact, dense form.
31:24But generally, solids are not as efficient as a liquid.
31:30OK.
31:30A solid rocket is basically like a firework, whereas a liquid rocket, especially the German ones,
31:36they had lots of plumbing, because rocketry is basically high-pressure plumbing.
31:42Right.
31:42And this is the difference between a liquid rocket and a solid rocket.
31:48Right.
31:49But as a weapon of war, I mean, it's fatally flawed, because it's not guided, you can point it in
31:57roughly the right direction, but you can't do much more than that, can you?
31:59Well, it was guided.
32:00Was it?
32:01It had a guidance system.
32:04It was more of what you would call more of a mechanical, a sort of clockwork type guidance system.
32:11Right.
32:13You basically told it before launch roughly what trajectory you wanted it to go on.
32:20Instead of saying, right, I want to hit that factory, you say, I want to hit South England.
32:25Right.
32:26And that's pretty much the sum of it.
32:28And do we have any idea about, you know, how much it cost in terms of resources, effort, time, and
32:37so on?
32:37I mean, do you?
32:38Well, it was actually, it tied up the German efforts, because they would probably have been better putting their time
32:48into more fighters, more bombers.
32:52But of course, they didn't.
32:54They spent their time building weapons like the V2, which were less effective overall than having more fighters and more
33:01bombers.
33:02So, from that perspective, it was actually a false economy for them.
33:12The numbers involved in creating the Nazi rocket programme are absolutely extraordinary.
33:18It cost around 50% more than the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb.
33:24And used a level of resources the Germans could simply no longer afford.
33:32I'm just reading here, three and a half thousand kilograms of an e-fill alcohol mixture and 5,250 kilograms
33:41of liquid oxygen.
33:43I mean, that's just huge numbers.
33:46And really, you've got to say that the V2 project is clutching at straws.
33:51I mean, it's a desperate gamble.
33:54And these V2 rockets, brilliant and incredible though they were, are just tying up unbelievable numbers of resources, thousands of
34:03men.
34:03The cost of this is just absolutely staggering.
34:08And to create that amount of alcohol, for example, just for one rocket, you would need 30 tonnes of potatoes.
34:30The V2 certainly didn't deliver the killer blow that Hitler wanted.
34:35It was a wonder weapon, just not in a way that was going to be decisive in the war.
34:41So, just how impressive is this technology, especially when you consider that this has been developed in the 1930s and
34:461940s?
34:47It's extremely impressive.
34:49And the reason why it's extremely impressive can be seen in the fact that the development of the V2 was
34:57followed on by copies of the V2 effectively by the Russians and the Americans.
35:04And that is why it made this such a pivotal rocket.
35:10And in the history of rocketry, it is the one we all come back to because so many future rockets
35:18were based on the V2.
35:26As the war approached its end game, the lessons learned from the rocket programme were not to go to waste.
35:34The Luftwaffe was about to unleash the power of the jet engine in aerial combat for the first time.
35:44Nazi Germany secretly experimented with increasingly ambitious and impractical aircraft designs.
35:50The Messerschmitt 163 was one of the few that saw action.
35:56The only rocket powered intercept fighter to enter operational service.
36:03Known as the comet, these stubby rocket planes were blindingly fast by the standards of World War II fighters.
36:11On the 6th of July 1944, a comet set an unofficial world record of 702 miles per hour, a speed
36:18unmatched for another decade.
36:22To get an insight into what this might have been like to fly, I'm exploring its performance with former fast
36:28jet pilot Matt Doncaster at RF Cosford.
36:34I mean, you know, when you're looking at experimental aircrafts, you know, developed in World War II, this is absolutely
36:41it, isn't it?
36:42You've got this sort of very, very short fuselage and nose made of metal. Amazingly, these are sort of largely
36:51wooden wings.
36:52I mean, absolutely incredible. And powered by a rocket.
36:55It's a bit. It is. If somebody rolled this out today, you'd go, you know, what's going on here? Let
37:00alone in the 40s.
37:03No tail? No tail. No, very interestingly, I'm not going to go down some aerodynamic rabbit hole regarding no tail,
37:08but clearly you can design the fly aircraft without a conventional horizontal tail plane.
37:14You simply control pitch by control surfaces on the wings, which is exactly what they did with the comet. But
37:19equally, the rocket exhaust is at the back as well.
37:22So my gut feeling might be that to hang a tail plane on the back with the mechanism involved, et
37:28cetera, et cetera, next to what is fundamentally a very hot piece of the airframe might have proved problematic, but
37:33very, very high risk.
37:35The comet was powered by a highly volatile mix of peroxide oxidiser and methanol hydrazine fuel. These were held in
37:43separate fuel tanks to prevent spontaneous combustion.
37:47Nevertheless, the planes were in as much danger of blowing up from their rocket fuel as they were of being
37:53shot down by enemy fire.
37:55The fuel for this is hydrogen peroxide, which is incredibly volatile. You've got just seven and a half minutes of
38:03powered flight.
38:05So you climb up incredibly fast, dive down, you've got one pass, shoot up what you can, and then basically
38:13you've got to burn up all your fuel and you've got to land with no fuel.
38:16Because what happens is the wheels come off, you jettison the wheels, and you land on the skid comes down.
38:22I mean, that's a backbreaker if ever there was one.
38:25Yeah. You want to land slowly without wheels. You want to land slowly with wheels, arguably. But equally, the airframe
38:31is built to do 700 odd miles an hour.
38:35And you've got to make sure you land with not a drop of that hydrogen peroxide in your fuel tank,
38:39because if you do, boom.
38:41Yes. I mean, this is a really lethal aircraft to fly, however brilliant and fast it might have been.
38:50The rocket powered comet was just too far ahead of its time. But the next aircraft we're going to look
38:56at was a stunning creation.
38:59The ME 262, the first operational jet aircraft in the world, truly set the course for the future of aviation
39:07history.
39:12It first saw combat in July 1944. Its twin jet engines were built around gas turbines being developed by BMW.
39:22Armed with four 30mm cannons and 24 rockets, some 1,430 were built, although only around 300 saw operational action.
39:34It could reach speeds of 540 miles per hour, making it highly effective against allied bomber streams.
39:41So Matt, looking at this, this is the ME 262. It's the kind of first operational jet, really, fighter jet.
39:48I mean, what do you make of it?
39:49You look at aircraft like these and, you know, as a pilot, I think, you know, would I want to
39:53go?
39:53And the simple truth is, yes, I'd love a go in one of these.
39:58There's an old adage, you know, if it looks right, it is right.
40:01Yeah, it does look right, doesn't it?
40:02And the ME 262 does look right.
40:04And quite a pioneering airframe for Second World War, you know, the sweat-back wings and all that.
40:09I mean, you know, you haven't got that on fighter planes up until that point.
40:11No, the sweep is definitely key, because the faster you go, the more sweep you need aerodynamically.
40:15Right.
40:16Well, there's no question about it, the German pilots would just, you know, every single one of them wants to
40:21get in this, and for obvious reasons.
40:22I mean, everyone wants to be in the fastest, most modern, best plane available, don't they?
40:26Yeah, absolutely. Speed is key.
40:27Yeah.
40:28Speed up until jet engines, you know, is gained by getting height and then trading height for speed once you've
40:33eyeballed your target below.
40:34But if you've already got that speed, you don't have to worry about that, you just go straight in.
40:38Exactly. You can attack from below, from above, from level, it doesn't really matter.
40:42Say you're coming up against comparatively slow bombers. I mean, we're talking about, you know, bomber stream of B-17s,
40:47for example.
40:47They're flying at, what, I don't know, 220, 240 miles an hour, something like that.
40:51You're hurtling along at the kind of best part of 600.
40:53Yeah.
40:54What's your approach?
40:55The approach would still be to get in and get out fast, without a doubt, because your B-17, festooned
41:00with 20mm, 30mm, 50 cals and all that sort of stuff.
41:02So you're going to get to your target quicker, you're going to be in the thick of it quicker, but
41:08you don't want to stay around for long.
41:10What this aircraft gives you, of course, is the ability to stay around for less time than, say, a Fokker
41:15Wolf or a Mission 8109.
41:17So pretty impressive.
41:19Yeah.
41:19I've always been impressed by this.
41:20It looks like a shark, doesn't it?
41:22It's got that shark nose to it.
41:24It's got the shape that sort of says it's fit for purpose.
41:27But yet again, engine reliability was to prove an issue for the 262.
41:33By the time it got into production, the Nazi regime no longer had access to the resources it required.
41:39And as a result of Allied bombing of its factories, it just didn't have the metals needed to make effective
41:45jet turbines.
41:48Here once lay the wall works of Essen, busy, prosperous Essen, thriving on what was the highest concentration of industry
41:57for death.
41:59So they were relying on cheaper, more plentiful substitutes.
42:03And these just couldn't cope with the intense sustained heat required by the 262's jet engines.
42:10It's the whole development thing in Germany, isn't it?
42:12The engines are certainly not as reliable as the engines being developed in the UK.
42:16When your engine's not reliable, there's a bit of doubt in the mind.
42:20But notwithstanding the fact that they don't last very long, you know, they're doing the job and...
42:24Because they're going super fast?
42:25Yeah.
42:26I'm sure if you speak to a German pilot who, you know, got airborne in one of these and came
42:30back with two serviceable engines,
42:31I bet he'd had a, you know, he'd had a good day.
42:34Just like the Junkers 88 before it, this potential game changer was also to fall victim to interference from above.
42:43Hitler's personal insistence that the fighter should be reconfigured as a bomber.
42:52So this was built and designed as a fighter aircraft.
42:55Hitler personally insisted on becoming a bomber.
42:58Yeah.
42:58But hasn't got any bomb base.
42:59Because if you haven't got bomb base, you've got to hang them on underneath.
43:01Exactly. You've got to put racks on.
43:02The racks themselves have drag.
43:03The bombs on the racks have drag.
43:05It all adds up.
43:06So if you're clean, as we call it, you know, nothing under the wings at all,
43:10then you'll be flying at a certain thrust setting.
43:13Festoon them with draggy bombs and that sort of stuff and bomb racks.
43:17For that speed, you have to increase the power because the drag is, the drag increase is significant.
43:24Gallant, who was the general of fighters at the time, he was just sort of going,
43:28Oh my God, you know, I can't believe this is the most insane decision ever.
43:31We've finally got a fighter aircraft that can take on the P-47s, Highmark Spitfires, the P-51Ds and all
43:38the rest of it.
43:38And we're not allowed to use it. I mean, that's just ridiculous.
43:41Yes.
43:41Bit of high-level meddling going on there.
43:43Yeah, I think so.
43:47Once again, it was the lack of a coherent strategy amongst the Nazi top brass that failed this brilliant invention.
43:55For years, Goering had clung to the belief that mass production of conventional aircraft was a better option than investing
44:01in the research and development of the jet engine.
44:05By the time he had realised its potential, it was way too late and the Allies were catching up.
44:11The ME 262 never had the chance to fulfil its early promise.
44:16But it became an important step in the development of combat aircraft, inspiring the designers of early jet fighters around
44:24the world.
44:26Germany began the war with the finest air force in the world, but by May 1945, it had been crushed.
44:32The demands upon it had just been too great and they'd been unable to keep up with the production and
44:40technological advances of the Allies.
44:43The problems had been compounded by faulty strategy, the internecine squabbles of the designers and a convoluted procurement process.
44:52And although they heralded in the dawn of a jet age, it had just come too little, too late.
45:01Their legacy, however, cannot be ignored.
45:04The inventiveness of their designers and engineers was eagerly embraced by their victors.
45:09The jet engine went on to transform both aerial warfare and civilian air travel, shrinking the world in a way
45:16unimaginable in the 1940s.
45:22And, of course, their rocket technology captured the imagination of millions, as it powered its way to putting a man
45:29on the moon.
46:00The inventiveness of experimentalRCs
46:00One ready for the moment, a automatic suspension of electricity.
46:04You
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