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The outcomes of World War II battles dictated global shifts in power, resulting in massive territorial, political, and human impacts....
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00:03Every battle is both a victory and a defeat.
00:07It depends which flag you fly.
00:13In every theater of the Second World War,
00:17battles won and lost determine possession of territory,
00:22of resources, and of the strength to go on fighting.
00:30For some of the battles,
00:32it was the victory that most influenced the future course of the war.
00:37For others, it was the defeat.
00:43This is the story of the battles won and lost,
00:48that decided the outcome of the greatest conflict in history.
01:02Some words transcend their origins as humble place names,
01:08even as the names given to battles won and lost.
01:13They are carved into history as turning points,
01:18which influenced the course of the war,
01:21the fate of nations, the makeup of our world.
01:26These words are indestructible.
01:31El Alamein.
01:33Okinawa.
01:36Pearl Harbor.
01:49Well, Pearl Harbor was put together quite late.
01:53The Japanese had to acquire raw materials from Southeast Asia
01:59following an American embargo in July 1941.
02:04The objective was to seize quickly key points in Southeast Asia.
02:11But in order to do it, they had to bypass the Philippines.
02:15Pearl Harbor was the key.
02:17Knock out the fleet, the battleships,
02:20and they assumed carriers, located Pearl Harbor,
02:22so that they would then be free at the same time
02:26to invade Malaya, to seize Southeast Asia.
02:31It was done in the understanding that in the long term,
02:36the Americans had the capacity to build up sufficient military power
02:40to create a terrible threat to Japan.
02:44But it was done in the hope that Japan could achieve sufficient success
02:48that the Americans would feel it wasn't worthwhile going on.
02:54From carriers 370 kilometres out in the Pacific,
02:58the Japanese had launched pre-dawn.
03:05The first waves fell on Pearl Harbor at 7.40 a.m.
03:10In that first attack, 40 torpedo bombers, 49 high-level bombers,
03:1641 dive bombers, and 43 fighters swept around the west of the island of Oahu
03:23to hook up into the great naval base,
03:26the natural harbour in the south of the island.
03:29The first attack lasted for 30 minutes.
03:39Out of a clear sky came the treacherous Japanese attack on Hawaii.
03:44The whole world knows now how Japan assorted the American naval base
03:48without warning, without a declaration of war,
03:51and while her envoys were actually negotiating in Washington.
03:55In addition to anchorages, the first attack had targeted air bases,
03:59Wheeler Field, Hickam Field, Kaneohe, and Ewa,
04:07grounding any possible opposition to the second raid.
04:12There were 354 American aircraft on the island,
04:16of which 188 were destroyed and 159 damaged.
04:22Seven escaped unscathed.
04:30At 8.50 a.m., the second wave hooked in from the opposite side of the island
04:36and pounded its targets for more than an hour.
04:40The force comprised 54 high-level bombers and 78 dive bombers with fighter support.
04:48The defenders had organised their anti-aircraft fire by this time.
04:52Of the 29 Japanese aircraft lost in the raid, 20 were in the second wave.
05:01They did not have enough screening vessels, and had they not so much launched a third strike,
05:07had they stayed in the area, they probably would have netted the Enterprise, which was nearby.
05:12So they had the forces there, but they were very worried about being so far out,
05:18lacking screening vessels, that they pulled away a bit too early.
05:24Ninety-four warships were in the harbour.
05:29Eighteen were sunk or suffered serious damage.
05:33But of the five battleships that were sunk, three were to return to service.
05:40One that did not, and remains today as a memorial to the date that will live in infamy, was the
05:47Arizona.
05:50Four out of every five men aboard the Arizona were killed.
05:551,100 out of the 2,403 American fatalities on that day.
06:03As a mathematical statement, Pearl Harbour was a battle lost for the Americans.
06:11But the port's infrastructure was largely intact, and there were no carriers in Pearl Harbour when the attack came in.
06:23The operation was a partial tactical success, with the caveat that the wrong targets were attacked.
06:31It was a strategic failure of the worst order, and Yamamoto's comment that he feared the sleeping giant had been
06:39awakened,
06:40I think was a correct one.
06:44The nature of that attack was the thing most calculated to create in the United States a collective will to
06:53respond in a way that I don't think anything else would have.
06:57December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.
07:11The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
07:24December 7, 2014, a date which will live in the United States of America.
07:41On the 12th of August 1943, Hitler ordered construction of a new defensive line on the Eastern Front, the East
07:49Wall.
07:51But he forbade any thought of withdrawal to the position.
07:55So, as autumn began to be felt, Axis forces stood as much as 300 kilometres ahead of the wall, which
08:03was itself well inside Russian territory.
08:07On August 26th, the Red Army began its autumn offensive.
08:15By Christmas, when winter closed down fighting, the German front had been pushed back all along its length, and in
08:23the centre as much as 150 kilometres behind the East Wall.
08:28The Central Front, Rokossovsky, moved beyond the battlefield of Kursk.
08:33At the same time, Army Group South, von Manstein, was coming under pressure from the 3rd and 4th Ukrainian fronts.
08:47When Hitler visited von Manstein's headquarters on the 27th, he was called on to decide whether to reinforce Army Group
08:54South, with formations from the centre, or permit a withdrawal behind the line of the Dnieper.
09:01He couldn't decide.
09:03He couldn't decide.
09:04When he went on to visit von Kluge at Group Centre HQ, he was persuaded not to reinforce von Manstein.
09:124th Ukrainian Front, Tolbukhin, liberated Taganrok two days later, and momentum was all with the advancing Russian forces.
09:22On September 2nd, Central Front reached the Breanzt-Connetop railway, completing their break-in to the German line.
09:30A week into September, and the Caucasus Front moved on the Taman Peninsula.
09:36On the 10th, they took Mayupol by amphibious assault.
09:46And on the 14th, Central Front, with Voronezh Front, General Vatutin in support, began driving for Kyiv.
09:55Towns were now being reclaimed on an almost daily basis.
10:00Bransk on the 10th, and when Chernigov fell on the 21st, it signalled that Rokossovsky had reached the Dnieper.
10:10On the 22nd, Vatutin's front began to cross the Dnieper.
10:14General Vatutin, commanding the 1st Ukrainian Army, drives on beyond the Dnieper on a wide front.
10:20Malinovsky's command crossing further south on the 26th, by which time Smolensk and Roslavi had fallen.
10:26At the beginning of October, the Baltic fronts of Yeremenko and Popov joined the offensive.
10:34By now, Mannstein was back behind the East Wall.
10:38But his forces were much reduced, and he would have trouble holding the position.
10:43The momentum did not relent.
10:48And at the beginning of November, the Red Army launched a major assault out of its bridgehead over the Dnieper
10:55at Liutej.
10:57On November 6th, Kyiv fell to the Red Army.
11:03And when, six days later, Zhitomir fell, two fronts were able to combine in establishing a bridgehead of 160 by
11:11240 kilometers,
11:13completely negating the utility, indeed the very idea, of the East Wall.
11:22As campaigning stalled with winter, the German armies were still intact, and they were still wholly on Russian soil.
11:32But the Soviet forces had advanced to a much stronger position from which to launch, first the spring, and then
11:40the epic summer offensive.
11:43Operation Bagration
11:54When General Montgomery was appointed to command the Eighth Army, he made one thing clear.
12:00He would not go onto the offensive until he had total materiel superiority.
12:06And he withstood Churchill's impatience until he was satisfied that the odds were right.
12:12And then he orchestrated the Second Battle of El Alamein.
12:17Second Alamein is very much a set-piece battle.
12:21Montgomery emphasized that the troops shall be trained in the tasks that they are meant to do.
12:25So you had some battalion brigade commanders building replicas of the positions that they were going to attack,
12:32and training and rehearsing their role for weeks and weeks and weeks beforehand.
12:38The battle had, in a sense, begun as another battle.
12:42The one initiated by Rommel on the night of the 30th of August, on the Eighth Army's position at Alam
12:48Halfa.
12:50Targeting the weak southern end of the British line that ran about 65 kilometers from the sea to the Katara
12:57depression.
12:59There was some desperation in Rommel's plan.
13:03Of the six supply ships on which he had been depending, four had been sunk.
13:09His success now depending, in part, on the successful capture of British fuel dumps during his advance,
13:17or his armor would be stranded.
13:20Within three days, blocked by well-prepared defensive positions,
13:25Rommel was forced back on his start line.
13:29By Second Alamein, the balance of material and troops and logistics in the Middle East had tipped.
13:37This is the first major battle where the British forces exceed those of the Germans in all regards,
13:42in terms of air power, in terms of men, in terms of anti-tank guns, in terms of medium tanks.
13:52Montgomery has assembled his forces and he's massed them ready for this attack to break through the line.
14:01On the night of the 23rd of October, 900 guns opened their throats.
14:10And the Battle of El Alamein was underway.
14:14North to south from the coast to the Katara, Montgomery deployed a truly Commonwealth force.
14:209th Australian Division at the Coast Road, the 51st Highland Division, 2nd New Zealand and 1st South African,
14:27then 4th Indian and, further south, 50th and 44th Divisions and Free French,
14:33with three armored divisions in support.
14:362nd New Zealand was the first advancing force to claim its first objective.
14:41It secured Mitteria Ridge, but 10th Armoured in support, did not exploit the chance to break out.
14:48North of them, 9th Australia was slowed passing through a minefield, with 1st Armoured hanging behind them.
14:56All this while, Rommel was away.
14:59He had gone to Germany on sick leave.
15:02On the 25th, he returned to his command.
15:05And to find that along the line from the British XIII Corps in the south,
15:10to the intended main break-in in the north, the attackers had been checked and progress slowed.
15:17Montgomery concluded from the progress of the battle that the main German concentration was in the north,
15:23facing the troops that he had charged with making the breakthrough.
15:27He responded by realigning the major thrust.
15:31This would now come south of the coastal sector in a new plan, Supercharge,
15:36where its principal opposition would be the Italian formations.
15:419th Australian was to continue pressure on the coast road,
15:45but the main line of attack would now be inland and westwards.
15:49Supercharge and the breakthrough began in the middle of the night of the 1st of November.
15:562nd New Zealand led the attack, supported by 1st Armoured Division,
16:03which took a heavy toll of 15th Panzer, which engaged it.
16:08Success was consolidated on November 3rd,
16:11when 4th Indian and the 51st were sent in against Kidney Hill.
16:15Their breakthrough opened the road for 7th and 10th Armoured, which raced through into open country.
16:22When 1st Armoured and the New Zealand Division joined the offensive,
16:26the Italian Ariete Division was almost completely destroyed.
16:30Rommel was on the back foot all along the line.
16:33South 13th Corps under General Horrocks overran the Italian formations facing it.
16:41And the entire Axis line was now falling back as Rommel began his withdrawal along the coast.
16:54By escaping, even if only to be pursued all along the North African littoral,
16:59Rommel had avoided the total defeat for which Montgomery hoped.
17:05But by any assessment, Rommel had suffered a decisive loss.
17:11And the Allies, for the first time in the war, could celebrate a decisive victory.
17:20After Alamein, the Germans essentially are on their way out of North Africa.
17:25Dealing with North Africa starts the Allies thinking about their re-entry into Western Europe.
17:30And in many ways, it's the turning point in the war for the Western forces.
17:37The Germans have received back again that measure of fire and steel,
17:44which they have so often meted out to others.
17:49Ah, this is not the end.
17:52It is not even the beginning of the end.
17:56But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.
18:12When the wars of East and West were joined by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
18:16the longest battle of the Second World War was already over two years old.
18:21It was known as the Battle of the Atlantic, and it started as the war in Europe began,
18:26with the Atlantic remaining a battlefield until the very last days of the war.
18:32After the fall of France, German aircraft, surface ships and submarines
18:36were based along the French Atlantic coast.
18:40From the airfields and ports of the French coast,
18:43their efforts to disrupt and destroy Britain's vital maritime lifeline
18:47became the Battle of the Atlantic.
18:52Germany's glamorous surface vessels, such as the Bismarck,
18:56Graf Spee, Scharnhorst and Tirpitz took a toll.
19:01But each was picked off in turn by the Royal Navy.
19:07Aircraft sank ships,
19:09but not in numbers that would have forced the British Isles to its knees.
19:14The real threat was the submarine.
19:20Lessons learned in the First World War meant that from the outset,
19:24merchant ships travelled in convoys.
19:29Admiral Dönitz, commanding the submarine fleet,
19:32evolved a tactic to counter the convoy system.
19:36Rudel tactic, which came to be called the Wolfpack.
19:43It worked.
19:49With the U-boats hunting in packs, extra vigilance by the convoys is essential to their safety.
19:56Dönitz never had as many submarines as he wanted,
19:59but then the Allies did not initially have as many escorts as they wanted.
20:05And for the first years of the war, there was a gap in the air cover
20:09where convoys sailed beyond the range of aircraft.
20:13As the battle wore on, tactics changed.
20:17New weapons were developed which were much more effective at destroying the U-boats.
20:24It was a constant battle of offence versus defence and developing technology on both sides.
20:31Fundamentally, all these things together with perhaps the most important,
20:35which was the provision of long-range aircraft and air support to the convoys,
20:41which created as a totality a system which was able to reduce the U-boat threat.
20:48The decisive month was May 1943.
20:52To the Germans, this was Black May.
20:56German submarine losses had risen sharply in proportion to the number of Allied ships being sunk.
21:02In April, 39 ships had been lost, but at a cost to the Germans of 15 U-boats, an unsupportable
21:09rate.
21:15And then, convoy ONS-5, designated a slow convoy, sailed.
21:22Forty-three merchant ships were escorted by 16 warships.
21:26And in the Atlantic, the convoy came under attack from a pack of U-boats,
21:31variously assessed at between 30 and 40 strong.
21:35Their attack went in on the night of May 4th.
21:38A Canadian Air Force Catalina sank one U-boat, an escort ship another.
21:47And twelve of the merchantmen were sent to the bottom.
21:53On the 5th, the escort group was reinforced.
21:56On the night of the 6th, the pack attacked again.
22:02And four U-boats were sunk.
22:05No merchantmen were lost.
22:08It is sometimes difficult to pinpoint the turning point at which a drawn-out battle was decided.
22:14But here was one.
22:17Convoy SC-130, a week later, met similar success.
22:22Thirty-seven merchantmen with an eight-ship escort sailed into the danger zone,
22:27where they were picked up by U-boats on May 19th.
22:32That same day, the convoy was joined on station by Escort Group 1.
22:37Three days later, the convoy entered British waters and Escort Group 1 detached.
22:42In that mid-Atlantic passage, the U-boat pack had come under constant aircraft and surface vessel attack.
22:50Four submarines were sunk without loss to the convoy.
22:54In the first three weeks of May, thirty-one U-boats were sunk.
22:59The total would reach forty-one by the end of the month.
23:02And Dönitz was forced to temporarily suspend operations in the North Atlantic.
23:09The losses were prodigious.
23:11But no battle had a more vital bearing on the war in Europe.
23:17The Allies prevailing the Atlantic allowed the remainder of the war to be fought.
23:23So by enabling the logistics, enabling the North American industrial machine
23:30to provide all the resources that were needed to fight what was an industrial war,
23:35the battle of the Atlantic was central.
23:48With the Soviet Union coming under immense renewed pressure in the early summer of 1942,
23:55as well over a hundred Axis divisions renewed their assault,
23:59Stalin demanded more of his allies.
24:03Stalin wanted Churchill to open up a second front, but he just wasn't in a position to do that at
24:08the time.
24:09So Churchill reasoned that a major raid could be a kind of compromise.
24:13If they could take a significant port, that would show the Germans that they were vulnerable in that area.
24:19That would then force Hitler to redistribute some of his forces down to protect that part of Europe,
24:27which would in turn take some of the pressure off the Red Army,
24:31and importantly show Stalin that Churchill was doing his part,
24:35that he was a willing partner and not just sitting back while Russian lives were being taken en masse.
24:43The Allied forces came up with the idea of a cross-channel raid.
24:48A raid, by definition, means hit and run.
24:52This was not to be an attempt to gain a toehold, let alone launch an invasion.
24:57They would, it was said, gain useful intelligence about German coastal defences,
25:02preparatory to launching a full-scale invasion, at a later date.
25:07There were also secondary objectives, and the RAF in particular were eager to see this as an opportunity
25:13to draw out the Luftwaffe, to have a ding-dong battle and hopefully give them a hard time.
25:19At this time, the new Spitfire Mark IX had just come out,
25:23and so they were confident that they'd be able to give the Luftwaffe a run for their money.
25:28Producers of British aircraft have already proved that they turn out the best planes in the world.
25:32Each new Spitfire bears witness to the great contribution of British design and workmanship.
25:38The objective selected was Dieppe.
25:41It was, in its planning, known as Operation Rutter.
25:46In its execution, it was called Operation Jubilee.
25:55British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery's Southeastern Command provided the troops for the operation,
26:02and planned a frontal assault without heavy preliminary air bombardment.
26:08Under pressure from the Canadian government to ensure that Canadian troops saw action,
26:14the Canadian 2nd Division was selected for the main force.
26:17They would assault the town while British parachute units attacked German batteries on the headlands as a diversion.
26:25That never happened.
26:28Bad weather caused delays.
26:30Montgomery was sent to North Africa to find the 8th Army and fame.
26:36The code name was changed to Jubilee, and Lord Louis Mountbatten took over planning.
26:43The air bombardment on Dieppe was reduced for fear of French casualties.
26:53Destroyers were allocated to bombard the shore.
26:56It was judged that battleships were too vulnerable that close to the coast.
27:02The parachute operation on the flanks was cancelled.
27:06An intelligence on which planning was based was patchy, and in some cases laughable.
27:12German gun positions dug into the sides of the headland cliffs were not spotted by air reconnaissance.
27:19And planners assessed the beach gradient and its suitability for tanks by scanning holiday snapshots.
27:26The Royal Marine Commando was to land in fast gunboats after the main force had gone in.
27:32They were to destroy the Dieppe dock installations and capture documents in a safe in the port office.
27:39The break-in was to be the special responsibility of a Marine who had been a burglar in civilian life.
27:46It has recently been suggested, as documents have been declassified,
27:51that their real objective was a new Enigma machine, which was defying British cryptanalysts.
27:57The naval intelligence officer planning that part of the raid was Ian Fleming,
28:02later to find fame as the author of the James Bond novels.
28:08The Germans, alerted by French double agents that the British were targeting Dieppe, were on high alert.
28:17It began with the Navy taking the Army across a calm channel in that dim light just before dawn.
28:23Navy, Army and RAF combining in a bigger raid than any attempted so far.
28:28The raid began at 04.50 on the 19th of August, with the faint remaining hope of surprise having been
28:35lost.
28:39The landing craft of the eastern sector had unexpectedly encountered a small German convoy.
28:45The resultant violent sea fight alerted the German coastal defences at Bonneval and Puyte.
28:54As the assault force approached the coast of France, the Germans were at action stations.
29:01Two commando units made flanking landings.
29:05Number three on Yellow Beach at the eastern end of the landing zone,
29:08and number four on Orange Beach at the western end.
29:12The main force hit three beaches at and about the town and port of Dieppe.
29:18Blue to the east.
29:20Green to the west.
29:24And the main force coming in on red and white beaches.
29:35Number four commando successfully stormed the Varangeville battery and was the only unit to capture all of its objectives.
29:43Only 18 men from number three commando got ashore in the right place.
29:48They managed to distract the Bernaval battery to good effect,
29:52but were eventually forced to withdraw as superior enemy forces responded to their landing.
29:57A concentrated naval bombardment preceded the main landing.
30:03But fire from destroyers was too light to seriously affect the defences.
30:09A concentrated RAF attack was equally limited in effect.
30:17And a smoke screen laid across the headland had dubious value.
30:21Indeed, it was a factor contributing to sending in reserves with fatal consequences when the outcome of the original assault
30:29was misinterpreted.
30:36On the east of the main landing at Puit, just 60 men out of 543 from the Royal Regiment of
30:43Canada were taken off.
30:46The regiment had been pinned to the beach and destroyed by coastal defence batteries and a well-sighted machine gun.
30:53Only a handful of the men of the South Saskatchewan Regiment reached their objectives,
30:58with others from this regiment landing in the wrong place.
31:02The Queen's own Cameron Highlanders of Canada, despite being landed late, managed to push further inland than any other troops,
31:10but were forced back when German reinforcements rushed up.
31:15Half an hour after the flank landings, the main assault started.
31:19The Canadian Essex Scottish Regiment and Royal Hamilton Light Infantry,
31:23supported by 27 Churchill tanks of the 14th Canadian Army Tank Regiment.
31:30Most of the tanks lost their tracks as they were driven onto the Shingle Beach
31:34and became crippled targets for German anti-tank guns.
31:39Tanks that did cross the Shingle were stopped by concrete roadblocks.
31:44Without tanks in support, the infantry was simply slaughtered by crossfire from machine guns hidden in the cliffs.
31:54Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal, launched straight at the centre of the town, were pinned down under the cliffs.
32:01A Royal Marine Commando was ordered to land to support them, a new task which caused chaos.
32:08When finally the mess was sorted and the commando moved, many of the craft were hit on the running.
32:17Those that reached the shore were killed or captured,
32:20and their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Tigger Phillips,
32:24seeing that the mission was futile, stood up and signalled to those following to turn back.
32:30He was killed a few moments later.
32:34At 10.20, a little over five hours after the battle had begun,
32:40five hours in which everything possible went wrong, the withdrawal began.
32:48Five hours after that, the last Allied troops had either been taken off, killed or taken prisoner.
32:5960% of the invading force was killed, wounded or captured.
33:04And they had lost weapons, dingo-armoured cars and Churchill tanks, which did not impress the Germans.
33:13Easy to fight, they said, with a poor and obsolete gun.
33:18The Royal Air Force lost over 100 aircraft, the Luftwaffe less than 50, and the Royal Navy lost 33 landing
33:27craft and a destroyer.
33:28The argument began at once and has not relented. Was the Dieppe Raid of any value?
33:35The principles of special operations are that it's got to be fast, it's got to be stealthy, and you've got
33:42to achieve surprise.
33:43And this operation was simply too big to achieve that. It was too complex. It couldn't be a special operation
33:48in that sense.
33:52They've certainly been through it, but they were already talking about next time, even before they got into hospital.
33:58It is, of course, easy to make the case that lessons were learned, and that those lessons made a significant
34:05difference to planning for the invasion of Europe on D-Day in 1944.
34:12It is rather more difficult to make the case that the lessons could not as easily have been learned by
34:18better use of intelligence, in both of the meanings of that word.
34:33The war in the Pacific has moved so fast that there may be a danger of underrating the enemy.
34:38Let no one imagine that recent victories in the Pacific indicate a walkover.
34:43The Japanese continue to fight back with a fanaticism quite unknown in the West.
34:49By early 1945, Japan is plainly beaten. On any objective measure, the Japanese Empire cannot win the war.
34:56But the Japanese culture, military culture especially, will not allow the Japanese to acknowledge that.
35:03So Japan has to be battered into submission. To do that, the Allies, the Americans especially, need to build air
35:09bases.
35:09To build air bases, they need islands, and if they need islands, they need Okinawa.
35:15For the invasion of Okinawa, 430 assault transports had been loaded at 11 ports from Seattle to Leyte.
35:25On April 1st, 1,300 ships were massed offshore, and the first waves of the 155,000 men of General
35:35Simon Bolivar Buckner's 10th Army,
35:37three Marine, and four Army divisions, began going ashore.
35:49They met very little opposition, but before the island fell, American forces involved would have numbered 300,000.
36:06General Ushijima, commanding the Japanese 32nd Army, had pulled his forces back, deciding not to contest the landing, but to
36:15meet the invasion south of the Shuri Line.
36:19By the end of the first day, Buckner had 60,000 men ashore.
36:26General Ushijima's strategy to defend Okinawa is to sell it at the highest human price.
36:33So, he doesn't waste lives meeting the Americans on the beaches, for example.
36:38Japanese withdraw into the interior, and they basically say, come and get us.
36:42And that means the Americans have to expend lives in order to kill Japanese, in order to gain victory.
36:48And that the Japanese strategy is about the most simple and brutal you can imagine.
36:54The ships riding at anchor tell a different story.
36:58The invasion fleet was battered by the Japanese weapon of last resort, the suicide bomb.
37:16Just minutes after four o'clock, it hit the superstructure.
37:24Everything went by.
37:26We knew we were ahead, because we were F'd. Machinery F'd. Machinery F'd. Machinery F'd was still good.
37:36Over the next few days, the Japanese launched kamikaze assaults on the invasion fleet,
37:42which did not wholly relent in all the weeks of fighting that lay ahead.
37:48Here, a Japanese V-pilot has ended his career with a direct hit on a carrier of the Essex class.
37:53He's caused casualties and damage on board an enemy ship.
37:57And it's for just that purpose that his own life was written off from the first day of his training.
38:03By the end of the Okinawa campaign, the suicides of 1,465 kamikaze pilots
38:11had accounted for 29 ships sunk, 120 damaged, and 3,048 sailors killed.
38:21It was a kamikaze he took us in.
38:24We found his body with a parachute.
38:28I couldn't understand why he had a parachute.
38:31Because he might have been shot down and he could bail out.
38:34What's the answer to that?
38:36I will tell you this, and this is hard for me to tell you,
38:40he did his job and he did it well.
38:43On the 9th of April, the American invasion force opened its main offensive.
38:493rd Amphibious Corps, General Geiger, swung north.
38:52As it happens, the northern thrust would meet the least resistance,
38:56and the north of the island would fall first.
39:0024th Corps, General Hodge, landed alongside Geiger's Corps and swung south.
39:05And here the fighting was hard against an enemy that had sworn to defend every inch to the death.
39:17Advancing in parallel along opposite coasts,
39:21Geiger's Corps reached Cape Hedo at the northern tip of Okinawa in less than two weeks,
39:26though the Motobu Peninsula was not secured for another week.
39:32By this time, the Americans have been fighting the Japanese for three years,
39:37and they've been through some appalling battles.
39:40They know what the Japanese are capable of, but on Okinawa it gets even worse.
39:44And it's probably the worst battle that the Americans fight in the Pacific.
39:48I mean, it was the worst ordeal you could imagine.
39:51Worse for the Japanese because they killed themselves if they weren't killed by the Americans.
39:55But both sides are suffering huge losses.
40:00The heroic dead of a combined army and marine force mark the grim battlefield of Okinawa,
40:05where one of the bloodiest engagements of the war is being fought.
40:08Thousands of Yanks have been wounded, and other thousands have sacrificed their lives
40:12to drive a fanatical foe from this vital base, the doorstep to Japan itself.
40:19In the south, it was a different story.
40:23The Americans came up against the well-planned fortifications of the Shuri Line.
40:31And did not breach it and take the island's capital, Naha, until May 27th.
40:39Shuri Castle, key to the defensive line, fell on May 29th,
40:42with Japanese defenders now falling back for a last stand on the southern tip of the island.
40:52The fight to the last spirit of the Japanese soldier was nowhere more apparent than in the fighting for Okinawa.
40:57And it's estimated that out of 108,000 Japs on the island,
41:01101,000 had to be wiped out before victory was achieved.
41:05Most of them were blasted out, one by one.
41:08On June the 17th, Japanese morale collapsed.
41:13The Japanese started to surrender in numbers.
41:21To the surprise of the Americans, who had not known it elsewhere in the Pacific.
41:27On June 22nd, General Ushijima committed suicide.
41:32And you can see that they've finally decided that this war's no use.
41:37It takes most of the battle before that occurs,
41:40and that's a sign of just how tough it's going to be to defeat the Japanese.
41:45Casualty lists were catastrophic.
41:48Japanese casualties exceeded 110,000.
41:55America's 40,000 in battle, and nearly 10,000 more to kamikaze.
42:01Okinawa's not where the Pacific War finishes,
42:03because the Americans and the British, and the entire Western Allies,
42:07know that they've got to defeat the Japanese home islands.
42:11So one of the most important consequences of Okinawa
42:14is that it feeds into the American planning
42:16for what is proposed to be the invasion of Japan.
42:20And it tells the Americans that they'll not only kill
42:24lots and lots of Japanese troops and civilians,
42:27but they'll lose perhaps a million troops of their own.
42:30That figure weighed heavily in the debate
42:33that would resolve the next phase of the war.
42:37The use of a new weapon.
42:41So in a sense, Okinawa shapes the history of conflict in the second half of the 20th century.
42:58Closed Captions began in dalla
42:59.
43:17Native Americans
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