- 5 days ago
Logistics and supply chain management decided the outcomes of major World War II battles. While military tactics won individual skirmishes, the ability to produce, transport, and sustain supplies determined the victor. The Allies won by creating highly productive, standardized, and secure global supply chains...
二战本质是工业与物流战争. 同盟国胜利主因是压倒性的物资生产, 运输与补给能力, 如美国 “民主兵工厂”, 苏联铁路网, 大西洋护航体系, 轴心国失败源于资源枯竭与补给线断裂...
二战本质是工业与物流战争. 同盟国胜利主因是压倒性的物资生产, 运输与补给能力, 如美国 “民主兵工厂”, 苏联铁路网, 大西洋护航体系, 轴心国失败源于资源枯竭与补给线断裂...
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TVTranscript
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,
00:23of resources, and of the strength to go on fighting.
00:30For some of the battles, it was the victory that most influenced the future course of the war.
00:37For others, it was the defeat.
00:42This is the story of the battles won and lost,
00:47that decided the outcome of the greatest conflict in history.
01:01Battles are almost always about territory.
01:05Advancing the front line,
01:07seizing the port,
01:10the city,
01:11the oil field.
01:12The fate of nations in the Second World War,
01:16rose and fell on battles that took territory.
01:20Singapore,
01:22Monte Cassino,
01:24and even more,
01:26on battles that failed to capture their objectives,
01:29in the skies over Britain,
01:32or before the walls of Stalingrad.
01:44Operation Barbarossa had surged across the Great Russian Plains,
01:49almost to the gates of Moscow,
01:51south into the Caucasus,
01:53and into the Crimea.
01:55Winter stalled the offensive,
01:58which resumed with the spring.
02:00Hitler detached the Sixth Army,
02:02tasked with the capture of Stalingrad.
02:05Stalin, determined to fight for the city that carried his name,
02:09put everything into its defense.
02:13Stalingrad,
02:14named for Russia's present leader.
02:17The pride of this generation of Russians,
02:20for it was their city,
02:22built in their time.
02:25With the capture of Stalingrad,
02:27the Nazis would have a base from which to launch a flanking attack on Moscow.
02:32Stalingrad sprawled for about 40 kilometers on both sides of the Volga,
02:37and at a point where that river was 1,300 meters wide.
02:45On August 23rd,
02:47von Paulus commanding the Sixth Army,
02:49at the time the largest single formation in the Wehrmacht,
02:53had reached the river Volga,
02:55just north of Stalingrad.
02:57We shall take Stalingrad.
02:59You may be sure of that.
03:01That post was made by Hitler weeks ago,
03:04and no doubt the Germans believed it.
03:06Frontal assaults, heavy shelling, colossal air raids,
03:10all have been tried, all have failed.
03:13The truth is that the Germans,
03:15they captured like around 90% of Stalingrad, right?
03:18So the 10% on the embankment,
03:20they could never make it there.
03:21As the first ice appeared on the Volga,
03:24Marshal Zhukov and the rest of the Soviet High Command
03:27began planning their counter-stroke.
03:30Operation Uranus, designed to trap the German Sixth Army.
03:35General Vatutin's southwest front would attack from the north.
03:39The Stalingrad Front, General Yeremenko, south of the city,
03:43would drive north, linking with Vatutin at Kalash.
03:48The Don Front, Konstantin Rokosovsky,
03:52would apply pressure to Paulus,
03:54preventing him from responding to the maneuvering in his rear.
04:01On the 11th of November 1942,
04:05the German assault on Stalingrad was renewed.
04:08A week later, the southwest and Don Fronts began their attacks.
04:14The Stalingrad Front moved the next day.
04:20By the end of November the 20th,
04:23Vatutin had advanced 40 kilometers.
04:26Zhukov had sent a million men, nearly a thousand tanks,
04:30and more than a thousand aircraft against the enemy.
04:35330,000 Axis troops were now trapped in Der Kessel, the cauldron,
04:4055 kilometers by 30.
04:42There was an attempt to relieve the 6th Army,
04:45which is called Operation Wintergewitter or Operation Winterstorm.
04:49Hitler said, you have to break through the encirclement,
04:53secure this corridor, and that's it.
04:57On November 27th, Hitler created Army Group DOM,
05:02ordering it to relieve the encircled Paulus.
05:04But at the end of November, the Red Army launched new attacks,
05:09forcing its commander, von Manstein, to postpone the offensive.
05:13When Winterstorm did launch, it met fierce resistance,
05:17and von Manstein recognized that his rescue mission had failed.
05:21By the time of the failure of this Operation Wintergewitter,
05:26the German soldiers in the front line in the 6th Army
05:29were getting maybe 100 or 120 grams of bread per day.
05:34So they were eating their horses.
05:37The worst thing was that at a certain point,
05:40they were hoping that, yes, we will have to make a corresponding strike.
05:46So Manstein is attacking, and we are breaking through the encirclement.
05:50So they burned all the rest of the resources that they had,
05:54food, they destroyed the tanks, the vehicles.
05:58The German soldiers were still believing in their leader.
06:02Hitler is a man of his word.
06:03He said that he will relieve us.
06:05There you go, he's relieving us.
06:07That never happened.
06:08On December the 16th, the Soviets launched Little Saturn
06:13against the Italian 8th Army, which was wiped out.
06:18Tatsinskaya, the main airfield used by the Germans for resupply,
06:22was now in Soviet hands.
06:24This is the scene of the captured German airfield northwest of Stalingrad.
06:28It looks as if the Hun retreated according to plan, doesn't it?
06:32Like hell it does.
06:33On the 10th of January 1943, the decisive Soviet assault began.
06:39The perimeter formed of six Soviet armies drew in like a dragnet on the West Bank.
06:46In these, the latest newsreel pictures from this front,
06:48the stories of street fighting, of the bitter struggles for every yard
06:53and for every vantage point come to life.
06:55The Germans had a name for the sort of fighting that knocked down the city's buildings.
07:02Rattenkrieg, they called it.
07:04Rat War.
07:06It produced legends like the fighting at the tractor factory,
07:10the grain silo, the main railway station, which had changed hands 15 times,
07:15and Pavlov's house, where Sergeant Pavlov and his unit had held out for 59 days until relieved.
07:23When the tractor plant was subjected to a bombardment by artillery
07:28massed at a density of 300 guns per kilometer,
07:31it surrendered, and the Battle of Stalingrad was over.
07:37On January the 31st, 1943,
07:41General Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus
07:43surrendered his command to Chuikov's 62nd Army.
07:48All the time there was a blast.
07:50There were bullets, there were bullets, there were bullets,
07:54and there was a silence.
07:56We finished it.
07:58There was absolute silence.
08:00It was even if it was not usual.
08:03On February the 3rd, the Führer announced the fall of the city
08:07and declared four days of mourning.
08:09The official communique announced that the entire 6th Army had been wiped out
08:15to the last man and the last bullet.
08:18In fact, 91,000 prisoners of war had been taken.
08:22The battle fought at Stalingrad was of an epic scale.
08:27Few other set pieces of the Second World War got close.
08:30And as a battle lost, in which an entire German army marched into captivity,
08:36it is broadly agreed to be one of the definitive turning points of the Second World War.
08:48In 1939, Winston Churchill, speaking of the major British base in the East, Singapore,
08:56offered the assurance that there will be no attack in any period which our foresight can measure.
09:03What Churchill perhaps instinctively knew was that if the Union Jack were to be lowered at Singapore,
09:09it would be a blow to British prestige from which the Empire might never recover.
09:16But by 1942, the British Empire in the East was crumbling.
09:21British troops were falling back, concentrating their strength on the island fortress of Singapore.
09:28Singapore had been created by the British as a strategic base in order to defend its imperial possessions in Asia.
09:35For 20 years, the British had been building a naval base
09:38and everything that goes with it in order to provide a bastion to protect against what threat?
09:44The Japanese threat.
09:46In late 1941, the Japanese entered the war.
09:50Singapore is at peril.
09:52And the British strategy proves to be completely worthless
09:56because the Singapore strategy depends not just on the existence of a naval base,
10:00but upon the existence of a fleet to be based in that naval base.
10:05They don't have the fleet because they're fighting the Germans in the North Sea and the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
10:11General Wavell, the overall commander in the Far East, had warned Churchill in mid-January that Singapore could not be
10:19held.
10:19On the 1st of February, the equivalent of four divisions stood in Singapore.
10:24They had blown the causeway to the mainland, but the Japanese had boats.
10:29On the 6th, a Japanese landing on the island of Pula Ubin was a feint.
10:36The main invasion of the island followed a day later, when three Japanese divisions crossed the Johor Strait.
10:44Their beachheads, well established by the 9th, they began their advance across the island towards Singapore City,
10:51to which the island's one million civilian population had withdrawn.
10:57On the 10th, Wavell made his last visit to the island, leaving it in the command of Lieutenant General Arthur
11:04Percival,
11:05officer commanding Malaya.
11:07The British commander in Singapore, Arthur Percival, is not a charismatic commander.
11:11He's cautious. He tries to defend the entire perimeter of the island.
11:16Even though the Japanese won't land on the entire perimeter, they only land in one place.
11:21He won't move sufficient troops to meet that landing, because he fears they'll land somewhere else.
11:25A reasonable fear, but not as it turns out true.
11:29So Arthur Percival is both, well, regarded as incompetent, but he's certainly unfortunate.
11:33Percival's forces had no tanks.
11:36He had received aircraft, but many of these were destroyed on the ground by Japanese bombers,
11:42and much of his command comprised poorly trained troops.
11:45British forces were concentrated at the great naval base in the southeast, on the Johor Strait,
11:51on the eastern tip at Changi, and, between those strong points, at Selatar.
11:59The Japanese simply ignored and bypassed the positions.
12:04Sixteen assault battalions, with five in reserve, found themselves facing three battalions of the Australian 22nd Brigade.
12:11The attack struck south-west, which for the central column meant following the railway line into the heart of the
12:19city.
12:21Had a siege been established, it would not have lasted long.
12:25The Japanese now had 440 artillery pieces trained on the island,
12:29and in their advance would capture the reservoirs that supplied the island's water supply.
12:35But a siege was not necessary.
12:38In two days, fierce initial resistance having been overcome,
12:43the Japanese advance was established on a line that ringed the city.
12:47It was February the 11th.
12:49By the 13th, the perimeter had shrunk to a 40-kilometer line around the city,
12:54with troops pulled back into its defense, from Changi and along the beaches.
12:59The Japanese were outnumbered by almost three to one.
13:03Yamashita knew that he would need to not just conceal that fact, but make the opposite appear to be true.
13:10The Japanese win at Singapore not because they're stronger, but because they're bolder.
13:15So successful were Yamashita's tactics that the surrender, which was to furnish images that have become a staple of stories
13:23about the fall of the British Empire,
13:26was only four days away.
13:29Yamashita ordered his artillery to fire as though their supply of ammunition was inexhaustible.
13:41Despite the bombardment, which softened the landing positions and disrupted communications,
13:47there was no counter, because the British command continued to think that the attack would fall in the northeast.
13:53The city came under attack from bombers.
13:59And Japanese engineers having patched the causeway, Yamashita was bringing his tanks across by the 14th.
14:06The British had no tanks in Malaya.
14:09The British Empire forces fighting the Japanese make a lot of mistakes.
14:13Their confidence is eroded, and the troops that they meet on the northwest coast of the island,
14:18although they think they can defeat the Japanese, they withdraw very rapidly.
14:22And it's symbolic that these troops expected to be defeated.
14:26The Japanese, by contrast, expected to win, even though on paper they should have lost.
14:31Percival was deeply concerned for the lives of the civilian population.
14:36The water supply was gone, and food was running out.
14:41The same was true for Yamashita. Bluff and double bluff.
14:46Yamashita, with his supplies running low, made the bluff explicit on the 11th,
14:51calling on Percival to surrender.
14:54On the 14th, St. Valentine's Day, the Japanese advance reached the Alexandra Hospital.
15:02A British officer advancing under a white flag was bayoneted.
15:07Patients and staff, about 250, were taken, and most of them were killed over the next 24 hours.
15:15Now Percival placed the choice before his commanders.
15:19Counter-attack in order to regain the reservoirs and the food supply depot at Bukit Timar, or surrender.
15:27Ironically, the Japanese are about to run out of ammunition.
15:30Their guns had a few shells left in each battery.
15:35So if he'd held out for a bit longer, then perhaps it would have all turned out differently.
15:40On the 15th of February, the British surrendered, and the garrison went into captivity.
15:46What sort of captivity, Percival was not to know.
15:50His surrender of about 80,000 troops under his command was the greatest in the history of British arms.
16:13Following the successful invasion of Sicily, Allied troops moved to the invasion of the Italian peninsula.
16:21But as they were to discover, in the long and draining campaign ahead, Italy is a very defensible place.
16:30Mussolini may have gone, but the Germans were not.
16:34And in strength, they prepared to defend the country.
16:39Allied forces, operating from both Sicily and North Africa, landed south of Naples.
16:45The British 8th Army at Taranto on the instep, and the US 5th at Salerno.
16:52Under cover of smoke, men and vehicles went steadily ashore.
16:56The most difficult, the most bloody phase of any combined operation, now lay immediately ahead of these men.
17:06Withstanding fierce German counterattacks, particularly on the Salerno beachhead, the two armies linked up on September 16th.
17:15And Kesselring, commanding German forces in Italy, ordered his troops to withdraw northwards.
17:22And north, between Naples and Rome, was the defensive position known as the Gustaf Line.
17:28The British 8th began its assault on the line in late November.
17:35The US 5th continued its advance, finally forcing the German 10th Army to withdraw to Gustaf at the beginning of
17:43December.
17:44A plan to speed the conquest of Italy by hooking past the Gustaf Line was developed.
17:50This was Operation Shingle.
17:53Operation Shingle on the surface was a really good idea.
17:56And this of course attracted politicians such as Winston Churchill who pushed for it very hard.
18:02And it's one of those examples of a military idea that was driven more by politics than military sense.
18:11It was, from the start, compromised by priority being given to the planning for Overlord.
18:19The invasion of Europe that would happen in June, on D-Day.
18:24Despite reservations, the operation went ahead.
18:28On January 22nd, Allied troops would land at a place called Anzio, less than 20 kilometers from Rome.
18:37It should have been a success.
18:40Two divisions, the British 1st and American 3rd, landed and quickly established a substantial bridgehead, 24 kilometers long by 12
18:52deep.
18:53They were opposed by the only German forces in the area, two battalions.
19:01The Germans were completely surprised.
19:03I mean, on day one, there was virtually no opposition.
19:06But what, of course, the Germans did do was they reacted very quickly and very effectively.
19:13Within three days, there were several German divisions blocking all the exit routes from the landing site.
19:21And these only built up in number, very quickly.
19:26But US General John P. Lucas remained on the beach, building and strengthening the bridgehead.
19:34I had hoped, said Winston Churchill, that we were hurling a wildcat on the shore.
19:40But all we got was a beached whale.
19:45As Lucas held his ground, Kesselring acted swiftly, ordering the 14th Army south of the road to confront the invader.
19:56As a result, Anzio, instead of a landing place, would become a battlefield.
20:06And within a month of landing, General Lucas would be replaced by General Truscott.
20:12Over the next few weeks, Anzio was transformed into one of the busiest ports in the world.
20:19Yet defeat for the Allies was staved off only by overwhelming air superiority.
20:25Boston, among other types, flew in over the beaches to bomb the Germans and their communications further inland.
20:32Our control of the air was virtually complete.
20:39The first major German counter-blow was struck on the 12th of February and drove the exposed British 1st Division
20:46back towards the sea.
20:53They underestimated them.
20:56They had assumed that the German Army, which had been fighting on the Gustav Line for quite some time, would
21:01be exhausted.
21:02And that the troops would not be up to reacting quickly.
21:07So, in effect, they didn't really appreciate what they would be up against.
21:14Within ten days, the British 1st Division had been pushed back almost to its start line.
21:22But German casualties were high.
21:26The land forces advanced six and a half kilometres in two days.
21:32It was air superiority which again decided the issue when the Germans returned to the attack on February 29th.
21:41This time, the US 3rd Division bore the brunt and was driven back towards the sea.
21:47But Allied aircraft outnumbered German planes by about ten to one.
21:53And Allied action was supported by warships close in.
21:57The battle turned into basically a contest of attack and counter-attack.
22:09But in the end, neither side could prevail against the other.
22:13And it turned into basically a contest with no outcome.
22:18Although the superior firepower and command of the skies prevented the Germans from expelling the Allies from Anzio,
22:25the landing was still a battle lost.
22:28Overall, the outcome of Operation Shingle was a failure.
22:31It didn't achieve what its objective was, which was to turn the flank of the Gustav Line.
22:37It didn't capture Rome.
22:39And it allowed the German army to escape to the north.
22:43The 6th Corps did not break out of its Anzio bridgehead until May 24th.
22:49The breakout linked up with the units moving in the general offensive, Operation Diadem.
22:57Indecision and inaction defeated Shingle, which in a rare case of complete surprise being achieved,
23:04had caught the Germans flat-footed.
23:07This failure had promoted insignificance, a battle that was being fought at the same time,
23:13high in the hills above the coast, at a place called Monte Cassino.
23:28The failure to break out at Anzio threw the emphasis back on breaking through on the Gustav Line.
23:34The defensive position that cut across Italy from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic.
23:40And the key to the Gustav Line was a high point that commanded the critical approaches to the Liri Valley.
23:50This was Monte Cassino.
23:53And control of Monte Cassino lay with those who occupied the summit.
23:58It's perfectly true, of course, that the monastery founded by Saint Benedict in the 6th century,
24:03on the site of the Roman Temple of Apollo, was a building of tremendous historic and material value.
24:09It had been a centre of culture and learning for hundreds of years.
24:13Monte Cassino by itself has no strategic significance whatsoever.
24:17It was a perfect observation point.
24:19Now, the Germans said, it's a Benedictine monastery, it's a lovely old building.
24:25Kesselring said, I'm not going to defend this monastery, I'm not going to use it for military purposes.
24:29The Allies believed that the Germans were using it as an observation post, and maybe they were.
24:35From February the 2nd to May the 17th, the Allies launched five offensives against Cassino's Benedictine monastery.
24:44Monte Cassino becomes a kind of a symbol of the inability of the Allies to make good in a campaign
24:50that they expected to go much more smoothly.
24:53You know, Churchill had talked about the soft underbelly of Europe.
24:56Well, they turned out not to be so soft.
24:58The Allied attack was held up until the last moment.
25:01Even then, warning leaflets were conveyed to all the civilians concerned, Benedictine monks and Italians who might be in or
25:08near the monastery.
25:09This is how the leaflets were conveyed.
25:21The American 34th Division went in first on January 24th.
25:28It secured high ground at great cost and was forced to withdraw on February 12th by the German 1st Parachute
25:36Division, commanding the heights but not occupying the monastery.
25:46By an irony, their commander, General Von Zenger und Ettelin, was himself a lay member of the Benedictine order.
25:57From the 16th to the 18th, the New Zealand Corps comprising 2nd New Zealand and 4th Indian Divisions went in.
26:07And they too.
26:16The US Air Force came over and destroyed the monastery to no effect because they turned it into a pile
26:24of rubble that the German paratroops were able to defend superbly.
26:27And in fact, the Allies made it harder for themselves to advance because they had turned this hill into a
26:33fortress.
26:34The battle for Monte Cassino resumed as part of a coordinated offensive diadem on March 11th.
26:45Finally, General Alphonse Jouin's Free French, led by Moroccan Irregulars skilled in mountain warfare, opened the way for the Polish
26:552nd Corps to carry Monte Cassino.
26:58And here are some of the first Poles to enter the top.
27:00The captain leads his patrol up an apparently deserted street while a tonigunner gives covering fire.
27:07On May 17th, they were repulsed but returned to the attack the next day.
27:14On May 18th, the Polish flag flew above the ruins as the Germans finally withdrew.
27:28With my friend, I explored the area at night and we found German helmets and with German helmets we pretended
27:38to be Germans.
27:40And there were 12 cement bunkers with one window each from which they were shooting.
27:46And we managed to disable them by throwing grenades into the bunkers.
27:53And that's why we managed to destroy them.
27:59The Allies won through a casino by sheer bloody determination, by making one attack after another.
28:05And eventually getting a strategy to break through that blockage.
28:12Monte Cassino is partly a symbol of the United Nations.
28:15There are so many nations involved in trying to break through this German bastion that that might be its biggest
28:22significance.
28:24Despite tenacious resistance, the German defenders had lost the battle and were forced to withdraw.
28:32And Monte Cassino, founded in 526 by Saint Benedict and numbering Saint Thomas Aquinas among its early monks,
28:40was demolished in what is probably the greatest cultural loss of the war.
28:47The ruins, unnecessarily created, formed a superb defensive position from which the Germans claimed too many allied lives before the
28:57monastery finally fell.
28:59So this was an engagement in which even those who obtained their objective could hardly claim a victory.
29:06It's a battle that eventually succeeds, but at massive cost.
29:09What, 40,000 allied lives?
29:11It's a massive cost for a relatively minor obstacle.
29:30The Asia-Pacific Theatre in 1944 was characterised by the advance of the American island-hopping strategy.
29:38The Marshalls and the Gilbert Islands had been captured and secured.
29:43So allied planning turned towards the Marianas, and beyond that, the Philippines.
29:49The Americans could now take the Marianas.
29:53And once they did, Japan would be within range of long-range heavy bombers based in the Marianas.
30:01The Japanese knew this.
30:04They'd always wanted to engage the Americans in a decisive sea battle.
30:10But their losses, starting at midway, particularly in carriers and ships and aircraft, had limited them.
30:19The Japanese planned to respond to the expected American assault by deploying a strong fleet in combination with aircraft based
30:28on the Marianas.
30:30Together, the plan proposed, they would destroy the American carrier force.
30:35That carrier force was the largest naval force yet to assemble in the Pacific.
30:41For the Marianas invasion, the American Third Fleet was based on Task Force 58, which had 15 carriers, 7 fast
30:49battleships, 21 cruisers, 58 destroyers and almost 30 submarines.
30:55And in Task Force 52, which was supporting the invasion, there were more carriers and battleships.
31:00The Japanese had just 9 carriers, 5 battleships, about 19 cruisers and less than 30 destroyers.
31:10And this was virtually all that was left of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
31:14The air power shipped, including 900 aircraft, gave the Americans a 2 to 1 advantage over Japan in the skies.
31:24Among the carriers were the Lexington, the Wasp and the Hornet, namesakes of those previously sunk by the Japs, out
31:31for revenge.
31:33When his force came under Japanese attack, Admiral Spruance, commanding 5th Fleet, chose to use his aircraft in defence of
31:41his group rather than carry the attack.
31:46And so, on the 19th and 20th of June, the largest carrier battle in history was fought.
31:53With radar protecting the fleet, the incoming attackers were picked off.
31:57And flying into a hail of flak and a storm of cannon fire, they suffered extremely heavy losses.
32:04Japan lost 219 aircraft.
32:09The Americans, 29.
32:12The American air crews averaged over 500 hours.
32:16The Japanese had less than 150.
32:19So they were no match for the Americans in the air.
32:23In an equally devastating blow, two Japanese carriers were sent down by American submarines.
32:33And still, the main American fleet, which had suffered no losses, had not joined the battle.
32:40Spruance's opposite number, Admiral Ozawa, commanding the mobile fleet, was ill-informed.
32:47Or possibly, to save face, his officers deliberately misinformed him.
32:51He was led to believe that his air attacks had met with success, and that the missing aircraft had landed
32:58safely on Guam.
33:01He waited for their return, and, by the time he realised they were not coming, was under overwhelming attack from
33:08American carrier-based forces, with little air cover himself.
33:13Warships and freighters took what evasive action they could, but they didn't escape.
33:18The Japanese pilots took a long time to form up.
33:21That gave the American combat air patrols plenty of time to position themselves, ready to meet the Japanese head-on.
33:30The Japanese didn't attack in formation to take advantage of mass firepower.
33:35They attacked either singly or in small groups, which the Americans easily picked off.
33:48Many Japanese pilots veered away before they were within bombing range.
33:54The Japanese couldn't even execute the most basic manoeuvres.
33:58A further carrier was sunk, other ships were damaged, and 65 more aircraft were destroyed.
34:06This was the action that the Americans dubbed the Great Mariana's Turkey Shoot, and it was a complete and unambiguous
34:14victory.
34:17In the final tally, the Japanese had lost three carriers and 480 aircraft.
34:24The Americans had lost no ships and 29 aircraft.
34:29The critical point was, those American losses were replaced overnight.
34:34The Japanese couldn't replace theirs.
34:37The Marianas were secured.
34:38In August, and before the end of the year, B-29 super fortresses flying from them were bombing the Japanese
34:46home islands.
34:48The losses, to materiel, but most significantly to trained air crew, permanently and fatally weakened Japan.
34:58A novel solution to her shortage of skilled pilots would be found, and named for the divine wind that had
35:06twice in the 13th century destroyed Mongolia.
35:08A novel invasion fleets, saving Japan.
35:13That wind was called kamikaze.
35:32Churchill said,
35:34The battle of France is over.
35:36I expect that the battle of Britain is about to begin.
35:41He went on to say that the whole fury and might of the enemy must soon be turned on us,
35:48which makes it clear that he expected an invasion.
35:52Well, they were certainly talking about invasion.
35:55It was called Operation Sea Line.
35:57With the fall of Europe and Germany sitting on the doorstep, so to speak, Britain was the only thing that
36:02stood in the way of total German conquest of Europe.
36:06With Britain isolated, Herman Goering relished the idea of unleashing his Luftwaffe on the United Kingdom to soften up the
36:15target.
36:16Strategically, the most important outcome would be control of the skies over the channel.
36:22To invade, they were going to come by water.
36:25So, obviously, if you've got landing craft and you have a viable air force, that is going to attack it.
36:31They weren't going to take that risk. They had to knock out the air force.
36:35Phase one of the Nazi plan called for the RAF to be knocked out of the air.
36:39But the men of the RAF hadn't read the Nazi plan.
36:44The story of why the Royal Air Force won the Battle of Britain can be told by focusing on one
36:51decisive day.
36:54Adlertag, Eagle Day.
36:58The first day of what Goering boasted would be the decisive phase of the whole air campaign.
37:04Unternehmen Adlerangif.
37:09Eagle Attack.
37:12The fall of France and its division into occupied and collaborationist Vichy areas gifted Germany coastal airfields within range of
37:22British targets.
37:24These were soon crowded parking areas and the squadrons were ready.
37:33On August 13, 1940, the Luftwaffe flew 1,786 sorties.
37:41Its main target was British airfields.
37:45Its intention was to so permanently damage the Royal Air Force that its effectiveness as a defensive weapon would be
37:53neutralized.
37:56The skies would belong to Germany.
38:01Here comes the Luftwaffe.
38:03In dozens of flights.
38:05Hundreds of planes.
38:07Bombers.
38:08Fighters.
38:10Dive bombers.
38:12Across that 21 miles of channel.
38:14That 8 short minutes of water.
38:16They sent along very, very large formations.
38:20Some groups were 200 or 300 at a time.
38:23Bombers escorted by a large number of fighter aircraft, the Messerschmitt 109 110s.
38:29It really was designed to bring the RAF down as quickly as they could.
38:36These aircraft already placed the Luftwaffe at a disadvantage.
38:41German aircraft had been designed for other uses.
38:45The Junkers 88, the Stuka dive bomber, so lethal in a ground support role in France,
38:54did not prove as valuable in the Battle of Britain.
39:02They realised too that the best way to knock out a Messerschmitt, for instance, was a close quarter front on
39:13attack.
39:14So we always hear about, you know, looking at them staring in the whites of their eyes.
39:18But this is what was happening.
39:20They flew as close as they could and they fired head on.
39:24Really dangerous, really risky, but very effective.
39:28The attritional nature of the battle also weighed against Germany.
39:35British aircraft, forced to make emergency landings, could be repaired.
39:43German aircraft were lost.
39:48Radar and the command and control system that responded to intelligence,
39:53whether from radar or from the network of spotters and watchers on rooftops and in churches around the country,
40:01tipped the balance.
40:03By mid-afternoon on the 18th, the battle was on all over southern England.
40:09An attack on Dettling airfield in Kent was devastating but pointless.
40:16German intelligence had got it wrong.
40:19Dettling was not a fighter base.
40:22On Adlertak, the Luftwaffe destroyed 47 aircraft on the ground, but only one was a fighter.
40:30He bombed the airfields and the fields were hit.
40:34But the planes were saved.
40:37For Britain, unlike Poland and the Low Countries, didn't make the mistake of bunching its planes on the runways.
40:43The planes of the RAF were scattered and hidden.
40:46Only a few on any one field and those in the far corners.
40:50Over Middle Wallop, nine Stuckers were shot down by Spitfires after their ME-109 escort had been forced to turn
40:59back due to shortage of fuel.
41:01The actual cost of Adlertak was not decisive, but the momentum shift and gain in confidence was.
41:09They were very good at continuous assessment.
41:11So they knew when things were working, they knew when things weren't working.
41:17If Germany changed their tactics, the RAF responded.
41:22Two days after Adlertak, radar reported a large formation attacking the North.
41:28The controller of 13 Group felt instinctively that this would be the only attack on the North
41:34and risked throwing everything in the path of the incoming fleet.
41:39He scrambled every squadron from Catterick in Yorkshire to Drem east of Edinburgh.
41:45If he was wrong, the skies were open.
41:49But he was right.
41:51Fifteen enemy aircraft were shot down for the loss of one RAF fighter.
41:57And so, by initiative in command, better equipment, planes and radar, and individual skill, the Battle of Britain was won.
42:10On August the 20th, one week after Adlertak, Winston Churchill rose in Parliament to famously praise the few.
42:20With the Battle of Britain and Churchill and his superb propaganda in bringing the people into the battle,
42:29they were part of the fight.
42:32They were willing to put up with everything that was happening.
42:36And they knew too that Britain was not going to lose.
42:39Britain would become victorious.
42:41Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties.
42:46And so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years,
42:56men will still say, this was their finest hour.
43:20And it will be my death.
43:20They were dead, but it's pretty much.
43:21And so bear ourselves.
43:21To the extent of the battle, you will never be able to die.
43:21To the battle is that, when you're dwelling in the battle, you can destroy the battle of the battle.
43:22But it's almost impossible.
43:22You're the only one.
43:23You were no one.
43:23You're the only one.
43:23This is not only a matter of years.
43:25You are a matter of which you are a little bit.
43:28Then it's over the battle.
43:29The battle is the battle for you.
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