00:10The End
00:55This is a story of a battle fought over half the globe.
00:58After two years of war, Japan still holds her empire.
01:03Fighting continues in the Pacific and in Burma.
01:12In November 1943, a new Allied command is formed in Southeast Asia,
01:17with Admiral Mountbatten as Supreme Commander.
01:21For our air forces are our new bases, new squadrons and a new order of the day.
01:28We must establish in Asia a record of Allied air victory
01:31of which we can all be proud in the years to come.
01:35Let us write it now in the skies over Burma.
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02:52By the beginning of 1944, we've collected 48 British and 17 American squadrons
02:57in Southeast Asia Command,
02:59as well as the Indian Air Force and over 100 transport planes.
03:02But what counts even more,
03:04we've won back air supremacy in Burma.
03:08Now we can fly as we like over the 800-mile-long jungle front,
03:11and all our effort can be turned to helping the troops down below us,
03:15among the trees.
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03:20There is no front line in this blind and treacherous country,
03:25only men hunting one another.
03:27Patrols of the British 14th Army have crept forward in the past few weeks,
03:31down the Arakan in the south,
03:34from Kohima in the north.
03:36Somewhere between our patrols is a Japanese army
03:39strong enough to invade India,
03:42silent, hidden, incalculable.
03:48The Japanese are still masters of jungle war.
03:52They move so secretly
03:53that even our air patrols have failed to find them.
03:56And now they are ready for Operation C
03:58to surround and annihilate our divisions on the Burma frontier
04:02and then sweep on to Delhi.
04:05Operation C will begin in February in the Arakan.
04:09Then they will strike at Kohima and Imphal
04:12and finish the 14th Army.
04:15In the Arakan, at Kohima and Imphal,
04:19the 14th Army is surrounded
04:20by the deceptive quiet of the jungle.
04:28On the ground, the enemy has achieved his first objective.
04:32He has surrounded our forward divisions.
04:50This tactic of infiltration has never failed the Japanese before,
04:54but now they have left the air unguarded
04:57and we can supply, support, and reinforce our army from the sky.
05:02Air power is on our side at last.
05:23The battle in the Arakan lasts 17 days.
05:27The siege of Imphal and Kohima, Haiti.
05:31And every day, 500 tons of life and hope
05:34are dropped to our troops between the Japanese guns.
05:51No camera has recorded the agony among the trees,
05:55only the aftermath.
05:57The garrisons have held.
05:58It is the Japanese who have broken and fled and died.
06:23In the monsoon fighting around Imphal and Kohima,
06:26we've destroyed three Japanese divisions.
06:28And by now, we've enough air haulage in Burma
06:31to mount a new offensive.
06:33Wingate's second expedition, the airborne Chindits.
06:36Operation Thursday.
06:38A whole division will be flown into the jungle
06:40far behind the enemy lines.
06:44On the 5th of March, 1944, it starts.
06:4810,000 men, 1,000 mules,
06:51bulldozers, guns, jeeps, armoured cars.
06:55Everything bar answer.
06:57The aim is to cut Japanese communications
06:59with the extreme north,
07:01where General Stilwell's troops
07:02are fighting through to China.
07:05At the best, it isn't going to be easy.
07:48General Wingate has said,
07:50have no lines of communication on the jungle floor.
07:53Bring the goods like Father Christmas down the chimney.
08:05But Wingate has died,
08:07and so have a lot of his men.
08:09The supply drops go on into the monsoon,
08:11as columns of exhausted soldiers slog back to base.
08:15It hasn't been easy.
08:17But we've cut the enemy communications
08:19for three whole months.
08:21We've regained the initiative in Burma.
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09:06Far above and beyond the battlefield, strategic bomber groups have opened another attack
09:11against the enemy's 4,000-mile lifeline to Japan.
09:15Targets in Rangoon, Bangkok, Penang, Malaya, Sumatra have been found by reconnaissance planes
09:21and struck at by long-range bombers and carrier task forces.
10:00Targets in Rangoon
10:03By the end of the year, the 14th Army is pushing eastward through the mountains towards the
10:08plains of central Burma.
10:11This is the beginning of the longest road back in all the war.
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13:38How to Home
13:43Burma is all ours now
13:46And the weather is ours too
13:48We might have brought it from home
14:07By the beginning of 1945, the Indian Ocean was secure,
14:11and a British fleet moved into the Pacific.
14:14Now the carriers sail north to join the American fleet off Okinawa,
14:19less than 400 miles from Japan.
14:22The Japanese Empire is shrinking,
14:24and a global war stretches to its last extremes.
14:29Okinawa will be the greatest of Pacific landings.
14:33Carrier planes will cover the American 10th Army
14:36and the 1,300 craft that take it ashore.
14:43The U.S. Pacific fleet has grown from one carrier to 100
14:47and has fought its way battle by battle from the Solomons to the Philippines.
15:00Our flattops with their broods of fighters and torpedo bombers
15:03have rubbed out the Japanese Navy as a fighting force.
15:06They've covered more amphibious landings than they can remember
15:10and evolved a pattern that's quite a science by now.
15:14First, you knock down all the enemy aviation for miles around.
15:17Then you slug the beach with naval guns.
15:19Then you hit it with all the planes and guns and rockets you've got
15:22while the Amtrak's wade ashore.
15:46As the Allies close in, Japanese resistance grows more fanatical.
15:51Admiral Arima has made the first kamikaze attack
15:54and now 2,000 suicide pilots prepare to crash to death on the Allied fleet.
16:00For them, immortality.
16:03And for their country, a last hope thrown across despair.
16:09coastline Arima has made aavoirși attack,
16:10the soldiers 상undalvăr 안-văr знărărăr
16:19izan cuaciunea mei.uxţărără
16:20treyără încărără.
16:20Atată se, ur TVONTER
16:21ară?�� contrôle arăărărără.
16:36încără。lată bellă a momentă
17:10This attack costs us our highest casualties ever.
17:14Five hundred ships sunk or damaged, five thousand men killed, five thousand wounded.
17:20But we're still in business.
17:22We take Okinawa.
17:30Okinawa becomes another of the many names for death.
17:33Bougainville, Buna, Rabaul, Majuro, Mindanao, Eniwetok, Brunei, Balikpapan, Palawan, Tarakan, Tarawa, Iwojima, Saipan.
17:45The attackers are Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, British.
17:49The defenders always Japanese and always stubborn.
17:54Science is fighting it out with superstition and the account is written in blood across the ocean called Pacific.
18:05Now at last the road to Japan is open and we've the strength to take it.
18:09The B-29s, the super forts, move forward to bases in the Marianas within striking distance of Tokyo.
18:15The secret of this job is to have enough machinery in the right place at the right time and the
18:20men to handle it.
18:21So our bomber crews set up house by the Blue Lagoon.
18:26The B-29s, the super forts, move forward to bases in the right place at the right time and the
18:28men to handle it.
19:18The B-29s, the super forts, move forward to bases in the right place at the right time and the
19:24men to handle it.
19:25They burn each city when its time has come.
19:27Then they drop bombs.
19:29Their bomb loads mostly incendiaries.
19:32Japanese towns burn fine.
19:35Tokyo and Yokohama are half destroyed.
19:38And high above several dozen other cities, our bombers give birth to death.
19:43Our crews aren't kamikaze fanatics.
19:46They're just guys you might see around any place doing what they reckon has to be done to end the
19:51war.
19:51They don't think much about the impact of west on east.
20:02Since we took Iwo Jima and had fleet bases in the Philippines, allied fighters have been able to reach Japan.
20:10As well as protecting the bombers, they strafe ground targets, any ground targets.
20:14When you've been through the Pacific, anything Japanese counts as enemy.
20:19Army
20:19Army
20:20Army
20:20Army
20:48Armyن
21:15While the bombers set course for base,
21:18the fighters home back to their carriers.
21:58The homing bombers have a longer ride, 1300 miles back to the Marianas.
22:04For shot-up planes, we have a new emergency landing strip at Iwo Jima, half that distance.
22:10Taking Iwo cost the Marines 5,000 dead, but to our wounded bomber crews, it's paying off.
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23:25All told, the bombing of Japan has cost us 3,000 bombers and air crews.
23:31The war in the East has reached new limits of destruction.
23:35then on the 6th of August 1945
23:38one solitary B-29 goes out
23:41with a different kind of bomb
23:44its target, Hiroshima
24:12on August the 9th the last salvos are fired
24:15as a second atomic bomb falls on Nagasaki
24:18the United States fleet enters Tokyo Bay
24:21and Japan surrenders
24:23the West has mastered the East
24:25the world is at peace
24:27but older and sadder than it was
24:30the heart has gone out of Nagasaki and Hiroshima
24:33and only the polluted air
24:36stirs among the ruins
25:05so
