My uncle WD was a mechanic for the 8th AF during the war - at the time, the policy was to assign one mechanic to one aircrew. He got to know the crew of the first aircraft he was assigned to very well - their hometowns, their girlfriends - and one day they didn't come back. So from that point on he wouldn't get to know the crews - he would look at their shoes. He went through 8 crews before the war ended. After the war they changed the policy - too depressing for the mechanics. Society has also forgotten the scale of WW2 - a figure I always remember was that 8th AF lost over 4200 aircraft over Holland alone in 1944 - when you add in British losses and Luftwaffe - today it's a big deal when the Russians lose one bomber over Ukraine. Never forget.
I will not at all as a child of a WWII solider. The bombers,fighters of all races were fighting for all of us then and now. If they had not we would not be here at all. Represent!
It is a big deal..Russia is attacking a sovereign country. Dad flew Bombers, I was a Jet Mech on Prowlers in the Navy, two brothers retired one was Airborne other Senior Master Sargent Air Force. No need to reply
Considering the fact that both my grandpas were pilots in WW2... on different sides. They both survived to tell their tale but way too many grandchildren never had that opportunity. Here's to them and their memory 🍻!
@@user-wx8nq9xh1pMy maternal grandpa, Alfred-Alexander, was transfered from the Wehrmacht's transportation and logistics department to the Luftwaffe after the Battle of Britain. When the OKM was scouring the ranks for anybody with flying experience, they picked him, raced him through pilot's training (where he still received more knowledge than later cadet years) and shoehorned him into a Messerschmitt 109's cockpit. The fact that he was over 2 meters tall (6'6''+) and had a furniture mover's physique made it necessary to remove the pilot seat's standard cushions and provide him with something far more uncomfortable. "After each mission my arse felt like the school teacher back then had a bad day!" My paternal grandpa Eoghan (Irish for "Owen") joined the Royal Air Force as a volunteer in a different matter. As he told us in his unmatched, slightly comical matter, after WW2 broke out, there were 2 kinds of strangers sitting in the pubs. One of them was happy to try out the whiskeys and beers and occasionally made an offer like (best read it with a stereotypical German accent): "Work for uz and azz soon az ze Brritish are deefeated, you will get yourr Island back. Ze entire Island!" Not that hard to tell who _they_ worked for. The other group stuck to their slightly warmer than usual beer and went like: "Well, if you fly for us, we will store any records of past... misunderstandigs... between us in a very, very combustible building. And every chap working there is a bloody smoker." Well, to put it diplomatically, my grandpa's family and ancestors had had their fair share of trouble with the British and therefore the offer of a clean slate was way too good to turn down. That's how their stories started. Alfred stayed with a Messerschmitt 109 and her different variants until he fell from grace and from the skies over London during the "Baby Blitz". Eoghan started with a Hawker Hurricane and later transfered to the Hawker Typhoon and later Tempest as a fighter-bomber. Their combined tales could fill a book than I am writing on for ages already 😅. Anyway, thank you for reading 😁🍻😎
I live in the shadow of three USAF WW2 airfields, Deenthorpe, Polebrook and Kingscliffe, the memorials all fly the stars and stripes every day, and flowers are always fresh and blooming whatever the season, we never will forget the sacrifices of these young hero's, the greatest generation. Come the evening tide of a summer evening in England we listen for that echo of a B17 that sometimes can be heard, ghosts of the past returning from that last mission, bless them all.
When I visited my father’s base at Tibenham I was struck by the reverence with which our air crews were and are held by the British. The British remember better than Americans do the sacrifices made because they saw the toll being taken every day.
@@7chq Is that so? How do you know that every single one of the 600,000 civilians murdered in the German genocide was involved in murder? Even if - since when is it actually common practice in a civilized country to murder a murderer's entire family?
There is a channel (WWIIUSBombers) that focuses on American bombers, the tech, tactics etc. From what I recall, very few were lost to friendly fire. The formations are a lot more spread out than as depicted, that combined with training and other factors meant that gunners didn't tend to shoot at their own. Even if they did, the other bombers were normally far enough away that damage would be minimal. I'm not saying it *never* happened but it was pretty rare all things considered.
50cals vs bombers arent very effective, at least vs the hardware. in later stages 30mm cannons were used vs bombers for that reason, cause even the widely used 20mm werent effective enough
@@tomhoni9642Yeah, 50 cals were always a bad idea to outfit out fighters and bombers with. They went for ammo capacity and existing weapons over cannons. It worked fine against Zeros, but heavier aircraft, not so much. Still, a 50 cal ripping through the fuselage will still kill you.
@@sergeantsalty1236 Its appreciation for our grandfathers that fought in that dreadful war. Mine was there, as well as his best friend who is still there. Respond how you feel If you want.
You don't want to drop the ball turret iff there is Any possibility off a water ditching 6:35 kissing the earth...my dad told a similar tale about doing that after they landed in Iceland on their ferry flight across the Atlantic. They got lost in fog and found the island as they were running on fumes. As soon as they touched down all 4 engines sputtered to a stop.
In Britain there were no memorials after the war. There was a national shame at bombing and its collaterlal damage. The RAF had less tech to mitigate that than USAAF. It is history that needs to be remembered and I am glad that since 1992 there is now a memorial in London to Bomber command.
One of my best friend’s fathers was a tail gunner in Lancasters during World War II. As scary as daylight bombing was, the Brits went in at night with no belly turrets. He told me the sight of Hamburg on fire stayed with him forever.
Ever wonder why our side used 4-engine planes when everyone else had only two?? You see allied engineers quickly figured out 4 engines were necessary to get the payload AND the crews balls off the ground.
I was shocked at the first few episodes when they flew without any escorts. Who ever came up with this suicidal strategy??? Thousands of young men died.
@@wnose The belief before the war was that "the bomber would always get through". It was a universal belief, and the RAF took insane losses in daylight bombing raids in France in 1940, as indeed did the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. (The real reason the campaign was abandoned was that the German bomber force was taking 33% losses per sortie, even with massive fighter escorts, and that's just not sustainable morale-wise.) The Americans looked at all that and thought their more heavily-armed bombers and better-organised formations could succeed where everyone else had failed. Had the Mustang not come along, they'd probably have had to reconsider, but as it was those escorted daylight raids essentially won the war by breaking the Luftwaffe, so delivering air supremacy and making D-Day possible.
The same response from age appropriate men would occur today. After World War One, the motto “Never again” gained traction and Oxford Debating Society vowed “This house will never again fight for King and Country”. Now we refer to them as the Few etc.
I agree these brave airmen from the usaf alongside the british raf desimated the horror of germanys luffwaffa . Never forgotten always in our hearts ..over 734 men lost there lives in only 22 months. Brave brave men rip
The series was OK, but just OK. Episodes 7 and 8 flat sucked. Way too much time spent on Crosby's affair and too much of that was flat made up. Episode 9 helped bring it back home with great direction from Tim Van Patten but the series as a whole was a major disappointment and a far far cry from the excellence of Band Of Brothers. They tried to do too much with too little. Tried to carry too many story lines and dropped a number of them. I know that Covid threw a wrench into things during production and I know that money ran short and they had to go with 9 episodes instead of 10, but they basically wasted two as well. It should have been ten full episodes and totally concentrated on the 100th Bomb Group, 8th Air Force, the way Band Of Brothers concentrated on the 506th P. I. R. The 332nd Fighter Group weren't even in the same Air Force as the 100th; they were in the 12th and the 15th out of Italy. Their story deserves to be told, and it has been, but it was not, nor should it have been part of THIS story. Doing it the way they did shortchanged both groups.
Interestingly enough the B17 was a compromise (thats code for shockingly bad choice) it wasn't a great bomb carrying machine, indeed the British Mosquito could carry a greater bomb load to Berlin than a B17 ... 3500 lbs vs 4000 lbs (the Lancaster could carry 14,000 lbs with a crew of 6) - the Mosquito had a pilot and navigator/bomb aimer (2 men) and the B17 had 9 men, too many American boys died because of bad choices ... isn't hindsight revealing.
And yet it was easier to mass produce and were more of them. Not to mention the other benefits such as a higher operational altitude, more protection (2 waist gunners and a ball turret gunner) and better crew survivability. So i guess in reterospect they chose right. It wasn't a great aircraft but it worked. P.S how does max payload affect crew survivability? You realise more British boys wouldve been saved if they had prioritised self defense and survivability?
@@ramonscott6045 Not true at all. I have the 363 fighter group logo book of all their missions. Fighters did face flak all the time excorting, going to and from target. They did lose many planes to flak.
Don't understand how the Fortress gunners could hit the German fighters when they came in close and fast, nor do I understand how the Fortress gunners could avoid shootin' each other up, especially when flying in such large, tight formations.
It's pretty much a universal of depictions of air to air combat that they show the participants much, much MUCH closer together than they would ever be in real life. The formations were not that close, and the German fighters weren't either - the turrets whizzing around shooting as the fighters pass close by is all very dramatic, but that wasn't how it was.
These guys would be the equivalent of our Gen Z generation today which means everyone would quickly die as they would be all making Tic Toc videos of themselves dancing around there machine guns or just staring at there phones.
These were better humans than our current generation. To sacrifice yourself for the future is something most people can’t comprehend nowadays. Thank you to all the people who risked their lives and lost their lives. Our current world doesn’t show appreciation for your sacrifice and I’m sorry for that
Tell that to the boys dying every day defending Ukraine from the 21st century's Hitler. When the call comes, people suck it up and answer. Do you think any of these soldiers in 1938 *wanted* to go and sacrifice themselves in the largest war in human history? Don't be an idiot.
From what I could tell they're trying to show just how fast these planes would past each other, especially since both the Americans and Germans are flying in opposite directions. Plus we see the German planes move at more realistic speeds when the fly in from the flanks or from behind.
@@Bigrago1 agree that is a fact that not many people know, a common Luftwaffe tactic to counter the B17 was to charge head on and target the pilots. As both sides are flying the opposite direction from the perspective of the B17 crew it seems as if the Bf109s are flying faster than usual because of the closing speed. But when attacking from behind the B17 crew can definitely see the fighters flying at their usual speed.
It's not that the 109s are flying like TIE fighters, it's that TIE fighters fly like 109s. George Lucas modeled Star Wars space combat off of World War 2 air combat. That's one of the things that made Star Wars seem realistic and exciting to audiences back then, even though it makes no sense to people who understand actual flight physics in space. But it also makes actual WW2 fighters seem unrealistic, because later generations first saw maneuvers like that in Star Wars.
Why would their be amo on the wings of the b-17 the only reason for the fire as the fuel fuels the engines 😐bullets and metal create sparks witch creates a fire 😐the reaction of so quick to a bistander it would look as if the wing is on fire but in reality it’s the fuel 😐
A WW2 Bomber crewman was asked why he and so many others did what they did, and whether or not it was worth it. He responded with "We went up there time and time again so men could dress in womens clothing and read book to kids, crush women in their own sports, and be named as 'woman of the year'. You bet your sweet ass it was worth it" -Katelyn Jenner (probably)
Oh ! But they did. The idea that sticking as many 50 cals as you could manage onto a B17 and flying in a formation to provide a curtain of fire looked good on paper but wasn't worth shit in the air. These guys life expectancy got longer once the P-51's arrived
One of the (many) challenges in WW2 air combat was getting remotely accurate kill counts. Even fighter claims were almost always wildly optimistic. You're in combat, you get a snapshot at 250+ mph/400+ kph on a target going just as fast and get a glimpse of it smoking and going into a spin. "That's a kill" you think but can't afford to watch it all the way to the ground because you have to keep your head on a swivel to keep someone else from getting YOU. But you feel confident enough to claim credit if you make it back home. Now try it for bombers. A German FTR flashes smoke or even explodes (no doubt on THAT one). But 4-6 or more guys in different bombers were shooting at it and every single one of them legit thinks "I GOT ONE!" I mean, really--you are tracking a target, firing at it and it blows up. Hard to argue with that, right? It's not like it was fun attacking a formation of B-17s. One German pilot noted that attacking a formation of 12 B-17s meant dealing with 144 heavy machine guns "And you felt like every single one of them was aiming at YOU." In addition to rockets and heavy cannon to allow them to attack from out of machine gun range, the Luftwaffe actually gave partial kill credit for separating a bomber from its defensive formation because a long bomber was much easier to deal with. The "self-escorting bomber" was a fallacy many paid for with their lives, but the Luftwaffe didn't take them lightly or make fun of them as an adversary.
This is correct. The huge early casualties of the 100th were because Boeing and some Air Force generals sold the idea that the "Flying Fortress" could defend itself from the Luftwaffe without fighter protection, and the available fighters at the time did not have the range to reach Germany and back. The full footnoted story is told in the book version of Masters of the Air.@@coinneachreid8971
@@mikecondray4805 yeah most of the time b17 crews just try and claim a kill if they think they see a enemy plane smoking or blow up just to keep morale up even if that wasn't positively identify as a kill.
I noticed there seems to be some censorship going on. Graphic violence scene show in one clip were absent in subsequent showings of same clip. This is a war film people die, and not just the enemy. People make mistakes, on both sides, bravery fear and ,just bad luck are not solely on one side..people I knew and were related to faced off during ww2 an uncle, actually flew B17s Others were actually on the ground looking up at the death and destruction. Raining down from far above. It's been many years ago, everyone on both sides are gone even now., I can understand the impotent anger they felt. I understood that bailed out crew were lynched by enraged towns people, it was not policy on the governments side. The military tried to take these people prisoners but sometimes they failed. At the risk of sounding cold, what did these men really expect would occur when those survivors of those being bombed got their hands on the killers. As ive written its been more than a lifetime ago that these events transpire. We are now all friend now and these events can never recur. I enjoyed the series and was amazed at what can be done with cgi now. Ate
If I had been in WWII, I would have wanted to be a pilot, for sure. Except that I probably would have been disqualified for wearing glasses. Much respect to those who fought in WWII and all other wars to maintain our freedom.
Did anyone notice how they completely abandoned the storyline of "baby face" two friends? They never show them again after the train ticket scene in Paris
Actually, they were shown in Ep. 7. They were the two guys riding bikes. It was narrated that they got to go home. But, yeah, I feel like we could've seen more of them. I feel like we skipped a whole plotline of their journey home.
@@DDiamond8374 yes, this was a tense and gripping subplot that could have served to illustrate the harrowing experiences of downed airmen who managed to escape and somehow survive...and then they just abandoned it and the guys show up in England, la-de-dah, "hey everybody, we're back." That was awful.
Yeah last we saw of them, they were in Paris, setting up the long and dangerous journey that would've been the resistance smuggling them to Spain. Then they forgot about that and boom they're just magically back in Britain again. Wasted potential
Enkel maar respect voor deze jongens die hun leven op het spel zetten om een einde te maken aan nazi deutsland te veel zijn niet meer terug gekeerd maar nogmaals respect forever
@@bimbonas2 only at first was the luftwaffe ordered not to bomb civilians, After a bombing raid on Berlin by Bomber command took place did they begin bombing cities
"No one judges the winners" are you sure? Dresden is known today as one of the worst war crimes in history (even though it was arguably a military target) and the firebombings of Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya are condemned by damn near everyone who's heard of them (which I think is a fair assessment), and there's a LOT of discourse about the ethics of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. The only people who actually think that Allied war crimes aren't being reasonably discussed are the ones that try to use Allied war crimes to downplay Axis war crimes. And people who try to downplay Axis war crimes are usually... Deniers.
11th grade (1978) we had a human history day where our mild mannered English teacher Mr Van Schaick recounted his experiences as a B17 pilot over Germany. Poignant.
All the yelling in those old mic sets. Those headphones distorted yelling so badly. I know it lends itself to drama, but the yelling is way overboard in this series.
A similar criticism is applicable to the movie Memphis Belle in which personal tensions between crew members boils over during their mission, something that these crews during daylight bombing raids over the heart of the Third Reich just wouldn't do.
True. Most aircraft commanders would have ordered them to shut up. In fact, it was a point of pride among air crews if a a/c commander remained calm under enemy pressure.
@@coinneachreid8971 The actual Memphis Belle went on a ''milk run' over the coast of France for their final mission. But the movie packed every single cliché of Bomber stories into one.
@@patrickkelly6691 The original script was about a RAF Lancaster but the film's writers couldn't sell it to Hollywood, thus it was retooled as an American film.
@@ptonpc oook - the basic concept was based around the '30 mission and go home deal', which was not a thing for the Lanc Crews (BIL's dad was a Lanc Rear Gunner and survived 40+ Missions). SO I am unsure how any script about the Lancs (which I would watch for sure) is comparable in the core script. But f that's so then I won't argue it. Certainly the ''Bridge Too Far' was another movie that had to promote American concepts rather than the Brits perspective, so ignoring the single point of failure that counted was that of General Gavin to order the Waal Bridges be taken at Nijmegen on day one and still left untaken when XXX Corps arrived ahead of planned schedule, only to find the bridge still in German Hands)
CGI looks poor, the fighters seem too fast on their passes (but the air gunners seem to hit every aircraft that came near them?) not really very good .
Bro I think your taking this to serious 😐yes it is a movie but it’s based on real life even if we did try to show you real footage having a camera or Video was really rare back then 😐it may not be better as yarn hub but this is the closest thing to yarn hub as it adds the realism to it 😎😊
those guys shot at the german bf109 fighters planes and each other , It looks like friendly fire happen alot.they fly so close together I dont see how they could of not shot each other.
It looks that way in the film, but it wasn't. The gunners were trained to cover their own sectors and to avoid tracking onto friendly aircraft. It wasn't just one big free-for-all. I'm sure accidents did happen, but most often, it was when another B-17 drifted out of position.
roughly 0.2% of the damage to planes in the 8th that made it back showed damage from friendly fire. They were more likely to shoot their own plane (1.4%) or to be damaged from empty shells falling from a plane above them (3.8%). There is a video here on youtube called "How Common was Friendly Fire Among Bombers in WWII?" that has the official numbers. Now to be fair that is surviving planes so it may be a hair lower but a gunner is only going to accidently hit a plane in passing and not concentrate fire on a friendly.
From what I remember it had a computer which could calculate the distance for greater accuracy, so they would destroy it to avoid the Germans from capturing the technology
It was a. Very expensive and b. They thought it was the game changer and didn't want German or Japanese to get one. Obviously that eventually happened and the Germans said nein ours is better, and the Japanese said hey that's pretty good, but ours will make do
Yeah the bomb sight was a very sophisticated device for it's time. One of the first uses of computers in warfare, in this case a mechanical one. You could actually slave the planes controls to the site for the final bombing run. But it didn't work all that well in combat conditions. It was accurate on paper and in testing, but in battle it didn't work as well. However the fundamental tech was still very powerful and there wasn't any reason this couldn't be improved.
Dutch navy pilots in the Netherlands East Indies campaign (1941-1942) flew Dornier Do. 24 flying boats there were equipped with the very modern German-made Goerz electronic bombsight. There weren't many of them in the NEI, so it was common to have a single aircraft with a Goerz bombsight serve as lead bomber for an entire formation. I have a Dutch-language article that compares bombsights used by the Dutch army / navy in WW2. It quotes a former Dutch pilot who wrote that most Dutch pilots preferred the Goerz to the highly classified Norden bombsight which they used later in the war on American-built aircraft.
It is ironic that the Allies nearly defeated themselves in the air war. They continually made decisions that were based on their own strengths and not German weaknesses. An example of this is the decision to bomb a German radar station (I don't remember which one). The idea was to bomb the nearby powerplant instead. The Allied planners decided against this because "Well, we (meaning the Allies) have all this power."
Show Is good, don't let the terrible editing put you down. It may not be as superb as BoB or the Pacific, it's still entertaining and thrilling at times.
@@bouzzard4871 It's not the editing, although this clip is atrocious. First and foremost, it is the dramatic music that I find so off-putting. And then there is the acting, which seems incredibly wooden. I'll likely give it a go though, at some point in the future.
@@bouzzard4871 Apple TV has 7 days free, so I decided to give it a try. I've only seen the first episode. Unfortunately, I wasn't expecting much, but I'm still disappointed. It is laughably bad.
If you think that’s interesting watch no bullets fly 😎the strength of the b-17 was being hallow as if something is hallow it can take a lot of punishment and still work 🙂but the weakness of the b-17 was because it was hallow it had very weak armor 😐with modern jets and other aircraft the rules are reverse 😐most planes are stiff and not hallow but what makes up armor lacks punishment as a heavy armor aircraft can’t take a lot of punishment even if something so small like micro cracks or short circuit jumping etc can completely cripple a Heavy armored aircraft
Now that it has all aired, over time it will start to be considered another classic ( maybe the last) from Hanks and Speilberg. Blake Neely on score has come of age, the next Hanz Zimmer. Well done all involved, 10 years in the making and worth the wait, wd
I was stationed m swchinefurt 3rd I'd refurbished luftvaffer barrics our tanks were on the airplane concrete pads they went after the ballbering factories
@@jettmthebluedragon Firstly series or not could of done so much better in their memory. Secondly base on a true story, but yet again could have done better. My grandfather (may he rest in peace),” was a navigator on the Lancaster Bomber called High Hopes and if he watched this series he would have called it “A load of shit”. If want to watch a true story about the B17 I recommend Memphis Belle. Kind regards.
![Masters of the Air (2024) | The Ending Final Battle [HD]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
