My grandfather said the worst mistake he ever made was going back to see the people who’d helped him escape ,to thank them. All the people who helped him had been executed. He carried that with him even then.
This is why you're my favorite reactor on RU-vid. You notice all the details of the cinematography and production, and you really absorb the episodes instead of just talking over them. I always learn something new from you every time I watch your reaction to something. Thank you!
This show illustrates why some people call the P-51 Mustang fighter the "weapon that won the war." It didn't destroy German armies, it didn't break enemy lines, it didn't transport divisions of soldiers, it didn't kill millions. But it did save the bombing campaign from death by attrition.
That is more of a misnomer really. The P-51 didn't win the war. America's mass production did. In early 1944 (prior to d-day) German fighters were still trading evenly with american fighters and bombers despite the 2-1 number disadvantage. What won them the war was the sheer number of planes america could build.
@@thomasthetanderloin I agree. I wasn't saying that I believe the P-51 was the single thing that won the entire war, I was just saying that this show vividly illustrates why some people think so. American manufacturing won the war, and it wasn't just planes. Here's a manufacturing number that always stuns me: on the day Pearl Harbor was bombed, Japan had six aircraft carriers, and the US had six (Ranger, Yorktown, Enterprise, Lexington, Hornet, and Saratoga). Over the next 4 years of the war, Japan was able to build about a dozen more carriers. During the same time, the US was able to build 150 (including fleet, light, and escort carriers). That's an astounding contrast in manufacturing capacity. By 1944 America was able to build so many planes so quickly that, onboard carriers, instead of bothering to service even lightly damaged planes or planes that even just needed routine maintenance, mechanics just pushed them overboard into the sea knowing that they could get as many brand new ones as they asked for.
The Polish women mentions about her people. Poland lost about 20% of their entire population during the entire of war. There’s a reason why they’re building military equipment out the ass of lately from places like the United States, and South Korea from what’s happening.
ye scary times again. russia is marching across europe intent on killing people and taking their land. Ukraine now. tomorrow Estonia then Poland if we let them take ukraine then why wouldnt they. i cant believe trump and his stupid right wing followers are actually on putin the dictators side this time. if americans want to keep making heroic tv shows and movies about their brave soldiers then they better keep fighting on the right side of history. never before i have ever heard americans be on the side of tyrany. scary times again.
I've seen a few people mention the Belgians were able to discern that Bob was a spy by how he wrote the date down (Day/Month/Year for a European and Month/Day/Year pretty much exclusively from Americans) and the model of lighter he brought out wasn't a Zippo, it was German.
He also messed up the anthem. He said “just so proudly we hailed” instead of “what so proudly we held.” English is very difficult for Germans. Makes me wonder if Bob was a Volksdeutsche.
Bob also failed because he knew the rest of the Anthem, something 90% of Americans don't. Which speaks that he was taught the song, not picked it up by osmosis in the schools, which generally only sing verse 1
@@brettpeacock9116 He also sang it loudly and "proudly" like a German would be brought up to sing their anthem. Tthe Americans were singing it subdued while trying to remember the lyrics.
Michou or lily shown in this episode was actually in her early 20's however she dressed as a teenager or school girl to avoid suspicion. Her real name was Micheline Aline Dumon and only died in 2017. Or is a reference to the real life Michou She was one of the more famous guides on the Comet line as that particular escape route was called. She helped over 250 airmen personally escape into spain.
My father in law was a side gunner on a B-24 Liberator. He didn't talk about his experiences which were many I'm sure. He re-signed up for a second tour and flew from the very beginning of the war to the end. I once asked him if he would have preferred to be on a B-17 crew. His answer was hell no, " The damn thing keeps you alive while freezing you to death, besides the 24 flew farther and carried more bombs." I'm not sure what he meant about "freezing you to death." We ended the conversation there as I could tell he didn't want to talk about it. Much of what I learned about him and the war I got from Ann, his wife.
From what I've heard from former crewman on both bombers and seen on military equipment analyzation suggest that much more air blew through the hull of a B-17 than the B-24. Less cold air and a tighter built hull kept crews from getting blasted by the cold air.
The German infiltrator was caught because of some details during the questionary , the way he wrote the date was one of them Edit: later on the U.S Army Air Force raised the number of missions to 35
This show illustrates why some people call the P-51 Mustang fighter the "weapon that won the war." It didn't destroy German armies, it didn't break enemy lines, it didn't transport divisions of soldiers, it didn't kill millions. But it did save the bombing campaign from death by attrition.
Of every 100 airmen who joined Bomber Command, 45 were killed, 6 were seriously wounded, 8 became Prisoners of War, and only 41 escaped unscathed (at least physically). Of the 120,000 who served, 55,573 were killed including over 10,000 Canadians.
you forget, thats only the british numbers. I.e. the night bombers. The americans had it much, much worse. Only 25% of all the european bomber crews lived to see the end of the war.
They flew in their underwear because they trained in air bases on the Texas/Mexico border, or in Oklahoma, where it is often very hot. Those bombers they trained on were roasting inside, and in the 1940s, air conditioning did not exist anywhere outside of movie theaters. When I was a kid in the early 1970s, my friend's stepdad was a bomber pilot instructor who spent the whole war on the US southern border. He said those bases were terrible, isolated, and with nothing to do.
On the subject of PTSD... Donald miller keeps returning to the subject of the mental health of the crews and what a challenge it was to get them fit enough to get them to get back in to their Forts after they suffered the trauma of amission. Air corps doctors and psychiatrists used a number of pioneering techniques, including hypnosis and drugs to help the flyers confront their trauma. Most of it was effective enough to get them back into their aeroplanes, but all of it was futile, because the only long term solution was to let them not go back into the very situation that had caused the trauma to begin with.
In re "Flak Happy", see the movies 'Captain Newman, MD' and '12 O'Clock High'. Lots of the guys really did start to crack up under the unbelievable stress.
I think you "get it" about why this series is so, so, so very well done. The producers were successfully able to convey the psychological aspect that took such an immense toll on these crews.
Something to think about, on D Day, Easy Company had approximately 140 officers and men. The mission in this episode the 100th lost the equivalent of 57% of Easy.
As a Marine. The US military uses DD/MM abv/YR format when writing dates. It has been done like that since the Revolutionary war. Today is 19 Feb 23 whereas German military would writes the date 19.02. 2023 the day hard stop. month by number, hard stop, space and four digit year. hard stop is typically a period.
The infiltrator was caught by the way he wrote the date, his penmanship, the way he knew "The Star-Spangled Banner," and the Wehrmacht issue IMCO lighter.
The infiltrator wrote the date on his paper date first, then month, which is the European way and in the US we write Month and then date. I've seen others mention the lighter was also german but i couldnt tell so idk if there's any merit to that.
Something you might wanna look into the story of the B-17 Ye Olde Pub. It was shot to shit by German fighters. One fw 109 Pilot instead of finishing the bomber off escorted it back to safety. There's a whole lot more to the story than what i'm writing. And it was immortalized by the band sabaton in a song called no bullets fly.
According to another RU-vid video channel that I watched by a historian the fixing of the magneto from the wheel well on the fly by Sergeant Ken Lemmons ACTUALLY happened!!😮 He documented it in his own memoirs!! Although it was on a DIFFERENT plane on a DIFFERENT mission, and probably DIDN'T have the dramatic screw drop and catch😅, it actually DID happen!!!❤ Also Buck and Bucky were absolutely CORRECT about the flying skills of the new pilots ESPECIALLY Rosenthal. You will see a sample of it next episode!! I couldn't help it!
I love your reactions Jacqui, and to a personal note on WWII. My Grandfather was a German Luftwaffe fighter pilot fought all the western campaigns and two years of North Africa in which he shot down only fighters no bombers yet, and he was chivalrous and always checked if the enemy pilot bailed out to safety because he only wanted to knock out the machine and not kill the pilot but once he got stationed to Holland to intercept American and British bombers in January 1943 and once he had his first pass home to see what devastation they were doing to the cities and civilians and that included children his heart hardened which is understandable since he had three kids himself one included my mom, and they lived in Greater Berlin. He developed another tactic to take down the BF 17 flying fortress because he said it was suicide to attack from the rear, the sides so he flew 1km ahead of the bombers and 1km above them then throttled down his power as the bombers came into view he dived on them and blasted away his his guns and cannon fire at the cockpits theorizing that if you kill the pilots the ship is lost. the tactic worked but he had PTSD about it for years after. he did one time in 1944 flying a Focke Wulf 190A8 save an American pilot flying a P47 thunderbolt which had a smoke trail and heading towards Germany, he found that strange a damaged plane heading not home but to Germany, he flew down and slowly glided next to the P47, at first the US pilot thought it was one of his own but got fear in his eyes when he saw the Balkan Cross on the fuselage and the kills noted on the tail section which at the time showed 175 kills which made my grandfather an Ace of aces. My grandfather surmised he must have a shot up instrument panel and had no idea in which direction he was flying, so he signaled him with hand signals that he was going the wrong way and that he should follow, at first the US pilot was nervous but after 3 minutes followed. once they reached the Dutch Coast my grandfather saluted the young man who returned the salute and my grandfather banked away to head home to his base. After the war they became great friends and the US pilot even attended a few Afrika Korps Reunions held in München every 4 years to which my Grandfather always went since he had served 2 years there in 1941/1942. they were friends their entire lives, funny isn't it one time enemies became great friends, when i asked my Grandfather why he did not shoot him don instead he replied, "I never shoot at a helpless enemy because up there we are all brothers."
there is honor among warriors . My father flew 54 missions in '17s and shot down Luftwaffe fighters . Yet after the war he said he held no animosity towards them because they were simply doing their jobs , like he was.
Just a note though 25 was the magic number for the Americans to be sent home, the British had no such luxury at the beginning of the war as an example Squadron Leader Guy Gibson flew 173 missions in Night Fighters, Bombers and Pathfinders, Pathfinders were Bombers that flew ahead of the bombers to light the targets seeing as how British bombed at night. In looking this info up I also found that one aircraft a Mosquito MK9 survived 213 combat missions, kind of makes you wonder how many crews passed through that ship:)
He did do more than one tour but it was his choice, he could have been an instructor. In the end he asked Bomber Harris to return him to duty after he worked at headquarters.
@@Thetasigmaalpha He seemed like that kind of person of what I have read of him. What did you think about that single ship surviving all those missions, that must have been one lucky ship
It was such an event to make 25 the celebration was very real. They are effectively depicting the wear on everyone from groundcrew, Red Cross workers, administration, air crew and civilians. Then contrast with the day to day work of the resistance fighters trying to help downed crews.
You're not wrong. Flak-Happy can absolutely be caused by PTSD and/or longer-term stressors. And is more or less the airman's version of shell shock (which was still in colloquial in use during WW2 and for some time until science at least gave us an idea what was happening to people. The field of modern psychology was only two-ish decades old by WW2, and generally, not taken as seriously as it should have been). It exhibited in different ways for the crews. Some were like in the scene in this episode: they gain a "Devil May Care" attitude and are apt to take more risks versus those they would have reasonably done before. Others were of the "accepting" sort and bought I to the fact they weren't going to make it and acted out: giving away possessions or having a system of letters in place if tbey didn't make it, those "big red flags" you're often told about when discussing the darker paths MH can lead you down. Others became catatonic in their lives, executing their jobs like automatons, but just going internal at all other times between missions. And probably scores of other ways too.
About stress, my Dad wrote that on a mission while flying over Austria, a single 24 just peeled off and flew toward Switzerland. At debrief they were told that that crew must have had enough of the war and were going to take their chances with the Swiss.
I love your reactions and keep these awesome videos going! I grew up with veterans from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. So good on you for the love and respect that you show our veterans with your reactions on all of this. You’re a good one.!!❤❤❤
Great comments. So many people expected this to be Band of Brothers or Pacific in the sky. You get how different the Air War was. Masters of the Air really helped me visualize and understand what my father told me it was like. He never talked about it until late in life. Seemed liked at that point he needed to tell us. He would tell you something so horrifying in such a casual way. I was Fortunate to have walked through a B-17 with him at an air show many years ago.
There was a great point in an old soviet movie "Only old man are going into battle" that hardest part of being a mechanic in an air wing is not fixing planes during bad weather, but waiting
People complain about CGI, but I can't see anything wrong with that - the only thing in this series I found a jarring goof that broke me out of this feeling of immersion in the story, was the "bombed house in London" scene. This is no Band of Brothers, it's not 10lb mortar rounds or 1lb hand grenades that could have caused the building to collapse. The only things that were hitting London in 1943 were aerial bombs, which depending on the weight could level from several buildings, to entire quarter or street. The smallest of them, 50kg/110lb, maaaaybe could limit its destruction to one building, but still, there wouldn't be any window left in any building in that shot. In any other body of work, this anachronism could be chalked up to this being obscure knowledge, but in a show about strategic bombings it really feels weird.
There are a number of things that separate Europeans from Americans especially in the 1940s. The writing of the date Americans do month day year Europeans do day month year eating with utensils. Europeans cut their food with a knife and use the fork in the other hand without switching Americans cut their food with a knife and then switch hands for the fork, as an example, these are minor things that very few people would think to change during a stressful interview Also want to add I am truly enjoying both masters of the air and the band Brothers reactions. I have watched a few band of brother reactions, but never one from a film student. You are adding an extra layer that even I haven’t thought about.
Enjoy your reactions. Since you are a student of film and watching both Band of Brothers and Masters of the Air there are a couple of films that came out in 1949/50 that you might want to look at where the screen writers were veterans and looked at the human element of the war. They are ‘Battleground’ and ‘12 O’Clock High’. Both had won some Oscars I believe.
Cleven was indeed shot down during the 2nd Bremen raid. Film making principles are irrelevant here assuming the writers care about depicting what actually happened.
If you want more humour but still want to react to a War miniseries I would highly recommend watching Generation Kill, about the 2003 US Invasion of Iraq.
There is not a lot of lighter fair themed around WWII but one truly great movie you should check out, which would keep you in the WWII state of mind, would be Kelly's Heros. It's funny but still captures the consequences of war.
I heard a historian talking about one of the little British boys, named Sam, who grew up running around Thorpe Abbotts during this time and who was later credited with organizing the first reunion at the base. I hope that's true!
A different story in the Pacific. To make a long story short, after dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was a debate about where to drop the next one, should that be necessary. Many wanted Tokyo to be the target, but General LeMay said there was no sense dropping the bomb there because the city had already been totally destroyed. In Japan, many cities were filled with buildings/houses made from wood and paper. They were fire-bombed. The longer the Japanese resisted, the harder the fought, the more they were bombed. Find a photo of Tokyo at the end of the war - a flat field, with only an occasional brick or cement building standing, here and there....
Hi Jacqui, another great gorgeous lady :) yes thats exactly it, it was a different perspective/vibe this episode. Yeah completing 25 missions of hell must have been the best feeling, but also bittersweet as you said. One of the first B17's to do this was the Memphis Belle. I highly recommend the 1990 movie of the same name for you to react to, it's awesome. I'm loving this series and your journey through it :) aerial warfare is my thing. Yeah those thst fought in the air had it different to those that fought on the ground but that's the difference overrall of various branches of the military. And air crews had it worse in combat - so the greater the risk, the greater the reward: hot food, comfy beds and attending parties.
During WW II the phrase was "Battle Fatigue" now ptsd. Now after years the Doctors know how to treat it.Still enjoy your reactions and commentary from your cinema perspective.
I totally agree with you about the differences between BoB and MotA. Actually, thinking about this since quite a few days helped me understand why I never really liked The Pacific. Band of Brothers as drama took place in a both physically and mentally reduced space. Everything is happening within the territory of War with capital W. Even those scenes, which aren't about combats, but involved civilians go through this narrow path of storytelling. The Pacific opened this space by involving other aspects, and paradoxically this made me unconfortable. (I only saw The Pacific once, when it came out. Maybe it would be the right time to re-warch it.) Now, two decades and hundreds of articles/essays etc I have written about dramatisation of real historical events later I am able to appreciate that kind of much more open and decentralised structure of storytelling Master of the Air has. Episode 4 was a real gamechanger for me, episode 5 I liked even more for these reasons and now looking forward to the rest of the series.
if you care for some other movies, then "the bombardment" "land of mines" "april 9th" "this life" and "flame & citron" is some strong contenders. they are all danish made and have a focus on the start of the war, during the war when denmark were bombed to save the resistance groups but sadly the mission also ended with a catholic school being hit. they cover some of the best known groups and individuals of the resistance during the war. and how the danes felt about the germans and treated german POW's after the war. they are all praised for the historical accuracy and for the very human perspective. there are no real heroes, it's not like band of brothers where they showcase brave heroes that run into battle or the generic war movie where they make a huge last stand. it's all about the people who were there and made the choice to fight for not only themselves but everyone else so they could see denmark as a free country once again. denmark lost after 6 hours in an action from the politicians that in the end saved thousands of lives but is a fact most people forget or is ignorant to
The were a few give aways of the infiltrator. Firstly how he wrote the date rest of the world way not american way. Now military did sometimes write it that way as well but he also wrote his 1's and 9's the german way. Secondly the anthem he messed up some of the lyrics , he also sang all of it which not everyone would know like quinn they ended up humming, thirdly the way he sang it was like the german way he had been taught loud and proud. We didnt get some of his answers to other questions but its possible he answered the london one as it was part of their infiltration research to learn about large places And the final confirmation for the resistance was the guys lighter. It was an austrian made lighter/brand when nigh on every american would have had a zippo
JACQUI, if you have not seen the 1995 I think is the Year film "Memphis Belle", then that would be great for you to react to it on the channel. IT Stars Matthew Modine and there are some other actors that I'm sure you will recognize and it's the story of the Memphis Belle completing it's 25 missions!! It's definitely based on truth and there is a documentary paying tribute to the feat as well.
You mentioned the series, "The Pacific". Be careful with that series. It's different - the war in the Pacific was different. You had young men from the US going up against a Samurai mentality that was drummed into Japanese youth and soldiers - death before dishonor, no quarter asked, no quarter given. Brutal. Life was cheap, battles were without mercy. Hard to watch - the Samurai culture was unlike anything American had seen. Be mentally prepared. Consider not watching it. Really. My father was in the Pacific during the war, but he was in a pretty cushy staff job, albeit on a heavy cruiser. He knew how lucky he was to not be in combat. I think he also felt a little guilty that others had it so hard. Consider this - if recall correctly, after the Battle for Okinawa, over 30,000 battle-hardened, combat-experienced American troops were treated for "battle fatigue", now known as PTSD. Over 30,000. What they saw - the brutality - shook those veterans to the core. It was unbelievably brutal. Beware.
The Pacific is a tragedy on display. I love that show maybe even more than band of brothers because of how it hurts me. This episode actually really reminded me of a few episodes in that one.
I'm sure I won't be the only person to do this, and I think I can speak for everyone here when I recommend the 1990 film Memphis Belle. It's a much tighter scope focused on the true story of one crew and plane who were among the first to complete their 25 missions, with the plot mostly focused on mission 25. Cast, writing, cinematography, editing -- all top notch, and the effects, which are mostly practical (it was 1990 after all) are exceptional.
@@stevedavis9466 Never met a historian or flyer who didn't have issues with that movie, totally agree. Best film we've gotten though so far, even to this day.
