Luftwaffe vs. Flying Fortress: Battle over Germany 1943 (WW2 Documentary)
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Fall 1943, Allied bombers are ramping up their daytime raids of Nazi German cities and industry. The bomber crews of the US 8th Air Force will pay the price against the German Luftwaffe. Formations such as the “Bloody Hundredth” 100th Bomber Group suffer some of the highest loss ratios of the Second World War - while in 1943 German war production continues to grow. So, let’s have a look why the 8th Air Force weren’t Masters of the Air over Germany quite yet.
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» SOURCES
Bowman, Martin W., The Mighty Eighth at War: USAAF Eighth Air Force Bombers versus the Luftwaffe 1943-1945, (Barnsley : Pen & Sword Aviation, 2010)
Caldwell, Donald L., The Luftwaffe over Germany: Defense of the Reich, (London : Greenhill Books, 2007)
Freeman, Roger Anthony, Mighty Eighth: A History of the U.S. Eighth Air Force, (Garden City, NY : Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1970)
Hall, Kevin, “Luftgangster over Germany: The Lynching of American Airmen in the Shadow of the Air War”, Historical Social Research, No. 43 (2008)
Hansen, Randall, Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany and Japan, (London : Faber & Faber Ltd, 2020)
Hawkins, Ian L., B-17s Over Berlin: Personal Stories from the 95th Bomb Gropup (H), (London : Brassey’s, 1990)
Hawkins, Ian L., Münster: The Way It Was, (Anaheim, CA : Robinson Typographics, 1984)
Historischer Verein Markt Werneck, “Luftangriffe auf Schweinfurt und ihre Auswirkungen auf Werneck” (www.historischerverein.de/Doku...)
Jacobs, W. A., “Strategic Bombing and American National Strategy, 1941-1943", Military Affairs, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Jul., 1986)
Levine, Alan J., The Strategic Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945, (Westport, CT : Praeger 1992)
Nijboer, Donald, The Mighty Eighth: Masters of the Air Over Europe 1942-1945, (Oxford : Osprey Publishing, 2022)
Ross, Stewart Halsey, Strategic Bombing by the United States In World War II: The Myths and the Facts, (Jefferson, NC : McFarland & Company, Inc., 2003)
Tooze, J. Adam, “No Room for Miracles. German Industrial Output in World War II Reassessed”, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 31. Jahrg., H. 3, Südasien in der Welt (Jul. - Sep., 2005)
Luftangriffe auf Hamburg bis 24.7.1943. Anlage 2: Übersicht in Zahlen (1943)
»CREDITS
Presented by: Jesse Alexander
Written by: Mark Newton
Director: Toni Steller & Florian Wittig
Director of Photography: Toni Steller
Editing: Toni Steller
Motion Design: Toni Steller, Philipp Appelt
Mixing, Mastering & Sound Design: above-zero.com
Research by: Mark Newton
Fact checking: Florian Wittig, Jesse Alexander
Channel Design: Simon Buckmaster
Contains licensed material by getty images, AP and Reuters
Maps: MapTiler/OpenStreetMap Contributors & GEOlayers3
Music Library: Epidemic Sound
All rights reserved - Real Time History GmbH 2024
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Were the bomber crews given things like better pay, alcohol and cigarettes, better food, better barracks, more leave, more letters home, more time to visit with local women, or other kinds of things like that to encourage people to stick with them? I know Indy Neidell talks about how drugs were given out almost like candy.
I love some of the names bomber crews came up with for their planes. Some of them were very creative and funny.
the usually accompanying nose art is also very creative
Does real time history spend alot of time viewing such nose art? Perhaps privately? :P
"INDY DONT COME IN IM RESEARCHING"
Right you are -- creative!. A B-26 was named Flak Bait a twist on the pilot's dog (at home) nicknamed Flea Bait.
My dad's B17 was named Lakanookie. They had to have a sense of humor going g through all that horror.
Excellent presentation as usual. You guys are one of the only honest channels on YT. Ethics, morals and knowledge a very rare treat.
Much appreciated!
Honest question, whats the difference between ethics and morals? English isnt my first language sorry
If only Yt permitted the freedom they espouse!
@@realtimehistory make a video on Italian unification and subsequent wars that followed
@@bimasetyaputra8381 Ethics are the big things. At school we learnt that the Philosophy of Ethics was why the British Empire was superior.
Morals are the smaller individual matters of conscience. Morals should conform to prevailing ethics but wiggle room is allowed.
(13:50) My uncle, 2Lt. John Shields, was co-pilot of the "Pasadena Nena." He was killed in action. I met the pilot, Cpt. John Justice when I was a youngster. He kept in touch with my Grandmother for many years, since we were all from Seattle. Cpt. Justice escaped through an underground network setup for downed airmen. One of the gunners was killed, and seven of the crew were captured and survived the war.
thanks for sharing
I am thankful for their service. I lost family in the ETO infantry. 😢 🙏🛐
Superb. Especially when compared to the bloated, corrupt Pentagon in 2024. Thank you.
My great uncle was the bombardier on a B-17 during the war. I don't know when she saw it (during or after the war), but my grandmother was shown a picture of his plane after they had returned to England from one of their bombing runs. She told me that thing had so many holes in it (I guess from flak) she thought it a miracle the plane made it back.
German flak destroyed 5380 American bombers and severely damaged thousands more many beyond re[air. US General Hap Arnold stated 'We never conquered the German flak artillery/
'She'?
@@derekweiland1857 Yeah. My grandmother, my great uncle’s sister.
@@RollTide1987 Ah, I misread it. Thanks for the clarification.
@@RollTide1987 Oh, and thanks to your family for their service.
These losses for allied raids are difficult to hear. Knowing the odds these flights crews faced climbing into their aircrafts is beyond honorable. Great video as always.
A lot of people don't realise how bad it was for the RAF and 8th Airforce. The losses were horrific, and the 8th actually abandoned missions for a while. The P51 turned up in late 1943 and started to escort for the full mission. That turned things right around in the allies favour
What about the losses of the women and children in the inferno below?
@@ruffles638 make a video on it , this video is not about that
What about them?@@ruffles638
@@thethirdman225 why did you comment this as a response to another comment?
My Father did 77 combat missions in the ETO. all in B-17 and B24's .
My grandfather did about 40 combat missions...
37 of those in FW-190 and 3 in ME-262
true legend!
Much respect and honor to your father.
Many heroes are never recognized. I salute 🫡 your father.
@Xingmey salute to your grandfather for his service. My family migrated to the North American continent in ~1750/1752 from Germany and Austria. I lost family on both sides of the ETO. I pray that we learn from our history and not repeat it, but I'm not holding my breath.
I never knew bomber crews were getting mauled like that, their casualties were extreme.
The RAF lost 95 bombers on Nuremburg raid March 1944
Highest loss rates of all branches with the Allies. Only the German uboat forces fared worse casualty rates over the course of the war.
@@fookdatchit Agreed, the Polish forces under Allied command constantly outdid those of other nations and suffered accordingly. And the Canadian sailors during the Battle of the Atlantic...read a few things about them, incredible.
Highest casualties in the war. Those guys had brass balls. I couldn't imagine the feeling they must have had when the fighters had to turn back.
@@HistoryGameV an example would be the Polish squadron 303 in the RAF. I admire the Polish people as warriors and also the victims of both the German and Russian atrocities. 🙏😢
My father flew 27 missions as a waist gunner in a B17. When his requirement was met, he reupped and flew 14 more.
...at the end of the war you need to say.
Or until wounded or something like that
Was he driven by revenge & hatred I wonder? That type of madness is the only thing that would've driven me to 're‐up' & do it all again. It is incredible what these guys went through!
Salute and respect to and for your father.
@@ondrejdobrota7344They could go home after a certain number of missions
Awesome show, thank you for putting history out there.
One of my favorite topics explained in great detail, gracias padrino
The movie Twelve O'Clock High covers the morale and leadership challenges of the 8th Air Force during the fall of 1942. It is about the Hard Luck group, the 100th. It is available on youtube in full for free. Great recapitulation. Thank you.
That was one of my great grandfather's favourite films, as well as Bridge on the River Kwai and we used to watch them together when I was in my teens and him in his 90s.
The films would always get him talking, especially when put on witin a scotch and a cigar.
He joined the army at the beginning of the war, lying about his age at 16 and got sent to Africa and from there let's just say much craziness ensued. He had a lot stories to tell and some awesome keepsakes from his adventures and it was a real privilege to get the chance to listen to them.
But as much as I heard him say how much he respected various soldiers and even enemies... it was the bomber crews he held in the highest regard and said it was the only job he didn't think he had the nerve for.
The bomber group in the movie was the 918th. The film was primarily based on the exploits of the real life 306th bomb group.
@@katazackThanks. Now we have a correct reference.
Thank you great video and content
This was a wonderful presentation. Thank you for sharing this with us
Splendid job. Very informative and well done!⚡️
I went to the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force in Pooler, GA (outside of Savannah and the HQ of the wing) [a few years ago]. Very nice museum. They even had a B-17 there
That’s a great museum!
My Dad was a late-war replacement who flew out of Italy as a nose-gunner on a B-24 with the 15th Army Air Force. The only mission my Dad ever talked about was a raid on Schweinfurt that was described pre-raid as a "milk run". Well, even though the German fighters were pretty much non-existent due to their own massive casualties, it turned out very far from an easy mission as the flak was so thick Dad felt he could have gotten out and walked on it. Shrapnel pinged off the fuselage and some pieces zinged straight through. Prior to another mission, Dad also recalled watching a fully-loaded B-24 failing to gain the necessary altitude on take-off and slamming into a hillside...they left nothing but a smoking crater. He also told me the story of losing an engine on one mission and while trying to return to their base in Italy, they lost a second engine. As they considered ditching in the Adriatic with a very low chance of survival, a US fighter pilot spotted them and led them to the island of Vis off the Yugoslavian coast. They were returned to their base by boat in about ten days, but the plane was pushed off the end of the runway as a total loss.
Thank you for another excellent video
This channel is phenomenal !
Really nice balance, here. Plus, footage I've never seen before. Thanks.
Thanks! I really enjoyed this war history video!
What a superb presentation. Keep up the excellent work..
these are excellent videos. informative and well balanced.
Very well done! Being born shortly after the end of the war & becoming a fan of & a high school player of American football the phrase everyone used for the perfect punt was to kick it in "the coffin corner". I hadn't heard that term spoken in more years than I can recall. Thanks!
This chanel is so underrated. Thank you for your work.
Accurate and well presented. Well done.
Thank you for uploading!!!!! //Lars
Great jobof doing footnotes on this presentation.
I enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up
The courage of those air crews is above and beyond. There are no Fox holes in the sky.
Wrong Place Wrong Time by George Kuhl describes in great detail cockpit courage. 20mm cannon plus 88mm flak.
Hard to feel anything for people who deliberately targeted civilians. And of course this goes for both sides.
The tragic cost of war. The huge flak discharges would cause the deaths and injuries of many German citizens from thousands of tons of shell splinters. Defence became an offence.@@wolfgangkranek376
@@wolfgangkranek376 Its modern warfare. The entire country is mobilized for war. That is what makes modern warfare so different than back when you had small groups of knights attacking other groups of knights. Now days its a fight for survival. The Napoleonic wars changed warfare.
That civilian producing weapons is just as important as the troops on the front line.
@@EQ_EnchantX Yes and no.
Of course there was no aerial bombing in former centuries. But still cities were also long before modern times deliberately targeted and civilians terrorized and butchered. To weaken an enemy and to break resistance.
The Assyrians did it, the Persians, Alexander the Great, the Romans, Mongols, Musl!ms and all large European powers (fe. Bombardement Kopenhagen, 1807).
Excellent video
thanks for the video
Great information and presentation. While vacationing in Palm Springs several years ago my son and I visited the excellent air museum there. They have a B-17 and you are able to go through the aircraft for a few bucks above the entrance fee. I was struck by how small and extremely cramped the interior was and certainly not built for comfort. Those young men were unbelievably brave.
11:08 Sharp visual, very helpful
Lots of food for thought here, on so many levels. Excellent presentation!
I’m a Canadian, born in occupied Netherlands, just before the liberation
I just subscribed!
One of the few honest history channels that accurately portray war instead of having an american, chinese, european, or russian bias one way or the other.
03/13/24: SUPERB narration. Thank you.
Really, it was a remarkable and wonderful historical coverage episode shared by an excellent ( RTH) channel...episode about American Air Force bombarded of Nazism Germany cities and manufacturing facilities in Daylights, thank you for sharing
EXCELLENT PRESENTATION of aviation history. Thanks and greetings from Mexico City.
the only history channel i love!
Thank you.
Outstanding and accurate!!!
Watching this after seeing "Masters of the Air" on Apple TV and wow how accurate they depict all this in the show is so great. Definitely reccomend everyone go watch it. Heroes in real life those airmen !
I love this channel!
Huge respect to any man that took to the skies both allied and axis. One of my friends relatives flew 109’s during the war, he apparently rarely ever spoke about the war but only mentioned the site of the bomber formations and just how many planes there were. It’s hard to believe that a b-17 crew had a higher survival rate than a German fighter pilot.
Bro, that was smooth AF into that ad
Thought the deadliest service was experience by U-boat crews, up to 80% casualties.
U BOATS definitely was the highest loss rate. I believe BOMBER COMMAND had a higher lass rate than the EIGHTH AIR FORCE.
U boats at 90% I think
@@Wolf-hh4rv I think seventy five percent of all German U-Boat Crewman died during the war. Thirty thousand out of forty thousand.
I watched this before episode 5 for Masters of the Air. Now, I’m rewatching it.
Great quotes.
Did get an ad for that new bomber group show during this so thats cool
let's hope it's not the next high budget historical production that disappoints.
@realtimehistory I've chosen not to watch napoleon. Historical parts aside it sounds like it's very choppy. On thebother hand Would I watch a napoleon and josephine style miniseries in the interpersonal drama style of The Crown? Absolutely.
I was just wondering when RTH would upload haha
LeMay says the idea of bombing killing children hurts his sanity. Later he will say he didn't feel bad about civilians dying in bombing because they supported their governments going to war. There's also that thing he said about him probably being a war criminal although because war was criminal nothing that happens in war could be considered a crime. I feel like there's a LeMay quote for however you want to feel about him.
My neighbor Capt Hugh Johnson was the maintenance boss 303d BG at Molesworth. He flew 17 different B17s, often combat test flights. His unit was a professionally run engineering operation with high turnaround and plenty of spare aircraft for the crews
Great video which I agree with all the assements of the raids and have to say while not desert storm levels of effectiveness they were still effective mostly in forice Germany to react and divert resorces to stopping the riads then to counter atttacking.
can you do a long documentary about the Italian unification like you did with germany
15:37 for your benefit, and future refinement of your fantastic content - never say "continue on"
it's a tautology 😊
Amazing
Woah attention to detail noted! The compass rose rotated as the map did a few minutes in, most folks wouldn't bother to keep north in the correct alignment to the map panning!
Very interesting. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Excellent video 📹
Diverted resources
The P-51 was a game changer , by mid 1944 bomber losses to E/A were minimal , so much so that a tour was extended to 30 missions , maybe increased further in 1945.
LE MAY may of had thoughts about civilians in 1943 , but altered his view against the Japanese in 1945.
Who's watching Masters of the Air right now?
Tooze’s the Wages of Destruction does a great job of explaining the macro impact of bombing. As you say, they kept building planes, but they’re building planes and air defence instead of what they need to win the war on the Eastern and later Western Front. The desperate attempt to defend against bombing consumes their industrial capacity (it also leads to a stagnation in terms of what planes they’re making).
Chris from ‘Military Aviation History’ channel talks about this, saying that the Germans were committed to a tactical solution to a strategic problem.
8:25 it's important to note just how hated the bombers were. Lot of germans getting sick of hitler suddenly had a change of heart after seeing a child ripped in half by allied bombs.
If that was true then civilian morale would have cracked and it didn't. Nobody rose up to overthrow Hitler.
I saw an old interview in which official Reich Architect, and later Minister of Armaments and War Production, Albert Speer claimed that, due to slave labor, industries that were damaged by bombings continued production regardless by quick repairs or by shifting production and workers elsewhere.
Where the RAF & USAAF managed to create firestorms that destroyed entire cities, such as Hamburg, the effect was devastating as there was no local infrastructure left to look after the survivors or put the city back to work quickly. In the case where a factory or residential area was hit, workers bombed out of their houses who returned to work within 48hrs were given free replacement housing & furniture, so the need to keep working was a survival imperative. Slave labor from POWs was also used to quickly clear up the damaged factories. Many headline missions like ball-bearing production were a failure (its too specific and ball-bearings were only one solution to run a rotating mechanism), serving to draw planes & crews away from destroying Ruhr cities and their industries, the more ubiquitous goods the better. Political bombing of Berlin had no impact on industry at all, but send hundreds of bombers to seriously damage a city in the Rhur and this could cause industrial delays across the supply-chain nationwide for weeks. The exact proof of this took decades to unravel, but tends to show Arthur Harris’ basic target list of blowing up the Rhur as more damaging than most and 8th AAF as some of the worst planned and best promoted, as they tried to prove 1930s concepts to justify establishing independence from the US Army.
That’s not to say night bombing was easy, Germans quickly learnt to identify pathfinders, set false colored flares in the farmland around a city and pull the later bomber waves off target. However, that trick only worked if the bomb stream was late onto its original flares. In general RAF radio guides worked better at finding targets than visual daylight navigation & bombsights and the USAAF used them for daylight navigation too.
"On February 23, 1944, Milch visited me in my sickroom. He informed me that the American Eighth and Fifteenth (Italy) Air Forces were concentrating their bombing on the German aircraft industry (Pointblank Directive), with the result that our aircraft production would be reduced to a third of what it had been, at least for the month to come. Milch brought with him a proposal in writing: Inasmuch as the Ruhr Staff had successfully dealt with the bomb damage in the Ruhr area, we needed a 'Fighter Aircraft Staff' which would pool the talents of the two ministries (Air Ministry and Ministry of Armaments) in order to overcome the crisis in aircraft production."
page 332 Inside The Third Reich Speer
interesting video
I'm disappointed that you didn't mention the USAAF's fixation on the idea that "The Bomber will always get through." I don't know when the phrase, "The Bomber Mafia" got coined, but the phrase does express a certain mindset.
2) The USAAF did have a fighter aircraft capable of escorting the bombers all the way, all the P47 needed were drop tanks.
I've read that the "Bomber Mafia" opposed equipping that fighter with drop tanks. I haven't seen an original source for that assertion.
yeah we purposefully didn't focus on the origins of the strategic bombing but more on the turning point or proving point for this doctrine. maybe we'll do another episode about the origins of strategic bombing down the road.
I wonder why. @@realtimehistory
The USAAF are not the originators nor presenter’s of the idea that “the bomber will always get through”. There was a vigorous inter -war debate across all countries around the efficacy of strategic bombing knocking an opponent out of the war. Douhet’s ideas we’re pioneering, and Billy Mitchell was the US’s greatest protagonist of air power.
The 8thAir Force was however confident initially that the masseddefensive firepower would be successful in securing success.
I think a British Air Marshal,
Trenchard , in fact coined the phrase , " the bomber will always get through " .
It was a widely believed concept in pre-war years .
The RAF launched a raid against Hamburg , with their best bomber of the time , the Wellington, in broad daylight, and unescorted .
They were so shocked by the ensuing carnage , that they reverted to night bombing thereafter.
Problem with that is all the Germans had to do was attack the formations early,making the p-47's have to jettison tanks,and not having enough fuel left to go all the way and back.And they knew this.
You are the first person that I have ever heard refer to General Hap Arnold as Henry. But you do you.
I always remember that large above ground air raid shelter in schweinfurt Germany It looked like a massive chimley and you can see large chunks missing from the structer
The summary RE to what extent was the bombing campaign a success was very well researched and succint, well done.
very interesting
One thing that I learned from this documentary is that, a war is a resource game.
My dad flew 34 missions w 8th AF. He was a great man ❤
11:21 - One possible reason for the 100th Bomb Group's high loss rate was given in "Bombs Away: The World War II Bombing Campaigns over Europe" by John R. Bruning. He stated that the Group was less proficient in the tight formation flying required to maintain the 'Combat Box' the interlocking fields of fire that the bombers' defense depended on. The highly experienced Luftwaffe 'Experten' would notice the loose formation and attack it aggressively, knowing that the defenses were weaker than the tight formations.
13:49 is episode 5 of Masters of the Air
The allied strategic bombing campaigns badly damaged the German war effort - apart from direct damage to production (significant from mid 1944 on) a huge number of cannon were sitting at home pointing skyward instead of being available to the Wehrmacht, and the Luftwaffe was busy elsewhere when it could have been contesting air superiority at the various fronts. But the issue is whether other uses of the massive resources needed for the strategic bombing campaigns would have hurt Germany even more. RAF bombers absorbed more money than the entire British Army and RN combined. The B29 on its own cost more than the entire Manhattan project.
The B 29 dropped the A bombs on Japan not something the B 17s could do and continue to serve in Koria. RAF Bomber Command continued their attacks on the German economy till the end of the war with little effect despite incurring losses twice that of the 8th. The 8th did accomplish its mission of destroying the Luftwaffe in time for the invasion.
The video has no thumbnail to me (just a print of a scene of the video). I think when the notification was sent to me i didnt notice i was a video of you. I only realize the video was published know because i search the channel to find the video o Dien Bien Phu
Its nice that the current TV show Masters of the Air is describing all these things very accurately.
yeah it's a great show. Did you see they will also release a documentary with veteran interviews in March?
A great classic movie about American bomber groups is Twelve O’clock High starring Gregory Peck and an excellent supporting cast. I highly recommend!
Check out the T.V.series
Super boring. I do not recommend it.
The psychological impact of strategically bombing civilians is something I'd like to learn more about. German, British and American flight crews all did this, and it'd be interesting (and heartbreaking) to learn more about.
www.youtube.com/@WorldWarTwo does cover those impacts in their sub series "war against humanity".
Judging by how much more it would happen in Korea and Vietnam, minimal. I have seen interviews where the crew say they feel nothing precisely because they’re dropping payloads from 10,000+ feet with no concept of the carnage it’s wreaking on the civilians below.
There is a museum covering the bombing campaigns in Hamburg (St. Nikolai Memorial). Said museum also addressed this topic.
In short, the air crews were far more concerned about survival than the morality of their actions during the actual flights. But after the war many indeed developed PTSD both due to the stresses of air combat but exacerbated by learning the mass civilian toll they wrought.
The museum quotes lots of veteran accounts, definitely recommend if you visit Hamburg.
Look no further than Gaza.
I'm pretty sure bombing civilians was a British specialty as it even was a directive of theirs. Americans tried to bomb military targets such as factories and refineries, which is why they needed daylight to properly hit their targets thus losing more of their planes. The British came at night because a city is a city, you can’t really miss it, no matter which part of it you hit in the end.
My uncle was a tail gunner on a 17 named Classie Chassie ,,,33 missions....could not even imagine.
I have to keep reminding myself that a single B-17 loss was 10 men. So when I hear "Oh, they lost 12 planes" that's 120 men ... damn near an entire rifle company.
Did I just get spoiled for Masters of the air?
Rick Steves😮 narrating history videos. I love it.
I never knew that Allied bombers specifically targeted cathedrals and civilian homes. I understand that we were in it to win, but this is a bit of a shock.
8:55 THERE IT IS AFTERALL THESE YEARS!!!! the german is interviewing the downed pilot and he says that he has a sprained ankle. do u have the audio!!!!!!!?????
LeMay is fascinating. Able to visualize the destruction he's responsible for unleashing, yet able to shut it off and do it.
LeMay was a very cold and cruel man.
@@San_Vitohe was man willing to make the hard choices
Curtis LeMay didn’t do the killing he directed that others do it at a distance. He’s so far removed from the violence you can’t attribute a heightened level of psychological toughness or intestinal fortitude to him.
I think LeMay’s resolve and willingness to push the envelope and in some cases beyond it was attributable to the American Pilots and air crew men sent to their deaths as a result of his orders.
When you put yourself in LeMay’s shoes and think of all the people working under him that were killed, wounded, maimed and made prisoners of war I can see how you wouldn’t have a problem bombing civilians or setting fire to Dresden the same for Japan.
I think the loss of young men who worked for LeMay is what made him as some describe his as “hard” or “cold”
@@San_Vito No, LeMay was the American equivalent of Harris. Someone who makes hard decisions sweats on them. He had no thought for what he was doing and he pretty well said as much. His personal shortcomings would be laid bare later, during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
@@craigtank4067 No, LeMay flew and led quite a few missions, including Schweinfurt.
8th USAAF losses on 17.8.43 were 147 B-17s., not 71! Plus fighters.
I think that both the British and US bomber forces started their campaigns before they had sufficient strength and experience to truly affect German industry. Plus, they concentrated on industries that were hard to cripple, or even evaluate, such as ball bearings or aircraft assembly plants. It was reluctantly accepted later that had they concentrated on crippling the Axis oil industry, the war would have been much shorter. I always thought that a cross-Channel invasion(Southern France) in late 1943 could have been successful, albeit costly, if the full weight of the Allied airpower would have been diverted to attack German supply lines and troops/ armored forces. That also would have drawn in the bulk of the Luftwaffe so it could be within the range of all Allied fighters based in England.
A very well balanced view on historical facts. Thanks to your (great-)grand-parents for not killing mine. Warm regards from Hamburg, Germoney.
A truly terrible event. July 1943,40,000 perished.
With over 18,884 examples of the B-24 produced and over 12,700 examples of the B-17s produced, the bombers couldn't help but be effective. The need for drop tanks for fighters, coupled with the shortage of aluminum led to creative options- Fighter drop tanks for fuel made from paper and varnish! Casualties from the Army Air Force were 5.1% of their total strength, compared to 10% for the rest of the Army.
(19:13 ) When asking whether the Allied bomber campaign was successful, one must take into account that the increase in German weapons production was mainly based on forced and slave labor from the occupied territories!
As someone who works in manufacturing(automotive related) bombing anything that’s ball bearing related is definitely crippling even to modern day manufacturing.
Germany critically needed Me-262 and air to air missiles as well as better radars and especially proximity fuses.
This development was possible but it was delayed as the importance of the air war was grasped too late.
Must have been scary to be hit with weapons that seem futuristic being throwing at you. Getting hit with something like a rocket would have been terrifying
in 2:45 you said the USAAF lost about 100 B17..., with 90 casualties. Casualty rate must be 10 times higher, one B17 shot down means 10 man lost and nearly every damaged B17 must have had crewman killed or wounded.
Well, maybe they were able to launch and were taken POW...
Hard to find LeMay saying such a thing about bombing civilians...
My grandfather was a me 109 fighter pilot who didn't talk much about the war only that he said they were under a lot of pressure and stress the bombers never stopped coming he said he got shot down once survived after recovering they put him back in a fighter
For all the civilians killed Strategic bombing which is a euphemism for terror bombing, it never ruined the morale of the people, something the British government should have known because they had the same thing happen to them during the Blitz. When you add the German civilian casualties to Allied Airmen killed you have to wonder if strategic bombing really worked just to prove Bomber Harris's belief that Bombing alone can win a war. I personally believe the bombing could have been used more effectively attacking the Germans Achilles heel, which was synthetic oil plants. Also using them for more tactical bombing like they did in Operation Cobra. What if they used those thousands upon thousands of bombers to attack enemy troops instead of naively believing that eventually if enough citizens die they will overthrow the Reich
Who Selected Targets "The campaign opened badly, for in the early spring of 1943 and for some time to come the Fortresses of the United States Eighth Air Force, which had been placed under the direction of the British Chief of the Air Staff, acting as agent for the Combined Chiefs of Staff, had to operate without the comforting presence of long-range fighters as escort--for at that time thee were only in the preliminary stages of their development."
page 1 Hyperwar Royal Air Force 1939-1945 Vol III