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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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 😐
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
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
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.
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)
@@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.
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.
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 .
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)
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
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.
El mundo es un infierno. Sin sentido
jesus christ ...8 crews U_U
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
Мы, потомки советских воинов, тоже не забудем и не простим вам никогда поддержку неонацистов
80 years ago last month my father’s B-24 was shot down in combat. Five POW, Five KIA.
My father was the longest living survivor.
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 🍻!
Wow
Which grandpas join which side? I would be interested to know which one of your grandpa is from Germany/Japan and the other from America/Britain.
@@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.
Do you remember to the thousands and thousands of civilians, they killed, too?
@@markushuber214 Do you remember that the fathers, sons, and brothers of those civilians massacred civilians of other countries throughout Europe?
@@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?
@@7chq Nonsens. How do you know that every single one of the 600,000 civilians murdered in the German genocide was involved in murder?
I wonder how many planes we lost to friendly fire in those huge aerial formations with adrenaline pumping.
too many !
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.
It is believed about 6% of bomber losses were friendly fire
Thanks grandpa wherever you are.
4 killing civilians ?
@@sergeantsalty1236 When you sup with the devil. You had better bring a long spoon. War is hell.
@@maddog46What is this 4 an answer ?
@@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.
@@maddog46 lol, they way you ppl deceive yourself into believing killing civilians and bombing the hell out of them was right.
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.
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.
Memorial for the bomber command ? For burning weman , children and old?
@@karlkirchweger4190 Yeah, that's what happens to a nation that elects a National Socialist government.
@@karlkirchweger4190 burning women and children and the old. Hitler and the Nazi party did that!
@@karlkirchweger4190 They were in a war for survival,both sides did the same to each.You probably wouldn’t have enough balls to do what they did
Sir Harris would be considered a war criminal for carpet bombing according to todays standards.
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.
My Uncle Joe was a member of the 100th...Munster was the raid where he went down, but he escaped and evaded.
4:45 3.5 seconds from dropping the ball turret to it hitting the Mediterranean Sea, that means they were flying at an altitude of about 200 feet.
I mean they were going lower that’s why they were trying to lose weight…
Why has this been over edited
The ethics of resigning so many men to such a horrific fate, especially considering how soon this type of combat would be obsolete. Terrifying.
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.
Ethics has nothing to do with it. These were different times and the technology available meant this had to be done
Losses were greatly reduced when long-range fighter escorts were finally provided. Of course, there was nothing they could do against 88mm flak.
The Red Tails
@@garyhall8410 Yo, Gary, the Red Tails operated out of Italy with the 15th AAF. Never were out of England.
The best generation to ever live.
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 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 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.
Usually fighter aircraft and flak did NOT inhabit the same space at the same time.
True
Today I'm just follow till 8 episodes,and it will be Watching from days to days.copy Sir.
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.
To every Man and Woman who fought and contributed in WW2. THANK YOU! and GOD BLESS each and everyone of YOU!
YOU-WILL-NEVER-BE-FORGOTTEN!
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.
Here is to all brave men and women who went through hell up there fighting for freeeeedoooooom
To think what my dad went thru as a tail gunner and then bombadier humbles me. He never talked about it
To the greatest generation.... thankyou for my freedom. 🇺🇸🤝🇬🇧
Mine too. Thanks to my dad,and uncles also.
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.
Fighters never attack during a flak barrage they run the risk of Friendly Fire.
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.
Plus the vaunted Norden bombsight didn't work well in real life situations
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?
Actually, I believe the B17 had a crew of 10.
@@christhornton1785 It did due to the numbee of gunners
The bravest sobs to ever have lived
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
Our current world is run by angry old right wingers, the offspring of those men. The current generation aren’t to blame for that.
There were just as may idiots and assholes then, we just see the specially selected ones fighting for their lives.
Bullshit
The people nowadays can comprehend it, just that we ain't willing to die just for the future of corporations and millionaires that don't care for us.
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.
Not the final battle, it’s the damn 4th episode my guy, the entire episode is this mission
1:50 we have a hole in our left wing!
Why do they have the 109s flying like TIE fighters? There's enough vintage and contemporary footage to help animators.
Agreed - plus the sometimes lightning-fast traverse on the upper turret. The CGI in this series is very patchy.
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.
You know that star wars space combat is based on WW2, right?
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.
Some of the most Bad arse soldiers of WW2 had "Eye Problems"
even the wounded needed O2
Unfortunally germans got super jet fighters in late. Also air defence missiles.
That's not final battle, that's part 3 first Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission
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
With gunners like these, who needs escort fighters?
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.
I think he was being sarcastic with the "realism" of the show.@@coinneachreid8971
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.
Is there some sort of weird editing going on here?
Yes
Seems fine to me
The editor did not survive contact with the enemy.
@@Bigrago1 The music changes in random places - likely to avoid DRM.
But it's clearly been altered from the original.
Lots of bits missing. The video and the plane are both full of holes and chopped up.
it’s copyright
Wow, so many fighter kills. :-))
And fighter wings catching fire, not engines.
a lot of fuel and ammo was stored in the wings.
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 😐
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
were the waist gunners rate of fire slower than the others???
What awful editing.
Then do a better one.
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
The super brave men of B 17
And B-24s
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.
Is this a shortened version or is the editing actually this bad??
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)
The tragedy of WW2 was that both sides bombed and killed civilians. On purpose, not by mistake! But no one judges the winners!
They seem to do so in Gaza.......
Brits and the US did it on purpose. The Germans not my dude
@@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
@@bimbonas2 Bullshit.
"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.
Respect
Man that was CHOPPED to crap
I was very disappointed in this film. You have to be in the air to master it.
On the mountain
Imagine In season 2 it's about air battle in pacific war that's includes Tokyo raid to enola gay
Masters of the Air is a fantastic series well done and well produced thank you to the men and women that served
😢😢😢Su nación vale Why Others See and Don't Act to Defend the People of the Country
The german / us losses are always skewed
All that attention to detail, and they get the oxygen masks wrong.
These are the worst jobs in the aviation history😢😢😢.
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.
@@brucemoore9708 Good to hear, cheers.
Fighters knew to fly between them to avoid fire.
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.
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 .
And you've seen a 400mph closing speed in person have you?
Manage time, to come to VN
Poor digital graphics on the landing. A mini would have looked better.
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)
Well that is a mix of a few battles. It's not the ending final battle
I have loved the Vietnamese . Name Hoang Hai
If I may ask why is the bomb sight so important? why did they need to destroy it or make sure it doesn't go to the enemy?
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.
Would be more realistic if they included the foo fighters
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."
2:10 take a look on bomber on the right - CGI does not deliver physics on time
Donde coño estan los Mustang P-51 de escolta??? Y los P-47 Thunderbolt????.
The more clips I see of this series, the less I want to watch it.
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.
Change the world Religious for me. Mom become the world god 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
126 unity roads
Прикольно. Ещё и своих сбивали в пылу боя.
พรุนเลยเครื่องบิน
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
Messerschmidts flying the speed of jet fighters!! Yeah, right. Good old fantasy cgi.
They went through all this, just to bomb residential area? Well done leads.
Real Super Heroes!
They should have added the German jets in the show
The first few episodes were around mid-late 1943, Me262 appeared around late 1944 but I think later episodes will show them.
@@user-wx8nq9xh1pthat’s interesting 🧐also the Germans did build a very early model of a jet aircraft during ww2 I forgot the name 😓
@@jettmthebluedragon Me 262?
@@user-wx8nq9xh1p yep that’s the one 🙂
I am on the American army base
War thunder take notes
I'm focusing on this movies
Wkwkwk, dari paramount itu kan? Dari dukungannya Zionis kan 🤦🏻♂️
Mom KPO Dagout.. become the lady of liberty 😂😂😂😂😂😂😢😢😢😢😅😅😅😢😢😂😂😂😂❤❤❤😂😂😂😂😂😂❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
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
Ya acabo los 9 capítulos los he visto muy pero muy buena serie
Forget Politics lets focus on the B17 being a T1000 of the air and the crews men of iron
Read the book instead.
WW Three, Ocean war
🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
Skies fight
Ocean fightings
War Thunder players be like
Я был в СССР призывником авиамехаником и знаю как не встречать экипаж с вылета, а потом нас почти всех перестреляли на земле...
I feel bad for people like you 😓the way Stalin treated you people is wrong and messed up 😓it is interesting to hear about your story 🙂
Lombieng
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