An old flying buddy of mine, now deceased, flew P-51s in Europe. One evening at a club meeting, he told us about a flight that he was on to strike "targets of opportunity." He described flying as wingman when they spotted a locomotive pulling flat bed cars with armored vehicles. He went on to describe how the lead P-51 opened up on the engine but didn't inflict any serious damage. He said that he rolled in on the engine right after the number one aircraft cleared the target and started hammering it. Just as he started to pass over it, the trains boiler blew up, and a chunk of it knocked off his intercooler, which resulted in a fire. He described trading off airspeed for altitude in an effort to have enough height to bail out. At 3,000 feet, he slid the canopy open, and the fire went out. So, he got back in and made a landing in a farmers plowed field. As he got out, the enemy calvary came out of the near by woods and started shooting at him. He told us that the only weapon That he had available was his service revolver and that wasn't going to help him very much. Well, as luck would have it, the lead P-51 saw what was happening, rolled in on the cavalry and "hosed" them. The few that were left vanished back in the woods. The lead aircraft then landed in the field, nocking off his tail wheel. He slid his canopy open and Charlie climbed in and sat on the pilots lap. They took off and flew back to their base in Italy. He had the proof with him that evening. Charlie Wilson produced the copy of "Yank" magazine with the full story and a recreated photo of him sitting on the pilots lap in the cockpit of a P-51. RIP Charlie my dear old friend.
One of the best clips out there because of the explanations on what each pilot was attempting to accomplish. Steering a plane at such speeds, with such great accuracy... Amazing... Thank you for all the explanations.
Quote: 'The gun platform for these train attacks is the p-47 Thunderbolt. With a top speed of 428 mph it can easily outpace a train.' Behold, this is high-quality material here.
Small correction. When you see the steam come quickly out of the train stack, it is usually because the engineer opened the safety valve. The last thing that they wanted was to be scalded to death by the steam. It was/is due to self-preservation. I have taught locomotive steam boilers and steamplant operation for 44 years.
In my experience with steam locomotives I have never heard of a valve that releases steam other than the safety valve which is not controlled by an engineer. It appears to me that the boiler is penetrated releasing steam through the flues and nothing at all to do with the engineer.
@Rip DOOM The commentator says they could do that, but I cannot find anyone who can verify that. Some commentators do not have a working knowledge of steam operations so you might take 3:28 with a little license.
10 cars jumped the tracks over here in Mississippi a month ago. They are still trying to remove the debre with large front end loaders/bull dozers. The area around the track had to be cleared. The wheels/carriages were removed. The rest of the cars are being cut by hand with torches. It might take 3 months.
It must have been terrifying to dive at a train! With the weapons limitations back then, the pilot, himself, was the guidance system for the weapons deployed. Those fighters looked to have got within 100 meters off the target many times!
The Germans had put anti-aircraft guns and there were highly effective on the trains they were a porcupine to attacks, but you knew that that train was carrying Ordnance weapons explosives tanks ammunition to the enemy so you're going to take it out and, and we had enough armor on a Friday to go in and take them out
As one who has been to east / west germany to view and follow the tremendous steam locomotive's, It alway's greatly saddens me to see their destruction !
john fellows unless they are carrying haft the poor Jewish population to their death or bringing rounds to kill innocent ppl. In that case, blow the FUCK outta those bitches!!!!!!
This from the chief boiler inspector in Kentucky as well as a certified locomotive engineer; regarding a valve that might be opened on a steam locomotive as suggested by the commentator at 3:28 and especially to the guy who calls himself a Rip DOOM. Boilers could be equipped with a valve, or valves, but these would not have near enough capacity to “empty” the boiler. Side note: In locomotive terminology, the TUBES are the 2” size, of which there are many, and FLUES are the 5” size with superheater elements in them, of which there are few.
Amazing how these combat gun cameras had a microphone too . . . . I bet the Intelligence guys lapped up the sound track, I mean, 50 calibre gunfire obviously sounds so different when you're attacking trains . . . Or could it be that someone is 'gilding the lily' and the footage isn't considered dramatic enough on its own . . .
P-51s would strafe Hungarian factory workers young and old trying to escape the building. My grandparents who were born in a Hungarian factory town remembered it vividly.
The Allies complain that German submarines have attacked ships in convoys, which were driven by civilians. But they themselves shoot at railways, which are also driven by civilians. They also shoot at passenger trains where only civilians are in passenger wagons. In each locomotive was shown here are died 2 people who are not soldiers. In the last days of the war they shoot at everything that moves, Farmers with horse-drawn wagons, womens and childrens on streets. They hunted treks with refugees from the East and kill hundrets people who are not soldiers either. They shoot ships in fire and kill 7.000 evacuated prisoners from concentration camps (SS Kap Arkona and MS Thiebeck in Luebeck Bay). That was all OK, only what the Germans did was evil. Apparently they enjoyed shooting to everything what moved, because in April/May 1945 there was no more resistance. This cowardly asshole-pilots was not heroes, they are supposed to stew in hell for ever.
@A. Wellknownmyth Civilians women, children, and Babies have not sown anything they have to harvest and 7,000 evacuated concentration camp prisoners on ships certainly also have not earned, to burn on these ships. The mother of my wife, for example, is as a child (8 years old) was been twice time attacked by British fighter planes in the last week of the war. She and her friend survived because they could hide behind an oak tree. The bullets are still today in this oak, she had showed me this tree. Sure, I understand what you mean, shoot women and children, refugees, farmers in their fields and sinking ships with concentration camp prisoners was very important for allied victory in the last days of the war... only bullshit is in your head. Instead of fighting the really guilty of the Nazi regime, it was cowardly revenge that the weakest had to endure. Unarmed Refugee treks what coming from east were punished enough, they had lost everything and it was pure murder to shoot of them. But for those cowardly assholes pilots, it was easier to fight people who couldn't defend themselves. It is a lie when they say that the pilots could not have known that they shoot little children. It is a lie to say that the pilots could not have known that the shoot unarmed refugees. They could see exactly what they were shooting at. They shot on everything was moving. British and US fighter pilots were no longer heroes in the last days of the war, they lost all their combat honor by targeted attacks on woman, children and refugees. They were in this time no better than German SS butchers in concentration camps. There are very inhumane thoughts in your brain. I think people with your snooty, inhumane opinion should also burn in hell when the time comes.
@A. Wellknownmyth You probably don't know the story because because people don't like to talk about their own mistakes in the UK.. On May 3rd 1945, four days after Hitler's suicide but four days before the unconditional surrender of Germany, the CAP ARCONA, the Thielbek and the passenger liner Deutschland, possibly converted to a hospital ship but not marked as such, were attacked by RAF Typhoons of 83 Group of the 2nd Tactical Air Force commanded by Sir Arthur Coningham as part of general attacks on shipping in the Baltic. The attacks were by No. 184 Squadron, based at RAF Hustedt, led by Derek Stevenson, by No. 263 Squadron, based in Ahlhorn (Großenkneten) and led by Squadron Leader Martin Trevor Scott Rumbold by No. 197 Squadron RAF, led by Squadron Leader K. J. Harding also at Ahlhorn, and by No. 198 Squadron based at Plantlünne led by Group Captain Johnny Baldwin. These Hawker Typhoon Mark 1B fighter-bombers used High Explosive 60 lb rocket projectiles, bombs, and 20 mm cannons. Unknown to the RAF, the ships were carrying between 7,000-8,000 prisoners from the German concentration camps in Neuengamme, Stutthof and Mittelbau-Dora, half of whom were Russian and Polish prisoners-of-war, along with others from 24 nations, including French, Danish, and Dutch. Allan Wyse, formerly of 193 Fighter Squadron, said "We used our cannon fire at the chaps in the water … we shot them up with 20 mm cannons in the water. Horrible thing, but we were told to do it and we did it. That's war." Among the survivors was Erwin Geschonneck, who later became a notable German actor, and whose story was made into a film in 1982. About 490 of the guards, Ss, and crew were rescued by German boats. Photos of the burning ships, listed as Deutschland, Thielbek, and CAP ARCONA, and survivors swimming in the cold Baltic Sea (seven degrees Celsius), were taken on a reconnaissance mission over the Bay of Lübeck by F-6 aircraft of the USAAF´s 161st Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron around 5:00 Pm, shortly after the attack. The capsized hulk of the CAP ARCONA later drifted ashore, and the beached wreck was salvaged in 1949. For weeks after the attack, the bodies of victims washed ashore, where they were collected and buried in a single mass grave at Neustadt in Holstein. For nearly thirty years, parts of skeletons continued to wash ashore, until the last find, by a twelve-year-old boy, in 1971. According to documents at the Dutch Institute of War Documentation (niod), the government of Sweden had warned the British government that prisoners were aboard the ships. Memorial to CAP ARCONA victims at Neustadt in Holstein. The prisoners were of 28 different nationalities: American, Belgian, Canadian, Czechoslovakian, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourger, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swiss, Ukrainian, Yugoslavian and others.
@A. Wellknownmyth Deceptive errors can certainly occur, but in this case there were warnings from Sweden that ships that had previously evacuated refugees from East Prussia to the west were loaded with prisoners from concentration camps and POW camps of war. It was May 3rd, Hamburg had surrendered without a fight and the British troops had taken Lübeck without a fight on May 2nd. Lübeck is only 10 km away. The area in which these ships were located was handed over to the British without a fight just 2 hours later. This ships would have been unable to leave this area because steamships without steam need at least 8 hours to be ready to go. So there was no longer any reason to sink these ships. A partial surrender of Northern Germany, Denmark, Norway and Netherlands has already been negotiated between Dönitz and Montgommery, which should come into force on 4 May (one day later). At this point there were no more fights in all of Schleswig-Holsten. The only ones to continue shooting and killing were British warplanes. Quite apart from the sinking of these ships, was shot at the shipwrecked people floating in the water. There is a taboo in warfare that you don't shoot shipwrecked people, even if they are former enemies. Apparently, it is British tradition to shoot shipwrecked people, like the sinking of German destroyers in Narvik, where the British destroyer Kossack shot particularly heroically at German shipwrecked people. What should this killing do, one day before the partial surrender? 14 million civilians fled west from eastern Germany. There were over 3 million refugees in the Schleswig-Holstein area alone. It was a great destination for British pilots as most of the refugees had to camp somewhere in the open air. Germans also did a lot of shit, but I don't know that German planes specifically shoot of refugee treks. Apart from that, there were no such mass movements of refugees. In France, the Netherlands and Belgium, there have been isolated unsightly scenes of streets being cleared of refugee treks because they hindered the advance of German troops, The refugees lost all their belongings but these refugees have not been killed. I think you know very little about what happened in Germany in the last days of the war. They only know British well, Germans evil. The Allied armies often have behaved in the last days of the war, as if you after a brawl, a person lying on the ground keeps kicking again in the face, although he has long been defenseless. The day before the partial surrender, there was no longer any reason to kill and kill and kill.
Wouldn´t it have been more effective to change the P-47´s eight .50cals against two or even four 20mm cannons like the one on the P-38? Or was that technically impossible?
It is quite impossible that a small explosive bullet, even full of cordite,can severe the rails or the ballast, as they are extremely resistant to pressure and heat. The maximum they can do is lifting up a great amount of dust
One thing that was said in the narration, made me cringe. He said that when the engine was attacked, the engineer opened the relief valves and you see a lot of steam escaping from the smoke stack and that was to prevent the engine from blowing up. I have a real problem with that for a couple of reasons. The first reason is looking at the video, I seriously doubt that the engineers had time to react that quickly. And the second reason is based on how steam engines work. The engine is a giant sealed tank of water with tubes running through it. The exhaust from the fire box blows through the tubes and the heat boils the water and pressurizes the tank. A bullet could easily puncture the tank. When this happens the pressure is reduced and the superheated water instantly turns to steam. This can be seen with the bullets hit the side of the tank. A bullet could easily continue on and puncture the tubes. This would allow water to rush into the tubes and give the superheated water another way to escape out of the high pressure tank. Since the pressure is suddenly reduced, the superheated water would instantly flash to steam and exit out of the tube to the smoke box and out the smoke stack. Thus there would be a massive discharge of steam coming out of the smoke stack as is shown in the videos. I don’t think the train engineers had anything to do with this.
I agree Woody, sounded like a comment from someone who obviously knows nothing about trains or steam locomotives. (A Hollywood movie producer by the sound of it!) Steam locos don't explode; the shells create holes in the boiler which allows the steam to escape to atmosphere. The crew on the loco would have been cowering on the floor of the cab and had no control over the resulting steam loss, that's for sure. As shown, wagons full of munitions explode if prodded the wrong way!
No such thing as a "relief valve " on a steam loco. As has being stated, once the boiler has been punctured, that full steam pressure roars out of the firehole and the smokebox. Probably instant death for the footplate crew.
You wonder how many allied soldiers got to live out their lives, because these planes knocked out the transport of the munitions that would have otherwise killed them ......-
My dads friends dad was an example of why you dont shoot boxcars bc they were being transpotted and his buddys brains exploded everywhere in the boxcar right next to him when the plane did its strafing run
Confirmation bias. Seeing twenty clips of successful train attacks on UA-cam and thinking its easy while forgetting there are just as many attacks that didn't come home to have their film developed.
It's actually the early 1940's and the trains are mostly carrying weapons and armoured rail cars. The rail transport of dead bodies were taken place in the late 30's.
As much as it would look so easy in strafing trains back in that War try doing that with a BP-44 anti-aircraft car attached to the train and shooting back at the attacking P-47 / P-51.
The level of skill of these pilots is something we probably just won't find anymore with modern computer controlled aircraft and long range fire and forget missiles.
@Jacob Makavelian Cite some reliable sources then. I've done plenty of research, which is exactly why i'm not going to make a ridiculous statement like the Polish being the absolute best pilots above everyone else who flew in the war.
Because they don't explode. The tank is punctured and the super heated water under high pressure suddenly has a drop in pressure and the water flashes to steam. Thus, that's what we see.
Trains are unable to take evasive manouvers unless there’s a tunnel in the vicinity. And Germans knew that and slapped dozens of flak guns on these trains.
The German railway system was the key to the German logistics system. It moved troops, armoured vehicles and tanks and artillery and mounted its own anti-aircraft guns. Trains moved complete mobile military communications units and disassembled aircraft, missiles (V1 and V2) sections of new UBoats, coastal vessels being moved from factories to ports, spare aircraft parts and engines, fuel, oil and lubricants and great quantities of all types of munitions, small arms, military clothing, helmets, fire fighting equipment, searchlights, radar equipment, machine tooling for new underground factories, industrial and farm labourers, prisoners of war, persons being taken for "resettlement" or forced labour, extermination, concentration camp seized and "appropriated" camp inmate property, farm animals, groceries, canned and packaged goods, materials for building bunkers and fortifications, Nazi records being hidden, Nazi administrative staff, captured foreign workers.....etc etc.....everything used in wartime.......(that list is endless)....so trains and the whole German railway system became high value targets at any time.....attacking them and their infrastructure such as bridges, railway yards, railway switching systems, junction controls and the encrypted German railway communications system (they used Enigma code machines) were all targets of opportunity....to be bombed, strafed, sabotaged etc.....
Oh god, please. "Look at this train here. You can see it's moving." That was enough for me . I can't stand naf narration. Maybe I'm becoming an impatient youtuber.
Yep I hate these 'Murican documentaries, with stupid commentaries and keep winding back to play a section again, with their wise words of wisdom. We can easily do that ourselves by using our mouse cursors if we want to watch a bit again. I hoped it would just be gun camera footage, and not mostly the same clip shown over and over again.
Plus the ex jet fighter pilot describes how the attacking aircraft made a perfect circle of gun fire around the target, and stopped the film to take another look. yep all fine and pretty, but since he is not hitting anything much except for churning up the dirt a bit, what's so clever about that ?
Trillock Watty Technical explanations to disguise terrorist attacks ! The Soviets were fighting machine guns, cannons and tanks. The yankees were fighting trains, horse carts and civilians. Making a big fuss about some steam coming out at he wrong place. Typically verbal American Hollywood sensation.
Take out the tracks and tie up 100 men to repair it, taking out the train is when ever you find it. And don`t forget they were moving POW,s on many of those trains. Would have been better to take out the tracks to stop the movements and forced the Germans to resort to more men off the front line to guard all the trucks.
This was near the end of the war when the allies had air superiority and turned their fighters loose to strafe random targets at will, the bombing campaigns were pretty much over by then.
P-38s were FAR more deadly in this role than either the P-51s or these P-47s. Not only did the 38s have a 20mm cannon along with 4 50 cal machine guns, their guns fired straight at an aimed target all the way through, not having to wait for the "convergence points" from wing guns.
The gobbler said it was total war, all the civilians funded the war effort, every factory jammed in whatever poor city it was, was a military target, to the dismay of the surrounding houses, every train fuels the war effort
It's just terrible what they did to these poor steam engines. And it's terrible what these planes had to do. Such beautiful machines used for war and destruction.
@@applesandgrapesfordinner4626 What about the driver and fireman? Do they deserve to get blown up? Despite what most people think, most Germans were just regular people like you and me, who were just trying to get by in life.
@@eggballo4490 “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” -John Stuart Mill If you're in the midst of a Fascist, world-conquering empire, don't be surprised if the freedom-loving enemies of your country shoot you to pieces.
@@eggballo4490 No, trains had to pass check points. Allies operating a German train on a German track wouldn't get far. Come on man use that big mushy grey thing in your noggin lolz
Seems like destroying the track would be easier and safer. It would take them a while to repair it if they even have the materials to do it and you could back and blow it up again in multiple spots.
What the Germans did was they put prisoners on the front of the train, and every one of those prisoners was happy that they died for from the US allies shooting and stopping that train everyone of them that they put out there I know in my guards heart that they were Proud To Die by our bullets so that trains could not reach his station
Oh no it’s the war winning yanks again of course the RAF who were in the war over 2 years before the yanks joined in never did anything like this The yanks did everything and all was well WHAT A LOAD OF PROPAGANDA THIS IS MR YANK YOU MAKE ME PEE MY ENGLISH PANTS LAUGHING
Thanks USA Grandpa Vade Beasley WW2 USA 🪖 Army Sniper against Nazi front lines from American Grandson John Robert Bruffett Junior 🇺🇸😎😎🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🌧️🌧️☕🌧️☕😂🌍🌎🌧️🌧️🌧️
hitting a moving locomotive was hard enough, try hitting narrow beams of steel going 400 miles per hour. Better to drop a bomb on them then, but even that is quite hard to do, a lot harder than hitting the train itself.
Why in american "documentaries" do they get idiots who aren't qualified to talk about anything to talk about what they think is happening and pass it off as truth under the guise of being "Experts"? 0:30 "Return fire from the train" is tracers bouncing off the ground. "You don't know when that golden BB is coming" unless it was an armoured train most of them were unarmed when on the road, and at that stage in the war there was almost total air dominance which made these trains easy targets with little to no resistance. 3:21 "Engineer releasing steam" there is no way to release steam in this manner on any steam train, the only possible way that steam can escape in such a violent manner during regular operation is from Safety valves blowing (Too much pressure in the boiler automatically trips valves to release steam until it is at a safe level) Safety valves are usually found towards the rear of the boiler on the top and from the video what we can see is a violent release of steam and smoke from the chimney/stack, and some from the cab area shortly after What has likely happened is that a .50 has pierced the boiler and the fire tubes inside the boiler and the steam has entered into these tubes and has gone both ways and has blown out of the chimney as well as blowing back into the cab, that's why you see the big plume of steam and some at the back shortly after the hits. 4:34 "A lot of return fire in this footage, these are well guarded trains" Again tracers bouncing off the ground...
@Mike W Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. The guy who says "You see return fire from the train" is an idiot as there is clearly no return fire in the video being shown, with "lights" being the result of bullet impacts. If you actually read my entire comment instead of jumping to a conclusion like an idiot, maybe you wouldn't have to comment....
![ЛЕБЕДЕВ у ДУДЯ: муху не обманешь 😁 [Пародия]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/E74h5fvVrqs/mqdefault.jpg)
An old flying buddy of mine, now deceased, flew P-51s in Europe. One evening at a club meeting, he told us about a flight that he was on to strike "targets of opportunity." He described flying as wingman when they spotted a locomotive pulling flat bed cars with armored vehicles. He went on to describe how the lead P-51 opened up on the engine but didn't inflict any serious damage. He said that he rolled in on the engine right after the number one aircraft cleared the target and started hammering it. Just as he started to pass over it, the trains boiler blew up, and a chunk of it knocked off his intercooler, which resulted in a fire. He described trading off airspeed for altitude in an effort to have enough height to bail out. At 3,000 feet, he slid the canopy open, and the fire went out. So, he got back in and made a landing in a farmers plowed field. As he got out, the enemy calvary came out of the near by woods and started shooting at him. He told us that the only weapon That he had available was his service revolver and that wasn't going to help him very much. Well, as luck would have it, the lead P-51 saw what was happening, rolled in on the cavalry and "hosed" them. The few that were left vanished back in the woods. The lead aircraft then landed in the field, nocking off his tail wheel. He slid his canopy open and Charlie climbed in and sat on the pilots lap. They took off and flew back to their base in Italy. He had the proof with him that evening. Charlie Wilson produced the copy of "Yank" magazine with the full story and a recreated photo of him sitting on the pilots lap in the cockpit of a P-51.
RIP Charlie my dear old friend.
Wow!!! And people think Tom Cruise is a pilot in TOP GUN!!! This piece of history needs to be made into a movie.
One of the best clips out there because of the explanations on what each pilot was attempting to accomplish. Steering a plane at such speeds, with such great accuracy... Amazing... Thank you for all the explanations.
Quote:
'The gun platform for these train attacks is the p-47 Thunderbolt. With a top speed of 428 mph it can easily outpace a train.'
Behold, this is high-quality material here.
I'm going to print that out and file it under "Shit That I Already Know."
The nightmare of engineers and firemen fulfilled
Small correction. When you see the steam come quickly out of the train stack, it is usually because the engineer opened the safety valve. The last thing that they wanted was to be scalded to death by the steam. It was/is due to self-preservation. I have taught locomotive steam boilers and steamplant operation for 44 years.
The narrator mentions that.
In my experience with steam locomotives I have never heard of a valve that releases steam other than the safety valve which is not controlled by an engineer. It appears to me that the boiler is penetrated releasing steam through the flues and nothing at all to do with the engineer.
@Rip DOOM The commentator says they could do that, but I cannot find anyone who can verify that. Some commentators do not have a working knowledge of steam operations so you might take 3:28 with a little license.
Smart move by the engineer
10 cars jumped the tracks over here in Mississippi a month ago. They are still trying to remove the debre with large front end loaders/bull dozers. The area around the track had to be cleared. The wheels/carriages were removed. The rest of the cars are being cut by hand with torches. It might take 3 months.
The Germans had taken all of Europe's locomotives and rolling stock, so they could just push damaged trains off the track and leave them.
It must have been terrifying to dive at a train! With the weapons limitations back then, the pilot, himself, was the guidance system for the weapons deployed. Those fighters looked to have got within 100 meters off the target many times!
The Germans had put anti-aircraft guns and there were highly effective on the trains they were a porcupine to attacks, but you knew that that train was carrying Ordnance weapons explosives tanks ammunition to the enemy so you're going to take it out and, and we had enough armor on a Friday to go in and take them out
As one who has been to east / west germany to view and follow the tremendous steam locomotive's,
It alway's greatly saddens me to see their destruction !
john fellows unless they are carrying haft the poor Jewish population to their death or bringing rounds to kill innocent ppl. In that case, blow the FUCK outta those bitches!!!!!!
It was for a good cause atleast
Just hate seeing those beautiful steam locos destroyed !!
they dont just look they bounce of the train even 50 cal.....
Excellent gun camera films. Some of the best I've seen.
The .50 cal sure tears those locomotives up!
thanks for the upload !!!
This from the chief boiler inspector in Kentucky as well as a certified locomotive engineer; regarding a valve that might be opened on a steam locomotive as suggested by the commentator at 3:28 and especially to the guy who calls himself a Rip DOOM. Boilers could be equipped with a valve, or valves, but these would not have near enough capacity to “empty” the boiler. Side note: In locomotive terminology, the TUBES are the 2” size, of which there are many, and FLUES are the 5” size with superheater elements in them, of which there are few.
The P-47 is faster than a train? No way!
"A lot of return fire in this clip" said about 3 or 4 times but I don't see anything to suggest it in any of the footage.
"🎵I've been working on the railroad, all the live long day ....".
4:45 Pilot makes circle missing the engine. So?How many aircraft were struck by debris flying up from exposions?
USAAF during WWII not USAF, We would watch these videos almost every week at the Academy.
I wander If some of these could be Identified, were that particulor train was shot up.
Thx for uploading. What is the title of this documantary?
Amazing how these combat gun cameras had a microphone too . . . . I bet the Intelligence guys lapped up the sound track, I mean, 50 calibre gunfire obviously sounds so different when you're attacking trains . . .
Or could it be that someone is 'gilding the lily' and the footage isn't considered dramatic enough on its own . . .
ok
It's definitely added for dramatic effect. The explosions wouldn't be heard instantly as it takes sound a few seconds to travel towards the plane.
"Check out the complete circle?" Thats called missing...
AMAZING PILOTS.
Good video!
My father was a boy of nine when a P-38 made target exercises on a field on him.
Steered by a hero, wow !
P-51s would strafe Hungarian factory workers young and old trying to escape the building. My grandparents who were born in a Hungarian factory town remembered it vividly.
The Allies complain that German submarines have attacked ships in convoys, which were driven by civilians. But they themselves shoot at railways, which are also driven by civilians. They also shoot at passenger trains where only civilians are in passenger wagons. In each locomotive was shown here are died 2 people who are not soldiers. In the last days of the war they shoot at everything that moves, Farmers with horse-drawn wagons, womens and childrens on streets. They hunted treks with refugees from the East and kill hundrets people who are not soldiers either. They shoot ships in fire and kill 7.000 evacuated prisoners from concentration camps (SS Kap Arkona and MS Thiebeck in Luebeck Bay). That was all OK, only what the Germans did was evil. Apparently they enjoyed shooting to everything what moved, because in April/May 1945 there was no more resistance. This cowardly asshole-pilots was not heroes, they are supposed to stew in hell for ever.
@A. Wellknownmyth Civilians women, children, and Babies have not sown anything they have to harvest and 7,000 evacuated concentration camp prisoners on ships certainly also have not earned, to burn on these ships. The mother of my wife, for example, is as a child (8 years old) was been twice time attacked by British fighter planes in the last week of the war. She and her friend survived because they could hide behind an oak tree. The bullets are still today in this oak, she had showed me this tree. Sure, I understand what you mean, shoot women and children, refugees, farmers in their fields and sinking ships with concentration camp prisoners was very important for allied victory in the last days of the war... only bullshit is in your head. Instead of fighting the really guilty of the Nazi regime, it was cowardly revenge that the weakest had to endure. Unarmed Refugee treks what coming from east were punished enough, they had lost everything and it was pure murder to shoot of them. But for those cowardly assholes pilots, it was easier to fight people who couldn't defend themselves. It is a lie when they say that the pilots could not have known that they shoot little children. It is a lie to say that the pilots could not have known that the shoot unarmed refugees. They could see exactly what they were shooting at. They shot on everything was moving. British and US fighter pilots were no longer heroes in the last days of the war, they lost all their combat honor by targeted attacks on woman, children and refugees. They were in this time no better than German SS butchers in concentration camps. There are very inhumane thoughts in your brain. I think people with your snooty, inhumane opinion should also burn in hell when the time comes.
@A. Wellknownmyth You probably don't know the story because because people don't like to talk about their own mistakes in the UK.. On May 3rd 1945, four days after Hitler's suicide but four days before the unconditional surrender of Germany, the CAP ARCONA, the Thielbek and the passenger liner Deutschland, possibly converted to a hospital ship but not marked as such, were attacked by RAF Typhoons of 83 Group of the 2nd Tactical Air Force commanded by Sir Arthur Coningham as part of general attacks on shipping in the Baltic. The attacks were by No. 184 Squadron, based at RAF Hustedt, led by Derek Stevenson, by No. 263 Squadron, based in Ahlhorn (Großenkneten) and led by Squadron Leader Martin Trevor Scott Rumbold by No. 197 Squadron RAF, led by Squadron Leader K. J. Harding also at Ahlhorn, and by No. 198 Squadron based at Plantlünne led by Group Captain Johnny Baldwin. These Hawker Typhoon Mark 1B fighter-bombers used High Explosive 60 lb rocket projectiles, bombs, and 20 mm cannons. Unknown to the RAF, the ships were carrying between 7,000-8,000 prisoners from the German concentration camps in Neuengamme, Stutthof and Mittelbau-Dora, half of whom were Russian and Polish prisoners-of-war, along with others from 24 nations, including French, Danish, and Dutch. Allan Wyse, formerly of 193 Fighter Squadron, said "We used our cannon fire at the chaps in the water … we shot them up with 20 mm cannons in the water. Horrible thing, but we were told to do it and we did it. That's war." Among the survivors was Erwin Geschonneck, who later became a notable German actor, and whose story was made into a film in 1982. About 490 of the guards, Ss, and crew were rescued by German boats. Photos of the burning ships, listed as Deutschland, Thielbek, and CAP ARCONA, and survivors swimming in the cold Baltic Sea (seven degrees Celsius), were taken on a reconnaissance mission over the Bay of Lübeck by F-6 aircraft of the USAAF´s 161st Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron around 5:00 Pm, shortly after the attack. The capsized hulk of the CAP ARCONA later drifted ashore, and the beached wreck was salvaged in 1949. For weeks after the attack, the bodies of victims washed ashore, where they were collected and buried in a single mass grave at Neustadt in Holstein. For nearly thirty years, parts of skeletons continued to wash ashore, until the last find, by a twelve-year-old boy, in 1971. According to documents at the Dutch Institute of War Documentation (niod), the government of Sweden had warned the British government that prisoners were aboard the ships. Memorial to CAP ARCONA victims at Neustadt in Holstein. The prisoners were of 28 different nationalities: American, Belgian, Canadian, Czechoslovakian, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourger, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swiss, Ukrainian, Yugoslavian and others.
@A. Wellknownmyth Deceptive errors can certainly occur, but in this case there were warnings from Sweden that ships that had previously evacuated refugees from East Prussia to the west were loaded with prisoners from concentration camps and POW camps of war. It was May 3rd, Hamburg had surrendered without a fight and the British troops had taken Lübeck without a fight on May 2nd. Lübeck is only 10 km away. The area in which these ships were located was handed over to the British without a fight just 2 hours later. This ships would have been unable to leave this area because steamships without steam need at least 8 hours to be ready to go. So there was no longer any reason to sink these ships. A partial surrender of Northern Germany, Denmark, Norway and Netherlands has already been negotiated between Dönitz and Montgommery, which should come into force on 4 May (one day later). At this point there were no more fights in all of Schleswig-Holsten. The only ones to continue shooting and killing were British warplanes. Quite apart from the sinking of these ships, was shot at the shipwrecked people floating in the water. There is a taboo in warfare that you don't shoot shipwrecked people, even if they are former enemies. Apparently, it is British tradition to shoot shipwrecked people, like the sinking of German destroyers in Narvik, where the British destroyer Kossack shot particularly heroically at German shipwrecked people. What should this killing do, one day before the partial surrender? 14 million civilians fled west from eastern Germany. There were over 3 million refugees in the Schleswig-Holstein area alone. It was a great destination for British pilots as most of the refugees had to camp somewhere in the open air. Germans also did a lot of shit, but I don't know that German planes specifically shoot of refugee treks. Apart from that, there were no such mass movements of refugees. In France, the Netherlands and Belgium, there have been isolated unsightly scenes of streets being cleared of refugee treks because they hindered the advance of German troops, The refugees lost all their belongings but these refugees have not been killed. I think you know very little about what happened in Germany in the last days of the war. They only know British well, Germans evil. The Allied armies often have behaved in the last days of the war, as if you after a brawl, a person lying on the ground keeps kicking again in the face, although he has long been defenseless. The day before the partial surrender, there was no longer any reason to kill and kill and kill.
“Luckily no one was hurt!”
Wouldn´t it have been more effective to change the P-47´s eight .50cals against two or even four 20mm cannons like the one on the P-38?
Or was that technically impossible?
The rate of fire and the limited space for 20mm ammunition would have been far less effective than the smaller 50 cal.
"Using just his rudders" Exactly how many rudders did a Thunderbolt have?
Rudder pedals.
Imagine if he could have put all the lines underground.
It is quite impossible that a small explosive bullet, even full of cordite,can severe the rails or the ballast, as they are extremely resistant to pressure and heat. The maximum they can do is lifting up a great amount of dust
Cordite filled bullets? That's a new one.
@@rayford21 The Germans did it quite often iirc, used it as a substitute propellant for gunpowder.
why from the side?take a train from the back all to the front i would say
They didn't pierce the boiler. The engineer released the pressure
One thing that was said in the narration, made me cringe. He said that when the engine was attacked, the engineer opened the relief valves and you see a lot of steam escaping from the smoke stack and that was to prevent the engine from blowing up. I have a real problem with that for a couple of reasons. The first reason is looking at the video, I seriously doubt that the engineers had time to react that quickly.
And the second reason is based on how steam engines work. The engine is a giant sealed tank of water with tubes running through it. The exhaust from the fire box blows through the tubes and the heat boils the water and pressurizes the tank. A bullet could easily puncture the tank. When this happens the pressure is reduced and the superheated water instantly turns to steam. This can be seen with the bullets hit the side of the tank.
A bullet could easily continue on and puncture the tubes. This would allow water to rush into the tubes and give the superheated water another way to escape out of the high pressure tank. Since the pressure is suddenly reduced, the superheated water would instantly flash to steam and exit out of the tube to the smoke box and out the smoke stack. Thus there would be a massive discharge of steam coming out of the smoke stack as is shown in the videos.
I don’t think the train engineers had anything to do with this.
I agree Woody, sounded like a comment from someone who obviously knows nothing about trains or steam locomotives. (A Hollywood movie producer by the sound of it!) Steam locos don't explode; the shells create holes in the boiler which allows the steam to escape to atmosphere. The crew on the loco would have been cowering on the floor of the cab and had no control over the resulting steam loss, that's for sure. As shown, wagons full of munitions explode if prodded the wrong way!
I have seen mention of this before and think it may have been an attempt to provide a smokescreen (or steamscreen.)
@@GaryNumeroUno "Hollywood". This was a documentary, not some action drama. You do know that most movies in the world aren't made in "Hollywood".
No such thing as a "relief valve " on a steam loco. As has being stated, once the boiler has been
punctured, that full steam pressure roars out of the firehole and the smokebox. Probably instant
death for the footplate crew.
The crews never knew what hit 'em.
I think that it is not a problem to get off with the inevitable damage
You wonder how many allied soldiers got to live out their lives, because these planes knocked out the transport of the munitions that would have otherwise killed them ......-
Why not strafe along the axis of the rail?
My dads friends dad was an example of why you dont shoot boxcars bc they were being transpotted and his buddys brains exploded everywhere in the boxcar right next to him when the plane did its strafing run
Imagine if go pro was already invented in that time...and 360 VRs
Too bad they had no A-10s then. WW2 Would have been a lot shorter!
The P-47 was the A-10 of its day...It’s name was the P-47 thunderbolt....Guess what the official name of the A-10 is? Yup the Thundedbolt II
p47 faster
Follow the tracks and you're going to get the train color coordinate you know what the logistics and World War was so amazing
Confirmation bias. Seeing twenty clips of successful train attacks on UA-cam and thinking its easy while forgetting there are just as many attacks that didn't come home to have their film developed.
There are 3 bullets hitting in between each tracer round.
thunderbolts had 8-.50 cal. machine guns. That is just a super load of firepower.
It's actually the early 1940's and the trains are mostly carrying weapons and armoured rail cars. The rail transport of dead bodies were taken place in the late 30's.
That is amazing footage 👍👍👍👍
Где он увидел ответный огонь из поезда?
As much as it would look so easy in strafing trains back in that War try doing that with a BP-44 anti-aircraft car attached to the train and shooting back at the attacking P-47 / P-51.
....Yehaaaaa, now that looks like fun!
Trains were rewarding targets
The level of skill of these pilots is something we probably just won't find anymore with modern computer controlled aircraft and long range fire and forget missiles.
@Jacob Makavelian some of the best maybe, but not THE best.
@Jacob Makavelian is that why the top aces of the war are all Polish? Oh wait.. they're not. 🤔
@Jacob Makavelian Cite some reliable sources then. I've done plenty of research, which is exactly why i'm not going to make a ridiculous statement like the Polish being the absolute best pilots above everyone else who flew in the war.
Jacob Makavelian so you gonna link your references to these legendary polish pilots? Or is it just a story
@Jacob Makavelian So them being the best pilots in all the world ever is just patriotic fairytales, thought as much.
So 50. Cals are enough
"A train is fairly easy to see" lol no shit
SAD to see
One could also demollish the rail itself with bombs for several miles, wouldnt that be just as effective? No more trains going over it
also, if the plane gets too close to the train and hits a car loaded with munitions, the blast could take the plane down.
4:22 thats P51 mustang strafing Japanese steam trains
I'm surprised noone's caught an engine exploding due to sheer strafing of locomotives
Because they don't explode. The tank is punctured and the super heated water under high pressure suddenly has a drop in pressure and the water flashes to steam. Thus, that's what we see.
walking those gun runs along the trains is just mesmerising, you know that people and equipment are getting shredded.
These trains were typically armed to the teeth with AA guns of all sizes. It really was dangerous to attack them.
Trains are unable to take evasive manouvers unless there’s a tunnel in the vicinity. And Germans knew that and slapped dozens of flak guns on these trains.
Where are the flak-guns in these films???
@@Nitramrec No footage because the camera was blown out of the sky?
I am grateful the Allies defeated two brutal military regimes - the Nazis and Hirohito's military.
They all fucking criminals
Did nothing about the soviets though, but I guess that’s okay because they didn’t try to break off from the international banking system
Avec les trains équipés de FlaK, ce n'était pas la même affaire...
To bad we had to give a third, Stalin's Russia, power in the process of ridding ourselves of the first 2.
I feel bad for the train, it's just a Nazi pawn
2.30 The pilot had half a second to pull back or he would have smashed into the electric wires and pole beside the track.
It's called "target fixation."
Far out! ✈️
Hell on earth. 60 million+ murdered...
The German railway system was the key to the German logistics system. It moved troops, armoured vehicles and tanks and artillery and mounted its own anti-aircraft guns.
Trains moved complete mobile military communications units and disassembled aircraft, missiles (V1 and V2) sections of new UBoats, coastal vessels being moved from factories to ports, spare aircraft parts and engines, fuel, oil and lubricants and great quantities of all types of munitions, small arms, military clothing, helmets, fire fighting equipment, searchlights, radar equipment, machine tooling for new underground factories, industrial and farm labourers, prisoners of war, persons being taken for "resettlement" or forced labour, extermination, concentration camp seized and "appropriated" camp inmate property, farm animals, groceries, canned and packaged goods, materials for building bunkers and fortifications, Nazi records being hidden, Nazi administrative staff, captured foreign workers.....etc etc.....everything used in wartime.......(that list is endless)....so trains and the whole German railway system became high value targets at any time.....attacking them and their infrastructure such as bridges, railway yards, railway switching systems, junction controls and the encrypted German railway communications system (they used Enigma code machines) were all targets of opportunity....to be bombed, strafed, sabotaged etc.....
Don't describe history in the present tense
They trained too do this. This was a job. Your duty. Terrified got nothing to do with it.
Why didn't they just blow up the track
A track is a small target. Tracks are easy to repair and cheap. Trains are hard to replace and very costly. I hope I answered your question.
Where do I sign up?
+Daniel De Abreu At The American Terror recruiting Office... lol
Toch Ela I'm on my way lol
in the nearest mosque
You mean...where do you sign up to be a minority in your own country.
To be a train driver?
same 6 clips over and over
Bet they show these clips to modern day pilots the ww2 pilots were the dogs nuts
While definately I liked the video the comment that it would be affect attacks in the Gulf war is reallly a big stretch.
Oh god, please. "Look at this train here. You can see it's moving." That was enough for me . I can't stand naf narration.
Maybe I'm becoming an impatient youtuber.
Yep I hate these 'Murican documentaries, with stupid commentaries and keep winding back to play a section again, with their wise words of wisdom. We can easily do that ourselves by using our mouse cursors if we want to watch a bit again. I hoped it would just be gun camera footage, and not mostly the same clip shown over and over again.
Plus the ex jet fighter pilot describes how the attacking aircraft made a perfect circle of gun fire around the target, and stopped the film to take another look. yep all fine and pretty, but since he is not hitting anything much except for churning up the dirt a bit, what's so clever about that ?
Trillock Watty Technical explanations to disguise terrorist attacks ! The Soviets were fighting machine guns, cannons and tanks.
The yankees were fighting trains, horse carts and civilians. Making a big fuss about some steam coming out at he wrong place. Typically verbal American Hollywood sensation.
Take out the tracks and tie up 100 men to repair it, taking out the train is when ever you find it. And don`t forget they were moving POW,s on many of those trains. Would have been better to take out the tracks to stop the movements and forced the Germans to resort to more men off the front line to guard all the trucks.
This was near the end of the war when the allies had air superiority and turned their fighters loose to strafe random targets at will, the bombing campaigns were pretty much over by then.
Engineers would sometimes release steam as a way to hopefully avoid a steam explosion caused by a bullet piercing the boiler....
French RR workers were sitting ducks. 15,000 were killed in allied bombing campaign.
Prove it!
well they didn't die defending their shit house country did they ha ha ha
None of these aircraft are P-49's, both aircraft that are shown look like Mustangs.
There is no P-49.
P-38s were FAR more deadly in this role than either the P-51s or these P-47s. Not only did the 38s have a 20mm cannon along with 4 50 cal machine guns, their guns fired straight at an aimed target all the way through, not having to wait for the "convergence points" from wing guns.
Very interesting. Thanks for the information.
Lol, US pilots talking about "military targets". They shot at anything.
Total War.... anything behind enemy lines was game.
@Mike W
Well, there's videos of people who were IN the damn traincars. Prisoners.
Getting strafed by Allied planes.
@Mike W ua-cam.com/video/vKB81rk7Qro/v-deo.html
The gobbler said it was total war, all the civilians funded the war effort, every factory jammed in whatever poor city it was, was a military target, to the dismay of the surrounding houses, every train fuels the war effort
@@11DNA11 maybe don’t put POWs and jewish people in cattle cars
he is fucking right
It's just terrible what they did to these poor steam engines. And it's terrible what these planes had to do. Such beautiful machines used for war and destruction.
They're just trains, man
No biggie
@@applesandgrapesfordinner4626 What about the driver and fireman? Do they deserve to get blown up? Despite what most people think, most Germans were just regular people like you and me, who were just trying to get by in life.
@@eggballo4490 Well it is war though. One of those situations no one can get back into except bear it and hope it doesn't happen again.
I like ugly planes for destruction.
@@eggballo4490 “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” -John Stuart Mill
If you're in the midst of a Fascist, world-conquering empire, don't be surprised if the freedom-loving enemies of your country shoot you to pieces.
Was there a moment in ww2 where allied forces captured a German train, if so what did they do with it.
They would probably use it to transport their own troops and supplies.
@@eggballo4490 I guess that makes since , alied troops have used guns taken from fallend axis armys .
@@eggballo4490 No, trains had to pass check points. Allies operating a German train on a German track wouldn't get far. Come on man use that big mushy grey thing in your noggin lolz
that fist one they were commenting on was not a p47 but a p41 look at the gun sight!
boom
Seems like destroying the track would be easier and safer. It would take them a while to repair it if they even have the materials to do it and you could back and blow it up again in multiple spots.
Tracks are thin lines very hard to hit. Going for stations or viaducts would be a better alternative.
Uh, no. Tracks are cheap. Trains are costly. It's quite obvious isn't it?
What the Germans did was they put prisoners on the front of the train, and every one of those prisoners was happy that they died for from the US allies shooting and stopping that train everyone of them that they put out there I know in my guards heart that they were Proud To Die by our bullets so that trains could not reach his station
Just show me the clips without interruption rather than this overproduced garbage.
@whocriesforbidennotme641 Yes. Not every sense has to be engaged all the time. We aren't children after all. Lolz
Oh no it’s the war winning yanks again of course the RAF who were in the war over 2 years before the yanks joined in never did anything like this The yanks did everything and all was well WHAT A LOAD OF PROPAGANDA THIS IS MR YANK YOU MAKE ME PEE MY ENGLISH PANTS LAUGHING
Thanks USA Grandpa Vade Beasley WW2 USA 🪖 Army Sniper against Nazi front lines from American Grandson John Robert Bruffett Junior 🇺🇸😎😎🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🌧️🌧️☕🌧️☕😂🌍🌎🌧️🌧️🌧️
I really like the Germans war trains
I'm sure the reality was horrific and disturbing but... I have to admit this looks like a really fun level in a game.
Cry cry
Thank God I get to drive this train during the war. I’m away from the front lines and safe. Ohhhhhhhhhhh shit.
It was common knowledge that train operations were incredibly dangerous.
@@AncientCreature-i2o as was being an infantry soldier
@@SeanP7195 That goes without saying, no?
Pathetic fake sound effects. Pilots stating the bleedin obvious!
Those 2 so called pilots are modern versions of what the greatest generation would call cowards.
Real dumbass hours
Why?
It would actually be more difficult for a modern plane to do this.
Not really, modern pilots still train for and use strafing attacks in combat
Lol you pulled that out of your rear end. It would be and is tenfold easier. Lol
Why not just shoot the tracks infront of the train??
hitting a moving locomotive was hard enough, try hitting narrow beams of steel going 400 miles per hour. Better to drop a bomb on them then, but even that is quite hard to do, a lot harder than hitting the train itself.
Vagabond This would cause the train to stop and then it's a sitting duck.
Why in american "documentaries" do they get idiots who aren't qualified to talk about anything to talk about what they think is happening and pass it off as truth under the guise of being "Experts"?
0:30 "Return fire from the train" is tracers bouncing off the ground.
"You don't know when that golden BB is coming" unless it was an armoured train most of them were unarmed when on the road, and at that stage in the war there was almost total air dominance which made these trains easy targets with little to no resistance.
3:21 "Engineer releasing steam" there is no way to release steam in this manner on any steam train, the only possible way that steam can escape in such a violent manner during regular operation is from Safety valves blowing (Too much pressure in the boiler automatically trips valves to release steam until it is at a safe level)
Safety valves are usually found towards the rear of the boiler on the top and from the video what we can see is a violent release of steam and smoke from the chimney/stack, and some from the cab area shortly after
What has likely happened is that a .50 has pierced the boiler and the fire tubes inside the boiler and the steam has entered into these tubes and has gone both ways and has blown out of the chimney as well as blowing back into the cab, that's why you see the big plume of steam and some at the back shortly after the hits.
4:34 "A lot of return fire in this footage, these are well guarded trains" Again tracers bouncing off the ground...
@Mike W Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. The guy who says "You see return fire from the train" is an idiot as there is clearly no return fire in the video being shown, with "lights" being the result of bullet impacts.
If you actually read my entire comment instead of jumping to a conclusion like an idiot, maybe you wouldn't have to comment....
Because you couldn't serve as the idiot expert as your calendar was full.
You strafe the train with the bravery of being out of range
I mean they were getting shot at too, they weren't out of range?
@@JamesF0790 Lyrics from a Roger Waters song.
@@josephastier7421 Ah, alright then!
@@josephastier7421 Pink Floyd sucks