In January 1944 a general who had already bombed Tokyo walked into the headquarters of the Eighth Air Force fighters in England, read a sign on the wall — “the first duty of the fighters is to bring the bombers back alive” — and had it replaced with one sentence: “The first duty of the Eighth Air Force fighters is to destroy German fighters.” Five months later the Luftwaffe’s single-engine fighter force had lost 2,262 pilots out of the 2,395 it began the year with, and on the morning of D-Day two German fighters crossed the beaches of Normandy. This is the complete story of that order: the Black Thursday that made it necessary, the Mustang with a British engine and paper fuel tanks that made it possible, Big Week, the Berlin raids of March, the strafing campaign that killed more American aces than the Germans did, the oil offensive, and the men — Doolittle, Kepner, Blakeslee, Zemke, Gentile, Yeager, the Yoxford Boys and the bomber crews who were the bait — who carried it out.
In this documentary:
• Black Thursday, 14 October 1943 — 60 bombers lost over Schweinfurt and the end of the self-defending bomber
• The range problem: 550 miles to Berlin, and every American fighter came up short
• Doolittle, Spaatz and Kepner — and the sign at Bushey Hall
• A Merlin in a Mustang: 440 mph at 30,000 ft, 7 hours’ endurance, 184 + 85 gallons
• The relay escort, and the 108-gallon drop tanks made of pressed paper
• Big Week, 20-25 February 1944 — 1,003 bombers, three Medals of Honor, and a third of the German fighter force
• Berlin: 4 March (the first Mustangs over the capital), 6 March (69 bombers, the worst day of the war), 8 and 9 March
• The Zerstörer massacre of 16 March — 26 of 43 Bf 110s shot down
• The 4th Fighter Group, the 56th “Wolfpack” and the 357th “Yoxford Boys”
• The Lightning’s long winter · Down to the ground: Jackpot and Chattanooga
• 60 hours against 225: what the Luftwaffe’s own study said about its pilots
• The loss tables, month by month: 30% · 33% · 56% · 43% · 50%
• Yeager’s walk over the Pyrenees · Gentile’s last pass · The oil order of 12 May
• The Sturmbock, the beaches, the shuttle to Russia, the jet — and the price
CHAPTERS:
0:00 Intro
0:39 Black Thursday
2:31 The Range Problem
4:41 The Man from Tokyo
6:43 The Sign
8:43 A Merlin in a Mustang
11:00 The Relay
12:45 Tanks Made of Paper
14:50 Big Week, Day One
16:56 Big Week, the Bill
18:51 Berlin, March Fourth
20:43 Berlin, March Sixth
22:42 The Bloody Hundredth Goes Back
24:33 The Men Who Were the Bait
26:37 The Zerstörer Massacre
28:37 Blakeslee’s Eagles
30:44 Zemke’s Wolfpack
32:40 The Yoxford Boys
34:42 The Lightning’s Long Winter
36:34 Down to the Ground
38:45 The Men in the Messerschmitts
40:56 What the Tables Said
43:05 Yeager’s Walk
44:58 Gentile’s Last Pass
46:57 The Oil Order
48:51 What the Germans Sent Back
51:05 The Beaches
52:58 The Shuttle to Russia
55:04 The Jet
56:49 The Price
58:38 Kepner’s Ledger
1:00:19 What One Sentence Did
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Which fighter group would you have wanted to fly with in the spring of 1944 — Debden, Halesworth or Leiston? Tell us in the comments.
Sources: Williamson Murray, “Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe 1933-1945” (Air University Press); Roger Freeman, “The Mighty Eighth War Diary”; Donald Caldwell & Richard Muller, “The Luftwaffe over Germany”; James Doolittle & Carroll Glines, “I Could Never Be So Lucky Again”; USAF Historical Studies and unit histories of the 4th, 56th and 357th Fighter Groups.
Music: “Clash Defiant” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Footage & photos: U.S. National Archives (NARA), U.S. Air Force releases (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons and archive.org), Periscope Film archive prints, Wikimedia Commons contributors (CC BY / CC BY-SA, credited below).
#P51Mustang #EighthAirForce #Doolittle #Luftwaffe #BigWeek #WW2 #AirWar #Thunderbolt #DDay #USAAF #SeniorCrown
Photos (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY / CC BY-SA): JSandberg, Willy Pragher, Fortepan / National Archives, Ad Meskens, JendaAJ, Sammlung BARTÓK ISTVÁN, Fotoarchiv/Privatsammlung Peter W. Cohausz, Losse Fotografische Objecten, Bengriff, Fotoafdrukken Koninklijke Luchtmacht, Karel Zlámal, Binder, Ruffneck88, Swissair, Michael Garlick.
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