Fun fact. The author of "Twelve Oclock High" was supposed to be on my grandfathers plane "Alice from Dallas" that day but was moved back to safer area at takeoff. The story of Quinn, Bailey to follow is good. They were friends with my Grandpa. My Grandfather (Lorch) originally ran to tail to jump because fire was in bomb bay too and he thought itd explode...he ran back up to drop them and then they jumped. Hinton (Baby Face) & Musante didn make it. They didnt show but Musantes chute got caught on tail and he crashed with pieces of plane if he survived the blast. Brutal.
@@732ReviewCrew Although my grandfathers part in the series may have ended with the crash/explosion.....the real story is wild. He lands not far from Quinn and Bailey but ends up hiding as a deaf mute in a butcher shop....Nazis found out....executed the family and took him to Stalag Luft 3.
@732ReviewCrew Just a few lines in Masters of the Air. He's mentioned briefly in a bunch of books but I have numerous Newspaper clippings that broadstroke the story.
The British bomber command also took extremely heavy losses throughout the war. Of every 100 airmen who joined Bomber Command, 45 were killed, 6 were seriously wounded, 8 became Prisoners of War, and only 41 escaped unscathed (at least physically). Of the 120,000 who served, 55,573 were killed including over 10,000 Canadians.
@@732ReviewCrew I know the American 8th USAAF had something like nearly 50k overall losses 27'000 of then killed alone. Half of the total USAAF losses overall. Total RAF losses incl ground personnel was 70k killed across the whole war.
They had to leave at that point otherwise they wouldnt get to africa in Daylight and also that particular task force were the only ones in 8th airforce trained to take off in fog. Colonel Le may also took a risk with his own life as he flew in the raid.
Yeah...I was a little taken out of the moment when they made it seem like LeMay had any real choice on taking off...they had to get to Africa in daylight. As I understand it, LeMay was ordered to take off by Brigadier Gen. Anderson, the commander of entire dual target operation.
To clarify day bombing vs night bombing, the RAF bombed mostly by night but had a very active day bomber force too. The US 8th Air Force bombed mainly by day but did experiment with night bombing. The RAF day raids following the Battle of Britain period tended to be either a handful of bombers at medium altitude with very heavy fighter escort designed to draw the Luftwaffe into battle (these happened almost daily from 1941), or several Squadrons bombing a precision target at low level. Operation Margin (Lancaster raid on Augsburg, 1942), Operation Oyster (attack on the Phillips factory, Eindhoven, 1942) and many raids by Mosquitoes on Gestapo HQs in 1944-5 are good examples. Being low level raids, they could manage with fewer aircraft because accuracy tended to be extremely good. High altitude bombing as shown in Masters of the Air generally wasn't very accurate even in daylight. As shown in this episode though, the bombers targeting the Regensburg factory did an extremely good job.
In my Grandfathers journal he talks about one day where he and his Co Pilot were sent on leave. They were in a cab on their way back to base and the towns air raid sirens kicked off. The driver wanted to pull over so they all could take shelter, but he told him they were almost out of the town and then he could ride out the raid in safety. The driver had just said fine, and bombs began hitting nearby. He woke up "Sometime later with a massive headache laying in a ditch the driver and his Copilot laying nearby". The car was flipped over and all three were pulled from wreck by WAKs manning an anti-air battery in a field nearby. Three of the women were berating the cab driver for not fallowing SOP and going straight to the shelter. Grandpa told them it was his call and before they would start yelling at him to remember he had a head wound and was feeling like crap already. Because they spent the next two days in hospital they missed one mission, This one. His group lost Six out of twenty while he and his Co Piolet were laid up in the hospital and awaiting transport to base. One of those "had I just turned left instead of right" moments.
The reason why Lemey ordered the 100th BG to deploy earlier than the rest was because this was the first shuttle mission they ever flew, and they were burning daylight that they would need to navigate to Africa
Oh and the reason they were so nervous about the navigation at the end was simple. This whole mission which were referred to as shuttle missions were right at the edge of operational range for the B17 usually. So navigation needed to be spot on.
The range on the fighters they had at the time, spitfires and P-47s, did not have the range to escort to the target. In fact, on the Regensburg mission, the 100th had escort for only 15 minutes after crossing the channel. AAF leadership dragged their feet on the escort problem for far too long, and it cost them.
I know all fans of US bomber crews will hate me, but here are some "fun" facts from the other side: Official statistics of West German government 1956 put the death toll due to Allied bombing of German cities (strategic bombing) at 635.000 civilians. Years later the winners - of course - reduced the numbers to 353.000 persons killed by air raids. And by the way: In France more than 67.000 people were killed by Allied bombing raids (collateral damage!). And yes, I'm an air enthusiast and love movies/shows about pilots & planes, but I'm also German ;)
@@MrNickjam The result was the same - at least. To hit a factory or a railwaystation or something else in a city, both - the RAF and the USAAF - bombed the whole city - of course. If you've ever seen original colour footage of destroyed German cities of 1945, you know what I mean.
@@MrNickjam The show is very American patriotisim propaganda in that respect (and some others like depiction of RAF and friendly fire). They are vastly overstating the precision of daylight bombing, which is pretty closely related to the myth of the norden bombsight although it is true that it was perceived in high regard. The difference between day and night bombing is how easy it is to find a specific target, not how precise the bombs are. At night it would be nearly impossible to identify a specific factory or something but you can still probably find a town or city. So daylight bombing is more accurate on a specific target as more groups can can easily identify it. But the bombs aren't any more precise, they are still hitting in a massive area around the target, they are just able to more accurately drop them in the right area. But factories and whatever else you may have, are still generally in cities. You will see more on this later in the show as well. You can look up footage of day bombing raids by American B17s to see what it actually looks like, it is really nothing like the dozens of hits precisely hitting the factory at the same time like they show here.
@SpitFir3Tornado Hmmmm, with how accurate it is; not sure why you view it as propaganda. Obviously a few things are made for screen just as every movie or series depicting war. But Americans making a film about American heroism is the goal no different than if England was to make an English film on their efforts. I'm waiting on that. Love Mr. Bean films though! ;)
Some harrowing stuff, probably the best episode so far. I definitely have found myself emotionally attached to several characters by this episode. I also admit I've had to spoil myself somewhat (will not do so here), as the show is about real individuals, to learn the fates of some characters (but not all, for example Curt). I also started watching a more historical based critique on the "Reel History" channel which I would NOT recommend if you want to avoid all spoilers (like who wrote memoirs of their experience). Though you might enjoy such after you've watched the complete show. I did learn a couple interesting things that are not spoilers: A comment by a VFX supervisor on the show indicated that for ground reconstruction they used the aerial photos of the bombings and historical images to then adjust modern satellite images, removing modern buildings and roads and adding landmarks. It is clear a lot of care went into making the show. It was also interesting to see comments from the creator/writer John Orloff discussing some errors (an incorrect rank was used in a voice over) in the 2nd episode that occurred because of the writers strike. Also, on a much more superficial note, I was surprised that the crew chief Sgt. Lemmons is played by Jude Law's son.
British night raids came with problems too - first its at night so navigation was difficult and dangerous, but there were also flak guns too and dedicated night fighters too
Quint parachuted near Flanders, Belgium (that part of Belgium Southern part is French speaking and the Northern part is Dutch speaking) that´s why the belgians he met were speaking French.
When British bomber command bombed Berlin for 3 months they lost 7000 aircrew 1000 pows 1047 aircraft shot down 1682 aircraft damaged . Their last raid alone consisted of 795 aircraft with 94 shot down and 71 damaged. Add that to the American losses shows how bad it was. Before this mission the raf had sent multiple 1000 aircraft raids. The RAF bombed day and night depending on what targets they were going after.
The ability to reach and contact someone, quickly and reliably, wasn't like it is now. Sending a radio message, then getting it successfully passed along to the right person, wasn't reliable.
Anecdotal stories are that between fighting of the Western Allies and Germans shooting at someone who bailed out by parachute was rare. On the Eastern Front such politeness between the Soviets and Germans was much less common. If you were in a bomber crew, bailed out, then discovered by German civilians, they'd be tempted to do something like hit you with a suitcase, for bombing their cities.
You guys don't really pay attention, do you. They were not too early, they went up after they were ordered to. The other two elements were held back, that is why they were not there. The US adopted a daylight strategy of bombing because they could actually hit the targets, unlike the British nighttime bombings that saw misses and a lot of collateral damage to the civilians. Sadly, they lost a lot of planes and crews, but the US command knew they would field a lot more bombers to make up for the loses. Fighters at that time could not escort the bombers due to fuel capacity. It's not until later in the war that the US got new fighters that could escort them into and out of Germany.
Considering 7 out of 10 were lost/Shot down during the war from memory out of the american air force's. At some point you were beating the odds of survival.
The German rockets didn't work the way they show it. The Germans had rockets but they were fired like mortars to expode within the bomber formation. Hard to aim and pretty much useless.
While the regensburg bombing was a relative success the Schweinfurt raid was less than successful and also hit as badly as was a follow up raid. However it still knocked out 37% of Nazi Germany production capacity immediately and for a while according to senior Nazi leadership and if the americans or british had been able to do a follow up raid immediately could havr actually succeeded
They pretty much ignore the existence of escort fighters so far in the show. The first figher attack shown in this episode was actually fought off by their escorts, but the escorts are never mentioned. They would have routinely had fighter cover over the western portion of Belgium/Netherlands. Also the depiction of air to air rockets is completely unrealistic. Air to air rockets were essentially used like artillery, where a group of fighters would each be equipped with 2 air to air rockets, and when they were at a set distance (rockets were fused on a flight range of 800m, 1000m, 1200m so they would have to know when to fire them based on the closing speed) they would all fire their rockets in a barrage at the bomber formation, they were incredibly inaccurate (whereas in the show they seem to track onto the bombers) but had a lethal radius of 30m which is why they did this type of salvo fire of them. You see a rocket directly hit the side of Buck's tail, if that had happened it would have split the plane in two. The actual story of Alice from Dallas (Claytor's plane) and Escape Kit (Biddick's plane he was subbing in for) are honestly more interesting than the dramatized versions they show here. Also Buck's plane did not randomly lose all engines just as they were coming to land, that's just pure fiction they made up. Also Mikey is right that they are in Belgium, in reality they spoke Dutch not French as they are in Flanders not sure why they changed it.
@@732ReviewCrew someone just said it but the question you can ask wither goblin/guard is "which road will the other goblin /guard say is the road to Valhalla" the truthful one will point to the road of damnation. The lying one will lie and point to the road of damnation. Either way whichever one you ask you take the other road.
It wasnt the largest air armada in history even at that point. The British had already done multiple 1000 bomber raids at that point and multiple 800 +. Even the Americans i think had already done one larger raid at that point.
They definitely did 800 or so at once at a single target such as in Operation Ghomorrah. To my knowledge they never actually did 1000 at once with 4 engine heavy bombers. Some of those claims were war time BS for morale purposes.
@TheSocratesian multiple 800 + alone. Technically the were a few 1k raids at that point as well but numbers were a bit fuzzy and depended on what planes you included.
I missed the reaction to the shitty cliche acting especially by Buck and Bucky - Those two alone make the show almost unwatchable. If the PS2 graphics weren't bad enough.
Well. You ought to look into what the real Bucky and Buck were like. Everything I’ve read, and saw, says they are portrayed as they were in real life. In this episode, when Buck told his copilot they were going to sit there and take it, that came straight from the book. His crew members heard it.
@@stevenpulliam2631 Buck wasn't some blonde blue eyed pretty boy in real life with a husky voice always chewing a toothpick.. One line or two doesn't make up for the cliche script and terrible acting. Scene with Bucky and the blonde and she says "my heart couldn't take another pilot in the potato field" C'mon who wrote this crap.
They were wrong about the biggest air armada ever assembled to that point in human history. The british had a mission in the summer of 42 about a year before RAF sent up 1,000 bombers. Its known as the thousand bomber raids. 3 days of 1,000 bombers by the RAF, however this mission was the biggest by the 8th Airforce to that point in the war. The mission wasn't worth it in hind sight, the germans only took a month to get the ball bearing factory back up and running the Germans had an insane stockpile of reserve bearings in Norway so you literally could've destroyed all of Germany and you wouldn't have stopped their production of bearings. The Germans had other factorys that made ball bearings they didn't just rely on this 1 city and this 1 factory for their war efforts, and it only took 6 weeks for the 109 factory in Regensburg to be back up and operational. Same rules applied they had a stockpile of reserve parts and had multiple factories churning out what they needed. It took the Germans 4 to 6 weeks to make everything like as if the raids never happened. It took the 8th airforce fucking 3 months to get back to the same capacity as before this episode, fucking 3 months OMG they fucked themselves going this deep into Germany this early in the war every time, on top of all that the escorts didn't have enough fuel to get into Germany so basically if you were doing a mission that required you to go to Germany than you were doing that everytime without fighter escorts😂😂😂😂 Holy Fuck its insane just how useless early American fighters were
Calling fighters useless because they have a limited range is quite naive. It's not like the American fighters even have less range than other nations. In actuality, they were some of the longest range fighters (not including heavy fighters), specifically the P-47 in the summer of 1943 with the introduction of external fuel tanks. The show pretty much ignores fighter escorts at least so far - on this mission the first fighter attack on this group came from about 8 o'clock and was fought off by their escort of 24 P-47s in reality.
@SpitFir3Tornado In reality almost 700 people died that day. Let's simplify this for your dumb mind since you've never been in combat before. Better technology typically will mean less loss of life, for their to be 700 people dying in 1 mission even the US Commanders considered this loss unacceptable and tried new tactics throughout to mitigate it the best the could. I'm not even gonna explain to you about how escorts the 1st time I was in Iraq were getting shot down left and right, they took casualties💯 and the whole time I always thought it was useless to put someone up into a flying vehicle that could get shot down as apose to an unmanned aircraft. I was right eventually the 2nd and 3rd time I was in Afghanistan we were being supported mainly by drones that didn't matter as much if they got shot down since there's not a whole person inside the aircraft... my point being is that they did have better fighter technology at the time they just weren't using it properly yet. Also the US fighter's will start going after German planes on the ground instead of getting into straight up dogfights with them since it's just way easier to rake up a bunch of 109's all parked on the ground than trying to shoot em down mid air. I think they may show something like this in the intro when the mustangs are dropping 💣💣💣 on some building. Im not calling the Americans that were the pilots of the fighters useless I'm saying we all know the Thunderbolts couldn't get into Germany and back😂😂😂😂😂 THAT IS A FUCKING USELESS ASS FIGHTER. Look at what happened when out Rangers went into Mogadishu without tank escorts it became useless to have gone in the way we did. 18 killed and the mission ended up taking 2 weeks since we didn't get Mike Durant back until after 11 days. That's what I'm talking about how a mission objective can be changed in an instant, the mission objective changes for everyone who is being shot down. It's now time to implement all the evac procedures they've drilled during training and get the fuck out, but imagine if half of everyone that got shot down didn't they'd need less time to rebuild cause as I mentioned in the paragraph above lol. It took the 8th Airforce 3 months to get back to the same operating lvl as they were before the 1st Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission. All that happens with better fighter's. Every interview with a bomber of WW2 that I've ever seen that is asked about the P-47's said they sucked, so you defending it is nothing but futile. Early US fighter's of WW2 were fucking ape shit terrible compared to the American bombers they had to defend , might as well accept it and get over it your not gonna change history or the show. The P-51 will change alot of that but as I'm sure you know it won't show up till late 43 as US bombers regular escort
Fun fact. The author of "Twelve Oclock High" was supposed to be on my grandfathers plane "Alice from Dallas" that day but was moved back to safer area at takeoff. The story of Quinn, Bailey to follow is good. They were friends with my Grandpa. My Grandfather (Lorch) originally ran to tail to jump because fire was in bomb bay too and he thought itd explode...he ran back up to drop them and then they jumped. Hinton (Baby Face) & Musante didn make it. They didnt show but Musantes chute got caught on tail and he crashed with pieces of plane if he survived the blast. Brutal.
Wow thank you, and your grandfather, for the extra information. That's absolutely insane
@@732ReviewCrew Although my grandfathers part in the series may have ended with the crash/explosion.....the real story is wild. He lands not far from Quinn and Bailey but ends up hiding as a deaf mute in a butcher shop....Nazis found out....executed the family and took him to Stalag Luft 3.
Oh my.... Is there a story or book for him?
@732ReviewCrew Just a few lines in Masters of the Air. He's mentioned briefly in a bunch of books but I have numerous Newspaper clippings that broadstroke the story.
The British bomber command also took extremely heavy losses throughout the war.
Of every 100 airmen who joined Bomber Command, 45 were killed, 6 were seriously wounded, 8 became Prisoners of War, and only 41 escaped unscathed (at least physically). Of the 120,000 who served, 55,573 were killed including over 10,000 Canadians.
Wow.
Those poor men.
@@732ReviewCrew I know the American 8th USAAF had something like nearly 50k overall losses 27'000 of then killed alone. Half of the total USAAF losses overall.
Total RAF losses incl ground personnel was 70k killed across the whole war.
They had to leave at that point otherwise they wouldnt get to africa in Daylight and also that particular task force were the only ones in 8th airforce trained to take off in fog.
Colonel Le may also took a risk with his own life as he flew in the raid.
Yeah...I was a little taken out of the moment when they made it seem like LeMay had any real choice on taking off...they had to get to Africa in daylight. As I understand it, LeMay was ordered to take off by Brigadier Gen. Anderson, the commander of entire dual target operation.
To clarify day bombing vs night bombing, the RAF bombed mostly by night but had a very active day bomber force too. The US 8th Air Force bombed mainly by day but did experiment with night bombing.
The RAF day raids following the Battle of Britain period tended to be either a handful of bombers at medium altitude with very heavy fighter escort designed to draw the Luftwaffe into battle (these happened almost daily from 1941), or several Squadrons bombing a precision target at low level. Operation Margin (Lancaster raid on Augsburg, 1942), Operation Oyster (attack on the Phillips factory, Eindhoven, 1942) and many raids by Mosquitoes on Gestapo HQs in 1944-5 are good examples. Being low level raids, they could manage with fewer aircraft because accuracy tended to be extremely good.
High altitude bombing as shown in Masters of the Air generally wasn't very accurate even in daylight. As shown in this episode though, the bombers targeting the Regensburg factory did an extremely good job.
In my Grandfathers journal he talks about one day where he and his Co Pilot were sent on leave. They were in a cab on their way back to base and the towns air raid sirens kicked off. The driver wanted to pull over so they all could take shelter, but he told him they were almost out of the town and then he could ride out the raid in safety. The driver had just said fine, and bombs began hitting nearby. He woke up "Sometime later with a massive headache laying in a ditch the driver and his Copilot laying nearby". The car was flipped over and all three were pulled from wreck by WAKs manning an anti-air battery in a field nearby. Three of the women were berating the cab driver for not fallowing SOP and going straight to the shelter. Grandpa told them it was his call and before they would start yelling at him to remember he had a head wound and was feeling like crap already. Because they spent the next two days in hospital they missed one mission, This one. His group lost Six out of twenty while he and his Co Piolet were laid up in the hospital and awaiting transport to base. One of those "had I just turned left instead of right" moments.
Wow.... That's.... An incredible story. I wish my grandad was around to ask about his time in Greenland.
The reason why Lemey ordered the 100th BG to deploy earlier than the rest was because this was the first shuttle mission they ever flew, and they were burning daylight that they would need to navigate to Africa
Oh and the reason they were so nervous about the navigation at the end was simple. This whole mission which were referred to as shuttle missions were right at the edge of operational range for the B17 usually. So navigation needed to be spot on.
The range on the fighters they had at the time, spitfires and P-47s, did not have the range to escort to the target. In fact, on the Regensburg mission, the 100th had escort for only 15 minutes after crossing the channel. AAF leadership dragged their feet on the escort problem for far too long, and it cost them.
Wow well that makes more sense
I know all fans of US bomber crews will hate me, but here are some "fun" facts from the other side: Official statistics of West German government 1956 put the death toll due to Allied bombing of German cities (strategic bombing) at 635.000 civilians. Years later the winners - of course - reduced the numbers to 353.000 persons killed by air raids. And by the way: In France more than 67.000 people were killed by Allied bombing raids (collateral damage!). And yes, I'm an air enthusiast and love movies/shows about pilots & planes, but I'm also German ;)
I'm German American :)! All details should be kept realisti, it's sad they lowered them to half
. How much of civilian loss was attributed to blind night bombing by RAF or strategic day bombing on factories and sub bases by US?
@@MrNickjam The result was the same - at least. To hit a factory or a railwaystation or something else in a city, both - the RAF and the USAAF - bombed the whole city - of course. If you've ever seen original colour footage of destroyed German cities of 1945, you know what I mean.
@@MrNickjam The show is very American patriotisim propaganda in that respect (and some others like depiction of RAF and friendly fire). They are vastly overstating the precision of daylight bombing, which is pretty closely related to the myth of the norden bombsight although it is true that it was perceived in high regard. The difference between day and night bombing is how easy it is to find a specific target, not how precise the bombs are. At night it would be nearly impossible to identify a specific factory or something but you can still probably find a town or city. So daylight bombing is more accurate on a specific target as more groups can can easily identify it. But the bombs aren't any more precise, they are still hitting in a massive area around the target, they are just able to more accurately drop them in the right area. But factories and whatever else you may have, are still generally in cities. You will see more on this later in the show as well. You can look up footage of day bombing raids by American B17s to see what it actually looks like, it is really nothing like the dozens of hits precisely hitting the factory at the same time like they show here.
@SpitFir3Tornado Hmmmm, with how accurate it is; not sure why you view it as propaganda. Obviously a few things are made for screen just as every movie or series depicting war. But Americans making a film about American heroism is the goal no different than if England was to make an English film on their efforts. I'm waiting on that. Love Mr. Bean films though! ;)
Some harrowing stuff, probably the best episode so far. I definitely have found myself emotionally attached to several characters by this episode.
I also admit I've had to spoil myself somewhat (will not do so here), as the show is about real individuals, to learn the fates of some characters (but not all, for example Curt). I also started watching a more historical based critique on the "Reel History" channel which I would NOT recommend if you want to avoid all spoilers (like who wrote memoirs of their experience). Though you might enjoy such after you've watched the complete show.
I did learn a couple interesting things that are not spoilers: A comment by a VFX supervisor on the show indicated that for ground reconstruction they used the aerial photos of the bombings and historical images to then adjust modern satellite images, removing modern buildings and roads and adding landmarks. It is clear a lot of care went into making the show. It was also interesting to see comments from the creator/writer John Orloff discussing some errors (an incorrect rank was used in a voice over) in the 2nd episode that occurred because of the writers strike.
Also, on a much more superficial note, I was surprised that the crew chief Sgt. Lemmons is played by Jude Law's son.
British night raids came with problems too - first its at night so navigation was difficult and dangerous, but there were also flak guns too and dedicated night fighters too
Quint parachuted near Flanders, Belgium (that part of Belgium Southern part is French speaking and the Northern part is Dutch speaking) that´s why the belgians he met were speaking French.
I know you didnt show it here but the crew that landed in the water 350 miles from land had ran out of fuel. Also they did survive and were captured
When British bomber command bombed Berlin for 3 months they lost
7000 aircrew
1000 pows
1047 aircraft shot down
1682 aircraft damaged .
Their last raid alone consisted of 795 aircraft with 94 shot down and 71 damaged.
Add that to the American losses shows how bad it was.
Before this mission the raf had sent multiple 1000 aircraft raids. The RAF bombed day and night depending on what targets they were going after.
The ability to reach and contact someone, quickly and reliably, wasn't like it is now. Sending a radio message, then getting it successfully passed along to the right person, wasn't reliable.
Anecdotal stories are that between fighting of the Western Allies and Germans shooting at someone who bailed out by parachute was rare. On the Eastern Front such politeness between the Soviets and Germans was much less common.
If you were in a bomber crew, bailed out, then discovered by German civilians, they'd be tempted to do something like hit you with a suitcase, for bombing their cities.
They also delayed the development of the ME262, Germany's first operational jet fighter.
You guys don't really pay attention, do you. They were not too early, they went up after they were ordered to. The other two elements were held back, that is why they were not there. The US adopted a daylight strategy of bombing because they could actually hit the targets, unlike the British nighttime bombings that saw misses and a lot of collateral damage to the civilians. Sadly, they lost a lot of planes and crews, but the US command knew they would field a lot more bombers to make up for the loses. Fighters at that time could not escort the bombers due to fuel capacity. It's not until later in the war that the US got new fighters that could escort them into and out of Germany.
Considering 7 out of 10 were lost/Shot down during the war from memory out of the american air force's. At some point you were beating the odds of survival.
They had to take off when they did if they were to make it to Africa during daylight.
And the Regensburg force had it easy compared to the later task force.
The German rockets didn't work the way they show it. The Germans had rockets but they were fired like mortars to expode within the bomber formation. Hard to aim and pretty much useless.
Weird they did that then
the operation's room did a great vid on this raid (and another B-17 raid too)
While the regensburg bombing was a relative success the Schweinfurt raid was less than successful and also hit as badly as was a follow up raid.
However it still knocked out 37% of Nazi Germany production capacity immediately and for a while according to senior Nazi leadership and if the americans or british had been able to do a follow up raid immediately could havr actually succeeded
Episode 4 hit hard as well!
French (and Dutch and German) is official language in Belgium.
the southern belgium speaks french as well. and the north speaks dutch
They pretty much ignore the existence of escort fighters so far in the show. The first figher attack shown in this episode was actually fought off by their escorts, but the escorts are never mentioned. They would have routinely had fighter cover over the western portion of Belgium/Netherlands.
Also the depiction of air to air rockets is completely unrealistic. Air to air rockets were essentially used like artillery, where a group of fighters would each be equipped with 2 air to air rockets, and when they were at a set distance (rockets were fused on a flight range of 800m, 1000m, 1200m so they would have to know when to fire them based on the closing speed) they would all fire their rockets in a barrage at the bomber formation, they were incredibly inaccurate (whereas in the show they seem to track onto the bombers) but had a lethal radius of 30m which is why they did this type of salvo fire of them. You see a rocket directly hit the side of Buck's tail, if that had happened it would have split the plane in two.
The actual story of Alice from Dallas (Claytor's plane) and Escape Kit (Biddick's plane he was subbing in for) are honestly more interesting than the dramatized versions they show here. Also Buck's plane did not randomly lose all engines just as they were coming to land, that's just pure fiction they made up.
Also Mikey is right that they are in Belgium, in reality they spoke Dutch not French as they are in Flanders not sure why they changed it.
Nice one!
General Curtis Lemay EFFED UP!
If anyone wants to know the answer to the riddle i have the answer
Please!!
Ask each goblin: which road will the other goblin say is the road to heaven? Take the other road.
@@732ReviewCrew someone just said it but the question you can ask wither goblin/guard is "which road will the other goblin /guard say is the road to Valhalla" the truthful one will point to the road of damnation. The lying one will lie and point to the road of damnation. Either way whichever one you ask you take the other road.
It wasnt the largest air armada in history even at that point. The British had already done multiple 1000 bomber raids at that point and multiple 800 +. Even the Americans i think had already done one larger raid at that point.
Good to know!!
They definitely did 800 or so at once at a single target such as in Operation Ghomorrah. To my knowledge they never actually did 1000 at once with 4 engine heavy bombers. Some of those claims were war time BS for morale purposes.
@TheSocratesian multiple 800 + alone. Technically the were a few 1k raids at that point as well but numbers were a bit fuzzy and depended on what planes you included.
I missed the reaction to the shitty cliche acting especially by Buck and Bucky - Those two alone make the show almost unwatchable. If the PS2 graphics weren't bad enough.
Well. You ought to look into what the real Bucky and Buck were like. Everything I’ve read, and saw, says they are portrayed as they were in real life. In this episode, when Buck told his copilot they were going to sit there and take it, that came straight from the book. His crew members heard it.
@@stevenpulliam2631 Buck wasn't some blonde blue eyed pretty boy in real life with a husky voice always chewing a toothpick.. One line or two doesn't make up for the cliche script and terrible acting. Scene with Bucky and the blonde and she says "my heart couldn't take another pilot in the potato field" C'mon who wrote this crap.
They were wrong about the biggest air armada ever assembled to that point in human history. The british had a mission in the summer of 42 about a year before RAF sent up 1,000 bombers. Its known as the thousand bomber raids. 3 days of 1,000 bombers by the RAF, however this mission was the biggest by the 8th Airforce to that point in the war. The mission wasn't worth it in hind sight, the germans only took a month to get the ball bearing factory back up and running the Germans had an insane stockpile of reserve bearings in Norway so you literally could've destroyed all of Germany and you wouldn't have stopped their production of bearings. The Germans had other factorys that made ball bearings they didn't just rely on this 1 city and this 1 factory for their war efforts, and it only took 6 weeks for the 109 factory in Regensburg to be back up and operational. Same rules applied they had a stockpile of reserve parts and had multiple factories churning out what they needed. It took the Germans 4 to 6 weeks to make everything like as if the raids never happened. It took the 8th airforce fucking 3 months to get back to the same capacity as before this episode, fucking 3 months OMG they fucked themselves going this deep into Germany this early in the war every time, on top of all that the escorts didn't have enough fuel to get into Germany so basically if you were doing a mission that required you to go to Germany than you were doing that everytime without fighter escorts😂😂😂😂 Holy Fuck its insane just how useless early American fighters were
Calling fighters useless because they have a limited range is quite naive. It's not like the American fighters even have less range than other nations. In actuality, they were some of the longest range fighters (not including heavy fighters), specifically the P-47 in the summer of 1943 with the introduction of external fuel tanks. The show pretty much ignores fighter escorts at least so far - on this mission the first fighter attack on this group came from about 8 o'clock and was fought off by their escort of 24 P-47s in reality.
@SpitFir3Tornado In reality almost 700 people died that day. Let's simplify this for your dumb mind since you've never been in combat before. Better technology typically will mean less loss of life, for their to be 700 people dying in 1 mission even the US Commanders considered this loss unacceptable and tried new tactics throughout to mitigate it the best the could. I'm not even gonna explain to you about how escorts the 1st time I was in Iraq were getting shot down left and right, they took casualties💯 and the whole time I always thought it was useless to put someone up into a flying vehicle that could get shot down as apose to an unmanned aircraft. I was right eventually the 2nd and 3rd time I was in Afghanistan we were being supported mainly by drones that didn't matter as much if they got shot down since there's not a whole person inside the aircraft... my point being is that they did have better fighter technology at the time they just weren't using it properly yet. Also the US fighter's will start going after German planes on the ground instead of getting into straight up dogfights with them since it's just way easier to rake up a bunch of 109's all parked on the ground than trying to shoot em down mid air. I think they may show something like this in the intro when the mustangs are dropping 💣💣💣 on some building. Im not calling the Americans that were the pilots of the fighters useless I'm saying we all know the Thunderbolts couldn't get into Germany and back😂😂😂😂😂 THAT IS A FUCKING USELESS ASS FIGHTER. Look at what happened when out Rangers went into Mogadishu without tank escorts it became useless to have gone in the way we did. 18 killed and the mission ended up taking 2 weeks since we didn't get Mike Durant back until after 11 days. That's what I'm talking about how a mission objective can be changed in an instant, the mission objective changes for everyone who is being shot down. It's now time to implement all the evac procedures they've drilled during training and get the fuck out, but imagine if half of everyone that got shot down didn't they'd need less time to rebuild cause as I mentioned in the paragraph above lol. It took the 8th Airforce 3 months to get back to the same operating lvl as they were before the 1st Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission. All that happens with better fighter's. Every interview with a bomber of WW2 that I've ever seen that is asked about the P-47's said they sucked, so you defending it is nothing but futile. Early US fighter's of WW2 were fucking ape shit terrible compared to the American bombers they had to defend , might as well accept it and get over it your not gonna change history or the show. The P-51 will change alot of that but as I'm sure you know it won't show up till late 43 as US bombers regular escort