The REAL Masters of the Air - Big Week - The German Pilot's Perspective - Animated
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- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2023
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In February 1944, Operation Argument, also known as "Big Week" savages German industry and the Luftwaffe. In this video we experience one of these fateful days from the eyes of a German Luftwaffe pilot. Hopelessly outnumbered, and with defeat assured, green pilots climb into their aircraft to hit the attacking Allied formations anyway.
/ theoperationsroom
Music: www.purple-planet.com
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No
No
I’m in your walls
No! 😡👎
Your works are very well made. Thank you for doing them.
It must have been really demoralizing for the German pilots to know that no matter what they did, they weren't going to stop the bombers or the invasion, short of surrendering.
I would certainly hope so. Fuck nazis.
Same with the U-boats. All those sinkings just so the Allies can replace the losses twice over with the Liberty & Victory ships!
Must've have been completely soul destroying.
Good F those evil P0Ss Nazis
@@jasonhesson1030facts. And in the East! Up until the last day of the war, the Germans kill/loss ratio versus the Soviets was staggering: they destroyed so many Soviet units, but there were always more.
That happens when U take on the Champ.😊
If anyone is unaware, Heinz Knoke's memoirs titled 'I flew for the Fuehrer' is an excellent book - well worth the read.
Tnx, added to the list!
Read it, excellent
Definitely looking into it! Thanks for the suggestion.
And it's free on Audible!
Tanks, I'll check it out.
So that scene from "Fury" where the tankers look up at the sky to see 5 German aircraft flying towards an entire fleet of Allied aircraft isn't fictional....
Those planes from fury looked like me262s.
well except at the intercept altitude, they wouldn't be able to see them so clearly.
only thing even slightly realistic about that movie
@@bigt9127 What? that was an incredibly accurate movie. Tiger tanks were known for aggressing large formations of enemy armor with absolutely no support. That's why they're called Tigers. They pounce.
@@intr0vertig0 Some of the battle scenes were laughable, very hollwood-styled. The scene with the dug in Tiger vs the Shermans was very hard to watch for example, those shermans wouldn't stand a chance
It’s insane how much fuel, ammo and planes were needed for stuff like this daily
That's true. The RUclips channel WW2TV did a show about the effort to supply the bomber bases took up a large percentage of British rail capacity during the war.
The carbon footprint is… big
11:30 😂
From my reading of the books by Donald Caldwell (the excellent JG26 unit histories, plus his books about the LW vs the daylight bomber offensive), it turns out that, regardless of the losses inflicted against the 8th AAF, the next day the bombers and their escorts would be back again just as strong and sometimes even stronger than before. It was 'relentless'.
@@nickmitsialis True industrial might
I'm a 51 year old who has read and studied history, especially the period around the two world wars, for 30 years now. I've often thought that the Luftwaffe pilots were the first ones to know for certain that there was no way for Germany to win the war. Even when the Nazi's had the upper hand on the ground, the situation in the air was already turning against them and that was FAR earlier than 1944. No matter how many planes they shot down, there never seemed to be any noticeable drop in the eyes of German pilots. And the sheer number of bombers in the air was a demoralizing sight for any German.
america was in war time production they were producing more planes, tanks and vehicles then they could operate themselves.
The German military officers knew there was no way to win from the outset. They knew they couldn’t out-manufacture the United States.
They had no long-range bombers that could reach the United States to attack the manufacturing industry.
They also knew that they had no practical way of invading the United States. 🤓
When you have hundreds of air kills and they keep throwing more at you, you have to start to wonder...
@@bradenhagen7977you talking now about Red Army Air Force?
@@si2fooThat’s going to be China when our politicians March is into WW3.
February 22, 1944….during “Big Week” my namesake Uncle was on one of 45 8th Air Force bombers shot down. No one in his crew survived.
I wonder if you could find the details of your uncles flight and find out what happened.
"....my namesake Uncle" So many of the friends and classmates of our generation were named for uncles who didn't come home.
It broke his Mother & Father’s heart@@stevewilson5292
After WW2 there was a massive records fire at Military records~ St. Louis a considerable amount was lost. @@garygenerous8982
@@jakemocci3953you area fool. Get off the internet for today champ.
This is the only channel that I watch where the presentation and narration is so good that I regularly rewind to hear portions again, just because it was so amazing to hear what was said.
Check out the channels shouted out by this one, along with The History Guy
I record my screen 👍🇿🇦
Greetings from Regensburg, reasonable good aim by the USAAF and lack of RAF night bombing left us with on of the few remaining medival city centers in Germany. Now a UNESCO world heritage site. The Messerschmitt factory was eventually wiped out anyway. Today there is a park and a public bath.
Greetings from Bananada. We have Hitler number 2 now...Trudeau
Despite fascism in the U.S., we hope the years since 1945 have mutually beneficial and the cooperation of the former warring countries have brought peace and prosperity to 3 to 4 generations of citizens. In the Netherlands, 3 generations of Dutch families have preserved the cemeteries of American soldiers while Donald Trump have ridiculed our Allies. We hope the presence of US, although needing nuclear weapons to counter the massive forces of adversaries, has brought deterrence so our European allies do not suffer like Ukraine.
@@tonymanero5544 Fascism has not come to the US. There are many, many Americans who support Ukraine. We do have a fair number of lunatics in Congress who are getting too much media time. Although democracy can be messy, it is superior to the systems of autocratic states like Russia, China and Iran. One day, those countries will also be democracies. Time is on our side. Thank you for honoring American war dead.
@@tonymanero5544 You are a lunatic, fascism isn't growing in the United States. Most of the people agreeing with Trump are simply tired of our military allies refusing to pull their own weight.
Does anyone know the two B-17s shot down by Knoke and his wingman featured in this video? My very good Friend was shot down Feb 22 over Bielefeld from a formation of B-17s that had trouble forming up. They missed their fighter escort and were only about 45 strong, elements of the 381st and 91st. He was flying in "coffin corner" in a B-17 flown by Francis Flaherty named "Friday the 13th". This whole video lines up with his account and that of the most recent historical account of the 8th air force, and I'd love to know if Knoke shot him down. My friend is 99 years old and going strong. I'm sure he'd love to know who did it!
Excellent question!
Certainly sounds plausible to me!
Find out where he landed with his parachute. Look at the landscape where they fly over in this clip. One city is named, so you should be able to tell just about where those two planes were shot down. Also the way they were attacked, the spin of the first aircraft, and maybe he saw how his plane crashed while floating down, maybe he can remember if it was a field or a forest?
These guys put in so much details, if everything is correct, it should be possible to find it out
Send your 99er friend greetings from a son of a Hauptmann from Division Grossdeutschland. My father die 2017 with 96,5. He teach me what means fight with honor and humanity, also in wartimes!!! Never forget it, also when your enemy fight without it!! You can lose the fight but you save your soul!!!
Interesting! Did you find out?
In the late 1990s, I worked with a lady named Doris in Las Vegas. She was a waitress in her mid 70s. She grew up in Germany and remembers foraging for edible roots and wild vegetables with her mother and sister in the woods near her home in between Allied bombing raids during the war. Wild stuff.
War is hell. For both sides. A lesson we seem to be forgetting as time passes
@@davidhochstetler4068 "War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and imposes the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to make it."-Benito Mussolini
Peaceniks stay losing.
My mother and her family came from Berlin and before Pomerania. My mom told me they were so hungry a piece of bread 🍞 with butter 🧈 tasted like cake. They were so utterly starving, my oma had to cook potatoes in floor wax. I am not Making this shit up. My mother's maiden name was Weimann and thot to be jews and came with in a hair of being sent to the death camps. Hitler was a total maniac.
@@natowaveenjoyer9862And you are sure to live up to those words if the bullets start flying?
Or are you more a would-be fascist, because deep inside you know you don't have what it takes?
Maybe stop bragging, take a deep breath, smile, stop hating and start loving and living.
@@natowaveenjoyer9862
And you quoted a loser to make your point.
the diary quotes hit hard, counting the friends you have left on one hand - knowing your fight is a losing battle
If you turn off your screen and just listen, you can feel every detail of the story
I wonder why there isn't a operations podcast yet
They could name it The Operations Radio
@@pestolinguine7281 Sounds like what civilians would hear during broadcast in those times.
its insane how "young" these senior/veteran/ace airmen/sailors/soldiers are during the war. when i was 22 im still sitting in my couch eating chips at 2am lol...i've done nothing
Can you imagine what a thousand bombers and escorts would look like from the ground? A THOUSAND! I mean, I know a lot had to turn back because of mechanical issues, and they did split up to different targets but you get my point. Seeing hundreds of bombers flying overhead to their targets would be wild. One of my favorite depictions of watching bombers fly overhead on the way to their targets is actually in the movie Fury.
It's always super interesting to hear any stories from a non allied perspective.
Just finished the Intel Video about the development of the long range escorts😊
"Theo, I've just used all my ammunition. I'm going to ram. Good bye. See you in Valhalla." - Heinrich Ehrler
Yeah buddy, see you in Valhalla. It's going to be quite a day!
Hero
@@jakemocci3953 A great warrior.
An episode that is especially interesting for me as I grew up in Wunstorf. After the war the airbase had been in use for some years by the RAF. It played a major role in the Berlin airlift. Nowadays it is used by the German Bundesluftwaffe.
Your detailed and fantastic narration with straight forward illustrations are a joy to watch. Thanks.
This is one of the best historical channels on battles out there. You guys are incredibly detailed with the names, positions, timing, and visuals more than any other channel that I have seen. You also stay very neutral and factual, keeping as unbiased as possible. Keep up the great work!
1:30 A corporal trained as a fighter pilot. Unreal.
If anyone is curious, the song in the background is called "Expectancy" by Purple Planet.
Everyone finding this spread the word on other videos on both channels.
Super fascinating, love the different way of looking at it from the German point of you
Thanks for the video bud. Outstanding presentation
I really hate to piss on party's, or beautifully crafted maps in this case, but that big island in the middle of the Netherlands (the Flevopolder) did not yet exist by this time. It hadn't been build yet.
-1 point for historical accuracy.
+162 points for the rest of this well made and greatly informative video.
Thank you for making it.
👍🏻
The whole map was a modern map
@@Shloomy_Shloms undoubtedly true. But this was the difference I noticed. It would be quite neat if actual WW2 army maps were used 'hint hint'
@@De_Wit yeah, would be pretty cool, they usually do pretty historically accurate maps for the ground battles at least
Thank you for adding this perspective from the side of the Luftwaffe. Patriotism, war weariness and sadness are the same on both sides.
I enjoy these aerial focussed videos a lot. Would you guys be interested in covering one of the RAF Circus missions from 41/42? I've spent a fair while researching these and could put together squadron level info on the missions and include pilot reports, so perhaps I could help.
Heinz Knoke wrote a book, "I flew For The Fuhrer", first published in 1953. I found a copy in a secondhand store. I recommend it to anyone interested in the Luftwaffe. It details his first entry into service until the very end and includes this battle. Fascinating.
Your videos are amazing. You deserve every single subscriber, I can't wait for you to reach 1 million subscribers!
Excellent video!
My family is from the area. I remember my grandmas cousin telling me of the day he as a small boy saw an allied bomber going down near their village near Wunstorf. He and his cousin ran out to the fields to see it and saw several parachutes. Villagers with pitchforks and other agricultural tools went out to go after the bailed crew. Many of them had sheltered there with relatives and friends, fleeing the bombing in the cities, as my grandmas cousin himself.
I wonder if that was one of the aircraft mentioned in this video.
It's eerie to have part of the war reconstructed like this in an area you grew up in.
love these videos man
Thanks for a terrific video!
My great uncle was involved in this , he was a flight Sargent, rear turret gunner for a Lancaster bomber, he was shot down over stuggart , he made the drop but he's squad mates were captured and put in labor camps (most survived)
I should probably add im Australian
My dad comes from Stuttgart. That is where my grandparents lived.
It'd be interesting to make the siege of Jadotville
My grandfather was in Bomber Command with the RCAF. Flew 33 missions. Thanks for this (and all your work)
My grandfather (dutch national) and his entire class died when the allies decided to bomb a occupied civil target in the Nijmegen.
800 dutch civillians died, less then 10 nazis died and no millitary impact was achieved. Not even the goal they had (disrupt train logistics) was achieved.
@@detachsoup6061yeah, would have been great if the Nazis didn't start a world war huh
Missed the first few sentences... but i know that airfield from sight and layout alone.
Fliegerhorst Wunstorf.
That's where I live, that's where my grandmother had a house on the base, and my aunt played on the railway tracks and the train had to stop (as i were told ;).
One relied upon courage, the other on production.
danke für die arbeit!
After finding your channel i have bing watched every episode at this point. I was a big fan of History shows such as Dogfights and Shootout years ago. If i may there are two stories i think you will enjoy. The story of Old 666 a bomber taken out for recon and harassed by more than 2 dozen fighters and making it back. the other is D-day. I was hoping you could do a multiple series of D-day like you did for iwo jima. It can really be amazing and informative. otherwise keep up with the great content.
My Grandfather flew Consolidateds during the war. He used to tell me stories of the Clouds, and the lines that the planes drew against the sky. He was shot down over France in 1944, and he never spoke of his time on the Ground in Occupied Territory. He Survived of course, but we've no idea how.
After he passed in 2018, we found an OLD German Pistol tucked away on a John Deer Model Tractor box. It was an FL Selbstelader, and the SN. dated it back to 1914.
My point was, that B-24 shown at the end of the Clip, could have very well been my Grandfather. I won't ever truly know, as I can't find much about his Service. But I'm glad to have known him, and as much of his story as he was willing to Share.
Hello there, Cheers from Northeast of Scotland.
Its 22 February 2024 and the events in this video during Big Week happened exactly 80 years ago today!
Heinz Knoke wrote a book about his days in the Luftwaffe from pre-WWII to the end. IT gives a very good insight into what his experience was like.
Love the channel! Would love a video on the Cologne tank battle between the Pershing and the Panther!
Actually, someone on one of the WWII sites did a video on that battle. I think it was WWII TV.
Sad week for Wherbs
They will celebrate the last stand of their heroes,the thermopylae at 25000 feet,blah,blah,blah...
Thank you for this dimond of a video.
Corporal rank pilots? Wow, I thought being a Sargent as a pilot was being cheap by the military. Love the animated history, thanks!
Best history channel on youtube
One side loses over 450 vs 64 human casualties and considers it a positive outcome. Definitely an unequal contest from the start.
That was just a small example. The Luftwaffe was crippled in early 44.
Not just about airmen casualties. How much damage was done to the infrastructure?
As crude and heartless as it sounds, the B-17 gun crews were rather expendable, for the Allied war effort.
(the pilots, navigator, and probably bombadier needed more training and were thus bigger losses)
But German fighter pilots were even more... precious
Gotta love the Geography and Cartography nerds coming out of the woodwork to comment on the Map. I love you guys keep up the good work 😂
A true display of honor, fighting, even though you know you'll lose.
I would love to see a video from this channel on the Sonderkommando Elbe, basically Germany's equivalent to the Japanese Kamikaze except that these guys were all volunteers which makes their story even more amazing. The channel Yarnhub should have a video on it.
5/36, fuck man. I don't know how any of their pilots kept going up.
Fascinating.
Nice, great to have abit of backstory to that gun-cam video it's mad he literally parks his 109 20ft behind the bomber and shreds it
Awesome! Please animate "Butler's Battlin' Blue Bastards!"
Everytime OR says "however", my attention peaks.
Those odds... Can't help but feel bad for the guys, how the survived is miraculous
TY 🙏🙏
Love the new animation
It's just a preference thing but I think you perfected maps with the Iwo Jima series
Those looked great, converted information, and were easy to read. Personally liked more then this new take
Still a great video though!
I love when I put on an Operations Room video while I’m playing Call of War and their sponsor is CoW 😩
Man I would love to see a video covering operation market garden. To learn more in detail on exactly what happened and why it failed in "the operation room" style.
Have you ever done a video about Ye Old Pub and Franz Stigler? That would be awesome!
Heinz Knoke! Sounds like a large breasted baked bean.
Love the videos ✌
It was the OIL CAMPAIGN that devastated the Luftwaffe. Once the Allies started bombing synthetic oil plants, refineries, & depots en masse; not as many planes, tanks, or trucks could move as far, fast, or often. The Luftwaffe had to use livestock, bicycles, ground crews, slave labor, or POW’s to taxi aircraft during takeoffs & landings. Had the oil campaign started earlier (such as oil targets instead of aircraft factories during Big Week); perhaps there would have been no fuel left for Operation Bodenplatte, nor for the Ardennes or Alsace counteroffensives.
09:20 its feel like an hopeless battle at this point
@TheOperationsRoom
How do you guys make the graphics in your video??
Can you do a video about Omaha Beach landing or a video about Operation Overlord during WWII? That would be a great video!
Do we get a big week series?
Love your videos, i do hope that you take this as constructive criticism.
Please can you focus on one topic at a time.
When you did the Big Week day one video, I was looking forward to the follow up.
The videos have been jumping all over the place since (all good videos) but could you please give them to us topic by topic.
i feel an immense amount of dread watching this video. its hard to explain.
My takeaway is that the P-47 Jug was maneuverable enough to dog a Me-109 to where escape was considered lucky by the German pilot. Not bad for a plane that was closer to a Mitchell than a Mustang in size.
The P-47 was the most versatile fighter of WWII, an absolute marvel of engineering. It was excellent both as an air superiority fighter and as a ground support weapon. And it was built like a tank. The pilots loved them.
Many of the Me 109g had extra 20 mm or rocket tubes under the wings because of the weak armament of the standard Me109 . 1 20mm cannon and 2 7.92 machine guns .The Germans tried to up gun the Me 109 to be more effective against American bombers but the added guns or rocket tubes affected speed and manoeuvrability against American fighters .
The Fw 190 was a far more effective bomber destroyer with its heavy armament but suffer ed from poor high altitude performance from its BMW radial engine .
5 vs 289… the bravery (or ignorant bravado for some of the young ones maybe) of those pilots CANNOT be undersold
is the footage heinz knocke captured of him taking down a bomber the one that went sorta viral on reddit maybe a month or two ago? it was literally footage of an axis pilot gunning down what seemed to be a bomber, expertly targetting the fuel tanks/wings. if so, the footage he recorded is on reddit somewhere
Pretty good effort here. But the Bf-109G was not really outclassed by the P-51 and the late model Gs and model Ks remained competitive till the end of the war. What the Luftwaffe no longer had by 1944 was pilot quality, with few quality pilots left (like Knoke) and too many novices (like his wingman Kruger). Also, pitting a mere 5/4 Bf-109s against numerous - and competent - Allied fighters is just not going to end well and it's amazing they survived.
The 109 G6 was quite outclassed by P51s and P47s with 150 octane fuel especially at 25kft+. The G14 couldn't really use its MW50 that high and there were not enough K4s.
@@rring44It sorta depends what you mean by outclassed, but you're right in this case, the Mustangs have a big advantage at 25k+ in speed over the 109s, especially with 150 octane.
The quantity of quality pilots though is what makes the biggest difference. The rookie allied pilots chasing them enjoyed far more flight time than the rookie German corporal did, and being outnumbered by orders of magnitude makes more of a difference than any details of relative plane performance could.
The map is wrong, it's from 1970. Flevoland in The Netherlands didn't exist yet during WW2.
To be so outnumbered and still fly, what is effectively a losing task, displays some raw courage.
I for one, admire their tenacity in the face of almost certain death.
I doubt whether any of the aircrew, on either side, were very old at the time.
Now we have Putin, pursuing the same folly, of sending young men needlessly to their deaths. All for some mad dream of conquest.
We also have the us government doing the same.
@@janitorizampedlmao
None of those evil Nazis had courage. They were nothing but murders.
@@janitorizamped Where? Since Afghanistan all our boys have been home
@@tonedeaftachankagaming457 a quick Google search tells me: Yemen, Somalia, Syria, and there's over 7000 soldiers still in Afghanistan.
Damn…. I feel kinda bad for the kid who got shot down in the first sortie, but such is the way of war.
46 bombers doesn’t sound like a lot until you realize each bomber had 10 men in them.
The USAAF lost more men than the Marine Corp.
That is saying something.
The Audiobook Duel Under the Stars: The Memoir of a Luftwaffe Night Pilot in World War II by Wilhelm Johnen comes and goes on RUclips. Search and if it's available listen while you can. James Holland does a forward in the latest version and it's truly remarkable. I just found Audiobook I Flew for the Führer: The Memoirs of a Luftwaffe Fighter Pilot by Heinz Knoke, the pilot mentioned in this vid. It's been available for 2 weeks, so like me listen quick before it goes. No matter how brave the Luftwaffe pilots were (and they were) my emotion and gratitude stays firmly with The Great Generation inside the bombers. 👍🇿🇦
Reminds me of the scene from the movie Fury
I kinda wonder if his gun camera footage from that fight survived the war.
I have a nitpick - the sun in the video is shining from the north, since the shadows are cast towards the bottom of the screen 😉
During the last days of ww2 there was a german fighterpilot that "happened" to damage his aircraft during take of so that he could stay on the ground instead of dying in a pointless battle in the air.
Smart man
My local museum has a Zero with a similar story... the pilot was assigned for kamikaze duty, but his ground crew managed to slow down their repairs long enough that the war ended before the plane was ready.
Calle of war es un juego muy bueno
I read he would tell his squadron that if they shot a man in a parachute he would shot them.
10:30 Even though the USAAF was better positioned to replace its losses than the Luftwaffe it is not clear to me that the German loss of 64 fighters was "even more costly" to them than the American loss of 45 bombers and 465 aircrew.
Oh
Battle of Walong...hurry hurry. So many stories left
Wondering when was the 11:33 photo taken. Dude definitely doesnt look like in his early/mid twenties.
it looks like Africa the heat will make you look 10 years older, that and the war
Germany never run out of planes.
They run out of pilots and fuel.
takes a couple around 200 days to make a plane, but it takes 18 years to make a pilot
Every man that flew in a B17 was a hero.
Him being airborne or on the ground? Couse its kind of ...important I guess.
Please lead book "I flew for de Fuhrer".
Heinz Knoke.
Greetings.
1:00
Sisyphus memes incoming.
I remember reading a realistic comic book about the Battle of Britain, with a squadron of just 12 Hurricanes up against hundreds of German bombers.
"Lay All Your Love On Me"