Mustangs and the Battle for Supremacy

The History Channel, original podcast In nineteen forty two and into nineteen forty three, hundreds of thousands of Americans descend on the east of England to live, fight, and maybe die in the joint effort to defeat Nazi Germany from the air twenty five thousand feet and three hundred miles per hour has never been attempted before. physical, mental, and emotional challenges will be unique Vistory in World War I will be largely determined by who controls the skies. The German Luftwaffe where the Allied Air Forces This is World War two with Tom Hanks Episode twelve battle for the skies een forty two The Thd Reich is building elaborate coastal defenses in Europe As they continue to battle the Soviets in the east The Germans know that it's only a matter of time before Britain and America attack from the West fromrom the English Channel to the plains of Russia Germany controls most of Europe Hitler has turned Europe into an apparently impregnable fortress. But as people said at the time, yes, but he forgot to put a roof over it And the Allied bombers are going to take advantage of that In the First World War Both sides bombed each other. to little effect But as aviation evolves A new concept of warfare develops in the nineteen twenties and thirties Strategic bombing It's proponents are a group of officers from the U. S. Air Corps Teactnical School They come to be known as Bomber Barons The theory is We'll use this novel weapon in a novel way notot to attack the enemy's armies to attack the enemy's homeland his factories, his infrastructure, destroying his economy and thus making it impossible for the enemy to make war These air power advocates say this is a better way to fight war No need for that horrible trench deadlock of World War One That's the old way The new way is strategic bombing East Anglia is The endion of the middle church is Hedges, fields Medieval buildings It's turned into one gigantic Aircraft carrier in the spring of nineteen forty two. The U.S eighth Air Force begins construction on dozens of air bases transansforming a quiet corner of East England. and to one of the most vital fronts of the entire Second World War It's flat. Perfect for airfields So you get this massive, massive influx of American bombers. carrying the most destructive weapons ever produced. And just as strikingly Young American amman All had grown up dreaming of flying above the clouds at over three hundred miles per hour somethingomething their parents and grandparents could never imagine. And all of a sudden Here's this opportunity The English used to complain They're oversexed. They're overpaid And they're over here The Royal Air Force has been striking the German homeland for two years Stay gof off your bo Hker Bill ever Prime Minister Winston Churchill understands how important such raids are for British morale the RAF pays a grievous cost. And in these early months of the war, there were raids with hardly any aircraft coming back And the most important lesson they took away from it is that daytime bombing was a very hazardous thing to undertake Harris is the man put in charge of Britain's bomber command And it's his idea to switch to night bombing To use night as a cloak these bombber forces so that they can drop their bombs and they have a better chance of making it home So what they're doing is merely area bombing They're flying over German cities at night and letting loose their bomb los And that means Civilian casualties There's a lot of retribution in this British trathorship Blitz had smashed British cities and factories in the winter of nineteen forty forty one Brit's plan to smash German society so badly that it knocks them out of the war They saved the wind And now They are going to reap the whirlwind Meeting in Casablanca President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and their staff strategize how to continue the Allied assault on the Third Reich. One of the major outcomes the Casablanca confonference is the Allies declared unconditional surrender as their war aim But something else happens at Casablanca as well argument on air strategy between the British and Americans The U.S. Army Air Force particularly its commander, General Henry Haap Arnold. insists that daylight precision bombing on critical wartime industries will be more effective And as so often in World War II American expectations come up against British experience Churchill is going to go to FDR and tell him that, look Your daylight precision sty, it's not going to work We tried it. It didn't work. That's why we are doing bombing operations at night And that is the way forward Well, Half Arlock gets wind to this Arnold's a pioneer in aviation by the right brothers how to fly and he is a believer in strategic air power. And when the British say, hey, you guys should bomb at night just like we do And he says, no, no. air power could be used in a better way. The American plan rests on a cutting edge device The Nordan bombs site The Nordon Bombbsite is an analog computer punch in various data Wind speed Altitude Wind direction, air pressure And it correlates all those things together and tells you exactly when to drop the bomb According to the advertising slogans, it can drop a bomb in a pickle barrel teen thousand feet Americans claim the Nordan bomb site which requires daylight and clear weather promises greater precision And therefore, fewer civilian casualties So Henry Arnold and his advisors come up with this plan comombined bomber offensive, which means the British bombing at night and the Americans bombing precision targets during the day The Americans are going to sell it as this round the clock bombing And this utterly appeals to Churchill with the idea that his adversary will never catch a break atttacking an enemy from twenty five thousand feet presents unique challenges Temperatures dip below minus fifty degrees Fahrenheit If an airman's supply of oxygen is cut off for more than sixty seconds die. You look out the window as a crewman on a B seventeen and you begin to see black puffs And they might not look too dangerous until one actually makes contact The most infamous German weapon of them all was the Flak eighty eight Millimeter gun It's capable of sending twenty nine pound explosive projectiles To altitudes approaching thirty thousand feet The dilemma with fllack is you can't maneuver to avoid it So the best you can do is sit tight And grit your teeth Once the flag stops There's silence It's a deathly silence because they know what's coming. There's four of them one o'clock high German fighter pilots are seasoned combat veterans Many of them have hundreds of kills because they've been engaging this war since nineteen thirty nine The best way to kill a German fighter is to send Allied fighters to shoot them down But when the United States starts to bomb Germany properly their fighters don't have the range to be able to escort bombers all the way to a target. So the B seventeen is whistling with machine guns around the fuselage of the aircraft. ing's nine o'clock coming around Itide at six o'clock up coming in There really is a flying fortress Bomber crews were these interdependent societies in which every person was dependent upon the person sitting next to them and the person sitting behind them Breaking it alone, brereaking it lone. I got him P seventeen out of A few miles from the actual target bomber will start what's called the bomb run It's all done visually You have to hold altitude, hold air speed, and hold headings so the bomb and air can dial in on the Nordan bomb site Because if you don't hit the target, You gott to come back again War sometimes breaks down to individual moments of terror. You're watching other planes being literally blown out of the sky And you have to drop the bombs with precision. and then make it out again on the way home In combat conditions, The accuracy of the Nordan Bomb site is not as precise as the Air Force predicted The casualties are greater than they feared Missions would come back with ten, twenty percent losses Of course, the pilots are highly trained highighly technical people that are very difficult to replace. No one in history has ever tried strategic bombing on this scale before As generals and strategists and air marshals are working out the future of air war These manag guinea pigs Mission by mission, the eighth Air Force slowly develops the methods needed to damage their intended targets. Adolf Hitler's attention remains fixed on his battle with the Soviets He had seen the German losses back in nineteen forty when the Luftwaffe was attacking England. And to him, it looked like strategic air power doesn't win wars. ground forces win wars So Hitler's viewpoint about an air Force is that it exists The ground troops With the laoss at Stalingrad? including the capture of his entire sixth Army Theother is focused on the eastern Font At the Allied raaids, do alarm Luftwaffe air Marshal Herman Ging Saring is hearing from his local and regional Lufaffa commanders that they really need more fighter aircraft But in a sense, Eering's trapped If he detaches air power from the easastern Front, a situation that is already critical is soon going to turn mortal So the Germans now are gonna streamline procedures and make things more efficient They start producing more aircraft more armaments in the middle of a combined bomber offensive. So from nineteen forty three on, there's an exponential increase in German industrial output and with German fighter production on the upswing The Allied government is becoming increasingly concerned and they're getting a little tired of hearing their airmen say, we can bring Germany to its knees when they don't see any evidence that that's true. In May, Churchill and Roosevelt meet to finalize plans in the Mediterranean They also commit to a cross channel invasion of France Since America came into the war They've had a strategy to land a gigantic force somewhere in Northwestern France driving straight into the heart of Germany codeenamed Operation Overlord The attack is scheduled for spring of the next year achieving air supremacy over occupied Europe is crucial to the success of the invasion. A this point, everybody recognizes amphibious operations can't happen unless you control the seas and have control of the air. So the top commanders all agree that the number one priority is destroying the luftwaffe And that means the bomber force is given the job of smashing the infrastructure of the Lfafe on the ground. so that when the Allies land on D day and in the ground fighting that follows There'll be no German aircraft interfering The RAF and the eighth Air Force join efforts for what they term Blitz Week taxs on various cities across Germany Their first joint target is a busy port with dockyards, submarine pins, and manufacturing It's also home to over a million people. Hamberurg is a real center of aircraft production. So for the Americans, there's lots of specific military industrial targets they can attack Look at the types of housing there and they think they're very vulnerable to fire. So they going to burn? Neighborhoods Dhouse German people And that means workers are going to be killed Fories will grind to a halt. Supply chains will break down It's codenamed Operation Gomora After the Old Testament city there was destroyed by fire from above This is going to be eight days and seven nights of pounding the city of Hamburg. It's very carefully planned First there are high explosives to blow out windows, to blow out roofs to knock down buildings. And they'll drop in sendiies smaller bombs that just burn like firecrackers. And with these roof tiles gone, the wooden structure of the roofs is exposed and these little incendaries will land in those roofs and just set fires The British want revenge on Hamburg for the Blitz The Americans have been singing the strategic bombing song for years And now they can show the destructive nature of the combined bomber offensive. to wipe a city off the map Millions of Americans are looking for effective ways to manage their weight, but finding the right support can feel confusing and time consuming. Orderly Med offers a convenient online experience that connects you with licensed medical providers to explore GLP one treatment options from home. The process is simple Complete your information online, connect with a provider, and learn what options may be right for you. No waiting rooms, no complicated scheduling, just a modern streamlined experience designed around convenience Visit orderlymeds d. com slash podcasts to learn more today. That's orderlymeds dot com slash podcasts. Again, orderlymeds dot com slash podcasts. One more time, orderlymeds dot com slash podcasts Compounded medications are not FDA approved. resesults can vary. Consult a licensed healthcare provider to determine if treatment is appropriate for you. Restrictions apply. Sometimes historic events saought Well what shouldn't suck is learning about history I do that through storytelling History that doesnn't suck is a chart topping history telling podcast Chronicling the epic story of America decade by decade, from the eighteenth century to the twentieth. Original music and immersive sound design accompany us on our storytelling journey. Listen to and follow History That Don't Sck, an Odyssey podcast available now on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts in the summer of nineteen forty three Allied Air Forces launch Blitzweig. the largest series of raids on Germany to date The British and American Air Forces have supposedly been working together The British bombing by night, the US. by day. But they haven't been bombing the same target cities That changes in the summer of nineteen forty three. The Allies' first joint target is the city of Hongberur On the night of july twenty fourth, the raids begin They RAF drops incendiary bombs. But in the following days, American B seventeen ss are unable to hit their targets The Americans intended to bomb aircraft factories But the use of incendiaries created so much smoke The Nordan bombbs sites were essentially blinded They can't actually see their targets. So they're almost reduced to doing area bombing not unlike the British onn july twenty seventh a heat wave send temperatures soaring. as the RAF returns for a fourth night of strikes It's very hot, it's very dry. and the meteorological conditions are ripe for Firestorm This time, the fires burning so hot, the oxygen that these fires demand causes the windstorm Winds are over one hundred and fifty miles an hour The firestorm works a little bit like a blast furnace It's a localed weather system that will see that fire spread looking at the speed of a galloping horse a gigantic updraft results That robs people cowering in their shelters of oxygen and leads to death by asphyxiation. Temperatures go up to a thousand degrees Celsius It's the most devastating firestorm that's ever been created The stories are of people trying to run out of shelters children near them burning with their hands and feet stuck in melting asphalt, with the buildings falling down on top of them The city. of Hamburg Dvast Operation Gamora kills over forty thousand civilians Almost two thirds of the city's houses are burned to the ground leaving a million residents homeless Churchill is worried about the human cost of what they're doing He's worried about how history will look at him And there's a line from Churchill supposedly where he looks at some of the movies of Hamburg goes are we beasts The striking thing about air power Is it makes all of us combatants It's not just about the battlefield The battlefield is actually civilian population. destruction stuns Nazi high command One of Hitler's ministers tells him that Hamburg put the fear of God in mother refuses to visit the city or receive a delegation of civilians who had saved lives during the fire Hamburg is a shock to the entire German war effort. Charing has told Hitler repeatedly that he had this bomber problem under control And now here lies the second largest city in Germany. in ashes. accccounts of the bombing of Hamburg spread throughout Germany Hitler begins to transfer German fighter planes from the easastern Font and the Mediterranean The fatherland In addition The Germans ring their major cities with these gigantic, monumental flat towers one hundred and fifty feet tall, eleven foot thick concrete walls. Bistling with guns Not only are they highly effective against incoming bombers Guns barking, the sound and fury remind the people that Hitler is looking out for them in Britain B bigig disagreement at the time with how the raid on Hamburg goes Paris' point of view that this is a war winning strategy if you hit people hard enough You can cause a breakdown of their will to fight. But for Arnold Homberg was not a success It proved the inefficiency of area bombing He wants to strike precise targets, the factories that are keeping the Luftwafe in the air Henry Arnold thinks strategic bombing can work We just need to do it harder The combined American British raid on Hamburg levels a city but does little to destroy the Luftwaffe before the invasion of Europe By August of nineteen forty three The eighth Air Force is receiving enough planes and personnel to launch the large formations required to decimate German aircraft production bomber barren theory is about to be put into practice What is keeping the loof off in the air are the factories behind it That's what Arnold wants to strike And he thinks the way to do that is to double down on daylight precision bombing. More planes, more raids, more attacks on the same target. until the Germans break Arnold now demands maximum effort from the eighth Air Force Normally, there are planes that are being worked on or repaired or air crew that are resting, so that every now and then they get a day off. But now when you go maximum effort It means you put everything in the air every time. Previously, around ninety V seventeens would fly each mission But that number will soon double and triple. The Americans are obsessed with this view of the German economy as a series of interconnected pubs and spokes So if they hit the right domino, they'll all come down These are called bottleneck industries Industries where just a few plants and locations control all the production. Bombing bottleneck targets seems to be a more efficient use of your air force. One big raid, one factory destroyed, a crucial sector of the German war economy crippled probably the most consequential bottleneck industry With regards to the Luuffwaffe Ball bearings Anything that moves needs a ball bearing, anythingy that turns needs a ball bearing. including German aircraft engines Propellers turning, landing, wheels And also all the machines and machinery that build those products So it's a twofer On august seventeenth, one year to the day from their first attack on occupied Europe The eighth Air Force launches a dual raid The first strike on Reaggensburg is meant to draw off German fighters so that the rest of the force can hit the primary target. Germany's largest ball bearing factory inchweinfurord Three weeks later, the eighth strikes another plant in Stutgart In these raids alone, the eighth loses nearly a hundred planes and a thousand crew killed or captured Bulbearing production is interrupted but only temporarily The Allies are always surprised at how rapidly the Germans rebuild their cities and factories They do so with this almost inexhaustible supply of slave labor. Prisoners of war in the hundreds of thousands They're barely fed. When one dies, they can be simply discarded and another one put in their place. Forced laborers from occupied countries are ordered by the Nazis to reconstruct German factories. They also dispersed the German aircraft industry so that it can't be taken out in any one strike because it's not all in one place And they put it underground They use old salt mines They use old quarries Now you can't hit it. Now you can't bomb it. There is nothing you can do because you can't bomb a facility when it's underground ultimately means German aircraft production will continue to increase By the fall of nineteen forty three The eighth Air Force is bombing targets deep inside the Reich and returning to ones they've already hit in early October. They fly a series of maximum effort raids including a second strike on the pllanted Scheinford. all in a single week There is a limit to how much the human psyche can take And on many occasions, bomber crews reached that limit If you're five miles up and you're braving death every second Fighters flack, fighters flack and adrenaline rush overloading your nervous system. And then you land And it's quiet You're back at a base in East Anglia. Do you have a hot meal You sleep in a comfortable bed And then maybe you do it again tomorrow M more fighters, M Fack. You'd think you were gonna die ten times in the course of this bomb raid And that night you'd be drrinking Scotch with a couple of friends at the commommissary It was almost impossible to reconcile the longer you did it you would become more and more aware of how vulnerable you were By the end of the month The eighth Air Force has endured horrific losses The men call it Black October But if you're an American airman, you have a twenty percent chance of being killed on any mission you undertake One in five That is forbidding Matt addding to that They don't appear to be having an appreciable impact on the German war effort. leading to an incipient collapse of Airman Morale. They start to see the losses around him and go We're just gonna fly until we're dead The series of American raids in Black October shows the cost of daytime precision bombing The losost rates The limitations of the Nordan bomb site, the weather, all these things play in a factor in how ineffective the bombing campaign is in nineteen forty three You could easily say that the Luftwaffe still don'ed disguise over Germany In de late fall Bad weather forces the eighth Air Force to suspend missions. giving ground crews the winter to patch battered planes But the RAF launches its largest campaign yet A sustained assault on Berlin These are going to be massive raids, sixteen of them in the heart of Germany The British goal over Berlin is to destroy German morale. That's the way to beat Germany, not to destroy individual factories. Haris thinks these Berlin raids will cost four to five hundred bombers cost Germany the war The RAF winter raids to Berlin pushed the limit and stamina of British air crerews with modest results Paris is presently accurate They lose four hundred to five hundred aircraft and almost five thousand airmen The Berlin bombing campaign is an epic effort But unfortunately, an epic failure Both air Forces are finding their plans are not corresponding with reality They're having almost no impact on the Luftwaffe at all They're simply getting more of their planes shot down and more of their crewmen killed or captured After months of heavy losses The eighth Air Force is at a crossroads. Arnold realizes the bombers can't do it alone If he wants these bombers to make a difference in this war, he's got to send fighters to the target with them The Allied air Forces have The P thirty eight lightning P fortyven Vunerable Absolutely excellent fighter aircraft. capable of dog fighting just about as well as anything else in the sky They only had one limitation and that was rage the time Aeronautical engineers believed having an aircraft that could fly almost a thousand miles. into Germany and back withith enough firepower, enough maneuverability, enough engine power is an engineering impossibility But a new fighter is already being produced by the United States for the British The P fifty one Mpang. And the Brits test fly it and they go Thanks It's okay Below fifteen thousand feet, it's fine but we're looking for something higher altitude Th' we get the idea of putting aolls Royce Merlin engine in this thing. So you have a British made engine American airframe made it together and it's gangbusters That's when it turns into this magical machine. It's fast. it flies high It's so efficient that it could escort a bomber all the way to downtown Berlin and back. It's the equivalent or better than anything the Germans have The Americans and British are allies. But in many ways, they've been working at cross purposes, especially in the air campaign Now The U. S. and British war efforts come together to produce an aircraft that is greater than the sum of its parts It's the embodiment of the Anglo American Coalition in World War I P fifty one is a game changer But it requires mind you an entire rehing of American aerial doctrine planners realize that if they threaten targets that are essential to the German war efforts and they force the Germans to send up fighters to protect those targets, K fifty one s can pounce and shoot them down The Allies have started out thinking B seventeen will destroy the German Air Force on the ground By early nineteen forty four, They realized that P fifty one is going to destroy the German Air Force in the air Knowing that command of the air is crucial to the upcoming cross channel invasion Allied Air Forces launch Operation arrgument a five day series of bombing raids over major German cities This is the critical hour for the combined bomber offensive Because the Allies now know that they're approaching the time for the D day landings. They need to draw up the Luftwaffe so that the P fifty one can destroy it in the skise The plan is to send thousands of bombers Knowing that the Luftwaffae will have no choice but to send everything it has up in the skies to defend the homeland So in a way, the bombers are the bait Fitted with extra fuel tanks, the P fifty one mustustangs capable of penetrating deep into Germany Their primary mission has been protecting the bombers Now They're ordered to actively pursue German fighters. even if it leaves the formations vulnerable The mission of the American fighters is to be aggressive after the Luhwafa in the air to kill them. any way, shape or form Operation argument known as Big Week begins a battle of attrition between the Allied Air Forces and the Luftwaffe The success of the upcoming invasion hangs in the balance. United States is going lose about a quarter of the eighth Air Force in that fight The Germans are going to lose about a third of their fighter force And eighteen percent of their fighter pilots This is something the Allies can sustain The Germans cannot From the U. S. perspective This is a war economy that is churning out hundreds and hundreds of heavy bombers every day of the year. Young men are signing up in droves And so the cold blooded calculation is that no matter how heavy US losses are America can replace its planes and pilots The month after big week American fighters down more German planes over Europe than in the previous two years The Luftwaffe is being destroyed in the air and on the ground It's really this symbiosis Mustangs, they're killing German fighters, which means the bombers can now be more accurate which means they're doing a better job of attacking The German aircraft industry It's a cycle that's destroying the Lufwaffe By june nineteen forty four, there are few experienced Luftwaffe pilots Left alive By by the time the D day comes, the Allies own the air. That's why you see very few Luftwaffa fighters over the beaches of Normy on june sixth, nineteen forty four. Control of the air is decisively established The Luftwaffe will be incapable of opposing the upcoming Allied invasion But again, The cost is high. Fewer than a quarter of British and American bomber crews survive the campaign The tragedy of the Air warar is that the bomber crews were essentially testing out an unproven theory