1 00:00:06,773 --> 00:00:10,977 I still get the same reaction when I see a B-17. 2 00:00:11,845 --> 00:00:14,414 But isn't that a beautiful aircraft? 3 00:00:15,148 --> 00:00:16,783 It's like a piece of sculpture. 4 00:00:18,184 --> 00:00:21,554 And it's lovely in the air when your wheels are up. 5 00:00:27,600 --> 00:00:29,290 When you flew in formation... 6 00:00:32,899 --> 00:00:35,502 sometimes with a thousand aircraft... 7 00:00:37,904 --> 00:00:40,373 it was a very beautiful and dramatic sight. 8 00:00:42,642 --> 00:00:45,110 [Hanks] In the cold, blue skies over Europe, 9 00:00:45,545 --> 00:00:47,213 a new kind of combat was fought 10 00:00:47,213 --> 00:00:51,217 in an environment that had never been experienced before. 11 00:00:51,851 --> 00:00:54,888 It was a singular event in the history of warfare. 12 00:00:54,888 --> 00:00:58,692 Unprecedented and never to be repeated. 13 00:01:09,235 --> 00:01:11,738 Airmen from 40 American bomber groups 14 00:01:11,738 --> 00:01:15,542 bled and died in staggering numbers in air combat. 15 00:01:16,420 --> 00:01:19,446 One of these groups, hyperaggressive and undisciplined, 16 00:01:19,446 --> 00:01:23,650 suffered so many casualties in such a short period of time 17 00:01:23,650 --> 00:01:26,453 it became known as the Bloody Hundredth. 18 00:01:29,656 --> 00:01:32,926 [crowd cheering, whistling] 19 00:01:32,926 --> 00:01:34,427 [Hitler speaking German] 20 00:01:43,403 --> 00:01:45,238 [crowd cheering] 21 00:01:45,772 --> 00:01:47,974 [reporter 1] Germany has invaded Poland. 22 00:01:47,974 --> 00:01:52,112 In a big attack, about nine o'clock, Warsaw itself was bombed. 23 00:01:56,883 --> 00:02:00,120 [reporter 2] The German army invaded Holland and Belgium early this morning 24 00:02:00,120 --> 00:02:02,822 by land and from parachutes 25 00:02:06,760 --> 00:02:08,795 [Churchill] You ask, what is our policy? 26 00:02:08,795 --> 00:02:12,132 It is to wage war by sea, land and air. 27 00:02:12,132 --> 00:02:16,803 To wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed 28 00:02:16,803 --> 00:02:20,940 in the dark and lamentable catalog of human crime. 29 00:02:24,644 --> 00:02:26,646 [Roosevelt] If Great Britain goes down, 30 00:02:26,646 --> 00:02:32,686 the Axis powers will control the continents of Europe and Asia 31 00:02:32,686 --> 00:02:36,356 and Africa, and they will be in a position 32 00:02:36,356 --> 00:02:42,462 to bring enormous military and naval resources against this hemisphere. 33 00:02:43,630 --> 00:02:45,498 [reporter 3] We have witnessed this morning 34 00:02:45,498 --> 00:02:49,569 severe bombing of Pearl Harbor by enemy planes. 35 00:02:50,136 --> 00:02:51,504 It is no joke. 36 00:02:51,504 --> 00:02:53,306 It is a real war. 37 00:02:55,108 --> 00:02:58,278 [Roosevelt] I ask that the Congress declare 38 00:02:58,278 --> 00:03:01,181 that since the unprovoked 39 00:03:01,815 --> 00:03:05,952 and dastardly attack by Japan, 40 00:03:06,586 --> 00:03:08,655 a state of war. 41 00:03:19,132 --> 00:03:22,435 - [troops marching] - [crowd cheering, whistling] 42 00:03:22,435 --> 00:03:23,970 [Hanks] At this point in the war, 43 00:03:23,970 --> 00:03:26,906 Hitler's Germany controlled continental Europe. 44 00:03:26,906 --> 00:03:29,676 Great Britain stood alone and vulnerable, 45 00:03:29,676 --> 00:03:34,214 the last surviving European democracy at war with the Nazis. 46 00:03:34,748 --> 00:03:37,917 And the question became how to hit back at the enemy. 47 00:03:38,918 --> 00:03:42,188 Britain's bomber command had been striking Germany incessantly 48 00:03:42,188 --> 00:03:44,924 but ineffectively since 1940, 49 00:03:44,924 --> 00:03:49,896 taking huge losses in night raids that often missed their targets by miles. 50 00:03:51,898 --> 00:03:55,368 [Spielberg] There was a clear and present danger to global democracy 51 00:03:55,368 --> 00:03:57,637 because of the Nazis. 52 00:03:57,637 --> 00:04:01,441 So, patriotism was something that the Greatest Generation, 53 00:04:01,441 --> 00:04:03,977 my father's generation, took very, very seriously. 54 00:04:06,546 --> 00:04:09,820 Now, it isn't as if it was a chore for me to talk to you 55 00:04:09,820 --> 00:04:12,919 because I wanna speak on my favorite subject, the Army Air Forces. 56 00:04:13,953 --> 00:04:16,356 I-I can't speak from long experience. 57 00:04:17,123 --> 00:04:18,625 I've only been in the service a year, 58 00:04:18,625 --> 00:04:21,928 but I've learned a lot about what the air forces have to offer. 59 00:04:23,960 --> 00:04:24,464 That's what I wanna talk to you about. 60 00:04:25,665 --> 00:04:29,369 The Army Air Forces need 15,000 captains, 61 00:04:29,369 --> 00:04:33,773 40,000 lieutenants, 35,000 flying sergeants. 62 00:04:34,307 --> 00:04:37,100 Young men of America, your future's in the sky. 63 00:04:37,610 --> 00:04:39,245 Your wings are waiting. 64 00:04:41,247 --> 00:04:44,584 [Luckadoo] I was in the middle of my sophomore year in college 65 00:04:44,584 --> 00:04:50,557 and didn't have a lot on my mind but chasing girls and-- and drinking whiskey. 66 00:04:50,557 --> 00:04:54,127 [chuckles] Meantime, Pearl Harbor happens, and then, 67 00:04:54,127 --> 00:04:59,666 along with my other fraternity brothers, were recruited as aviation cadets. 68 00:04:59,666 --> 00:05:01,301 [officer] Attention! 69 00:05:01,301 --> 00:05:02,335 [crowd cheering] 70 00:05:02,335 --> 00:05:05,605 [Rosenthal] At that time, there was a great deal of anti-Semitism. 71 00:05:05,605 --> 00:05:10,430 And Hitler, with his talk of superiority of the Aryan nation, 72 00:05:10,430 --> 00:05:14,647 I had a sense of frustration that I couldn't do anything about it. 73 00:05:14,647 --> 00:05:17,484 Suddenly, that frustration disappeared. 74 00:05:17,484 --> 00:05:19,652 I'd felt now that I could do something. 75 00:05:20,153 --> 00:05:23,857 I thought the most effective way to serve would be as a pilot. 76 00:05:25,258 --> 00:05:30,630 I went down the next day and volunteered to be an air force cadet. 77 00:05:33,199 --> 00:05:36,836 [Hanks] Before enlisting, thousands of American flyers had never set foot 78 00:05:36,836 --> 00:05:41,675 in an airplane or fired a shot at anything more threatening than a squirrel. 79 00:05:41,675 --> 00:05:44,744 The crews were made up of men from every part of America 80 00:05:44,744 --> 00:05:47,280 and nearly every station in life. 81 00:05:47,280 --> 00:05:51,618 There were Harvard history majors and West Virginia coal miners. 82 00:05:51,618 --> 00:05:54,721 Wall Street lawyers and Oklahoma cowpunchers. 83 00:05:55,355 --> 00:05:58,658 Hollywood idols and football heroes. 84 00:06:01,327 --> 00:06:03,196 [reporter 4] The cadets have passed their test. 85 00:06:03,196 --> 00:06:05,231 And now, they'll get their flying lessons. 86 00:06:06,320 --> 00:06:09,402 [Rosenthal] Each instructor had four students. 87 00:06:09,402 --> 00:06:13,340 The other three students had previous flight training, I had none. 88 00:06:13,340 --> 00:06:15,508 I had never been inside of an airplane. 89 00:06:20,130 --> 00:06:22,916 [Clark] After about ten hours, we'd have solo. 90 00:06:23,416 --> 00:06:26,586 When those wheels leave the ground, there's no one to help you. 91 00:06:26,586 --> 00:06:27,654 You're on your own. 92 00:06:30,230 --> 00:06:35,261 [Crosby] I became a navigator because I was a flop as a pilot. 93 00:06:36,663 --> 00:06:37,731 [Armanini] I got washed out. 94 00:06:37,731 --> 00:06:40,967 I'll never forget the guy that washed me out was Lieutenant Maytag, 95 00:06:40,967 --> 00:06:44,504 proper name for a-- washing out a prospective flying student. 96 00:06:45,710 --> 00:06:49,676 [Luckadoo] I had a military instructor, and he was about to wash me out, 97 00:06:50,377 --> 00:06:52,412 and he said, "You're gonna kill yourself anyway, 98 00:06:52,412 --> 00:06:56,820 but I'll tell you what, I'm gonna go over and sit under that tree. 99 00:06:56,820 --> 00:07:01,521 If you can take this up three times and around the pattern and land it, you're in. 100 00:07:02,550 --> 00:07:04,570 If not, you're out." 101 00:07:06,693 --> 00:07:10,730 [Rosenthal] We flew from eight o'clock in the morning to eight o'clock at night. 102 00:07:10,730 --> 00:07:14,768 I did various maneuvers of chandelles and lazy S's. 103 00:07:14,768 --> 00:07:17,604 And on a rare day off, we would dogfight. 104 00:07:19,606 --> 00:07:22,575 I never enjoyed anything more than I did at that time. 105 00:07:32,419 --> 00:07:33,420 [speaking indistinctly] 106 00:07:33,420 --> 00:07:38,425 [Luckadoo] Forty of my classmates, just graduated from flying school, 107 00:07:38,425 --> 00:07:39,726 along with me, 108 00:07:39,726 --> 00:07:43,290 were all assigned to fly the B-17. 109 00:07:43,290 --> 00:07:45,899 We'd never been in a B-17 before. 110 00:07:48,134 --> 00:07:51,371 [reporter 5] The Boeing Flying Fortress, manned by ten men, 111 00:07:51,371 --> 00:07:54,374 this new bomber has a speed of nearly 300 miles an hour. 112 00:07:54,374 --> 00:07:57,110 The bulges on its fuselage are turrets for machine guns. 113 00:07:57,911 --> 00:07:59,579 With 4,000 horsepower engines, 114 00:07:59,579 --> 00:08:03,450 it can cruise for 3,000 miles without landing to refuel. 115 00:08:03,450 --> 00:08:08,755 B-17 was the first both offensive and defensive aircraft ever designed. 116 00:08:09,456 --> 00:08:13,760 Offensively, it dropped very heavy payloads for its day. 117 00:08:13,760 --> 00:08:17,297 And it was called the Flying Fortress because it had so many 50-caliber guns. 118 00:08:18,865 --> 00:08:21,835 [Rosenthal] The feel of the B-17 was wonderful. 119 00:08:22,335 --> 00:08:27,774 The plane responded so beautifully that I, uh, immediately related to it. 120 00:08:28,808 --> 00:08:31,311 I was very happy to be on B-17s. 121 00:08:32,879 --> 00:08:35,849 [Murphy] We had about five or six months of practice training 122 00:08:35,849 --> 00:08:38,151 and getting ready for an overseas assignment. 123 00:08:40,860 --> 00:08:44,900 In May of 1943 we were sent to England 124 00:08:44,900 --> 00:08:45,992 to become a part of the Eighth Air Force. 125 00:08:47,961 --> 00:08:51,640 [Luckadoo] We were told before we went overseas, 126 00:08:51,865 --> 00:08:54,501 "You look on your left and your right, 127 00:08:54,501 --> 00:08:56,670 and only one of you is gonna come back." 128 00:08:57,237 --> 00:08:59,506 We were going overseas to die. 129 00:09:15,355 --> 00:09:18,758 [Hanks] Just as the crews of the 100th began arriving at their new base 130 00:09:18,758 --> 00:09:23,863 in rural eastern England, the European war entered a new phase. 131 00:09:23,863 --> 00:09:26,533 It was the official beginning of Pointblank, 132 00:09:26,533 --> 00:09:29,200 an around-the-clock bombing campaign, 133 00:09:29,200 --> 00:09:32,138 with the Americans bombing by day and the British by night. 134 00:09:32,672 --> 00:09:37,100 Its purpose, to achieve air supremacy over northern Europe 135 00:09:37,100 --> 00:09:39,579 by the D-Day invasion the following spring. 136 00:09:40,580 --> 00:09:44,617 Without air supremacy, the Allies could not invade the European continent. 137 00:09:46,186 --> 00:09:47,387 [airmen chanting] 138 00:09:48,221 --> 00:09:51,891 [Roane] We'd just got there and getting to know one another, 139 00:09:51,891 --> 00:09:56,329 and King, the pilot, asked me, "What had you done before?" 140 00:09:56,329 --> 00:10:01,267 I said, "Well, recently I did the work of a cowboy." 141 00:10:01,267 --> 00:10:05,380 And he said, "Well, fine, you'll be Cowboy from now on." 142 00:10:05,939 --> 00:10:07,807 [Miller] The 100th is a young outfit, 143 00:10:07,807 --> 00:10:10,910 and it had some pretty reckless young commanders. 144 00:10:10,910 --> 00:10:14,214 A guy named Gale Cleven, who was a squadron commander 145 00:10:14,214 --> 00:10:16,883 and an air executive named John Egan. 146 00:10:16,883 --> 00:10:20,687 Egan and Cleven didn't have to fly as squadron leaders, but always did. 147 00:10:20,687 --> 00:10:23,289 And that's one of the reasons the men admired them. 148 00:10:23,289 --> 00:10:28,161 [Luckadoo] Buck Cleven, along with Bucky Egan, they wore scarves 149 00:10:28,161 --> 00:10:31,498 and their hats cocked on one side of their heads, 150 00:10:31,498 --> 00:10:33,500 and they were pretty cocky. 151 00:10:33,500 --> 00:10:36,536 They'd be at the officers' club, and they would say, 152 00:10:36,536 --> 00:10:39,639 "Lieutenant, taxi over here, I wanna talk to you." 153 00:10:40,440 --> 00:10:42,342 [Paridon] John Egan, Gale Cleven, 154 00:10:42,342 --> 00:10:45,311 their life's ambition was to fly an airplane. 155 00:10:45,311 --> 00:10:46,813 And here they are, flying an airplane. 156 00:10:46,813 --> 00:10:49,983 Doing something that they love for a country that they love 157 00:10:49,983 --> 00:10:51,484 on a mission that they believe in. 158 00:10:52,519 --> 00:10:55,210 [Hanks] Cleven and Egan would help lead the 100th 159 00:10:55,210 --> 00:10:59,559 against the most formidable air force in the world, the German Luftwaffe, 160 00:10:59,559 --> 00:11:04,297 whose veteran pilots had seen action over Spain, Norway, Poland, 161 00:11:04,297 --> 00:11:09,669 France, Russia, Greece, North Africa and England. 162 00:11:10,170 --> 00:11:15,108 They will understand the enormity of their miscalculation 163 00:11:15,942 --> 00:11:20,647 that the Nazis would always have the advantage of superior air power. 164 00:11:21,181 --> 00:11:25,352 That superiority has gone forever. 165 00:11:25,952 --> 00:11:31,324 We believe that the Nazis and the fascists have asked for it, 166 00:11:31,324 --> 00:11:33,326 and they're going to get it. 167 00:11:42,369 --> 00:11:45,500 [officer] Captain Kirk, Captain Thompson, Lieutenant Bushka, 168 00:11:45,500 --> 00:11:47,407 Iverson, Holloway and Hawkers scheduled to fly. 169 00:11:47,407 --> 00:11:48,341 Snap it up. 170 00:11:52,120 --> 00:11:54,381 [Alshouse] The commanding officer, he'd come in, he'd come up the front, 171 00:11:55,215 --> 00:11:57,517 he'd pull back a, uh, curtain, 172 00:11:57,517 --> 00:12:02,555 and there'd be a red ribbon from Thorpe Abbotts all the way to the target. 173 00:12:03,790 --> 00:12:06,626 [officer] This group of buildings here is your target. 174 00:12:07,394 --> 00:12:09,996 This building will be the aiming point. 175 00:12:10,530 --> 00:12:14,167 If your bomb pattern is concentrated in this area, 176 00:12:14,167 --> 00:12:17,537 it should very effectively knock out the factory. 177 00:12:25,211 --> 00:12:28,948 [Wolff] After getting off the jeep and getting some of the stuff stowed, 178 00:12:28,948 --> 00:12:32,285 then climbed aboard, got settled in, and fired up. 179 00:12:45,598 --> 00:12:47,634 [Hanks] Flying in a self-defending formation 180 00:12:47,634 --> 00:12:50,303 they called a combat box, 181 00:12:50,303 --> 00:12:54,808 with accumulative firepower of as many as 13 guns on each plane, 182 00:12:54,808 --> 00:12:59,212 they could muscle their way to the target through waves of enemy planes. 183 00:13:00,580 --> 00:13:03,249 [reporter 6] At the fighter fields, Thunderbolts are ready. 184 00:13:08,388 --> 00:13:10,590 They set out to meet the bombers. 185 00:13:10,590 --> 00:13:13,960 The two groups make rendezvous over the English Channel, 186 00:13:13,960 --> 00:13:17,464 and with the fighters patrolling the skies around the bomber formation, 187 00:13:17,464 --> 00:13:20,300 the air armada moves into enemy territory. 188 00:13:22,235 --> 00:13:25,605 [Hanks] The bombers received limited protection from the smaller, 189 00:13:25,605 --> 00:13:29,509 more nimble fighter planes, like the P-47 Thunderbolt, 190 00:13:29,509 --> 00:13:32,979 whose limited fuel capacity forced it to leave the bombers 191 00:13:32,979 --> 00:13:35,482 once they crossed deep into Germany. 192 00:13:35,482 --> 00:13:37,450 [Paridon] The crewmen were in an alien world 193 00:13:37,450 --> 00:13:42,422 to where they physically could not survive without specialized clothing, 194 00:13:42,422 --> 00:13:44,190 without specialized equipment, 195 00:13:44,190 --> 00:13:47,260 without breathing oxygen that was being pumped to them. 196 00:13:47,260 --> 00:13:50,597 [Luckadoo] As soon as we got to altitude, we had to go on oxygen, 197 00:13:50,597 --> 00:13:53,133 so we had an oxygen mask clasped on our face. 198 00:13:53,133 --> 00:13:55,100 And the-- the stark cold. 199 00:13:55,100 --> 00:13:57,437 The frigid temperatures. 200 00:13:57,437 --> 00:14:01,307 We were operating in 50 or 60 degrees below zero. 201 00:14:07,914 --> 00:14:11,151 [Paridon] The fighter escort did not have the range 202 00:14:11,151 --> 00:14:15,288 to escort the B-17s all the way to the targets inside of Germany, 203 00:14:15,288 --> 00:14:17,524 so the Allied fighters turned around and went back to England. 204 00:14:25,331 --> 00:14:29,102 [Murphy] I remember that when we first crossed over the English Channel, 205 00:14:29,102 --> 00:14:33,373 I remember looking down and realizing that we were over enemy territory, 206 00:14:33,373 --> 00:14:35,408 and I had a lump in my throat. 207 00:14:35,408 --> 00:14:36,843 I was-- [stammers] I was nervous. 208 00:14:36,843 --> 00:14:39,579 [shells exploding] 209 00:14:39,579 --> 00:14:41,681 [reporter 7] There are the black smudges of the flak 210 00:14:41,681 --> 00:14:43,950 that come up from the antiaircraft guns below. 211 00:14:44,751 --> 00:14:46,920 [Miller] A flak gun is a German 88 gun, 212 00:14:46,920 --> 00:14:50,560 and it could fire a shell up to 40,000 feet. 213 00:14:50,560 --> 00:14:55,195 The shell would explode in the air, and it would throw shards of shrapnel. 214 00:14:57,564 --> 00:15:00,667 The skin of the plane is not steel, it's aluminum. 215 00:15:00,667 --> 00:15:03,103 So, that meant flak just blew holes in the plane. 216 00:15:03,103 --> 00:15:05,138 [flak hitting metal] 217 00:15:05,138 --> 00:15:10,310 [Murphy] That was my first time to be exposed to very heavy antiaircraft fire, 218 00:15:10,310 --> 00:15:13,279 and, uh, it was-- [stammers] it was frightening. 219 00:15:13,279 --> 00:15:15,849 [gunfire] 220 00:15:18,510 --> 00:15:21,688 [Luckadoo] We were being confronted by very experienced 221 00:15:21,688 --> 00:15:26,590 and very well equipped and very well trained opposition. 222 00:15:26,590 --> 00:15:29,863 They were pros, and we were rank amateurs. 223 00:15:33,900 --> 00:15:36,469 [Hanks] When the formation neared its target, 224 00:15:36,469 --> 00:15:40,173 the bombardiers entered variables such as airspeed and wind drift 225 00:15:40,173 --> 00:15:41,908 into their Norden bombsights, 226 00:15:41,908 --> 00:15:45,445 top-secret aiming devices designed to guide the planes 227 00:15:45,445 --> 00:15:48,982 to the optimal release point for dropping their payloads. 228 00:15:49,582 --> 00:15:52,552 [Miller] The Norden bombsight, it's supposed to be so accurate 229 00:15:52,552 --> 00:15:57,791 that you can bomb from 20,000 feet and drop your bombs into a pickle barrel. 230 00:16:00,593 --> 00:16:02,280 [Bankston] When we dropped our bombs, 231 00:16:02,280 --> 00:16:04,631 I could see bombs from the planes ahead of us dropping 232 00:16:04,631 --> 00:16:07,634 but also I could lean out in the plexiglass nose 233 00:16:07,634 --> 00:16:11,204 and see the bombs falling directly down from us. 234 00:16:11,204 --> 00:16:15,575 And then, when they exploded, we could actually see the explosions. 235 00:16:15,575 --> 00:16:17,210 [reporter 8] The first bombers have been over, 236 00:16:17,210 --> 00:16:20,580 and the target's already partially obscured by the fires they've started. 237 00:16:21,348 --> 00:16:24,918 Hits were scored on a power plant, submarines under construction, 238 00:16:24,918 --> 00:16:26,953 and at least one U-boat in the water. 239 00:16:28,955 --> 00:16:30,357 [Wolff] We dropped our bombs, 240 00:16:30,357 --> 00:16:33,260 a couple of fighter attacks, nobody got hurt. 241 00:16:33,626 --> 00:16:36,129 And I thought, "Well, this isn't so bad." [chuckles] 242 00:16:38,498 --> 00:16:42,202 [Hanks] The early missions for the 100th were mostly coastal targets, 243 00:16:42,202 --> 00:16:46,539 like submarine pens and industrial sites in France and Norway. 244 00:16:47,507 --> 00:16:49,776 [Spielberg] The air force was trying to destroy 245 00:16:49,776 --> 00:16:52,145 the war machine of Nazi Germany. 246 00:16:52,145 --> 00:16:55,415 The factories that made planes, that made tanks. 247 00:16:55,415 --> 00:16:57,183 The factories that produced ball bearings. 248 00:16:57,784 --> 00:16:59,486 [reporter 9] At the British landing fields, 249 00:16:59,486 --> 00:17:01,870 word on the sky battle was out. 250 00:17:02,188 --> 00:17:04,824 Many of the fortresses themselves were crippled. 251 00:17:04,824 --> 00:17:09,162 A few came in with feathered props or with knocked-out landing gear. 252 00:17:10,230 --> 00:17:13,199 [Crosby] The B-17 had the reputation of being trustworthy and safe 253 00:17:13,199 --> 00:17:14,501 and getting people back. 254 00:17:14,501 --> 00:17:16,636 You could lose three engines and get home. 255 00:17:16,636 --> 00:17:20,400 You could lose half of your vertical stabilizer on the tail 256 00:17:20,400 --> 00:17:21,174 and get home. 257 00:17:21,174 --> 00:17:24,440 [Jeffrey] It would bring you home on two engines, 258 00:17:24,440 --> 00:17:26,546 and I've seen 'em come in with only one. 259 00:17:32,719 --> 00:17:34,921 [Hanks] Everything was about to change for the Eighth 260 00:17:34,921 --> 00:17:37,557 with the largest raid they would undertake up to now. 261 00:17:37,557 --> 00:17:41,361 A double strike against ball bearing plants in Schweinfurt 262 00:17:41,361 --> 00:17:44,230 and Messerschmitt factories in Regensburg, 263 00:17:44,230 --> 00:17:48,201 massively defended targets deep inside Germany. 264 00:17:48,201 --> 00:17:51,471 The 100th was assigned to the Regensburg Force. 265 00:17:52,138 --> 00:17:54,941 [Wolff] When they pulled the curtain away from the map, 266 00:17:54,941 --> 00:17:57,944 and you saw that red line going all across Germany, 267 00:17:57,944 --> 00:18:00,460 you know, we thought, "Holy cow." 268 00:18:00,714 --> 00:18:03,416 [Crane] The plan as designed is really brilliant when you look at it. 269 00:18:03,416 --> 00:18:04,317 So, you've got 270 00:18:04,317 --> 00:18:09,550 Curtis LeMay's Third Bombardment Division is going to fly 271 00:18:09,550 --> 00:18:13,259 and attack the Messerschmitt factories at Regensburg and then head for Africa. 272 00:18:13,259 --> 00:18:17,230 And ten minutes behind them is gonna be the First Bombardment Division, 273 00:18:17,230 --> 00:18:20,660 and they're gonna attack the ball bearing plants at Schweinfurt 274 00:18:20,660 --> 00:18:21,634 and then go back to England. 275 00:18:21,634 --> 00:18:25,380 So, the Germans are gonna have to decide which of these groups to hit. 276 00:18:25,380 --> 00:18:29,676 The problem is-- surprise, it's August, and there's fog in Great Britain. 277 00:18:31,211 --> 00:18:32,612 [LeMay] We went out that morning. 278 00:18:32,612 --> 00:18:37,150 I had took lanterns and flashlights and lead the airplanes out. 279 00:18:38,840 --> 00:18:41,421 I got assembled about ten minutes late, but we got off. 280 00:18:41,421 --> 00:18:44,424 [Crane] Curtis LeMay has trained his bombardment division 281 00:18:44,424 --> 00:18:46,493 to take off in-- in English fog. 282 00:18:46,493 --> 00:18:48,995 The other bombardment division hadn't. 283 00:18:48,995 --> 00:18:52,632 So, all of a sudden, LeMay gets his guys up and gets them all formed, 284 00:18:52,632 --> 00:18:55,100 and the other bombardment division hasn't even taken off yet. 285 00:18:55,769 --> 00:18:58,772 So, it ends up, instead of a ten-minute gap, a two-hour gap. 286 00:18:59,506 --> 00:19:00,607 [siren wailing] 287 00:19:01,241 --> 00:19:04,110 [reporter 10] This captured German film shows how quickly their 109s 288 00:19:04,110 --> 00:19:07,147 and Focke-Wulf 190s got into action after a warning. 289 00:19:07,647 --> 00:19:11,170 They had plenty of time to amass their fighters at a chosen point of attack 290 00:19:11,170 --> 00:19:14,788 and to outnumber our escort at anything from 2-to-1 to 10-to-1. 291 00:19:17,957 --> 00:19:20,960 [Wolff] Flew across the channel. It was a beautiful day out there. 292 00:19:21,728 --> 00:19:22,829 They hit the Dutch coast, 293 00:19:22,829 --> 00:19:25,131 and all of a sudden the whole world exploded. 294 00:19:26,166 --> 00:19:28,134 Kept up for the next two hours. 295 00:19:31,400 --> 00:19:34,174 [Roane] The training we'd had previously gave us the idea 296 00:19:34,174 --> 00:19:36,710 that we could outrun German fighters. 297 00:19:36,710 --> 00:19:40,113 Of course, we learned that that was not true. 298 00:19:40,980 --> 00:19:45,151 [Wolff] There was flak, there were fighters, more flak, more fighters. 299 00:19:45,151 --> 00:19:49,856 And I could hear the top turret chattering away with machine-gun fire. 300 00:19:50,523 --> 00:19:54,227 [Miller] Cleven's plane took six hits. 301 00:19:54,227 --> 00:19:57,230 They knocked out the hydraulic system. They knocked out one of the engines. 302 00:19:57,831 --> 00:19:59,499 The cockpit is on fire. 303 00:19:59,499 --> 00:20:03,570 Cleven turns around, and he... [stammers] ...looks at the radio gunner, 304 00:20:03,570 --> 00:20:05,872 and the radio gunner doesn't have any legs. 305 00:20:05,872 --> 00:20:07,400 They'd been sheared off. 306 00:20:09,876 --> 00:20:12,120 [Wolff] And I still remember one plane, 307 00:20:12,120 --> 00:20:14,781 fire was coming out of every opening in that hull. 308 00:20:16,783 --> 00:20:19,519 I dreamed about that one for a long time. 309 00:20:20,553 --> 00:20:22,389 [Spielberg] Every single member of that flight crew 310 00:20:22,389 --> 00:20:25,592 was fighting so democracy and freedom could reign. 311 00:20:25,592 --> 00:20:29,195 But when you're in combat, you know who you're fighting for? 312 00:20:29,195 --> 00:20:31,998 The guy to your left and the guy to your right. 313 00:20:31,998 --> 00:20:34,334 The guy just ahead of you and the guy just behind you. 314 00:20:34,334 --> 00:20:35,735 That's the pod you're fighting for. 315 00:20:37,771 --> 00:20:38,605 [gunfire] 316 00:20:38,605 --> 00:20:43,543 [Miller] Cleven is sitting in the cockpit, and his copilot said, in so many words, 317 00:20:43,543 --> 00:20:45,645 "We gotta get out of here. Let's hit the bail out bell." 318 00:20:45,645 --> 00:20:47,814 Cleven said, "We-- We gotta get to the target. 319 00:20:47,814 --> 00:20:50,830 We're gonna complete the bomb run." 320 00:20:50,830 --> 00:20:55,422 [Wolff] Five minutes before we got to the target, everything stopped. 321 00:20:55,422 --> 00:20:57,390 No fighters, no flak, no nothing. 322 00:20:58,224 --> 00:21:00,794 We succeeded in dropping our bombs. 323 00:21:03,963 --> 00:21:06,660 [Hanks] Perilously low on fuel, 324 00:21:06,660 --> 00:21:11,237 the Regensburg group fought its way over the Alps down to North Africa, 325 00:21:11,237 --> 00:21:15,942 while the Schweinfurt group flew straight into the full brunt of the Luftwaffe. 326 00:21:16,810 --> 00:21:20,213 So that means for the Germans, they get up and ravage LeMay's guys, 327 00:21:20,213 --> 00:21:23,550 then they get to land and have a schnapps and rearm and refuel too. 328 00:21:23,550 --> 00:21:25,418 And then they get to hit the Schweinfurt guys. 329 00:21:29,155 --> 00:21:34,494 The whole Luftwaffe jumped on the Schweinfurt group and just shattered them. 330 00:21:41,801 --> 00:21:43,937 [Hanks] Having made it to North Africa by day's end, 331 00:21:44,504 --> 00:21:48,641 the crews of the 100th Bomb Group were battle-worn and weary, 332 00:21:49,175 --> 00:21:51,511 but feeling lucky to be alive. 333 00:21:52,879 --> 00:21:55,782 [Eaker] Any commander that had to commit forces to combat 334 00:21:55,782 --> 00:21:57,717 when they were outnumbered 335 00:21:57,717 --> 00:22:00,200 and with equipment which was not suitable 336 00:22:00,200 --> 00:22:05,792 and with a minimum of training, faced very tough decisions. 337 00:22:05,792 --> 00:22:09,129 Uh-- [stammers] It's like, uh, sentencing men to death. 338 00:22:13,600 --> 00:22:18,905 [Rosenthal] I had landed in England in the summer of 1943, 339 00:22:20,173 --> 00:22:23,510 and I was sent to the 100th Bomb Group. 340 00:22:23,510 --> 00:22:26,479 [Luckadoo] Rosie Rosenthal, uh, arrived at the group 341 00:22:26,479 --> 00:22:30,717 as a replacement crew for crews that were lost. 342 00:22:31,317 --> 00:22:35,321 [Miller] Egan had gotten word that this kid, Rosie, was a pretty good flyer. 343 00:22:35,321 --> 00:22:38,925 And so, Egan took him out and ran him through the-- the struts 344 00:22:38,925 --> 00:22:41,270 and said, "I want you in my squadron." 345 00:22:44,864 --> 00:22:46,666 [Luckadoo] I happened to be in the bar. 346 00:22:46,666 --> 00:22:53,239 And I was having my usual Scotch and felt this tap on my shoulder 347 00:22:53,740 --> 00:22:56,876 and turned around, and here was the squadron commander. 348 00:22:57,477 --> 00:23:00,380 He said, "Lucky, you better go home and get some sleep. 349 00:23:01,470 --> 00:23:02,382 You're flying tomorrow." 350 00:23:06,519 --> 00:23:10,223 [Hanks] When the weather over Germany cleared on October 8th, 351 00:23:10,223 --> 00:23:14,227 the Americans launched a succession of maximum-effort missions 352 00:23:14,227 --> 00:23:17,364 to take out aircraft manufacturing plants. 353 00:23:18,131 --> 00:23:21,868 The airmen would eventually call it Black Week. 354 00:23:22,569 --> 00:23:26,373 [reporter 11] On October 8th, 855 planes left Great Britain 355 00:23:26,373 --> 00:23:28,875 for a raid on Bremen and Vegesack. 356 00:23:28,875 --> 00:23:31,711 They were loaded with two and a half million pounds of bombs. 357 00:23:31,711 --> 00:23:34,581 Two and three-quarter million rounds of ammunition. 358 00:23:36,516 --> 00:23:39,986 [Luckadoo] As we came off the target, out of the corner of my eye, 359 00:23:39,986 --> 00:23:46,326 I saw this flight of two Fw 190s aiming directly for us. 360 00:23:46,326 --> 00:23:49,796 He shot down the ship directly in front of me, 361 00:23:49,796 --> 00:23:53,733 and it blew them out of the formation, and they exploded. 362 00:23:55,680 --> 00:23:56,736 [Crosby] The group was decimated. 363 00:23:56,736 --> 00:24:00,607 We were shot clear out of the formation. Our number three engine was on fire. 364 00:24:01,875 --> 00:24:03,343 [Luckadoo] Cleven tried to move up 365 00:24:03,343 --> 00:24:06,479 and take over the group when he was shot down. 366 00:24:07,814 --> 00:24:08,948 [Miller] Cleven, he got hit. 367 00:24:09,649 --> 00:24:11,651 There's a lot of chaos in the plane. 368 00:24:11,651 --> 00:24:13,586 The cockpit caught fire. They gotta bail. 369 00:24:17,357 --> 00:24:18,925 [Paridon] Gale Cleven is shot down. 370 00:24:18,925 --> 00:24:23,960 This is a huge hole left in the 100th Bomb Group at this time. 371 00:24:23,960 --> 00:24:26,466 And for all intents and purposes, everybody thinks he's dead. 372 00:24:27,801 --> 00:24:33,306 That was the first time that I doubted that I really was gonna get back. 373 00:24:34,307 --> 00:24:39,112 [Rosenthal] My plane, Rosie's Riveters, was badly damaged, 374 00:24:39,112 --> 00:24:41,314 and a couple of engines were out. 375 00:24:43,149 --> 00:24:44,918 [Luckadoo] After we dropped our bombs, 376 00:24:44,918 --> 00:24:48,655 I brought what was left of the formation home, 377 00:24:48,655 --> 00:24:51,570 which was only six airplanes. 378 00:24:54,361 --> 00:24:58,398 [Crane] I mean, imagine the morale, to lose all those crews in one day. 379 00:24:58,998 --> 00:25:01,301 What they would try to do is clean out the barracks. 380 00:25:01,301 --> 00:25:03,370 As soon as a plane went down, they'd clean it out. 381 00:25:03,370 --> 00:25:05,939 So, you'd walk in-- you'd walk into an empty barracks. 382 00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:10,777 [Luckadoo] Egan was in London on leave, 383 00:25:10,777 --> 00:25:13,546 and he got word that Cleven had been shot down. 384 00:25:14,814 --> 00:25:18,685 Egan was so incensed that he immediately canceled his leave 385 00:25:18,685 --> 00:25:23,423 and returned to the base, and said, "I'm leading the next mission." 386 00:25:24,190 --> 00:25:27,160 [Hanks] The Münster raid was a city-busting operation, 387 00:25:27,160 --> 00:25:29,262 a new thing for the Eighth Air Force. 388 00:25:29,262 --> 00:25:33,700 The target was a strategically essential rail yard in the city center 389 00:25:33,700 --> 00:25:37,570 and also a neighborhood of workers' housing that abutted it. 390 00:25:38,204 --> 00:25:43,343 In the fight against Nazi tyranny, human flesh and bone became a target, 391 00:25:43,343 --> 00:25:46,546 an essential part of the Reich's war machine. 392 00:25:46,546 --> 00:25:48,548 [Miller] There was tension in the room. 393 00:25:48,548 --> 00:25:51,651 A lot of the airmen, for the first time ever, 394 00:25:51,651 --> 00:25:53,860 questioned the mission. 395 00:25:53,687 --> 00:25:55,588 Egan makes a speech. 396 00:25:55,588 --> 00:26:00,260 They were gonna fly this one for Cleven, and this is a revenge raid. 397 00:26:04,764 --> 00:26:09,903 [Rosenthal] Because we had high losses, our group was pretty well banged up, 398 00:26:10,403 --> 00:26:14,374 and we could only put 13 planes in the air. 399 00:26:16,900 --> 00:26:18,645 [Paridon] When it came to German fighter attacks, 400 00:26:18,645 --> 00:26:24,117 if your formations were loose, if you had 13 aircraft as opposed to 18, 401 00:26:24,117 --> 00:26:26,486 the Germans are gonna attack the lesser target. 402 00:26:26,486 --> 00:26:30,757 [Murphy] We were immediately attacked by over 200 German fighter aircraft. 403 00:26:31,324 --> 00:26:36,496 Two, uh, Me 109s came in behind us and killed our tail gunner. 404 00:26:36,496 --> 00:26:40,333 I was sprayed with shrapnel flak from an exploding cannon shell 405 00:26:40,333 --> 00:26:41,901 and knocked to the floor. 406 00:26:41,901 --> 00:26:44,771 It was clear that the airplane was out of control, 407 00:26:44,771 --> 00:26:47,400 and we were going to go down. 408 00:26:47,574 --> 00:26:50,744 I remember we were about 21-- 22,000 feet. 409 00:26:50,744 --> 00:26:54,814 The ground looked a million miles away, but I had no choice. 410 00:26:54,814 --> 00:26:57,250 I had to go out, and so I did. 411 00:26:57,250 --> 00:26:59,850 [gunfire] 412 00:27:05,692 --> 00:27:10,130 We went down the flight line, and we kept waiting around. 413 00:27:14,467 --> 00:27:16,836 Finally, one of ours came in. 414 00:27:18,400 --> 00:27:20,807 [Jeffrey] Only one airplane of the 100th had returned. 415 00:27:20,807 --> 00:27:23,910 Uh, Rosenthal was the man that was flying that airplane. 416 00:27:23,910 --> 00:27:28,148 So, he had seen, uh, his share of, uh-- of rough times. 417 00:27:28,648 --> 00:27:31,584 There was an eerie silence there. 418 00:27:31,584 --> 00:27:34,721 There were a few people who hadn't flown the mission, 419 00:27:35,321 --> 00:27:37,957 and nobody seemed to approach us. 420 00:27:37,957 --> 00:27:39,893 We were sort of left by ourselves. 421 00:27:39,893 --> 00:27:42,362 It was a very strange feeling. 422 00:27:43,963 --> 00:27:49,690 [Roane] We certainly felt the loss of the people that had been shot down. 423 00:27:49,690 --> 00:27:55,675 I especially l-lost my very best friend on the Münster mission. 424 00:27:59,279 --> 00:28:02,749 [Luckadoo] When Bucky Egan and Cleven were shot down, 425 00:28:02,749 --> 00:28:05,785 it was really a tremendous morale factor 426 00:28:05,785 --> 00:28:09,556 because everybody just assumed they were invincible. 427 00:28:11,358 --> 00:28:15,328 [Hanks] The Münster mission was the greatest air battle up to that time. 428 00:28:15,328 --> 00:28:18,131 Not just a raid, but a titanic struggle 429 00:28:18,131 --> 00:28:21,801 between two large and murderous air armies. 430 00:28:21,801 --> 00:28:25,672 The 100th had arrived in England four months before Münster 431 00:28:25,672 --> 00:28:28,575 with 140 flying officers. 432 00:28:28,575 --> 00:28:33,646 After Münster, only three of them were still able to fly and fight. 433 00:28:34,147 --> 00:28:36,850 [Rosenthal] This kind of record got around, 434 00:28:36,850 --> 00:28:39,152 and people became worried about us. 435 00:28:39,152 --> 00:28:41,154 They called us the Bloody Hundredth. 436 00:28:43,490 --> 00:28:45,191 [Crane] When you're an airman, and you go out, 437 00:28:45,191 --> 00:28:47,327 you have four hours of pure terror. 438 00:28:47,327 --> 00:28:49,729 All of a sudden, you get on your bicycle, go to the local pub, 439 00:28:49,729 --> 00:28:52,732 drink a beer, go out with a local girl, go back to base, 440 00:28:52,732 --> 00:28:54,670 sit nice and peaceful. 441 00:28:54,670 --> 00:28:57,237 Then, the next day, you're up, and you're back into the terror again. 442 00:28:59,839 --> 00:29:06,780 This had the ultimate result, in some cases, of causing people to crack. 443 00:29:10,383 --> 00:29:11,885 [Hanks] After Black Week, 444 00:29:11,885 --> 00:29:15,550 morale in the Eighth plummeted to a new low, 445 00:29:15,550 --> 00:29:17,624 and commanders worried about crew revolts. 446 00:29:18,191 --> 00:29:20,694 There were distressing reports from flight surgeons 447 00:29:20,694 --> 00:29:25,699 and air force psychiatrists of abnormal behavior among crewmen 448 00:29:25,699 --> 00:29:31,371 as combat insidiously shook the moorings of airmen's self-control. 449 00:29:31,371 --> 00:29:33,440 [Luckadoo] I have seen instances 450 00:29:33,440 --> 00:29:38,745 where they weren't in control enough to just walk out of the airplane. 451 00:29:39,746 --> 00:29:42,449 Those were individuals that were on the verge 452 00:29:42,449 --> 00:29:45,819 of what we called victims of combat fatigue. 453 00:29:48,121 --> 00:29:50,890 [reporter 12] We have learned that many of these men with neurotic reactions 454 00:29:50,890 --> 00:29:52,125 can recover quickly 455 00:29:52,125 --> 00:29:55,610 when the battle situation has been left behind temporarily. 456 00:29:55,562 --> 00:29:58,198 Fundamentally, we must depend for this recovery 457 00:29:58,198 --> 00:30:00,900 on the patient's own recuperative powers. 458 00:30:00,900 --> 00:30:04,738 But these powers can best be exercised away from a hospital atmosphere. 459 00:30:06,940 --> 00:30:11,444 [Luckadoo] We would try to get them out of the wartime environment 460 00:30:11,444 --> 00:30:15,281 for a few days and sent to the rest home. 461 00:30:15,281 --> 00:30:17,250 We called it the Flak House. 462 00:30:18,284 --> 00:30:22,389 Oftentimes, it was effective. Sometimes it was not. 463 00:30:23,857 --> 00:30:26,760 [Jeffrey] This was a problem that all commanders had to deal with 464 00:30:26,760 --> 00:30:31,231 because there are some people whose chemical and mental makeup, 465 00:30:31,231 --> 00:30:33,933 uh, is such that, uh, they just can't stand this sort of thing. 466 00:30:34,601 --> 00:30:38,104 [Luckadoo] We had to immediately remove those people 467 00:30:38,104 --> 00:30:41,241 from the crew and from the base 468 00:30:41,241 --> 00:30:45,412 because that sort of attitude was contagious, 469 00:30:45,412 --> 00:30:49,249 and we couldn't afford to have it affect the morale of the rest of the people 470 00:30:49,249 --> 00:30:53,453 that were going out every day and continuing to perform their duties. 471 00:30:55,722 --> 00:30:58,625 [Crane] You can argue not only has the Allied air forces 472 00:30:58,625 --> 00:31:01,795 don't have any sense of air superiority over Germany and Europe, 473 00:31:01,795 --> 00:31:03,730 you could argue they're losing the air war. 474 00:31:05,198 --> 00:31:08,568 [Clark] You know, we did not drop into a pickle barrel all the time. 475 00:31:08,568 --> 00:31:11,871 We would scatter bombs even on good, clear days, 476 00:31:11,871 --> 00:31:14,441 several miles from the intended target. 477 00:31:15,508 --> 00:31:17,143 [Hansen] They couldn't hit their targets, 478 00:31:17,143 --> 00:31:20,714 and they were much more, themselves, a target 479 00:31:20,714 --> 00:31:24,451 for German fighter defense. So the force was being slaughtered. 480 00:31:25,185 --> 00:31:28,555 [reporter 13] Every few cubic feet of this pile contains a plane, 481 00:31:28,555 --> 00:31:30,990 22,000 hours of American labor. 482 00:31:31,925 --> 00:31:35,662 Every yard of it means ten American boys dead or captured. 483 00:31:41,000 --> 00:31:44,571 [Murphy] Probably the most dreadful thing that one could expect was to be shot down. 484 00:31:45,205 --> 00:31:47,700 We always knew it was possible. 485 00:31:47,700 --> 00:31:49,943 Being young and thinking that we were immortal, 486 00:31:49,943 --> 00:31:52,479 we always figured that they might get everybody else, 487 00:31:52,479 --> 00:31:53,780 but they wouldn't get us. 488 00:31:54,714 --> 00:31:57,484 I-I knew how much my mother worried about me, 489 00:31:57,484 --> 00:31:59,386 and I knew that she would be getting 490 00:31:59,386 --> 00:32:03,390 a missing-in-action telegram from the War Department, 491 00:32:03,390 --> 00:32:05,925 and she would not know what happened to me. 492 00:32:08,328 --> 00:32:11,598 [Hanks] Airmen were given parachutes but not trained how to use them, 493 00:32:11,598 --> 00:32:15,802 and they were given only scant training in escape and evasion tactics. 494 00:32:15,802 --> 00:32:20,400 Nor were they properly warned when civilians in bombed-out towns 495 00:32:20,400 --> 00:32:23,443 began to attack downed airmen in increasing numbers. 496 00:32:25,578 --> 00:32:27,947 [Miller] Cleven, he goes down, 497 00:32:27,947 --> 00:32:31,518 and he can see that farmers are gathering all around. 498 00:32:31,518 --> 00:32:32,619 The next thing he remembers, 499 00:32:32,619 --> 00:32:36,256 a farmer has a pitchfork a ninth of an inch in his chest 500 00:32:36,256 --> 00:32:37,424 and wants to press down on it. 501 00:32:38,910 --> 00:32:40,994 Some local Luftwaffe police show up. 502 00:32:43,960 --> 00:32:46,466 [Murphy] I was taken to a German Air Force airfield 503 00:32:46,466 --> 00:32:47,834 that was a collection point 504 00:32:47,834 --> 00:32:51,400 for all of the American flyers who had been captured that day. 505 00:32:56,476 --> 00:32:58,378 [Wolff] I got interviewed by this guy, 506 00:32:58,378 --> 00:33:02,820 and, uh, he congratulated me... [chuckles] ...on my promotion. 507 00:33:02,982 --> 00:33:07,153 I had just gotten first lieutenant about three days before. 508 00:33:07,153 --> 00:33:09,756 That sort of took me by surprise. 509 00:33:09,756 --> 00:33:12,492 And he hands me a 3-by-5 card, 510 00:33:12,492 --> 00:33:17,797 and there's my name and birth date, my parents' name, and my address. 511 00:33:19,566 --> 00:33:22,435 [Miller] The Germans had spies in the United States 512 00:33:22,435 --> 00:33:24,938 send them their hometown newspaper. 513 00:33:24,938 --> 00:33:26,106 So, they relax you 514 00:33:26,106 --> 00:33:28,742 to get this sense that you're having a conversation, 515 00:33:28,742 --> 00:33:30,877 and they know everything about you. 516 00:33:30,877 --> 00:33:33,130 [Hanks] This cagey interrogation technique 517 00:33:33,130 --> 00:33:36,683 was sometimes effective in persuading unsuspecting airmen 518 00:33:36,683 --> 00:33:40,220 to give up information they considered inconsequential, 519 00:33:40,220 --> 00:33:43,156 but which master interrogators prized. 520 00:33:44,570 --> 00:33:47,427 [Wolff] The next morning, they put us in a boxcar. 521 00:33:47,427 --> 00:33:50,597 There were 30 or 40 of us in the boxcar. 522 00:33:51,865 --> 00:33:53,833 None of us knew what was gonna happen. 523 00:34:00,340 --> 00:34:02,342 [Wolff] I can remember walking through the gate, 524 00:34:02,342 --> 00:34:04,711 and there were big, wooden stakes there, 525 00:34:04,711 --> 00:34:07,480 and there was barbed wire all over the place, 526 00:34:07,480 --> 00:34:10,517 and there were guard towers at all the corners. 527 00:34:10,517 --> 00:34:14,921 And there was about a 10- or 12-foot space between the big fence, 528 00:34:14,921 --> 00:34:17,900 and then there was a smaller fence. 529 00:34:17,900 --> 00:34:20,930 We were told not to go over the small fence, or we'd be shot. 530 00:34:21,361 --> 00:34:23,697 [Murphy] The American POWs who were there, 531 00:34:23,697 --> 00:34:26,232 many of whom, uh, were members of the 100th Bomb Group 532 00:34:26,232 --> 00:34:29,269 who had been shot down before I was shot down. 533 00:34:29,269 --> 00:34:31,171 The minute they saw us come in, well, they-- 534 00:34:31,171 --> 00:34:33,873 Some of them laughed and said, "Well, we've been expecting you. 535 00:34:33,873 --> 00:34:34,974 You're finally here." 536 00:34:36,376 --> 00:34:40,880 [Hanks] Cleven and Egan arrived at Stalag Luft III within days of each other. 537 00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:44,451 Cleven was immediately wisecracking with the injured Egan, 538 00:34:44,451 --> 00:34:47,530 and soon, the two were roommates again 539 00:34:47,530 --> 00:34:50,357 and quickly assumed leadership roles inside the camp. 540 00:34:50,357 --> 00:34:53,590 [Wolff] We lived together, cooked together, 541 00:34:53,590 --> 00:34:56,290 washed our clothes together, showered together. 542 00:34:56,290 --> 00:34:59,566 Showers were once a week, maybe... [chuckles] ...if you were lucky. 543 00:35:00,567 --> 00:35:03,360 [Paridon] Life inside the Stalag Luft camps 544 00:35:03,360 --> 00:35:04,738 was very, very regimented. 545 00:35:04,738 --> 00:35:08,410 Everything was done in a military way to keep their minds busy, 546 00:35:08,410 --> 00:35:11,111 to keep discipline, and basically to keep everybody alive. 547 00:35:16,683 --> 00:35:18,885 [Hanks] At a secret meeting at the Tehran Conference 548 00:35:18,885 --> 00:35:20,887 in late November 1943, 549 00:35:20,887 --> 00:35:26,559 Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin agreed to a second front against Nazi Germany 550 00:35:26,559 --> 00:35:30,296 to be planned and executed principally by the Americans and the British. 551 00:35:31,798 --> 00:35:34,267 There was to be a massive amphibious assault, 552 00:35:34,267 --> 00:35:35,769 the greatest in history, 553 00:35:35,769 --> 00:35:40,440 across five beaches in Normandy, France, code-named "Overlord." 554 00:35:40,440 --> 00:35:45,712 It was scheduled for May 1944, just six months away. 555 00:35:46,579 --> 00:35:49,115 [Miller] General Eisenhower has been brought to London. 556 00:35:50,450 --> 00:35:54,621 He said that we can't launch the fleet until you knock out the Luftwaffe. 557 00:35:54,621 --> 00:35:57,157 That is our mission now. 558 00:35:57,157 --> 00:36:02,595 [Jeffrey] We were aware that no land invasion can occur 559 00:36:02,595 --> 00:36:05,498 unless air superiority has been achieved. 560 00:36:07,670 --> 00:36:09,903 [Hansen] The ultimate goal was to shoot down so many fighters 561 00:36:09,903 --> 00:36:12,439 that the Germans could no longer put up a fighter defense. 562 00:36:15,642 --> 00:36:21,514 [Doolittle] We had been having very high losses due to fighter action. 563 00:36:22,182 --> 00:36:27,454 And so, a rush program at home began to get us more and more fighters. 564 00:36:28,154 --> 00:36:31,124 [Paridon] Late 1943, a fighter aircraft arrived in England, 565 00:36:31,124 --> 00:36:34,127 and it was the fighter plane that the Eighth Air Force had been waiting for. 566 00:36:34,127 --> 00:36:35,962 It was the P-51 Mustang. 567 00:36:36,963 --> 00:36:39,199 [reporter 14] The Mustang. The P-51. 568 00:36:39,199 --> 00:36:41,668 The longest-range fighter in the world. 569 00:36:41,668 --> 00:36:46,106 Speed, fast climb, quick dive, tight turn. 570 00:36:46,639 --> 00:36:48,675 [Rosenthal] When P-51s came over, 571 00:36:48,675 --> 00:36:53,413 they had the range to accompany us to the target and back. 572 00:36:53,413 --> 00:36:56,649 And they also fixed up the 47s 573 00:36:56,649 --> 00:37:00,253 and put wing tanks on them so that they could accompany us. 574 00:37:02,389 --> 00:37:06,259 [Crosby] When we went to Emden, and I saw all those gorgeous P-51s, 575 00:37:06,259 --> 00:37:08,661 I thought, maybe for the first time, "I'm gonna get through." 576 00:37:10,530 --> 00:37:11,664 [Miller] The primary mission 577 00:37:11,664 --> 00:37:13,566 is not to protect the bombers and get 'em home safely. 578 00:37:13,566 --> 00:37:17,871 It'll be to go after the Luftwaffe in the air and on the ground. 579 00:37:18,905 --> 00:37:21,241 [gunfire] 580 00:37:22,308 --> 00:37:24,911 [reporter 15] Sunday morning 20 February, 581 00:37:25,445 --> 00:37:27,714 we prepared for the heaviest assault 582 00:37:27,714 --> 00:37:31,584 in the history of the American Strategic Air Forces up to that time. 583 00:37:32,752 --> 00:37:35,522 This was the prelude to invasion. 584 00:37:36,790 --> 00:37:41,795 [Miller] They planned a succession of continuous raids one day after the other. 585 00:37:41,795 --> 00:37:43,763 This is gonna decide the whole war. 586 00:37:50,537 --> 00:37:52,572 [reporter 16] Day after day, month after month, 587 00:37:53,730 --> 00:37:58,244 Mustang, Thunderbolt against the Me 109s and the Fw 190s. 588 00:37:58,244 --> 00:38:01,414 Our fighters attack, attack, attack. 589 00:38:02,115 --> 00:38:05,385 Our victory column soared at the rate of 4-to-1. 590 00:38:06,653 --> 00:38:10,230 [Crane] The casualty rate for German pilots on the western front 591 00:38:10,230 --> 00:38:14,494 between January and May 1944 was 99%. 592 00:38:14,494 --> 00:38:16,596 I mean, they just get butchered. 593 00:38:18,765 --> 00:38:21,434 [Spielberg] It wasn't until the Mustang really got involved in the war 594 00:38:21,434 --> 00:38:24,671 that America and England gained air superiority over Germany. 595 00:38:26,390 --> 00:38:27,640 [Biddle] If you want to go to the heart of the enemy 596 00:38:27,640 --> 00:38:31,978 and be sure the Luftwaffe will be pulled into the sky, you go to Berlin. 597 00:38:33,460 --> 00:38:35,582 [Crosby] When they had the briefing, and they pulled the curtain back, 598 00:38:35,582 --> 00:38:38,251 and the tape went all the way to Berlin, 599 00:38:38,952 --> 00:38:42,522 first it was just stunned silence and then just a shout. 600 00:38:46,226 --> 00:38:48,228 [reporter 17] You can't hear what's going on down there 601 00:38:48,228 --> 00:38:49,863 five miles below you, 602 00:38:50,430 --> 00:38:54,467 but marshaling yards and chemical tanks, ships and warehouses, 603 00:38:54,467 --> 00:38:59,105 spare engines, and ball bearing factories are disintegrating in molten chaos. 604 00:39:00,306 --> 00:39:04,878 [Hanks] This would be the American's first foray into bombing Berlin. 605 00:39:04,878 --> 00:39:07,981 It would be the toughest target the Eighth ever attacked, 606 00:39:08,548 --> 00:39:09,883 but it had to be done. 607 00:39:12,180 --> 00:39:14,254 [Bankston] I can say that if I had been in Germany 608 00:39:14,254 --> 00:39:19,859 and witnessed, everyday, hordes of bombers coming over and dropping bombs, 609 00:39:19,859 --> 00:39:22,529 it would have had a very adverse effect on my morale. 610 00:39:22,529 --> 00:39:26,566 It must have had an adverse effect morale on the civilians and military alike. 611 00:39:32,539 --> 00:39:35,742 [Murphy] One of the worst things about being a prisoner of war 612 00:39:36,276 --> 00:39:39,512 is that you don't know how long you're gonna be held captive. 613 00:39:39,512 --> 00:39:42,515 It's not as if you've been given a fixed sentence. 614 00:39:42,515 --> 00:39:46,186 You're going to be there until you either escape or it's all over. 615 00:39:46,986 --> 00:39:48,688 [Wolff] I did start a tunnel. 616 00:39:49,189 --> 00:39:52,225 They had an old toilet that had a tile floor 617 00:39:52,225 --> 00:39:55,128 and I figured, well, let's see if we can do something here. 618 00:39:55,128 --> 00:39:59,466 And my object was to have these removable tiles 619 00:39:59,466 --> 00:40:00,934 and we could start digging. 620 00:40:00,934 --> 00:40:03,403 The guards caught that almost immediately. 621 00:40:04,938 --> 00:40:09,909 [Murphy] Some 76 British prisoners tunneled out of the compound 622 00:40:09,909 --> 00:40:13,646 immediately adjacent to us through a tunnel that they dug. 623 00:40:13,646 --> 00:40:15,915 It was known as the Great Escape. 624 00:40:15,915 --> 00:40:22,880 All but two were recaptured, and 50 were executed by the Germans. 625 00:40:23,189 --> 00:40:26,126 What little decent relations we had with the Germans 626 00:40:26,126 --> 00:40:28,940 evaporated completely after that. 627 00:40:31,431 --> 00:40:34,734 [Jeffrey] One day I received a telephone call and they said, 628 00:40:34,734 --> 00:40:36,970 "General LeMay would like to speak to you." 629 00:40:36,970 --> 00:40:40,730 He said, "Jeffrey, I need a group commander 630 00:40:40,730 --> 00:40:42,976 at the 95th Bomb Group and the 100th Bomb Group. 631 00:40:42,976 --> 00:40:44,744 You can take your choice." 632 00:40:45,412 --> 00:40:47,947 The 95th could essentially do no wrong. 633 00:40:47,947 --> 00:40:49,949 They lost the minimum number of airplanes. 634 00:40:49,949 --> 00:40:54,254 Their bombing record was good, and I figured that I could do more 635 00:40:54,254 --> 00:40:56,222 for the 100th than I could for the 95th. 636 00:40:56,222 --> 00:40:59,926 So, I called him back and I told him with his-- his permission, 637 00:40:59,926 --> 00:41:02,620 uh, I would accept the 100th Bomb Group. 638 00:41:02,620 --> 00:41:04,164 And I asked him, "When do you want me to report?" 639 00:41:04,164 --> 00:41:05,465 And he said, "This afternoon." 640 00:41:09,969 --> 00:41:15,108 My first action was to ask General LeMay if he would take the 100th 641 00:41:15,108 --> 00:41:18,645 off of operations for two days and he granted that. 642 00:41:18,645 --> 00:41:20,413 And so, over the next two days, 643 00:41:20,413 --> 00:41:22,482 four hours in the morning and four hours in the afternoon, 644 00:41:22,482 --> 00:41:26,853 we flew every airplane in the 100th Bomb Group in formation. 645 00:41:27,721 --> 00:41:34,940 [Rosenthal] Tom Jeffrey, he was dynamic, charismatic and knowledgeable, 646 00:41:34,940 --> 00:41:37,931 not only about the aircraft, but about combat flying. 647 00:41:39,466 --> 00:41:41,501 [Jeffrey] I had people in the lead airplane 648 00:41:41,501 --> 00:41:42,836 photographing the formation 649 00:41:42,836 --> 00:41:46,306 so that we could identify who was flying good and who wasn't. 650 00:41:46,306 --> 00:41:50,143 And then I took an old airplane and circled around the formation, 651 00:41:50,143 --> 00:41:53,179 back and forth, and tried to herd 'em into position. 652 00:41:53,179 --> 00:41:55,782 [Clark] The commanding officers were just blue in the face 653 00:41:55,782 --> 00:41:58,785 about us keeping our formations tight. 654 00:41:58,785 --> 00:42:01,588 You think you're tight and they say tighten 'em up more. 655 00:42:02,589 --> 00:42:04,624 [Jeffrey] At the end of two days, 656 00:42:04,624 --> 00:42:08,762 the 100th was flying the best formation, uh, that I have ever seen. 657 00:42:09,863 --> 00:42:15,680 [Rosenthal] It was not until Jeffrey came did we become a superb group. 658 00:42:15,869 --> 00:42:18,471 I think the best group in the air force. 659 00:42:22,542 --> 00:42:27,470 [Paridon] An Eighth Air Force bomber crew had a tour of duty of 25 missions. 660 00:42:27,470 --> 00:42:29,820 Once you completed your 25 missions, 661 00:42:29,820 --> 00:42:31,217 you were rotated back home to the United States. 662 00:42:32,485 --> 00:42:37,900 [Luckadoo] Upon completion, I was told that I could either remain 663 00:42:37,900 --> 00:42:42,896 and accept command of a squadron or rotate back to the States. 664 00:42:42,896 --> 00:42:49,169 I concluded that I had been extremely fortunate 665 00:42:49,169 --> 00:42:54,541 and lucky to have survived and that I shouldn't push it any further. 666 00:42:54,541 --> 00:42:57,844 So, uh, I elected to return. 667 00:42:59,646 --> 00:43:02,150 [Paridon] Rosie Rosenthal completes his 25 missions 668 00:43:02,150 --> 00:43:05,919 on March 8th, 1944, on a raid over Berlin. 669 00:43:06,653 --> 00:43:10,390 [Rosenthal] The crew urged me to buzz the field when we returned. 670 00:43:10,390 --> 00:43:13,893 I was a very conservative pilot and I said, "I don't think so." 671 00:43:14,661 --> 00:43:18,131 But on the way back, I said, "What the heck." 672 00:43:18,131 --> 00:43:22,836 And headed right for the tower and everybody hit the deck there 673 00:43:23,403 --> 00:43:27,207 and I buzzed the field three or four times and then came in. 674 00:43:27,207 --> 00:43:29,209 And then somebody approached me and said, 675 00:43:29,209 --> 00:43:33,279 "Rosie, did you know that General Huglin was there? 676 00:43:33,780 --> 00:43:37,217 And he hit the deck and he-- his clothes are all messed up." 677 00:43:37,217 --> 00:43:41,210 And there coming into the debriefing room was General Huglin. 678 00:43:41,210 --> 00:43:43,390 He came over and grabbed my hand 679 00:43:43,390 --> 00:43:46,159 and he said, "One hell of a buzz job, Rosie." 680 00:43:47,260 --> 00:43:50,230 [Miller] Everyone knew that D-Day was on the horizon 681 00:43:50,230 --> 00:43:54,968 and finishing off the Reich was a big objective for Rosie. 682 00:43:55,468 --> 00:43:59,406 To leave here is to leave the center of the universe. 683 00:43:59,406 --> 00:44:02,776 [Rosenthal] And that's when I decided to continue flying, 684 00:44:02,776 --> 00:44:07,414 and ultimately, I was assigned to be a squadron commander. 685 00:44:08,314 --> 00:44:12,485 [reporter 18] On this day, 650 American flying fortresses 686 00:44:12,485 --> 00:44:16,256 inflicted severe damage on German defenses along the coast. 687 00:44:20,627 --> 00:44:23,930 [Jeffrey] I had flown over to France to drop some bombs on some target. 688 00:44:23,930 --> 00:44:27,300 And when I returned, I was met at the airplane 689 00:44:27,300 --> 00:44:33,730 and told that I was t-- to report to General LeMay's headquarters that evening. 690 00:44:34,307 --> 00:44:39,746 General LeMay marched in and announced to us that the Allied Forces 691 00:44:39,746 --> 00:44:43,516 would land on the beaches of Normandy the next morning. 692 00:44:43,516 --> 00:44:47,921 But he said in order for you to thoroughly understand 693 00:44:47,921 --> 00:44:51,191 the, uh, importance of this occasion, 694 00:44:51,191 --> 00:44:56,196 that the Eighth Air Force will expend every airplane that it has 695 00:44:56,196 --> 00:44:59,666 in its inventory to be sure that these people got ashore. 696 00:45:00,934 --> 00:45:03,136 [Rosenthal] I remember coming to the briefing 697 00:45:03,136 --> 00:45:07,507 and when they moved the curtain from the map and there were cheers. 698 00:45:07,507 --> 00:45:10,510 I had never heard this kind of thing from the crews. 699 00:45:10,510 --> 00:45:12,412 Finally, D-Day had arrived. 700 00:45:16,516 --> 00:45:19,520 [Eisenhower] Soldiers, sailors and airmen 701 00:45:19,520 --> 00:45:21,154 of the Allied Expeditionary Force, 702 00:45:22,689 --> 00:45:25,792 you are about to embark upon the Great Crusade 703 00:45:25,792 --> 00:45:28,428 toward which we have striven these many months. 704 00:45:29,362 --> 00:45:31,331 The eyes of the world are upon you. 705 00:45:32,799 --> 00:45:34,901 Your task will not be an easy one. 706 00:45:35,802 --> 00:45:39,372 Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. 707 00:45:39,873 --> 00:45:41,541 He will fight savagely. 708 00:45:42,409 --> 00:45:47,514 I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. 709 00:45:48,448 --> 00:45:51,751 We will accept nothing less than full victory. 710 00:45:55,221 --> 00:45:56,790 [Rosenthal] As we flew over the channel, 711 00:45:56,790 --> 00:46:01,628 we looked down and saw thousands of ships in an armada down there. 712 00:46:03,363 --> 00:46:10,236 It was so thrilling one of the crew started to pray, and we all joined in. 713 00:46:12,500 --> 00:46:13,640 [radio beeping] 714 00:46:15,342 --> 00:46:19,112 [St. John] This is Robert St. John in the NBC newsroom in New York. 715 00:46:19,112 --> 00:46:22,115 This is a momentous hour in world history. 716 00:46:22,716 --> 00:46:26,953 The men of General Dwight Eisenhower are leaving their landing barges, 717 00:46:26,953 --> 00:46:30,657 fighting their way up the beaches into the fortress of Nazi Europe. 718 00:46:31,491 --> 00:46:33,293 They are moving in from the sea 719 00:46:33,293 --> 00:46:37,630 to attack the enemy under a mammoth cloud of fighter planes. 720 00:46:38,298 --> 00:46:40,934 [reporter 18] The fury from the air went on and on. 721 00:46:40,934 --> 00:46:45,905 Our airmen in tactical support of the ground forces took no rest that day. 722 00:46:45,905 --> 00:46:50,310 Back from one sortie, they gassed up, loaded their bombs and ammunition belts 723 00:46:50,310 --> 00:46:53,613 and grimly went out again and again. 724 00:46:56,983 --> 00:47:01,388 [Biddle] There was hardly any air intervention by the Luftwaffe 725 00:47:01,388 --> 00:47:02,655 when we invaded Normandy. 726 00:47:03,857 --> 00:47:06,259 [Spielberg] The Air Force really paved the way 727 00:47:06,259 --> 00:47:09,529 for the invasion across the English Channel. 728 00:47:13,266 --> 00:47:15,802 [Hanks] Germany now had to fight on two fronts, 729 00:47:15,802 --> 00:47:20,106 against the Anglo-American allies in the west and the Russians in the east. 730 00:47:20,106 --> 00:47:24,110 In August 1944, the Red Army discovered Majdanek, 731 00:47:24,110 --> 00:47:29,315 an abandoned Nazi concentration and extermination camp near Lublin, Poland, 732 00:47:29,315 --> 00:47:34,988 indisputable evidence of Hitler's program to exterminate the Jews of Europe. 733 00:47:40,860 --> 00:47:43,630 [reporter 19] Our invasion forces are on the offensive 734 00:47:43,630 --> 00:47:48,668 against Nazi troops who have been ordered to die rather than retreat. 735 00:47:48,668 --> 00:47:52,872 However, die or retreat they must, for this attack is being made 736 00:47:52,872 --> 00:47:57,477 with all the strength the Allied Command can throw into battle. 737 00:47:57,477 --> 00:48:00,460 [Couch] The army camp had these clandestine radios 738 00:48:00,460 --> 00:48:04,150 and we knew just about everything the BBC knew. 739 00:48:04,150 --> 00:48:08,154 [Wolff] When the invasion started in June of '44, 740 00:48:08,154 --> 00:48:10,490 we knew that we weren't gonna be there forever. 741 00:48:11,758 --> 00:48:15,362 [Hanks] Downed airmen were still streaming into Stalag Luft III. 742 00:48:15,362 --> 00:48:17,197 Among them, a number of Black pilots 743 00:48:17,197 --> 00:48:21,668 including Second Lieutenants, Alexander Jefferson and Richard Macon, 744 00:48:21,668 --> 00:48:26,473 who were with the renowned 332nd fighter group, the Red Tails. 745 00:48:26,473 --> 00:48:29,776 [Delmont] The Tuskegee pilots painted a deep red on the tails of their planes. 746 00:48:29,776 --> 00:48:32,946 Even when people didn't know that these were Black pilots flying the planes 747 00:48:32,946 --> 00:48:35,348 they recognized that they were Red Tails. 748 00:48:35,849 --> 00:48:39,552 [Macon] We didn't have any concern about running into the enemy 749 00:48:39,552 --> 00:48:42,589 because we knew that we were better flyers than they were, 750 00:48:42,589 --> 00:48:45,225 and I would "Ready, aim, fire." 751 00:48:47,600 --> 00:48:49,429 [Spielberg] These courageous Black flyers had been waiting 752 00:48:49,429 --> 00:48:54,367 to contribute to the war effort, and they distinguished themselves brilliantly. 753 00:48:56,569 --> 00:49:00,407 [Moye] Within the Air Force, and especially among the bomber crews 754 00:49:00,407 --> 00:49:05,780 that are making those long dangerous runs, say that they appreciated the Red Tails 755 00:49:05,780 --> 00:49:08,715 more than any of the other squadrons that they flew with in the war. 756 00:49:09,516 --> 00:49:11,918 [Hanks] Macon and Jefferson had been racially segregated 757 00:49:11,918 --> 00:49:14,587 on Air Force bases in America and Italy, 758 00:49:14,587 --> 00:49:16,156 and were shocked to discover 759 00:49:16,156 --> 00:49:19,626 that the barracks at Stalag Luft III were integrated. 760 00:49:19,626 --> 00:49:21,394 [Jefferson] There were approximately 150 men 761 00:49:21,394 --> 00:49:24,798 who had come in to this camp, and we were lined up. 762 00:49:24,798 --> 00:49:30,236 Finally, down the line came a long, tall Kentucky hillbilly 763 00:49:30,970 --> 00:49:35,775 and he walked back and says, "By cracky, I think I'll take this boy." 764 00:49:35,775 --> 00:49:39,112 Colonel walked across and said, "Lieutenant, you go with him." 765 00:49:39,946 --> 00:49:40,947 "Yes, sir." 766 00:49:41,948 --> 00:49:43,783 [Macon] The Germans took me into the room 767 00:49:43,783 --> 00:49:47,854 and showed me where I was going to be, on the third bed up. 768 00:49:48,421 --> 00:49:51,124 I didn't realize how badly I had been injured. 769 00:49:51,124 --> 00:49:53,793 I was paralyzed from my waist down. 770 00:49:53,793 --> 00:49:56,396 So, once they saw that I couldn't move, 771 00:49:56,396 --> 00:49:59,199 the Germans tried to tell them 772 00:49:59,199 --> 00:50:02,335 who will give up his bottom bunk for this man. 773 00:50:02,335 --> 00:50:03,803 Nobody moved. 774 00:50:03,803 --> 00:50:08,800 And finally, the guy from Texas said, "He can have my bunk, I'll go up there." 775 00:50:08,641 --> 00:50:11,211 He and I became the best of friends. 776 00:50:12,145 --> 00:50:14,948 [Delmont] These men had to come together to survive the prisoner camp. 777 00:50:14,948 --> 00:50:19,486 They let whatever racial attitudes, racial animosities go or at least lessen 778 00:50:19,486 --> 00:50:22,155 because they had to work together to keep up each other's spirits 779 00:50:22,155 --> 00:50:23,356 to survive that experience. 780 00:50:25,358 --> 00:50:29,529 [Hanks] One of the last Air Force operations was to starve the Reich of fuel 781 00:50:29,529 --> 00:50:32,665 by bombing German synthetic oil plants. 782 00:50:32,665 --> 00:50:36,870 The Allies also would need to hit transportation and storage facilities 783 00:50:36,870 --> 00:50:40,173 for the coal that powered jet production plants. 784 00:50:40,173 --> 00:50:43,677 This air blockade would cripple the Reich's war machine 785 00:50:43,677 --> 00:50:46,379 and leave the German army without adequate air cover 786 00:50:46,379 --> 00:50:49,820 in the culminating battles of the war. 787 00:50:49,820 --> 00:50:51,885 [Clark] We were in the officers' club until 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. 788 00:50:52,652 --> 00:50:54,888 Suddenly we heard the announcement: 789 00:50:54,888 --> 00:50:56,890 "Be prepared for a mission in the morning." 790 00:50:59,826 --> 00:51:03,163 We put up 2,000 heavy bombers. 791 00:51:03,163 --> 00:51:07,167 All you could see was four-engined bombers to the horizon. 792 00:51:09,703 --> 00:51:11,805 [Miller] To knock out one plant in World War II, 793 00:51:11,805 --> 00:51:14,700 a place called Leuna near Merseburg, 794 00:51:14,700 --> 00:51:20,460 it took 6,000 bombers flying about 40 missions to knock that plant out. 795 00:51:21,381 --> 00:51:25,185 [Rosenthal] Our group led one of the biggest raids on Berlin. 796 00:51:25,185 --> 00:51:26,986 It was a very beautiful day. 797 00:51:26,986 --> 00:51:29,723 The sun was shining, not a cloud in sight. 798 00:51:30,390 --> 00:51:34,561 As we approached the target, the plane was hit, 799 00:51:34,561 --> 00:51:37,664 but we continued and bombed the target, 800 00:51:37,664 --> 00:51:41,000 knowing that we couldn't return to our base. 801 00:51:41,568 --> 00:51:45,305 There was smoke and fire in the plane, and I knew I had to get out. 802 00:51:45,305 --> 00:51:47,907 And when I got out, I thought I was in heaven. 803 00:51:49,142 --> 00:51:52,612 And suddenly, I hit the ground and I looked up, 804 00:51:53,413 --> 00:51:56,449 and I saw three soldiers coming at me with guns. 805 00:51:57,450 --> 00:52:01,588 One of the soldiers raised his gun and was about to strike me, 806 00:52:01,588 --> 00:52:06,559 and I noticed that he had, on his hat, the Red Army symbol. 807 00:52:07,227 --> 00:52:10,263 And I yelled, Amerikanski, Roosevelt, 808 00:52:10,263 --> 00:52:12,799 Stalin, Churchill, Pepsi-Cola, 809 00:52:12,799 --> 00:52:16,269 Coca-Cola, uh, Lucky Strike. 810 00:52:17,437 --> 00:52:21,241 [Hanks] The Berlin raid was Rosie's 52nd and final mission. 811 00:52:21,241 --> 00:52:24,611 The most raids flown by a pilot in the 100th. 812 00:52:24,611 --> 00:52:27,280 After recuperating in a Russian hospital, 813 00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:29,616 Rosie made his way back to Thorpe Abbotts, 814 00:52:29,616 --> 00:52:34,870 where he had flown his first mission a year and a half earlier. 815 00:52:37,357 --> 00:52:40,627 [Couch] The Russians were knocking on the door. 816 00:52:40,627 --> 00:52:42,762 We could hear artillery 817 00:52:42,762 --> 00:52:46,199 and other sounds of combat in the distance. 818 00:52:46,833 --> 00:52:48,334 [Walton] Hitler debated back and forth: 819 00:52:48,334 --> 00:52:51,971 should we march the prisoners out of the camp or kill them? 820 00:52:51,971 --> 00:52:54,740 That was a real possibility. 821 00:52:54,774 --> 00:52:56,900 [Murphy] And suddenly, one night, 822 00:52:56,900 --> 00:52:59,679 our American senior officer was told by the Germans 823 00:52:59,679 --> 00:53:02,148 that we were going to be evacuated immediately, 824 00:53:02,148 --> 00:53:06,786 and we would be leaving the camp within an hour to march out on foot. 825 00:53:07,687 --> 00:53:10,457 They just said, we're moving you for your safety. 826 00:53:11,240 --> 00:53:13,393 That was what they said, but we all knew better. 827 00:53:15,295 --> 00:53:17,297 [Miller] The airmen had no idea where they're going. 828 00:53:17,297 --> 00:53:20,233 They feared Hitler was going to take American airmen 829 00:53:20,233 --> 00:53:22,469 and use them as human shields. 830 00:53:22,469 --> 00:53:25,839 And it's the worst European winter in 100 years. 831 00:53:27,207 --> 00:53:28,808 [Murphy] It was bitterly cold. 832 00:53:28,808 --> 00:53:31,344 The snow was about knee-deep, 833 00:53:31,344 --> 00:53:35,782 and they walked us all that night until late the next afternoon 834 00:53:35,782 --> 00:53:36,850 with just brief stops. 835 00:53:41,821 --> 00:53:44,240 [Jefferson] At Spremberg, they put us on a train. 836 00:53:44,240 --> 00:53:46,526 We were locked inside of these boxcars. 837 00:53:46,526 --> 00:53:49,129 They jammed in 60 to 70 men. 838 00:53:49,129 --> 00:53:50,864 Didn't have room enough to sit down. 839 00:53:50,864 --> 00:53:52,232 It was hell. 840 00:53:52,966 --> 00:53:55,435 [Wolff] That one, we were packed in tighter than heck. 841 00:53:55,435 --> 00:53:58,438 Anybody falling down would get stomped on. 842 00:53:58,438 --> 00:53:59,706 [Walton] When the train pulled in, 843 00:53:59,706 --> 00:54:02,342 men were banging on the door to get out of the cars. 844 00:54:02,342 --> 00:54:04,544 The guards finally opened the doors. 845 00:54:05,178 --> 00:54:07,347 It's as bad as-as you can imagine. 846 00:54:12,986 --> 00:54:15,922 [Wolff] It was a camp that apparently had been designed 847 00:54:15,922 --> 00:54:19,325 to hold 8,000 or 10,000 people max. 848 00:54:19,325 --> 00:54:21,728 There was over 100,000 there. 849 00:54:21,728 --> 00:54:23,596 Camp Hell would be a good word for it. 850 00:54:25,532 --> 00:54:27,801 [Miller] There were no barracks, people camped outside. 851 00:54:27,801 --> 00:54:29,269 The conditions were horrible. 852 00:54:29,269 --> 00:54:31,370 No one knew what was gonna happen to them. 853 00:54:34,541 --> 00:54:37,770 [Macon] One day, we were walking around in the camp. 854 00:54:37,770 --> 00:54:40,213 Somebody says, "There's a tank. There's a Sherman tank." 855 00:54:40,213 --> 00:54:41,948 And then we looked and, surely enough, 856 00:54:41,948 --> 00:54:44,417 there was a Sherman tank on the horizon. 857 00:54:45,418 --> 00:54:47,554 [Jefferson] Patton's Third Army came through. 858 00:54:47,554 --> 00:54:52,392 I saw Patton on-- on a tank when he came through the main gate of--of Stalag VII-A. 859 00:54:52,392 --> 00:54:53,460 We'd been liberated. 860 00:54:53,460 --> 00:54:54,961 [chuckles] 861 00:54:55,729 --> 00:55:00,734 The men went to the flagpole and rung down the swastika 862 00:55:00,734 --> 00:55:05,939 while they opened up Old Glory and raised it, and we came to attention. 863 00:55:05,939 --> 00:55:09,420 We weren't in uniforms. Tattered clothes and all that stuff. 864 00:55:09,420 --> 00:55:13,747 And I guess that was the greatest salute I ever gave. [chuckles] 865 00:55:14,614 --> 00:55:16,449 [Murphy] It was very emotional. 866 00:55:16,449 --> 00:55:18,518 We were finally going to be freed 867 00:55:18,518 --> 00:55:23,423 after all those months and years of having been held as POWs. 868 00:55:23,423 --> 00:55:27,427 In many ways, it was hard to believe that we were finally gonna be able to go home. 869 00:55:28,528 --> 00:55:30,697 [reporter 20] This is London Calling. 870 00:55:30,697 --> 00:55:32,766 Here is a news flash. 871 00:55:33,266 --> 00:55:38,710 The German radio has just announced that Hitler is dead. 872 00:55:40,600 --> 00:55:44,878 [Hanks] On May 1st, 1945, the day the world learned of Hitler's suicide, 873 00:55:44,878 --> 00:55:47,247 the 100th flew one final mission, 874 00:55:47,247 --> 00:55:50,283 part of what was called Operation Chowhound. 875 00:55:50,283 --> 00:55:54,521 The crews would be dropping, by parachute, food, not bombs. 876 00:55:54,521 --> 00:55:57,724 Relief for nearly five million starving people in the Netherlands, 877 00:55:57,724 --> 00:56:00,493 still occupied by die-hard Nazis. 878 00:56:00,994 --> 00:56:04,364 As the bombers reached the outskirts of Amsterdam, 879 00:56:04,364 --> 00:56:08,568 they passed over fields of brilliantly colored tulips. 880 00:56:08,568 --> 00:56:10,270 In one of them, the heads of the flowers 881 00:56:10,270 --> 00:56:14,174 had been clipped to say, "Many thanks, Yanks." 882 00:56:16,676 --> 00:56:18,478 [cheering, whistling] 883 00:56:22,582 --> 00:56:24,451 [Hanks] The war in Europe was over. 884 00:56:24,451 --> 00:56:27,821 The crews of the 100th packed up their duffels, 885 00:56:27,821 --> 00:56:30,857 and the local folk from the villages around Thorpe Abbotts, 886 00:56:30,857 --> 00:56:33,260 dressed in their Sunday finest, 887 00:56:33,260 --> 00:56:36,396 gathered to see them off for their long journey home. 888 00:56:40,367 --> 00:56:42,535 [cheering] 889 00:56:44,871 --> 00:56:47,340 [Murphy] When I got to Atlanta, I went to the public telephone 890 00:56:47,340 --> 00:56:50,477 and called my mother and told 'em I was home. 891 00:56:51,110 --> 00:56:52,645 Course, she immediately broke down, 892 00:56:54,314 --> 00:56:55,949 and they-they ca-- they came out-- 893 00:56:55,949 --> 00:57:00,553 They drove out to Fort McPherson, and they picked me up and I got home. 894 00:57:01,421 --> 00:57:02,422 [sniffles] 895 00:57:03,223 --> 00:57:04,858 [Wolff] We got back to California. 896 00:57:04,858 --> 00:57:06,760 My dad and mother were there. 897 00:57:06,760 --> 00:57:10,497 There was a big reunion, of course, and I was halfway to the moon. 898 00:57:13,990 --> 00:57:15,902 And three weeks later, we were married. 899 00:57:17,604 --> 00:57:20,774 [Hanks] The men of the Bloody Hundredth were finally home, 900 00:57:21,641 --> 00:57:23,910 reunited with their families 901 00:57:24,577 --> 00:57:25,945 and their wives 902 00:57:26,813 --> 00:57:28,481 and their sweethearts. 903 00:57:28,982 --> 00:57:32,552 Some for the first time since leaving for war. 904 00:57:33,586 --> 00:57:37,624 [Rosenthal] When I l-left the service, I was exhausted. 905 00:57:37,624 --> 00:57:39,993 I'd been through these trying experiences, 906 00:57:39,993 --> 00:57:43,596 and I wanted to put that behind me and I wanted to resume civilian life. 907 00:57:44,798 --> 00:57:48,468 I went back to work at the same firm that I had been with, 908 00:57:48,468 --> 00:57:52,500 and I was not ready, really, to go back to work. 909 00:57:52,500 --> 00:57:55,475 And finally, after being there for six months, 910 00:57:55,475 --> 00:58:00,947 I heard about an opportunity to go to Nuremberg as a prosecutor. 911 00:58:03,416 --> 00:58:06,353 On the ship over there, I met this beautiful woman 912 00:58:06,353 --> 00:58:10,357 who was also a lawyer and was going over as a prosecutor. 913 00:58:10,357 --> 00:58:13,993 And within 10 days, we were engaged to marry, 914 00:58:14,527 --> 00:58:16,529 and we were married over in Nuremberg. 915 00:58:18,365 --> 00:58:23,236 I saw these defendants there who were powerless now, 916 00:58:23,236 --> 00:58:26,973 sitting abjectly and being tried and being convicted. 917 00:58:27,507 --> 00:58:31,611 And when I saw that, that, in fact, ended the war for me. 918 00:58:36,683 --> 00:58:40,253 [Hanks] World War II was the most devastating event in human history. 919 00:58:41,488 --> 00:58:44,924 More costly in lives than any war ever fought. 920 00:58:45,925 --> 00:58:50,930 In it, the Eighth Air Force suffered the highest casualty rate 921 00:58:50,930 --> 00:58:54,000 of any of the American Armed Forces. 922 00:58:57,103 --> 00:58:59,572 [Luckadoo] Now that I've survived it 923 00:58:59,572 --> 00:59:05,178 and can look back on it for all these intervening years, 924 00:59:06,112 --> 00:59:08,348 it was a life changer for me. 925 00:59:09,849 --> 00:59:11,117 [Crosby] If, in this time, 926 00:59:11,117 --> 00:59:15,288 there's a feeling of excitement and romance and mythology, it's there. 927 00:59:15,288 --> 00:59:19,826 My friends that I made then saved my life any number of times. 928 00:59:19,826 --> 00:59:22,896 They were the friends of all friends. 929 00:59:23,496 --> 00:59:26,399 [Rosenthal] The people we served with, they were dedicated, 930 00:59:26,399 --> 00:59:29,402 they sacrificed, they had great courage. 931 00:59:29,936 --> 00:59:32,872 We shared heartbreak and hilarity. 932 00:59:32,872 --> 00:59:37,310 We saw our comrades go down and being killed, 933 00:59:37,310 --> 00:59:40,680 being wounded, become prisoners of war. 934 00:59:40,680 --> 00:59:45,719 And we developed a tremendous respect for each other and we shared a victory. 935 00:59:46,219 --> 00:59:50,230 And I think this was the experience of all of our people. 936 00:59:50,230 --> 00:59:52,726 Miraculously, people came together. 937 00:59:55,495 --> 00:59:59,650 You have to give all the credit to the men and the women 938 00:59:59,650 --> 01:00:04,700 that sacrificed their lives and basically saved the world from fascism. 939 01:00:06,573 --> 01:00:11,177 [Murphy] The freedoms that we enjoy did not come about by accident. 940 01:00:11,177 --> 01:00:14,881 They were bought and paid for by my generation 941 01:00:14,881 --> 01:00:18,118 and the generations that preceded us. 942 01:00:18,118 --> 01:00:19,519 And for that reason, 943 01:00:19,519 --> 01:00:25,425 I think the World War II generation deserves to be remembered.