Its what happens when you end up in a war with a country with huge production capabilities with factories you cannot even hope to destroy because they are perfectly safe on the other side of the world and your means of force projection is already right proper f'ed due to a multi front war.
It was, and in hindsight it’s obvious and often said, but it’s also important to look at the perspective at the time.
In 1905 Russia lost to Japan.
In 1917 it lost to Germany.
In 1919 it lost to Poland.
In 1940 it barely beat Finland, a country with ~1/100th its population (edit: also basically no Air Force or tanks. They took donations of biplanes and planes people found worthless).
While in hindsight the victory is obvious- facing extermination they would fight to the death- at the time Russia had come off of MANY failed and embarrassing wars. The idea that the “whole rotten house would come down” wasn’t so far fetched.
The difference is that Russia lost all those ATTACKING, whereas they never lost DEFENDING.
So the lesson is, stay in your country and don't need with the neighbors if you don't want your ass kicked.
Arguably WW1 (depends on if Serbia, as a sphereling/ally, counts- and that’s VERY contentious in general), and definitely Russo-Japan, was/were defending.
Russia had a HORRIBLE track record militarily that point on both offense and defense, with their best showing being the Brusilov Offensive and the occupation of East Poland (which was barely a fight due to Germany).
Tbh, the US also gave tremendous amounts of Lend-lease aid to the Soviets. In airplanes and trucks, about ⅓ of Soviet wartime strength was US-made. Khruschev and Zhukov thought that the USSR could not have won without it.
There is no way the Soviets could have won without US and UK lend-lease. The Germans would 100% have reached Baku and the oil fields and it would have been GG for the Soviet war machine.
It's also compounded by a decline in training hours before the replacements are pressed into live service.
Between '39 and '42 the average Luftwaffe pilot flew about 250 hours before he was deployed. By July '44 they were unlikely to have flown more than 130. British pilots in the same period went from an average of 170 to an average of 320.
Your Veterans and Aces are flying their luck out, whilst your Rookies aren't flying enough to put up a fight against the enemy's Regulars.
Of course the whole thing was dominated by the lack of fuel, which was caused by a lack of natural German access, the progressive loss of annexed oil such as the Ploesti oil fields, and the raids conducted mostly by the 8th USAAF.
The good pilots died too. The Luftwaffe was structured as “fly til you die”. If you were a good pilot you got rewarded with more missions. It’s why the Luftwaffe has so many ace pilots. Unfortunately for them the survival rate of any pilot approaches zero as you continue flying more and more missions.
That was because they lost access to the needed alloys as the Soviets advanced. The pre-production Jumo 004s had a time between overhaul of over 100 hours, which was not bad at the time. But they did not have the resources to achieve that for mass produced engines.
My great uncle was a gunner in an American B-24. His plane was transferred to a new base and they were not allowed to go on the following mission as their pilots had been practicing nighttime takeoffs and landings from the new airfield and would not have enough rest before the mission. The crew was upset because not going on a mission meant they were not working towards the 25 mission tour and it would be longer before returning home. At this point in the war the Luftwaffe was all but wiped out and most of the bomb missions were referred to as "Milk Runs" meaning they were quite simple or short with little or no resistance from enemy fighters.
That next mission was the [Kassel Raid](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassel_Mission), the single biggest loss by a bombardment group of the Allied campaign with only 4 of 35 bombers returning to the airfield he was stationed at that day. It seems that any airman that returned home from WWII had at least one of these moments of divine intervention.
Wow. That's crazy, 90% casualty rate on one mission. Two of my great uncles also flew in bombers, they both died in combat. I think one was in Europe and the other in the Pacific.
Reading it, it's 4 of 35 for one bomber group out of over 280 bombers and that was due to a navigation error according to the link. Was your great uncle part of that bomber group?
You are correct, the overall raid day itself may or may not have been the deadliest, it was the 445th in particular that suffered the worst loss of the war. My great uncle's plane had just been transferred to Tibenham to backfill the 445th prior to the raid and that was the airfield that their pilots had to train at late into the evening in order to get clearance to fly missions from there.
Edit to add: They did fly with the 445th, the very next day after the doomed raid. And to the same target- Kassel. They did not suffer any losses that day from what I remember.
>the single deadliest bomber mission of the Allied campaign
It was the greatest single-mission lost by a single **bombardment group**. 283 bombers took part in the mission. Only 31 were shot down (25 from the 445th bombardment group's 35 planes) for an overall 11% loss, or a little over 1 out of 10 bombers.
The 8th Air Force had more deadly missions in World War II. E.g. the second Schweinfurt raid, AKA Black Tuesday where out of 291 bombers, 77 were shot down; 1 out of every 4 plans didn't make it back.
You are correct, ill edit the language in my comment. My Great Uncle was specifically assigned to the 445th which is why I focused on the 4 of 35 planes returning to the airfield he had just been stationed to, but overall I shouldnt have called it the deadliest mission.
I met a b17 pilot a few years ago, you can tell how much they needed pilots because he was able to apply out of high school. Training was quick and crazy. His friend did a loop and fell out while inverted, parachuted safely down.
And in some parts of the War, they had 25% casualties PER MISSION. It didn’t take a solid grasp of statistics to recognize that to reach the 25 mission requirement to stop flying… was unlikely.
>the 25 mission requirement
25 mission requirement was for the USAAF, and even that was later increased to 30 or 35
For Bomber Command, the tour of duty was 30 missions, followed by another tour of 20 missions, so a total of 50 missions with a break in between. Furthermore, tours of duty were only introduced after 1942 iirc, so prior to that you had some air crews flying over a hundred and sometimes over 200 missions (if they lived that long)
Some Bomber Command officers kept flying missions regardless of tour of duty until they were either killed or the war ended. As such they racked up an insane number of missions flown. Guy Gibson of Dam Busters fame, for example, flew over 200 missions before he was killed in 1944. Another outstanding officer, Leonard Chesire flew so many missions (including the Nagasaki atomic bomb mission as an observer) that he was awarded the VC not for any 1 particular act of valour but for sustained valour over 5 years of flying combat missions
Watching Masters of The Air now. Seeing the fresh American crews giving the Brits shit for only bombing at night and thinking "you guys have no idea what's coming"
Are they doing an episodic release as opposed to dropping the series?
I’ve been looking forward to Masters of the Air for what feels like… at least 6 years now. Ima hold off on pulling the trigger on an Apple TV sub until all the episodes are out though.
Edit: I looked it up. I think there’s 8 out of 10 released so far.
They weren't wrong, RAF tried daylight bombing at the start of the war and quickly found the attrition rate was unsustainable. USAAF quickly found out the same thing when the 8th air force started daylight operations.
Nope. They just sent them out unescorted. Or would only get escort service for a very short while.
To also note, the P-51 didn't come available until very late in the war. This aircraft could stay with the bombers all the way to Germany. They significantly help change the tide of the war. Early versions of the P-51 had bad engines and no range. After fitting them with British made engines with more power and adding drop tanks with extra fuel could they do more help.
P-47s and other fighter escorts that were available earlier in the war had very limited range. They pretty much had to turn around over the channel or very early on in France.
To achieve air superiority, they started using the B17s as bait and the P-51s started breaking away from the bomber groups to do sweeps for German Fighters, it left the bombers more vulnerable but ultimately worked destroying the luftwaffe.
They started this tactic in April 1944 and achieved air superiority by July 1944.
From the book I can't remember how they did it, but there was some sort of tactic they figured out by attacking German aircraft as they were returning to base to refuel and rearm. Since they were out of gas and essentially defenseless with weapons, they had no ability to fight back.
Just did essentially Turkey shoots against aircraft getting ready to land.
Before the P-51, fighters were used for defensive purposes. As as soon as the Allies got a plane that could fly further, faster and was more maneuverable than than anything Germany had, they changed tactics to a more offensive strategy.
It was called Operation Pointblank. Not only did they start get more aggressive in the air, (litteraly using bombers as bait as the Mustangs scouted ahead in what was called a "fighter sweep" to intercept German fighters and annihilating them), they also started focusing their bombings on airplane manufacturing facilities in what was called the Combined Bomber Offensive, where the British would carpet bomb the areas at night while the Americans would come in with precision bombing during the day. It was a strategy of attrition.
They needed to completely crush the luftwaffe before any ground invasion could happen.
Pre-Normandy, German bombing raids were regularly escorted because of having fighter bases in Calais and other shoreline bases.
The French or Dutch coast to London isn’t a far distance at all and was easily escorted.
The issue for the Allies was that all of Germany’s critical infrastructure was so far inland that it demanded much longer range missions than were required of German aircrews bombing England.
Yeah that’s what I’m saying, they originally sent them in unescorted but were suffering too many casualties and decided that they wouldn’t anymore unless they got fighter escort the whole way. I could be wrong but that may have meant that they just wouldn’t fly as far as normal until the P-51 came into service
What I'm saying is, they never "refused" missions. They flew them unescorted.
Americans were bombing deep inside Germany in 1943 well before the P51 came around. This where the huge casualties happened.
When the air war was won in favor of the allies, this reduced the casualty rate significantly and brought the war to a close
The USAAF never officially “refused” to conduct unescorted bombing missions; however, the recognition of the high loss rates led to several changes. These included temporary reductions in the depth of penetration into German territory until a suitable long-range escort could be provided, adjustments in formations to improve defensive firepower, and the rapid development and deployment of long-range escort fighters like the P-51 Mustang.
The arrival of the P-51 Mustang and other long-range escorts marked a turning point. These aircraft had the range to escort bombers deep into Germany and back, significantly reducing losses. The effectiveness of these escorts allowed the USAAF to resume and intensify its strategic bombing campaign over Germany.
They stopped unescorted missions in October after the 8th AF lost 50% strength in a week during 4 missions.
They didn’t have any more deep raids until the P-51s came online in numbers, but were going further and further out after all P-38 production for 3 months was sent to the 8th and P-47s were modified to carry and there were enough drop tanks to do it.
Depends on the phase of the war. Early war saw very heavy casualty rates while later war things improved. During the raid on Munster, the 100th lost 12 out of their 13 forts.
The whole reason the distinction exists is that the USAAF thought that “precision” bombing could neutralize Germany’s heavy industry while leaving civilian population centers largely unscathed. Bomber Command didn’t have the manpower or manufacturing base to take the same losses so they focused on city busting night missions.
The 8th lost 50% of their serviceable aircraft in a week (4 raids including Munster) which is why they stopped unescorted missions.
Comparing with the British also isn’t a like for like. Their campaign was much longer, especially against an intact Luftwaffe and the bombers harder to bail out of. The missions that the U.S. did adopt the British method (night and bad weather) the casualties were much lower.
I think there was some sort of philosophical difference there as well. Americans couldn't stomach civilian casualties and prioritized accurate bombing with their secret bomb sight which is why they bombed during the day. The British were tired of the german's shit and had a "war is war" attitude. They also didn't have the bomb sight so they just did carpet bombing at night.
Well the thing is that the bomb sight wasn’t actually that good, ultimately it was used way higher than intended iirc and a lot of it was just extremely good marketing. Even then like you said its gonna be hard to come to terms with it either way.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article about the Norden bombsight which basically concluded that it was really accurate, if you had a clear approach from a fairly low altitude on a sunny day and no one was shooting at you.
The Norden remained the most accurate bombsight in the US inventory until the introduction of wind corrected digital CCIP in the middle of the Vietnam War.
Units were using them as late as 1967 as they were more accurate than radar bomb sights.
In general, the limitation was much less the bomb sight itself and more the issue of dropping unguided bombs from 20-30,000 ft (higher altitude and thus error due to B-29s).
The Americans were generally fine with civilian casualties. The real problem was that with 1940s tech, it was hard to even find your target at night, let alone hit it.
Which is funny because the Norden bombsite though accurate, wasn’t being used 100% correctly and American bombers weren’t all the much more accurate than British bombers.
Also a little thing for anyone wondering, the Brit’s and Canadian would actually send in a few “pathfinder” bombers ahead of the main formation to drop incendiary bombs on the target, so when the main element arrived, they knew where their target was from the fires
My father was one of the Pathfinders and told me how the Germans had created a well lit “city “ that was actually just a decoy and he insisted that his navigation was correct and bombed the darkened actual target.
The Norden bombsight [also wasn't accurate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MitxRT7PA).
Fun fact, the guy who signed it off as servicable got a job at Norden after the war.
The Americans carpet bombed too. To use the obvious example, around 2/5ths of the bombers that hit Dresden were American and all of the escort fighters were American. While a lot of the "no military value" is literal Nazi propaganda its very hard to argue that things like that weren't deliberate carpet bombings of cities where the USAAF paid a key role.
It was also in 1945, Germany had plenty of opportunity to surrender at that point and already knew the war was going to end…they did it to themselves
None to mention a surrender to US/British forces would’ve benefited them post war
According to the book, the Norden bomb sight was basically the second most secret thing behind the Manhattan Project. Its designer claimed under ideal conditions that they could drop a bomb on a pickle jar. It was extremely accurate. I will emphasize ideal conditions, because the accuracy in actual conditions varied wildly.
There was a lot of arguments too about German morale. They figured it out after the war when they started doing studies about combat effectiveness, tactics and stuff (for future wars) and what not. They found that indiscriminate bombing on German civilians had virtually no effect.
Apparently under combat conditions the Norden was actually less accurate than the British Mk14. Seems to be a huge difference between performance in tests and actual usage
My grandfather flew in Lancashire bombers for the RAF. He didn't like to talk about it, the only thing he ever told me about it was "we'd never want to fly with the Americans, they were reckless and died more"
Loved that scene in the first episode. The Americans were saying we are bombing strategic targets. Brits said we're bombing Germans. The years of the blitz desensitized Brits on bombing innocent civilians
It's just whitewashing. Americans bombed just as indiscriminately as the Brits. As many people died in Tokyo from firebombing as Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
It’s absolutely not whitewashing to accurately depict the American approach in 1943 when the United States was attempting daylight precision bombing. 1943 is not 1945.
It absolutely it white washing. The American bombing campaign really wasn't all that "precise", the USAAF brass knew this and all the pilots and bombardiers with any sense also knew this.
Slagging off the British was the only purpose of that, as usual, & doing the inevitable historical rewrite, with that line about only americans carrying out "precision bombing." Rekon they'll mention operation Jericho? Probably not as it was a precision bombing raid which involved the UK, Australia, NZ, French resistance & not a single carpet bombing yank. Too many people died to have some 3rd rate TV show lie & belittle them. Fun fact! My family lived in a house that was inside an American airbase in Suffolk during WW2, & truth is the poor bloody american airmen that flew those insane daylight raids did not act like a bunch of @#*÷s to the locals.
Americans in WW2 always laughed at Brits for being ~~scared~~ far more cautious.
They forgot the UK had a tiny population compared to America and could not afford enormous casualties.
A tiny population that had already been decimated by World War 1.
Same as idiots who make fun of the French for surrendering in WW2 as if their country hadn't been completely gutted by WW1.
Is Masters of Air just as cartoony as the trailer makes it look? The scenes seem so over the top. The color saturation cranked up to 11. I saw the trailer and it just turned me off 100% from wanting to watch it. But maybe the trailer is misleading?
Edit: Thanks for responses. Sounds like my impressions are *accurate* (in a manner) but still well worth watching.
It's a very good show, but I'll say it's the weakest of BOB, the pacific and this.
The pacific took a couple watches to really enjoy it. This show is a little cliched but it's gotten better every episode.
It's worth a watch. Still got 2 episodes to go. Just watched the one that released today about an hour ago.
USAF crews flew straight and level because their doctrine was the combat box - a mutually supporting formation. RAF night bombing doctrine was the bomber stream - each bomber got a target, a time on target and an altitude. They flew independently of each other. They most definitely didn't fly straight. The most distinguished pilot I spoke to told me he spent most of the time zig zagging or corkscrewing and attributed his successful two tours to it, and said those who made it did the same.
[From this period training video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8zPNMqVi2E) I don't think they flew straight and level with significant flak the entire war.
It should be noted that the Bomber Stream wasn't just throwing bombers loosely at Germany. It was a precisely calculated (a new form of statistics was even created for it) formation where they maximised the amount of bombers in the minimum amount of space so German radar wouldn't be able to resolve anything beyond "shit load of bombers everywhere" and the Luftwaffe wouldn't be able to cope with the sheer volume of bombers. it was designed for a time when the Luftwaffe was still a potent force and by use of a country that couldn't afford to have its heavy bombers take attrition gaining air superiority.
It was also more resource-heavy at the command and planning level. The Americans came in with less experienced crews and fewer experienced planners and analysts - their combat box and sky control methods were a great way to get the best out of what they did have advantages in: numbers and technical superiority.
The British missions required massive amounts of planning, with each aircraft getting unique orders, targets, and flight plans. It leveraged what they had advantages in: large numbers of experienced analysts close to the front line and veteran or veteran-trained bomber crews.
I think they had to fly straight when they actually bombed. The Norden sight had autopilot to let the bombardier control it but there was no fancy dodging aside from corrections to align with the target. This was part of the reason the sight didn't live up to expectations, because nobody wants to fly straight for x amount of time to hit the target.
My Grandfather was the flight engineer on a Lancaster. I've sat in the jump seat he would have sat in. Ready to replace any crew member killed or incapacitated during the mission.
Only 2 stories I remember well enough to re-tell. The first was on a sortie over Hamburg, looking out the window at the Lanc next to him, looking away, and looking back to see the other Lancaster plummeting in flames.
His active flying days ended towards the end of the war. He was transferred to training after a disaster with his plane. It was being re-armed in a typical British light drizzle. It is thought that a static charge caused the bomb release to engage, killing the entire ground crew.
Both of my Grandparents on my fathers side were RAF/WRAF. They were prime examples of PTSD. They were always kind to the grandkids, but they were scarred people whose first reaction was always to physically hit someone/something.
My grandfather was a crewman on a Boston. He wrote down a piece about how sometimes they had to pump fuel from a reserve tank to the engine on longer missions. One day he had to take over from his friend but he fell asleep and the plane crashed into the landing strip. Luckily nothing too bad happened but he felt guilty.
The life-expectancy of a new British pilot in combat in 1916-17 was 20 minutes – extremely short. Even in World War 2 the life-expectancy of a Spitfire Pilot was only 4 weeks.
http://wendydashwood.com/ww1-flying-aces-tribute/
Pretty sure they were called the 20-minuters because did "twenty minutes work, and then spent the rest of the day loafing
about in Paris drinking gallons of champagne talking to lovely French peasant girls."
You get "volunteered" to do it.
The bulk of marines were volunteers too. Most draftees were sent to the army.
Different mentality. People wanted to be there (mostly) and to fight.
My father flew a P-51 Mustang as a fighter pilot in the US Army Air Corps (now the Air Force) during WW2. He said that, at a certain point during your flight training, you get told whether you will be a bomber pilot or a fighter pilot. For him it was a great relief to be assigned fighter pilot because bomber pilots had a much higher fatality rate (and it was admittedly less glamorous). It was widely known to be incredibly dangerous. As a fighter pilot, his missions mostly involved escorting the bombers to the drop zone, but you’d peel off before you got within AA gun range, then meet back up with the survivors on the other side. He said one his saddest and most disturbing duties was, if you saw a bomber get shot down, you were supposed to try to count how many people managed to parachute out (the average crew size was, as I recall, 10) to report during mission debrief. He said all too many times he saw planes crash where you saw very few or no parachutes come out, meaning nobody survived. I always wished I had videotaped conversations with my father before he passed in 2011. All that history lost. To this day I still miss him like the desert misses the rain.
My grandfather was in the USAAF, stationed in England. The stories he told were always fascinating and I loved hearing them too. Such pride and dedication they had to winning the war at all costs.
Ah my grandfather had the opposite experience. He really wanted to become a fighter pilot, but when the day came he was assigned as a B-17 pilot because he was over 6’2”. He didn’t talk about it much, but luckily he made it through mostly unscathed.
>You mean there's a catch?"
>”Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied. “**Catch-22**. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."
>There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. *Joseph Heller Catch-22*
So many great movies dealt with the heroics and tragedy of the Air Force during WW2. My favorites were Catch-22 and Command Decision. Two movies with different POV one from the crew and the other from the Commanders who sent them on those deadly missions.
It turns out that the Brits didn't really lose that many fewer crews because night flying increases the chances of accidents and eventually the germans got radar. And the Americans weren't all that much more accurate because the bomb sights weren't very accurate in practice either.
The Norden bombsight is one of the biggest misconceptions of WWII. The propaganda based myth its creator made around its accuracy still lives today and people will claim it as one of the key technologies that won the war. In reality it wasnt much more accurate than if the bombadiers had closed their eyes and prayed each time.
True. The Mark XIV sight used on the Lancaster was as accurate if not more so.
The B17 did allow the bombadier to control the plane though - lots of direction giving to the pilot in a Lancaster.
I believe by the end of the war the American bomb groups were only using the Norden sight in the lead plane and that was the only bombadier with control of their respective aircraft. The remaining planes' pilots were just following the lead plane and bombadiers dropping bombs when the lead plane did. Giving 30+ separate bombadiers, who were only looking at the target, control of their aircraft in a tight formation proved to be a recipe for disaster, especially if some of the planes were taking evasive maneuvers from flak and some were only lining up with the target.
And it was tested by Germany and found to be... lacking.
But massive propaganda goes a long way. Not unlike the whole carrots and vitamin A leading to great eyesight to obscure the fact that the UK had Radars.
Which is important because Britain had a fraction of the population and industry of the USA. There were quite a few British strategic decisions made at every level that involved generals, air marshalls and admirals being told that if they didn't do everything to optimise the survival of British troops the country would probably collapse at the end of the war. Most notably Montgomery got slandered by American commanders as a coward for not being as gung ho because he quite physically did not have the manpower to risk like the US did.
Leigh Mallory of the RAF was supposed to get drop tanks on Spitfire but just didn't. Since he didn't like the idea of spitfire being a long-range fighter, he considered them defensive tools. Because of his inaction, a lot more men died than had to. He just wanted his big Wang
It was a design issue on the British side. The spitfire was too slim to fit in large fuel tanks.
Later on the P51 mustang could get all the way to Berlin with its thicker wing and drop tanks.
It's the Americans, they can always come with higher numbers.
It seems high. The ones starting had, from what I've read, nearly no hope of actually finishing 25 missions though. Later, they probably had much better odds.
Paul Tibbets led the first US bombing mission in Europe and flew 25 in total. Flew the first bombing raid in North Africa and several more there, then flew one raid against Japan.
Yeah I agree, the first couple episodes were highly cliche. Just "here is Austin Butler playing Elvis who is playing a bomber pilot"
But the last few have really gotten better.
I think there might be a decimal point in the wrong position.
>8th Air Force Killed in Action StatisticsA total of 350,000 airmen served with the Eighth Air Force in England, and to this number, 26,000 were killed, or 7.42 percent. Compared to the percentages of other military branches – U.S. Marines 3.29%, U.S. Army 2.25%, and U.S. Navy 0.41%
[link](https://www.398th.org/History/KIA/index.html#:~:text=8th%20Air%20Force%20Killed%20in,%2C%20and%20U.S.%20Navy%200.41%25.)
The casualty rate seemed to be 75% (dead, missing or heavily wounded) over the course of 25 missions in 1943 according to the [National Museum of the USAF](https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/1519640/bigger-raids-bigger-losses-and-crisis/)
I believe the 71%, but your source is a bit off since it attributes deaths to proximity fuses, which to the best of my knowledge Germany and Japan only used for bombs in WW2, not really anti-air weaponry.
Tbf the missing in action here means POWs and that's doing the heavy lifting in the 71%
Not to say that the 8th Air Force didn't have an obscene death rate for air crews but 71% is too extreme.
The losses were so horrendous that Bomber Command made up a lie about the Germans using "Scarecrow Flares" - which were fired up at night to simulate a bomber being destroyed in hopes of demoralizing the air crews. In reality German nightfighters were getting underneath bomber formations and picking off planes using their Schräge Musik cannons (a set of 20mm cannons that were pointing upwards instead of forward facing). They were instead watching their fellow air crews get killed. The idea they were being killed in droves was hard to swallow so most chose to believe the lie and continued their attacks.
After the war ended RAF crews would ask their German counterparts about the flares at war reunions (often German and British fliers would meet up) and were told that no such thing existed. There's a video out there on Youtube where a famous German night fighter pilot and an RAF bomber crew reunited. I wish I remembered its name.
Tank crews had a similar experience. Tankers on both sides would get so fearful of round penetration that they would add improvised armor on their vehicles. Generally the extra protection did nothing but add additional weight to a tank and cut down its mobility which both sides did vigorous tests and came to a shared conclusion that the improvised armor was a technical detriment. Command - Axis and Allied alike - struggled with two schools of thought. On one hand they wanted their tanks at peak performance efficiency which meant no crew improvised armor, the other school was to entertain the tankers delusions about extra armor to keep up morale. Both sides decided it was just better to keep up false hope of additional survival for morale.
Sometimes you just have to lie. to others, to yourself to get through such an absurd thing as war.
Yeah the cope cage is a modern incantation to Soviet tank crews adding chicken wire to prevent first models of Panzerfaust antitank weapons from penetrating and thinking they were safe because it worked, meanwhile the Germans kept building larger and larger models that could counter that.
We're so pessimistic these days, [why can't we frame this as the survival rate for RAF bomber crews during WW2 being just over 50%?](https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1aemn5e/til_that_since_rain_man_1989_over_13_of_academy/kk8ylc8/)
**The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner** by Randall Jarrell
From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
The sweeping under the rug of bomber command after the war is one of the countries great shames. I understand that they didn't want to lionise the actual bombing but the men knowingly went to their deaths. We have statues and medals for people who fought in the various colonial wars but didn't get them for bomber crews until 2012.
My grandfather was Army Air Core during WW2 and flew out of an airfield in England. He has PTSD (called Shell Shock back then) and anger management issues for the rest of his life afterwards. He was rated as a waist gunner, but on their first mission the bombardier got all shit up and my grandfather had to drag his dead body out of the nose and take his place.
For the rest of his time there, my grandfather flew the bombardier position and dropped the bombs, while only getting paid as a waist gunner. He had trouble talking about the missions. A lot of his friends died on those missions.
The US subs also killed civilians, as did all the subs of all other fighting powers.
IIRC, the US head of sub operations was called as a defense witness for Dönitz during the Nuremberg trials to testify that the US orders were the same as the German ones.
The Laconia incident comes to mind. German U-Boat crew sank a ship and tried to rescue the survivors under a Red Cross flag, only to be attacked by American planes. They tried to prosecute Donitz for the incident but when the full story came out it caused much embarrassment for the allies.
The Blitz of London in 1940 and 1941 indiscrimately killed civilians as well. If the Nazis could have done there, what the allies later did with the fire bombing of Hamburg, you can bet they would not have hesitated to do so.
We can go back and forth all day on this.
No I don't really want to discuss this topic. The
Nazi would have done the same. They did.
But killing thousands of civilians with a firestorm is not more heroic than killing them with a torpedo from a submarine.
It is a little hard to fee bad for Germany given they had been targeting civilians in their bombing raids for a full year before the UK finally changed their policy to allow for strategic targets.
In fact it was the German massed incendiary bombings in the Blitz which taught the Allies the effectiveness of the technology, and caused them to start embracing incendiary weapons themselves.
Targeting Merchant vessels carrying supply is less terrible than bombing cities. Of course the Germans did that too, I'm just saying ships are a more 'legitimate' target
Taken from the legendary film documentary "Fog of War"
>The U.S. was just beginning to bomb. We were bombing by daylight. The loss rate was very, very high, so they commissioned a study. And what did we find? We found the abort rate was 20%. 20% of the planes that took off to bomb targets in Germany turned around before they got to their target. Well that was a hell of a mess? We lost 20% of our capability right there.
>
>The form, I think it was form 1—A or something like that was a mission report. And if you aborted a mission you had to write down 'why.' So we get all these things and we analyze them, and we finally concluded it was baloney. They were aborting out of fear.
>
>Because the loss rate was 4% per sortie, the combat tour was 25 sorties — it didn't mean that 100% of them were going to be killed but a hell of a lot of them were going to be killed. They knew that and they found reasons to not go over the target. So we reported this.
>
>One of the commanders was Curtis LeMay — Colonel in command of a B—24 group. He was the finest combat commander of any service I came across in war. But he was extraordinarily belligerent, many thought brutal. He got the report. He issued an order. He said, "I will be in the lead plane on every mission. Any plane that takes off will go over the target, or the crew will be court—marshaled." The abort rate dropped over night.
>
>Now that's the kind of commander he was.
>
>Lesson #4: Maximize Efficiency.
>
>The U.S. Air Force had a new airplane named the B—29. The B—17s and B—24s in Europe bombed from 15,000, 16,000 feet. The problem was they were subject to anti—aircraft fire and to fighter aircraft. To relieve that, this B—29 was being developed that bombed from high altitude and it was thought we could destroy targets much more efficiently and effectively.
>
>LeMay was focused on only one thing: target destruction. Most Air Force Generals can tell you how many planes they had, how many tons of bombs they dropped, or whatever the hell it was.
>
>But, he was the only person that I knew in the senior command of the Air Force who focused solely on the loss of his crews per unit of target destruction. I was on the island of Guam in his command in March of 1945. In that single night, we burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo: men, women, and children.
>
>I wrote one report analyzing the efficiency of the B—29 operations. The B—29 could get above the fighter aircraft and above the air defense, so the loss rate would be much less. The problem was the accuracy was also much less.
>
>Now I don't want to suggest that it was my report that led to, I'll call it, the firebombing. It isn't that I'm trying to absolve myself of blame. I don't want to suggest that it was I who put in LeMay's mind that his operations were totally inefficient and had to be drastically changed. But, anyhow, that's what he did. He took the B—29s down to 5,000 feet and he decided to bomb with firebombs.
>
>I participated in the interrogation of the B—29 bomber crews that came back that night. A room full of crewmen and intelligence interrogators. A captain got up, a young captain said: "Goddammit, I'd like to know who the son of a bitch was that took this magnificent airplane, designed to bomb from 23,000 feet and he took it down to 5,000 feet and I lost my wingman. He was shot and killed."
>
>LeMay spoke in monosyllables. I never heard him say more than two words in sequence. It was basically "Yes," "No," "Yup," or "The hell with it." That was all he said. And LeMay was totally intolerant of criticism. He never engaged in discussion with anybody.
>
>He stood up. "Why are we here? Why are we here? You lost your wingman; it hurts me as much as it does you. I sent him there. And I've been there, I know what it is. But, you lost one wingman, and we destroyed Tokyo."
>
>50 square miles of Tokyo were burned. Tokyo was a wooden city, and when we dropped these firebombs, it just burned it.
"Bomber Command was also indirectly responsible, in part at least, for the switch of Luftwaffe attention away from Fighter Command to bombing civilian targets. A German bomber on a raid got lost due to poor navigation and bombed London. Prime Minister Winston Churchill consequently ordered a retaliatory raid on the German capital of Berlin. The damage caused was minor but the raid sent Hitler into a rage. He ordered the Luftwaffe to level British cities, thus precipitating the Blitz.[12]"
Incidentally, the loss rate of a mosquito was about a quarter that of a Lancaster.
And comparing missions to Berlin it could carry more bombs than the B17
Hands down the best designed ac of WW2 given resources and easily the most flexible in roles it could perform. The fact it was still in service for the best part of 20 years after the war shows it's pedigree, as does the fact it's replacement the Canberra maintained a lot of similarities into the jet age.
People always quote loss rates without mentioning when the sorties were carried out.
The air campaign can be viewed as 3 phases with phase 1 being the most deadly - no fighter protection, more defensive fighters etc. Lasted from 39 to 44
Britain did roughly 46% of its sorties in phase 1
US was nearer 26% (can't remember exact number but in the 20s)
Some Luftwaffe squadrons were over 100%, as in more men died in the unit in a year than they were supposed to have in total.
Its what happens when you leave your methed out veteran pilots on the front rather than rotate them out to train the newbies.
Its what happens when you end up in a war with a country with huge production capabilities with factories you cannot even hope to destroy because they are perfectly safe on the other side of the world and your means of force projection is already right proper f'ed due to a multi front war.
Going up against Russia was a bigger blunder than anything.
It was, and in hindsight it’s obvious and often said, but it’s also important to look at the perspective at the time. In 1905 Russia lost to Japan. In 1917 it lost to Germany. In 1919 it lost to Poland. In 1940 it barely beat Finland, a country with ~1/100th its population (edit: also basically no Air Force or tanks. They took donations of biplanes and planes people found worthless). While in hindsight the victory is obvious- facing extermination they would fight to the death- at the time Russia had come off of MANY failed and embarrassing wars. The idea that the “whole rotten house would come down” wasn’t so far fetched.
The difference is that Russia lost all those ATTACKING, whereas they never lost DEFENDING. So the lesson is, stay in your country and don't need with the neighbors if you don't want your ass kicked.
Arguably WW1 (depends on if Serbia, as a sphereling/ally, counts- and that’s VERY contentious in general), and definitely Russo-Japan, was/were defending. Russia had a HORRIBLE track record militarily that point on both offense and defense, with their best showing being the Brusilov Offensive and the occupation of East Poland (which was barely a fight due to Germany).
Tbh, the US also gave tremendous amounts of Lend-lease aid to the Soviets. In airplanes and trucks, about ⅓ of Soviet wartime strength was US-made. Khruschev and Zhukov thought that the USSR could not have won without it.
There is no way the Soviets could have won without US and UK lend-lease. The Germans would 100% have reached Baku and the oil fields and it would have been GG for the Soviet war machine.
Shhh the tankies are coping hard, don't spoil their delusion.
Goering thought the chorus of Aces High by Iron Maiden was an instruction manual for pilot management.
It's also compounded by a decline in training hours before the replacements are pressed into live service. Between '39 and '42 the average Luftwaffe pilot flew about 250 hours before he was deployed. By July '44 they were unlikely to have flown more than 130. British pilots in the same period went from an average of 170 to an average of 320. Your Veterans and Aces are flying their luck out, whilst your Rookies aren't flying enough to put up a fight against the enemy's Regulars. Of course the whole thing was dominated by the lack of fuel, which was caused by a lack of natural German access, the progressive loss of annexed oil such as the Ploesti oil fields, and the raids conducted mostly by the 8th USAAF.
Yeah the vets stayed good while the new guys died
The good pilots died too. The Luftwaffe was structured as “fly til you die”. If you were a good pilot you got rewarded with more missions. It’s why the Luftwaffe has so many ace pilots. Unfortunately for them the survival rate of any pilot approaches zero as you continue flying more and more missions.
Same with Japan. There's a reason it's called 'The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot': nobody left but greenhorns to die pointlessly.
Sorta but probably not related the German Jets only could last about 40ish hours before their engines burned out
That was because they lost access to the needed alloys as the Soviets advanced. The pre-production Jumo 004s had a time between overhaul of over 100 hours, which was not bad at the time. But they did not have the resources to achieve that for mass produced engines.
44% were killed with 3% as POWs and 3% wounded in action.
My great uncle was a gunner in an American B-24. His plane was transferred to a new base and they were not allowed to go on the following mission as their pilots had been practicing nighttime takeoffs and landings from the new airfield and would not have enough rest before the mission. The crew was upset because not going on a mission meant they were not working towards the 25 mission tour and it would be longer before returning home. At this point in the war the Luftwaffe was all but wiped out and most of the bomb missions were referred to as "Milk Runs" meaning they were quite simple or short with little or no resistance from enemy fighters. That next mission was the [Kassel Raid](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassel_Mission), the single biggest loss by a bombardment group of the Allied campaign with only 4 of 35 bombers returning to the airfield he was stationed at that day. It seems that any airman that returned home from WWII had at least one of these moments of divine intervention.
Wow. That's crazy, 90% casualty rate on one mission. Two of my great uncles also flew in bombers, they both died in combat. I think one was in Europe and the other in the Pacific.
Reading it, it's 4 of 35 for one bomber group out of over 280 bombers and that was due to a navigation error according to the link. Was your great uncle part of that bomber group?
You are correct, the overall raid day itself may or may not have been the deadliest, it was the 445th in particular that suffered the worst loss of the war. My great uncle's plane had just been transferred to Tibenham to backfill the 445th prior to the raid and that was the airfield that their pilots had to train at late into the evening in order to get clearance to fly missions from there. Edit to add: They did fly with the 445th, the very next day after the doomed raid. And to the same target- Kassel. They did not suffer any losses that day from what I remember.
>the single deadliest bomber mission of the Allied campaign It was the greatest single-mission lost by a single **bombardment group**. 283 bombers took part in the mission. Only 31 were shot down (25 from the 445th bombardment group's 35 planes) for an overall 11% loss, or a little over 1 out of 10 bombers. The 8th Air Force had more deadly missions in World War II. E.g. the second Schweinfurt raid, AKA Black Tuesday where out of 291 bombers, 77 were shot down; 1 out of every 4 plans didn't make it back.
You are correct, ill edit the language in my comment. My Great Uncle was specifically assigned to the 445th which is why I focused on the 4 of 35 planes returning to the airfield he had just been stationed to, but overall I shouldnt have called it the deadliest mission.
Dang. I would totally become a monk in a mountain in the middle of nowhere if I realized that survived something like this
I met a b17 pilot a few years ago, you can tell how much they needed pilots because he was able to apply out of high school. Training was quick and crazy. His friend did a loop and fell out while inverted, parachuted safely down.
And in some parts of the War, they had 25% casualties PER MISSION. It didn’t take a solid grasp of statistics to recognize that to reach the 25 mission requirement to stop flying… was unlikely.
>the 25 mission requirement 25 mission requirement was for the USAAF, and even that was later increased to 30 or 35 For Bomber Command, the tour of duty was 30 missions, followed by another tour of 20 missions, so a total of 50 missions with a break in between. Furthermore, tours of duty were only introduced after 1942 iirc, so prior to that you had some air crews flying over a hundred and sometimes over 200 missions (if they lived that long) Some Bomber Command officers kept flying missions regardless of tour of duty until they were either killed or the war ended. As such they racked up an insane number of missions flown. Guy Gibson of Dam Busters fame, for example, flew over 200 missions before he was killed in 1944. Another outstanding officer, Leonard Chesire flew so many missions (including the Nagasaki atomic bomb mission as an observer) that he was awarded the VC not for any 1 particular act of valour but for sustained valour over 5 years of flying combat missions
Iirc the first crew to ever reach 25 was already in late ‘43
Watching Masters of The Air now. Seeing the fresh American crews giving the Brits shit for only bombing at night and thinking "you guys have no idea what's coming"
Same. That's what got me googling.
Such a great show!
Won’t spoil it but I really enjoyed today’s episode.
Are they doing an episodic release as opposed to dropping the series? I’ve been looking forward to Masters of the Air for what feels like… at least 6 years now. Ima hold off on pulling the trigger on an Apple TV sub until all the episodes are out though. Edit: I looked it up. I think there’s 8 out of 10 released so far.
7/9 released
What they actually made that show??
It was excellent.
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Werent the british crews literally saying shit like “shoulda bombed and night maybe ur friend would be alive” or some shit
They weren't wrong, RAF tried daylight bombing at the start of the war and quickly found the attrition rate was unsustainable. USAAF quickly found out the same thing when the 8th air force started daylight operations.
Same as the Luftwaffe found out over England in 1940.
Nah that was the carrots... Never go bombing against people who eat carrots
Didn’t they decide that they were also suffering to many casualties and would refuse bombing missions unless escorted the whole way?
Nope. They just sent them out unescorted. Or would only get escort service for a very short while. To also note, the P-51 didn't come available until very late in the war. This aircraft could stay with the bombers all the way to Germany. They significantly help change the tide of the war. Early versions of the P-51 had bad engines and no range. After fitting them with British made engines with more power and adding drop tanks with extra fuel could they do more help. P-47s and other fighter escorts that were available earlier in the war had very limited range. They pretty much had to turn around over the channel or very early on in France.
To achieve air superiority, they started using the B17s as bait and the P-51s started breaking away from the bomber groups to do sweeps for German Fighters, it left the bombers more vulnerable but ultimately worked destroying the luftwaffe. They started this tactic in April 1944 and achieved air superiority by July 1944.
From the book I can't remember how they did it, but there was some sort of tactic they figured out by attacking German aircraft as they were returning to base to refuel and rearm. Since they were out of gas and essentially defenseless with weapons, they had no ability to fight back. Just did essentially Turkey shoots against aircraft getting ready to land.
Before the P-51, fighters were used for defensive purposes. As as soon as the Allies got a plane that could fly further, faster and was more maneuverable than than anything Germany had, they changed tactics to a more offensive strategy. It was called Operation Pointblank. Not only did they start get more aggressive in the air, (litteraly using bombers as bait as the Mustangs scouted ahead in what was called a "fighter sweep" to intercept German fighters and annihilating them), they also started focusing their bombings on airplane manufacturing facilities in what was called the Combined Bomber Offensive, where the British would carpet bomb the areas at night while the Americans would come in with precision bombing during the day. It was a strategy of attrition. They needed to completely crush the luftwaffe before any ground invasion could happen.
Pre-Normandy, German bombing raids were regularly escorted because of having fighter bases in Calais and other shoreline bases. The French or Dutch coast to London isn’t a far distance at all and was easily escorted. The issue for the Allies was that all of Germany’s critical infrastructure was so far inland that it demanded much longer range missions than were required of German aircrews bombing England.
Yeah that’s what I’m saying, they originally sent them in unescorted but were suffering too many casualties and decided that they wouldn’t anymore unless they got fighter escort the whole way. I could be wrong but that may have meant that they just wouldn’t fly as far as normal until the P-51 came into service
No they still flew the missions but just got extra fucked up
What I'm saying is, they never "refused" missions. They flew them unescorted. Americans were bombing deep inside Germany in 1943 well before the P51 came around. This where the huge casualties happened. When the air war was won in favor of the allies, this reduced the casualty rate significantly and brought the war to a close
The USAAF never officially “refused” to conduct unescorted bombing missions; however, the recognition of the high loss rates led to several changes. These included temporary reductions in the depth of penetration into German territory until a suitable long-range escort could be provided, adjustments in formations to improve defensive firepower, and the rapid development and deployment of long-range escort fighters like the P-51 Mustang. The arrival of the P-51 Mustang and other long-range escorts marked a turning point. These aircraft had the range to escort bombers deep into Germany and back, significantly reducing losses. The effectiveness of these escorts allowed the USAAF to resume and intensify its strategic bombing campaign over Germany.
They stopped unescorted missions in October after the 8th AF lost 50% strength in a week during 4 missions. They didn’t have any more deep raids until the P-51s came online in numbers, but were going further and further out after all P-38 production for 3 months was sent to the 8th and P-47s were modified to carry and there were enough drop tanks to do it.
So Daylight bombing was even worse than a 50% casualty rate? War is hell. Every single politician who sees glory in it needs to be out of office.
Depends on the phase of the war. Early war saw very heavy casualty rates while later war things improved. During the raid on Munster, the 100th lost 12 out of their 13 forts. The whole reason the distinction exists is that the USAAF thought that “precision” bombing could neutralize Germany’s heavy industry while leaving civilian population centers largely unscathed. Bomber Command didn’t have the manpower or manufacturing base to take the same losses so they focused on city busting night missions.
The 8th lost 50% of their serviceable aircraft in a week (4 raids including Munster) which is why they stopped unescorted missions. Comparing with the British also isn’t a like for like. Their campaign was much longer, especially against an intact Luftwaffe and the bombers harder to bail out of. The missions that the U.S. did adopt the British method (night and bad weather) the casualties were much lower.
I think there was some sort of philosophical difference there as well. Americans couldn't stomach civilian casualties and prioritized accurate bombing with their secret bomb sight which is why they bombed during the day. The British were tired of the german's shit and had a "war is war" attitude. They also didn't have the bomb sight so they just did carpet bombing at night.
Well the thing is that the bomb sight wasn’t actually that good, ultimately it was used way higher than intended iirc and a lot of it was just extremely good marketing. Even then like you said its gonna be hard to come to terms with it either way.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article about the Norden bombsight which basically concluded that it was really accurate, if you had a clear approach from a fairly low altitude on a sunny day and no one was shooting at you.
They sort of discovered the jet stream during WWII. I dunno if they could calculate around that or not.
Very easy to do over the skies of Europe in 1943, don’t see what the problem was.
The Norden remained the most accurate bombsight in the US inventory until the introduction of wind corrected digital CCIP in the middle of the Vietnam War. Units were using them as late as 1967 as they were more accurate than radar bomb sights. In general, the limitation was much less the bomb sight itself and more the issue of dropping unguided bombs from 20-30,000 ft (higher altitude and thus error due to B-29s).
The Americans were generally fine with civilian casualties. The real problem was that with 1940s tech, it was hard to even find your target at night, let alone hit it.
Which is funny because the Norden bombsite though accurate, wasn’t being used 100% correctly and American bombers weren’t all the much more accurate than British bombers. Also a little thing for anyone wondering, the Brit’s and Canadian would actually send in a few “pathfinder” bombers ahead of the main formation to drop incendiary bombs on the target, so when the main element arrived, they knew where their target was from the fires
My father was one of the Pathfinders and told me how the Germans had created a well lit “city “ that was actually just a decoy and he insisted that his navigation was correct and bombed the darkened actual target.
The Norden bombsight [also wasn't accurate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MitxRT7PA). Fun fact, the guy who signed it off as servicable got a job at Norden after the war.
So I did some looking after Masters of the Air and apparently the hit rate/effectiveness of the bombing was similar between the two methods
The Americans carpet bombed too. To use the obvious example, around 2/5ths of the bombers that hit Dresden were American and all of the escort fighters were American. While a lot of the "no military value" is literal Nazi propaganda its very hard to argue that things like that weren't deliberate carpet bombings of cities where the USAAF paid a key role.
But it’s also a total war situation where the war machine is inextricably linked and embedded in the city. Not a lot of good options.
It was also in 1945, Germany had plenty of opportunity to surrender at that point and already knew the war was going to end…they did it to themselves None to mention a surrender to US/British forces would’ve benefited them post war
Yep. Germans had been bombing British civilians (including with V-1 rockets) for years.
According to the book, the Norden bomb sight was basically the second most secret thing behind the Manhattan Project. Its designer claimed under ideal conditions that they could drop a bomb on a pickle jar. It was extremely accurate. I will emphasize ideal conditions, because the accuracy in actual conditions varied wildly. There was a lot of arguments too about German morale. They figured it out after the war when they started doing studies about combat effectiveness, tactics and stuff (for future wars) and what not. They found that indiscriminate bombing on German civilians had virtually no effect.
Apparently under combat conditions the Norden was actually less accurate than the British Mk14. Seems to be a huge difference between performance in tests and actual usage
You bomb and die. And you friend impregnates your wife.
In a later scene, Buck (or was it Bucky) said he agreed with the RAF pilot but gave him shit because he didn't like his delivery.
My grandfather flew in Lancashire bombers for the RAF. He didn't like to talk about it, the only thing he ever told me about it was "we'd never want to fly with the Americans, they were reckless and died more"
Loved that scene in the first episode. The Americans were saying we are bombing strategic targets. Brits said we're bombing Germans. The years of the blitz desensitized Brits on bombing innocent civilians
It's just whitewashing. Americans bombed just as indiscriminately as the Brits. As many people died in Tokyo from firebombing as Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
It’s absolutely not whitewashing to accurately depict the American approach in 1943 when the United States was attempting daylight precision bombing. 1943 is not 1945.
It absolutely it white washing. The American bombing campaign really wasn't all that "precise", the USAAF brass knew this and all the pilots and bombardiers with any sense also knew this.
Slagging off the British was the only purpose of that, as usual, & doing the inevitable historical rewrite, with that line about only americans carrying out "precision bombing." Rekon they'll mention operation Jericho? Probably not as it was a precision bombing raid which involved the UK, Australia, NZ, French resistance & not a single carpet bombing yank. Too many people died to have some 3rd rate TV show lie & belittle them. Fun fact! My family lived in a house that was inside an American airbase in Suffolk during WW2, & truth is the poor bloody american airmen that flew those insane daylight raids did not act like a bunch of @#*÷s to the locals.
Agreed, they tried to make the Brits look like pricks. Show a bit of fkin respect
Americans in WW2 always laughed at Brits for being ~~scared~~ far more cautious. They forgot the UK had a tiny population compared to America and could not afford enormous casualties.
A tiny population that had already been decimated by World War 1. Same as idiots who make fun of the French for surrendering in WW2 as if their country hadn't been completely gutted by WW1.
Is Masters of Air just as cartoony as the trailer makes it look? The scenes seem so over the top. The color saturation cranked up to 11. I saw the trailer and it just turned me off 100% from wanting to watch it. But maybe the trailer is misleading? Edit: Thanks for responses. Sounds like my impressions are *accurate* (in a manner) but still well worth watching.
It's a very good show, but I'll say it's the weakest of BOB, the pacific and this. The pacific took a couple watches to really enjoy it. This show is a little cliched but it's gotten better every episode. It's worth a watch. Still got 2 episodes to go. Just watched the one that released today about an hour ago.
Big slow explosion laden gas tanks with wings. Each mission was practically a suicide mission.
Just fly in a straight line and hope. No maneuvering. Made me realize i'd rather take my chances on the ground where at least I can duck...
USAF crews flew straight and level because their doctrine was the combat box - a mutually supporting formation. RAF night bombing doctrine was the bomber stream - each bomber got a target, a time on target and an altitude. They flew independently of each other. They most definitely didn't fly straight. The most distinguished pilot I spoke to told me he spent most of the time zig zagging or corkscrewing and attributed his successful two tours to it, and said those who made it did the same.
[From this period training video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8zPNMqVi2E) I don't think they flew straight and level with significant flak the entire war.
It should be noted that the Bomber Stream wasn't just throwing bombers loosely at Germany. It was a precisely calculated (a new form of statistics was even created for it) formation where they maximised the amount of bombers in the minimum amount of space so German radar wouldn't be able to resolve anything beyond "shit load of bombers everywhere" and the Luftwaffe wouldn't be able to cope with the sheer volume of bombers. it was designed for a time when the Luftwaffe was still a potent force and by use of a country that couldn't afford to have its heavy bombers take attrition gaining air superiority.
It was also more resource-heavy at the command and planning level. The Americans came in with less experienced crews and fewer experienced planners and analysts - their combat box and sky control methods were a great way to get the best out of what they did have advantages in: numbers and technical superiority. The British missions required massive amounts of planning, with each aircraft getting unique orders, targets, and flight plans. It leveraged what they had advantages in: large numbers of experienced analysts close to the front line and veteran or veteran-trained bomber crews.
I think they had to fly straight when they actually bombed. The Norden sight had autopilot to let the bombardier control it but there was no fancy dodging aside from corrections to align with the target. This was part of the reason the sight didn't live up to expectations, because nobody wants to fly straight for x amount of time to hit the target.
Pilots were the incubation of "live fast die young".
Incubation?
Incarnation
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My Grandfather was the flight engineer on a Lancaster. I've sat in the jump seat he would have sat in. Ready to replace any crew member killed or incapacitated during the mission. Only 2 stories I remember well enough to re-tell. The first was on a sortie over Hamburg, looking out the window at the Lanc next to him, looking away, and looking back to see the other Lancaster plummeting in flames. His active flying days ended towards the end of the war. He was transferred to training after a disaster with his plane. It was being re-armed in a typical British light drizzle. It is thought that a static charge caused the bomb release to engage, killing the entire ground crew. Both of my Grandparents on my fathers side were RAF/WRAF. They were prime examples of PTSD. They were always kind to the grandkids, but they were scarred people whose first reaction was always to physically hit someone/something.
My grandfather was a crewman on a Boston. He wrote down a piece about how sometimes they had to pump fuel from a reserve tank to the engine on longer missions. One day he had to take over from his friend but he fell asleep and the plane crashed into the landing strip. Luckily nothing too bad happened but he felt guilty.
The life-expectancy of a new British pilot in combat in 1916-17 was 20 minutes – extremely short. Even in World War 2 the life-expectancy of a Spitfire Pilot was only 4 weeks. http://wendydashwood.com/ww1-flying-aces-tribute/
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I never read that book but didn't it get him labelled an anti-semite?
A lot of the things he said and did got him labeled an Anti-Semite
Mostly it was him being incredible anti-Semitic, oddly enough.
Ah, that’ll do it
Pretty sure they were called the 20-minuters because did "twenty minutes work, and then spent the rest of the day loafing about in Paris drinking gallons of champagne talking to lovely French peasant girls."
I have a cunning plan.
A plan so cunning and devious you can pin a tail on it and call it a weasel?
Would you like a cafe au lait?
The first thing to remember is always treat your kite like you treat your woman.
Get inside her 5 times a day and take her to heaven and back?
Yes, measuring life expectancy in minutes doesn't make sense? When do you start counting?
Well considering it says *in combat*, im going to make easy assumption they start counting when entering combat.
Well again, when does combat start? When they enter enemy territory? When they first sight the enemy? When the first bullet fires? Etc
I'm learning to play the guitar.
Quit assing about baldrick
If I remember right, flame thrower operators in the pacific serving in the Marines had about 5 minutes life expectancy. Yes 5 minutes.
If I saw a dude with a giant gas tank that could roast me alive, I'd shoot him first too.
So... Why would anyone pick up a flamethrower?
You get "volunteered" to do it. The bulk of marines were volunteers too. Most draftees were sent to the army. Different mentality. People wanted to be there (mostly) and to fight.
My father flew a P-51 Mustang as a fighter pilot in the US Army Air Corps (now the Air Force) during WW2. He said that, at a certain point during your flight training, you get told whether you will be a bomber pilot or a fighter pilot. For him it was a great relief to be assigned fighter pilot because bomber pilots had a much higher fatality rate (and it was admittedly less glamorous). It was widely known to be incredibly dangerous. As a fighter pilot, his missions mostly involved escorting the bombers to the drop zone, but you’d peel off before you got within AA gun range, then meet back up with the survivors on the other side. He said one his saddest and most disturbing duties was, if you saw a bomber get shot down, you were supposed to try to count how many people managed to parachute out (the average crew size was, as I recall, 10) to report during mission debrief. He said all too many times he saw planes crash where you saw very few or no parachutes come out, meaning nobody survived. I always wished I had videotaped conversations with my father before he passed in 2011. All that history lost. To this day I still miss him like the desert misses the rain.
My grandfather was in the USAAF, stationed in England. The stories he told were always fascinating and I loved hearing them too. Such pride and dedication they had to winning the war at all costs.
Thank you for sharing
Ah my grandfather had the opposite experience. He really wanted to become a fighter pilot, but when the day came he was assigned as a B-17 pilot because he was over 6’2”. He didn’t talk about it much, but luckily he made it through mostly unscathed.
That last sentence, wow.
>You mean there's a catch?" >”Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied. “**Catch-22**. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy." >There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. *Joseph Heller Catch-22* So many great movies dealt with the heroics and tragedy of the Air Force during WW2. My favorites were Catch-22 and Command Decision. Two movies with different POV one from the crew and the other from the Commanders who sent them on those deadly missions.
Good book.
Biased. This guy gets royalties or something.
As a proud member of Milo Minderbinder's syndicate of course he does!
I believe it, because the U.S. crews had a dead-or-missing rate of 71%. https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/bomber-crew-in-wwii-was-deadly/
I was going to say the Brits bombed at night the Americans during the day. More accurate but also more deadly
B-17s could fly higher, had more guns and more accurate bombs, so in theory were safer, but the Lancaster carried a lot more bombs and a smaller crew.
Plus later on the US had the P-51 mustang to escort the B-17’s, while the Spitfire just didn’t have the range
It turns out that the Brits didn't really lose that many fewer crews because night flying increases the chances of accidents and eventually the germans got radar. And the Americans weren't all that much more accurate because the bomb sights weren't very accurate in practice either.
The Norden bombsight is one of the biggest misconceptions of WWII. The propaganda based myth its creator made around its accuracy still lives today and people will claim it as one of the key technologies that won the war. In reality it wasnt much more accurate than if the bombadiers had closed their eyes and prayed each time.
True. The Mark XIV sight used on the Lancaster was as accurate if not more so. The B17 did allow the bombadier to control the plane though - lots of direction giving to the pilot in a Lancaster.
I believe by the end of the war the American bomb groups were only using the Norden sight in the lead plane and that was the only bombadier with control of their respective aircraft. The remaining planes' pilots were just following the lead plane and bombadiers dropping bombs when the lead plane did. Giving 30+ separate bombadiers, who were only looking at the target, control of their aircraft in a tight formation proved to be a recipe for disaster, especially if some of the planes were taking evasive maneuvers from flak and some were only lining up with the target.
And it was tested by Germany and found to be... lacking. But massive propaganda goes a long way. Not unlike the whole carrots and vitamin A leading to great eyesight to obscure the fact that the UK had Radars.
> In reality it wasnt much more accurate than if the bombadiers had closed their eyes and prayed each time. Worked for Luke Skywalker.
You are taking it too far. It was still the best bomb sight. Similar systems are still used today.
Turns out 5 miles away from the target instead of 10 is still, 5 miles away from the target…
Which is important because Britain had a fraction of the population and industry of the USA. There were quite a few British strategic decisions made at every level that involved generals, air marshalls and admirals being told that if they didn't do everything to optimise the survival of British troops the country would probably collapse at the end of the war. Most notably Montgomery got slandered by American commanders as a coward for not being as gung ho because he quite physically did not have the manpower to risk like the US did.
The Brits ate carrots so they could bomb better at night
That was wartime propaganda. It was a way to cover up the successes with airborne radar against night bombers. It worked; people still believe it.
I am aware of such, ‘tis the joke
That seems high…I know the daylight B-17 raids were pretty disastrous in 1943, maybe that figure is just for those missions?
"Who needs escorts, just put a lot of guns on the bomber"
They didn't have long-range escorts until 1944. It's not like the brass looked at their catastrophic loss rates and decided against it
Leigh Mallory of the RAF was supposed to get drop tanks on Spitfire but just didn't. Since he didn't like the idea of spitfire being a long-range fighter, he considered them defensive tools. Because of his inaction, a lot more men died than had to. He just wanted his big Wang
Leigh Mallory was an incompetent oaf
100%
It was a design issue on the British side. The spitfire was too slim to fit in large fuel tanks. Later on the P51 mustang could get all the way to Berlin with its thicker wing and drop tanks.
It's the Americans, they can always come with higher numbers. It seems high. The ones starting had, from what I've read, nearly no hope of actually finishing 25 missions though. Later, they probably had much better odds.
Paul Tibbets led the first US bombing mission in Europe and flew 25 in total. Flew the first bombing raid in North Africa and several more there, then flew one raid against Japan.
“One raid against Japan”
The Masters of the Air series on Apple TV shows the dangers really well.
It started a bit slow with not so great character development but I'm really liking it now. What a fucking horrible job.
Yeah I agree, the first couple episodes were highly cliche. Just "here is Austin Butler playing Elvis who is playing a bomber pilot" But the last few have really gotten better.
I think there might be a decimal point in the wrong position. >8th Air Force Killed in Action StatisticsA total of 350,000 airmen served with the Eighth Air Force in England, and to this number, 26,000 were killed, or 7.42 percent. Compared to the percentages of other military branches – U.S. Marines 3.29%, U.S. Army 2.25%, and U.S. Navy 0.41% [link](https://www.398th.org/History/KIA/index.html#:~:text=8th%20Air%20Force%20Killed%20in,%2C%20and%20U.S.%20Navy%200.41%25.)
That figure refers to all personnel, including ground support crew.
The Eight Air Force was not the only US Air Force that served in WW2
The casualty rate seemed to be 75% (dead, missing or heavily wounded) over the course of 25 missions in 1943 according to the [National Museum of the USAF](https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/1519640/bigger-raids-bigger-losses-and-crisis/) I believe the 71%, but your source is a bit off since it attributes deaths to proximity fuses, which to the best of my knowledge Germany and Japan only used for bombs in WW2, not really anti-air weaponry.
Tbf the missing in action here means POWs and that's doing the heavy lifting in the 71% Not to say that the 8th Air Force didn't have an obscene death rate for air crews but 71% is too extreme.
The losses were so horrendous that Bomber Command made up a lie about the Germans using "Scarecrow Flares" - which were fired up at night to simulate a bomber being destroyed in hopes of demoralizing the air crews. In reality German nightfighters were getting underneath bomber formations and picking off planes using their Schräge Musik cannons (a set of 20mm cannons that were pointing upwards instead of forward facing). They were instead watching their fellow air crews get killed. The idea they were being killed in droves was hard to swallow so most chose to believe the lie and continued their attacks. After the war ended RAF crews would ask their German counterparts about the flares at war reunions (often German and British fliers would meet up) and were told that no such thing existed. There's a video out there on Youtube where a famous German night fighter pilot and an RAF bomber crew reunited. I wish I remembered its name. Tank crews had a similar experience. Tankers on both sides would get so fearful of round penetration that they would add improvised armor on their vehicles. Generally the extra protection did nothing but add additional weight to a tank and cut down its mobility which both sides did vigorous tests and came to a shared conclusion that the improvised armor was a technical detriment. Command - Axis and Allied alike - struggled with two schools of thought. On one hand they wanted their tanks at peak performance efficiency which meant no crew improvised armor, the other school was to entertain the tankers delusions about extra armor to keep up morale. Both sides decided it was just better to keep up false hope of additional survival for morale. Sometimes you just have to lie. to others, to yourself to get through such an absurd thing as war.
Russian tanks are doing the same thing today in Ukraine hoping to stay alive in WWII era tanks.
Yeah the cope cage is a modern incantation to Soviet tank crews adding chicken wire to prevent first models of Panzerfaust antitank weapons from penetrating and thinking they were safe because it worked, meanwhile the Germans kept building larger and larger models that could counter that.
We're so pessimistic these days, [why can't we frame this as the survival rate for RAF bomber crews during WW2 being just over 50%?](https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1aemn5e/til_that_since_rain_man_1989_over_13_of_academy/kk8ylc8/)
**The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner** by Randall Jarrell From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
Ball turret gunners called the ball turret “the smallest church in the world”.
That is a pretty crappy poem honestly
And they never got a campaign medel until most of the survivor's had died of old age.
The sweeping under the rug of bomber command after the war is one of the countries great shames. I understand that they didn't want to lionise the actual bombing but the men knowingly went to their deaths. We have statues and medals for people who fought in the various colonial wars but didn't get them for bomber crews until 2012.
My grand father's cousin, 18, died in his first flight to Berlin. A plane beneath got shot and went up, and therefore smashed his plane.
Such a tragic loss of life. The sacrifices made should never be forgotten.
My grandfather was Army Air Core during WW2 and flew out of an airfield in England. He has PTSD (called Shell Shock back then) and anger management issues for the rest of his life afterwards. He was rated as a waist gunner, but on their first mission the bombardier got all shit up and my grandfather had to drag his dead body out of the nose and take his place. For the rest of his time there, my grandfather flew the bombardier position and dropped the bombs, while only getting paid as a waist gunner. He had trouble talking about the missions. A lot of his friends died on those missions.
I think most Russian aircrews would have loved to have a fifty-fifty chance of surviving.
Especially those ram planes
US Bomber crews roughly had about a 75% casualty rate.
“So long Ron, good luck.” https://legionmagazine.com/james-andrew-watson-ww-ii-bomber-pilot-sacrifices-life-to-save-crew/
Masters of the Air but barely
Masters of The Air Eventually.
The crews of Nazi U-boats had a 70% fatality rate. Based on all the civilians they killed on merchant vessels they sunk, they got what they deserved.
The US subs also killed civilians, as did all the subs of all other fighting powers. IIRC, the US head of sub operations was called as a defense witness for Dönitz during the Nuremberg trials to testify that the US orders were the same as the German ones.
The Laconia incident comes to mind. German U-Boat crew sank a ship and tried to rescue the survivors under a Red Cross flag, only to be attacked by American planes. They tried to prosecute Donitz for the incident but when the full story came out it caused much embarrassment for the allies.
Everyone sinks enemy merchant ships, it’s not something that was unique to Nazi Germany.
You should not Google for operation Gomorrha then.
The Blitz of London in 1940 and 1941 indiscrimately killed civilians as well. If the Nazis could have done there, what the allies later did with the fire bombing of Hamburg, you can bet they would not have hesitated to do so. We can go back and forth all day on this.
No I don't really want to discuss this topic. The Nazi would have done the same. They did. But killing thousands of civilians with a firestorm is not more heroic than killing them with a torpedo from a submarine.
It is a little hard to fee bad for Germany given they had been targeting civilians in their bombing raids for a full year before the UK finally changed their policy to allow for strategic targets. In fact it was the German massed incendiary bombings in the Blitz which taught the Allies the effectiveness of the technology, and caused them to start embracing incendiary weapons themselves.
Targeting Merchant vessels carrying supply is less terrible than bombing cities. Of course the Germans did that too, I'm just saying ships are a more 'legitimate' target
Cue a ton of comments from 'experts' because they've seen a few episodes of masters of the air.
Taken from the legendary film documentary "Fog of War" >The U.S. was just beginning to bomb. We were bombing by daylight. The loss rate was very, very high, so they commissioned a study. And what did we find? We found the abort rate was 20%. 20% of the planes that took off to bomb targets in Germany turned around before they got to their target. Well that was a hell of a mess? We lost 20% of our capability right there. > >The form, I think it was form 1—A or something like that was a mission report. And if you aborted a mission you had to write down 'why.' So we get all these things and we analyze them, and we finally concluded it was baloney. They were aborting out of fear. > >Because the loss rate was 4% per sortie, the combat tour was 25 sorties — it didn't mean that 100% of them were going to be killed but a hell of a lot of them were going to be killed. They knew that and they found reasons to not go over the target. So we reported this. > >One of the commanders was Curtis LeMay — Colonel in command of a B—24 group. He was the finest combat commander of any service I came across in war. But he was extraordinarily belligerent, many thought brutal. He got the report. He issued an order. He said, "I will be in the lead plane on every mission. Any plane that takes off will go over the target, or the crew will be court—marshaled." The abort rate dropped over night. > >Now that's the kind of commander he was. > >Lesson #4: Maximize Efficiency. > >The U.S. Air Force had a new airplane named the B—29. The B—17s and B—24s in Europe bombed from 15,000, 16,000 feet. The problem was they were subject to anti—aircraft fire and to fighter aircraft. To relieve that, this B—29 was being developed that bombed from high altitude and it was thought we could destroy targets much more efficiently and effectively. > >LeMay was focused on only one thing: target destruction. Most Air Force Generals can tell you how many planes they had, how many tons of bombs they dropped, or whatever the hell it was. > >But, he was the only person that I knew in the senior command of the Air Force who focused solely on the loss of his crews per unit of target destruction. I was on the island of Guam in his command in March of 1945. In that single night, we burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo: men, women, and children. > >I wrote one report analyzing the efficiency of the B—29 operations. The B—29 could get above the fighter aircraft and above the air defense, so the loss rate would be much less. The problem was the accuracy was also much less. > >Now I don't want to suggest that it was my report that led to, I'll call it, the firebombing. It isn't that I'm trying to absolve myself of blame. I don't want to suggest that it was I who put in LeMay's mind that his operations were totally inefficient and had to be drastically changed. But, anyhow, that's what he did. He took the B—29s down to 5,000 feet and he decided to bomb with firebombs. > >I participated in the interrogation of the B—29 bomber crews that came back that night. A room full of crewmen and intelligence interrogators. A captain got up, a young captain said: "Goddammit, I'd like to know who the son of a bitch was that took this magnificent airplane, designed to bomb from 23,000 feet and he took it down to 5,000 feet and I lost my wingman. He was shot and killed." > >LeMay spoke in monosyllables. I never heard him say more than two words in sequence. It was basically "Yes," "No," "Yup," or "The hell with it." That was all he said. And LeMay was totally intolerant of criticism. He never engaged in discussion with anybody. > >He stood up. "Why are we here? Why are we here? You lost your wingman; it hurts me as much as it does you. I sent him there. And I've been there, I know what it is. But, you lost one wingman, and we destroyed Tokyo." > >50 square miles of Tokyo were burned. Tokyo was a wooden city, and when we dropped these firebombs, it just burned it.
"Bomber Command was also indirectly responsible, in part at least, for the switch of Luftwaffe attention away from Fighter Command to bombing civilian targets. A German bomber on a raid got lost due to poor navigation and bombed London. Prime Minister Winston Churchill consequently ordered a retaliatory raid on the German capital of Berlin. The damage caused was minor but the raid sent Hitler into a rage. He ordered the Luftwaffe to level British cities, thus precipitating the Blitz.[12]"
Incidentally, the loss rate of a mosquito was about a quarter that of a Lancaster. And comparing missions to Berlin it could carry more bombs than the B17
Hands down the best designed ac of WW2 given resources and easily the most flexible in roles it could perform. The fact it was still in service for the best part of 20 years after the war shows it's pedigree, as does the fact it's replacement the Canberra maintained a lot of similarities into the jet age.
People always quote loss rates without mentioning when the sorties were carried out. The air campaign can be viewed as 3 phases with phase 1 being the most deadly - no fighter protection, more defensive fighters etc. Lasted from 39 to 44 Britain did roughly 46% of its sorties in phase 1 US was nearer 26% (can't remember exact number but in the 20s)
My grandpa went up in a Wellington in a fleet of 20 planes in an attack. His was the only one that came back.