It was the most potent symbol of the American airpower in military history.
Designed to fend off ferocious attacks
from the German Luftwaffe,
it dealt a death blow
to Nazi wartime industrial production,
and erased Hitler's capital to the ground.
"To me, it was the most beautiful plane ever built,
really great airplane and still is."
Each crewed by 10-men,
thousands of them would fly the most perilous missions of the 2nd WW.
Many would never return.
"If it hadn't been for a B-17,
I more likely wouldn't be sitting here talking to you."
Using color reenactments and rare archive film,
《Battle Stations》 takes to the skies in the legendry B-17 Flying Fortress.
1918,
with the conclusion of 'The War to End All Wars',
military powers around the world
recognized the warfare would never be the same.
Military thinking moved away from the stalemate of trench warfare,
and focused on the use of the new wonder weapons --- aircraft.
It had become apparent that
bombers would prove decisive in any future conflict.
The bomber was believed would always get through.
In the 1930's,
this bomber doctrine got real momentum.
Attention now turned
to modernizing America's obsolescent Air Corps.
Modern bombers were needed
to replace the fabric and wood aircraft of the last war.
On August the 8th 1934,
the US Army Air Corps
issued a circular proposal that called for a bomber
with a maximum speed of 250 miles per hour.
That's operated 10,000 feet
and have a range of 2,000 miles.
Designs would be company funded
and submitted for testing within a year.
The victor would win a production run up to 120 aircraft.
Titling on the brink of bankruptcy,
the Boeing Aircraft Company left to the challenge.
In a bold move,
Boeing under the visionary leadership of Edward C. Wells
committed most of its capital and manpower
to the project they called Model 299.
It was a fantastic gamble.
In August 1934,
Boeing began building a radical, all metal, 4-engine aircraft.
"It had
beautiful lines and was a long wing airplane
and that all the turrets were
attractive, just a nice looking airplane
and Boeing had always been noted for making beautiful airplanes."
Boeing's new plane would be fitted with an array of machine guns
and an internal weapon's bay.
It was a bold design,
one that far exceeded the requirements of the proposal.
On July the 28th of 1935,
just 11 months after the competition had started,
Boeing's model 299
rolled out of the company's factory in Seattle
becoming America's first all metal, 4 engine bomber.
"Closely guarded, the Army newest bomber
and America's largest ?land scene
is prepared for its 1st flight at Seattle.
It's Boeing 299.
With all her machine gun turrets, it weighs 15 tons,
and is reported to have cost nearly half a million."
A newspaper reporter attending the event
was impressed by the immense size
and the number of gun emplacements on the aircraft,
and exclaimed
why it's a flying fortress.
"While my father used to say,
'Look at all that armor you got
and I said, "Dad you could put your finger to the side of the airplane,
if you really pushed really hard."
"It was just an aluminum box flying in the skylight
and all it was with some guns sticking out of it
with the load of bombs
like a paper bag."
"With all the hardware and all the guns it had on it,
it truly was a flying fortress."
Boeing's legendry aircraft was born.
But the all important contract was still to be won.
Alongside Boeing's offering,
2 rival twin engine designs
were also evaluated by the Army Air Corps,
Martin's B-12
and Douglas's DB-1.
On the morning of the 30th of October,
disaster struck.
During the evaluation,
the Boeing prototype bomber stalled after take-off
and crashed to the Wright Field.
"Between the aircraft company it had invested
in the Model 299 Projects,
now __ __ from the Army Air Corps
and now the program ?lay in tatters.
In addition,
they lost their two pilots
which effectively put them out of running for the contract."
Boeing's Model 299 was disqualified from the competition,
and the company lost the contract.
Douglas's DB-1 triumphed,
and 133 of the bombers were ordered.
But despite the crash,
Model 299 had impressed the Air Corps,
and a small number were purchased
for further evaluation.
It was not the order Boeing had hoped for,
but it was a start.
Modifications to the aircraft followed,
and in February 1937,
the Air Corps ordered 10 more aircraft,
now called YB-17's.
These aircraft fitted with superchargers had a ceiling of 30,000 feet.
But in the dark days of September 1939
as Europe descended into war,
Douglas's bombers were taking too long to get off the production lines,
and were proving underpowered.
Boeing's B-17
was the only operational heavy bomber in the United States,
but the Air Corps owns just 30
New YB-17's
would now be fitted with power-operated turrets above
and below the fuselage.
And 2 more sets of twin guns are added to the tail
and radio operator's positions.
By March 1941,
B-17's were being transformed
from an advanced prototype
to a full-powered super-bomber ready for war.
Under the terms of its Lend - Lease agreements,
America sent 20 of these fortress YB-17s
to Britain's Royal Air Force.
But the B-17's first delivery flight
ended in disaster.
At high altitude over the skies of England,
the bomber experienced a power failure
and crashed.
It was an inauspicious start.
But despite these problems,
on the 8th of July 1941,
2 Fortress 1's, belonging to the RAF,
bombed Wilhelmshaven in Germany.
"Wilhelmshaven,
a main target,
is a number one target
for it's a major naval base
and a great shipbuilding center."
This first mission
also ended in disaster.
At high altitude,
all of the guns froze
and the bombs were dropped wide off the target.
Later 8 fortress 1's were shot down.
It looks as though the B-17 would go down in history as a failure.
"The British experience of the
fortress one was a resounding failure.
The aircraft
was found to suffer from a number of mechanical failures.
The guns froze when at high altitude.
It lacked defensive armament
to fight off the determined attack by the enemy.
And it was also difficult to put ordnance on target
from that height.
The RAF therefore concluded
that the best thing would be to
increase its defensive armament
use it in greater numbers for protective purposes
and also use it at lower altitudes."
Now the RAF immediately
pulled the Fortress from European combat
and promptly reassigned it to the Middle East.
As war intensified in Europe,
and diplomatic relations between the USA and Japan deteriorated,
America moved its YB-17's
to bases in the Pacific.
On December 7th, 1941,
as a flight of unarmed YB-17's
arrived at Hickam Field, Hawaii,
Japan ended America's isolationism.
At Pearl Harbor,
12 B-17's were destroyed on the ground.
And all of the unarmed aircraft flying in were damaged
or lost.
From the ashes of destruction in Hawaii,
Americas' troubled B-17's
had to prove its doubt was wrong.
With America at war,
the Flying Fortress was about to be thrown into Pearl Harbor.
As America rushed headlong into war,
production of YB-17's went into full swing.
On December the 8th 1941,
Boeing Executive Jake Harman,
made a phone call to Plant Two at Seattle.
His conversation was concise
and to the point.
"Start building airplanes."
"How many?"
"Just start building.
Never mind the schedules.
Tell US how much money,
and what things you need and when"
As Harman made his call,
B-17's in the Pacific
started flying reconnaissance missions
to track the Japanese battle fleet.
Off the coast of Luzon,
a Japanese convoy was spotted.
Five YB-17's attacked
and the Flying Fortress became the 1st US aircraft
to drop its bombs in WWII.
But it was in Europe
that the Fortress would become a legend.
By early 1942,
in accordance with the Allied 'Europe First' policy,
Major General Carl Spaatz,
suggests that the 8th Air Force
be designated the core of the Army Air Forces in Britain.
Now America prepared to send its new 'heavies' to front line units in England.
Recognizing the value of bombing to the war in Europe,
Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill
and President Franklin Roosevelt
agreed on the use of airpower in the theatre.
"Churchill and Roosevelt
both unequivocally endorsed the strategic bombing.
In January 1943,
they had called for the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan
and they saw strategic bombing as the overwhelming
force that would quickly end the war
by destroying the German industrial complex
and demoralizing its civilian population,
They reasoned that they could
grind to a halt Hitler's war machine."
Earlier in 1942,
Allied command identified special targets
to be given absolute priority.
Submarine construction facilities,
aircraft factories,
ball-bearing production plants,
and oil-refineries
were at the top of the list.
The RAF and 8th Air Force
plan a co-coordinated non-stop day and night bomber offensive.
From then on,
B-17's would operate by day,
in full view of the German Luftwaffe.
Flying a B-17 in combat without the fighter escort
was pretty close to being suicidal.
It wasn't until they learned the lesson the hard way
that you can't fly these airplanes.
They were just not well protected
because the enemy that we were contending with
was highly sophisticated,
good weapons and good airplanes."
On August 17th 1942,
the US launches its first raid of the war in Europe.
With no fighter cover,
the B-17's made the attack on their own.
"At 15:26 hours,
the first daylight mission from a base in England was launched.
Strategic airpower was born."
As B-17's were to be operated without fighter escort,
Great emphasis was placed on flying in a defensive wedge formation.
By stacking the aircraft in an orderly pattern,
it was believed that their arcs of fire
would be enough to repel fighter attacks.
This theory would be severely tested.
"We in the United States,
the Army Air Corp at that time
had no tactics.
They didn't know how to go at it,
and our adversaries over in Germany,
they had been
fighting and flying since 1939,
so they were old hands at what we were just learning."
"You had the high squadron.
You had the low squadron,
and you had the middle squadron.
You flew in a formation
basically like this.
The tighter you flew,
and the reason for tight formation is
that the fighters could not go through your formation
and break it up, which they would attempt to do."
"No matter what angle a fighter came at you
from he had
a lot of 50 caliber machine guns
shooting at him
because the way the formation was stacked
almost every gunner
on the right side of the aircraft, for instance,
could shoot at the fighter."
Though the unescorted bombers had some protection against fighters,
there was nothing they could do
to avoid flieger abwehr kanonen - 'flak'.
Fired from the ground,
these lethal 88mm shells
were set to explode at the same altitude as the aircraft.
Once the German gunners zeroed in on the B-17's,
the results could be devastating.
"I always thought that flak was
more dangerous than fighters were because
you could see a fighter coming
and you could shoot back but you never knew
when you might get hit by the flak shell
and there was lots of it.
They used to say that flak
smoke was so thick you could walk on it up there
and it was almost true."
"Well anti-aircraft is like going down a bumpy road,
with a car with no shock absorbers on it
and every time you're shot the thing would go up,
aerial bump and jump
up and down.
I mean you are going this way,
you are going right, you are going left, you are going up and down."
In January 1943,
Churchill and Roosevelt met at the Casablanca Conference,
and they agreed a policy on a strategic bombing campaign.
And what became known as the "Casablanca Directive"
--- the 8th Air Force was given the responsibility
to ensure 'the progressive destruction
and dislocation of the German military,
industrial and economic system'.
But flying unescorted in daylight hours
poses a real threat to the bombers crews.
Flying at a mere 200 mph,
the B-17's were sitting ducks for the German Luftwaffe.
At 30,000 feet,
the crews of the unpressurized B-17's,
operated in extreme conditions.
Encumbered by bulky clothing,
engaging an enemy fighter was no easy task.
"It's 55 below zero up there
and even though we had heaters in the cockpit,
the poor gunners back in the rear,
they had no heat
and even though they wore heated suits,
some of them,
and wore a lot of clothing,
it was still very cold back there
and frostbite was a problem for them."
"The biggest thing that people don't realize is people sweat,
at 45 degrees below zero.
You sat there sweating,
maybe it was fear sweat, I don't know."
The crews had good reason to be fearful
as German pilots identified a weakness in the aircraft's defenses.
A frontal attack concentrating on the nose
and its minimal armor
was the best way to down the heavy.
"Well when we first got there,
they made most of their attacks from the tails,
and that didn't bother the pilots because we couldn't see them. .. .
Then, about halfway through,
when, they switched to head-on stuff,
and it wasn't just one plane coming head on,
it was a whole flight, like 4 to 6 planes coming in."
"They had more guts than Dick Tracy, I'll tell you ...
It amazed me
that one of these guys could take a Me-109
and fly right through the middle of your group.
You knew that they were showing off,
They were trying to scare the heck out of you, and they were doing it."
"The head on attacks by the German airplanes
would shoot out people in the nose.
It was a vulnerable position.
They would get the pilots
or get the bombardier or get the navigator.
In April 1943,
during the attack on the Focke-Wulf plant at Bremen,
16 B-17's were destroyed,
the heaviest loss rate to date.
But for the 8th Air Force,
things were about to go from bad to worse.
On August the 17th,
American forces plan to attack the ball-bearing factories at Schweinfurt.
"The factories at Schweinfurt
produces 52%
out of the total number of anti-friction bearings manufactured in Germany.
This concentration of critical production capacity
caused the Allied Chiefs of Staff
to assign a top priority to the target."
"The Germans of course were determined to defend the place,
because it was important.
So they put every fighter up that they could get a hold of, I guess,
and they did
they did some real bad damage
to the 8th Air Force that day."
Of the 211 Fortresses dispatched on the raid,
60 were lost
- over a quarter of the attacking force.
The attrition rate in
crewmen and B-17's
was extremely high.
And in the early days,
your chances of survival was 1 in 3.
that's a __ should know that
you have to fly 25 missions.
Your chances of survival was just almost nil.
By 1943,
the US 8th Air Force in Britain
suffered the highest attrition rate of the war.
Less than a third of B-17 crews were expected to survive.
At this rate,
the 8th Air Force would only last another few weeks
Something needed to be done..
??? August 1943,
nearly ended the American daylight bombing-offensive in Europe.
Realizing its loss-rate was unsustainable,
the Army Air Force halted its offensive
to rethink and regroup.
For the crews of B-17's,
it was an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the aircraft
and form bonds that would last for lifetime.
10 men in the crew,
4 officers, a pilot & a co-pilot,
navigator and bombardier they were officers
all the rest were enlisted men.
Each man has his own battle station on the aircraft.
"The navigator and the bombardier
were in the nose of the aircraft;
and ...
you crawl through a hatch
and then you go up into the pilot's compartment."
Here the pilot,
co-pilot,
and flight engineer have their stations.
"Quite naturally the pilot and copilot were real buddies
because they had to look at each other side by side.
They had to make sure that all of these buttons were punched
and all of this electrical and all this hydraulics
were functioning and everything
so they were very, very close. They needed to be."
"And then the engineer, when he wasn't manning his turret,
would stand between the pilot and co-pilot
and read off air speed indicators and that kind of stuff."
Behind the cockpit, in his own room, was the radio operator.
"He had a little space in there,
It's kind of like a room and he had all his radios set up in there."
Further back behind the radio operator,
the ball turret gunner has a slightly smaller room all of his own.
"Well,
if you ever open a can of sardines you know how it looks,
It's all full.
The ball turret was that way.
I wouldn't get in that
ball turret if they gave me the airplane.
I don't know how else to put it.
The guys that got in there I think deserved a medal
just for doing it."
Behind the ball,
in the largest compartment of the fortress,
the two waist gunners kept up a constant vigil for enemy fighters.
"Then you had your tail gunner
that added up to your 10 people.
I depend on you, you're the pilot, you depend on me 'cause I'm a gunner
and they __ __ __.
Each position has a responsibility
to the other guys.
It was a very close knit little family,
I mean, everybody had to do their job.
Everybody depended upon the other guy to do his job.
If some guy failed to do his job,
something could go wrong."
In picturesque rural England,
surrounded by friendly civilians,
the young American airmen of the 8th Air Force
adjusted to life on the front line.
Many would not survive the war.
But in the tranquil surroundings of the English country side,
there were plenty of opportunities to make the most of their tour.
"Well to say the least coming from a big city like Chicago,
there was like a culture shock."
"Of course we had to buy our bicycles.
It's the only way we could get around over there
and without their help
we couldn't even ve found a place to buy a bicycle.
And there was no shortage of American money.
The shortage was in
finding something to buy to spend our money."
"You usually
got yourself a bicycle as soon as you got over there
and we would ride that 7 miles into Arundel in the evening and
hit the pub
and have a few pints of mild
and bitter or nut brown or whatever,
and fraternize with the Brits.
One of the expressions they used
was that the only problem with the Yanks
was they were over-sexed and overpaid and over there,
and we heard this once in a while."
"We were doing the same thing their guys were doing
and the kids got close to us
because they'd be coming looking for gum chew,
looking for candy, because you had no sugar.
They had nothing like that.
And we were not a heck of lot older than some of those kids,
maybe 6 or 7 years old
and we were 19 or 20, so we were kind of like their big brothers."
A tour of duty in England was 25 missions,
but with an average life expectancy of just 14 missions.
For a B-17 crew in the European Theater,
many would not survive.
"We had to fly 25 missions, and they told us,OK ..
all you have to do is fly 25 missions and you go back to the States.
Right now, we're currently running a 4% attrition rate.
4 times 25 it was no go, you know ...
But .. that's how bad it was."
Studies carried out in 1943
show ?too
that about half of the B-17's loss in combat
had left the safety of the formation.
The conclusion was that a B-17 on its own
stood little chance of survival.
In 1944,
efforts were made to revise
the standard bomber combat formation
and a new 36-plane formation was devised.
Three clusters,
each consisting of 12 B-17's,
replaced the existing 18-strong grouping.
Flying in a v-shaped echelon,
the aircraft are packed tight together in the sky.
Never before could the mass ?ranks of the B-17's
concentrated firepower
with such accuracy and volume.
But flying so close together provided new dangers.
When you are flying very tight formation
and a plane within the formation,
let's say got a direct hit and the thing blew up.
He takes quite a few other airplanes with him,
and that did it happen."
"What you were supposed to do
was to back off a little bit and not fly so close,
unless you were under fighter.
If you were under fighter attack well then
you are supposed to really get up there close and get a concentrated fire power."
In the busy skies over Europe,
accidents could and did happen.
"I looked off to the left and there were two B-17's that had collided,
and we saw one cut the other one in half
and the tail go one way
and the plane go another way
and the other plane go to the right.
And we looked out
and saw these fellows falling out of the waist
with no parachutes."
"The sad thing that happened was
that the tail gunner bailed out
and he did not have a chute hooked to the harness.
When he bailed out, it was a chest chute.
He just had it in his hand,
and the slip string tore away from him,
So he had 27,000 feet to fall
with no, no support.
My thought was he had plenty of time to say his prayers before he hit."
By the end of 1943,
the latest model of the B-17
had additional mountings
for hand-held machineguns in the 'cheek' of the aircraft
and a power operated turret in the chin.
This G model
was the last and most extensively produced version of the fortress.
It boasted a total armament of 13 .50 cal machine guns,
transforming the B-17 from a tough bomber
to a true fortress!
After the disastrous Schweinfurt raids
in Aug. and Sep. 1943,
deep penetration raids into Germany were halted.
The arrival of the P-51 Mustang,
a single seat long-range fighter,
meant the Fortresses
would last have the additional protection they so badly needed.
By December,
the B-17 was ready
for re-entry into European operations.
Now the Allies concentrated
on delivering a 'knock-out blow' to the Nazi war machine.
"By Feb 1944,
the Army Air Force was ready to begin it's attack
against the German aircraft manufacturing industry.
By destroying the Luftwaffe in the factory,
it would be possible to conduct
further strikes against other strategic targets.
It was to be the biggest bombing missions yet.
Some 3,500 aircraft
all to bomb within the space of a week
that would soon become known as the 'big week'."
For the crews of the B-17's,
this 'Big Week'
began much the same as any other.
___ at 3, and ___ at 4!
"You started in the middle of the night, actually,
to go to the briefing
and they'd put a yarn deal across a map up there,
from our field
to where the target was,
and most of the time,
it looked like it was going halfway around the world."
"There were certain cities that
if they pulled the curtain back at the briefing in the morning
and you saw the string going to that place, why,
you knew you were in for it."
"When they pulled that curtain back up there
to show you where you were going,
you should've heard the moaning and groaning
from all the crews that were out there listening."
But the cost of the 'Big Week' was heavy.
244 bombers
and 33 fighter planes were lost.
2,600 men were either killed or wounded
in just 7 days.
"It was a living hell, ha ha ha ...
It was bad going in there and coming back.
That's the most flak I ever saw in one place.
That was the heaviest.
The heaviest defense I had ever seen in my life."
These raids paved a crucial role
in helping to reduce the overall strength of the Luftwaffe
and paving the way for D-Day.
During the offensive,
the back of the Luftwaffe was broken.
Now the B-17 crews
could turn their attention
to the most perilous bombing mission of them all - Berlin.
Hermann Goering,
Commander In Chief of the Luftwaffe,
had claimed that enemy bombs would never fall on Berlin.
And he had a good reason to believe it.
As Hitler's capital and the heart of the Nazi war machine,
Berlin was the most heavily defended city in all ?the fortressed Europe.
It was ringed by tens of thousands
of lethal 88mm anti-aircraft guns and fighters.
But, by early 1944,
production of new fighters
had all but dried out.
The crews of the B-17's
knew that they would be the targets
of highly trained German fighter pilots.
"German fighters were a big problem, I'll tell ya,
and there were a lot of them,
and these guys had been flying since 1939
and they had the tactics done perfect.
They would come right at you
and roll over,
come on out and come back up again."
"There was a group of
German fighters,
yellow-nosed Fockewolves,
the 'Abbeville kids' we called them.
Those guys were sharp,
really sharp.
We hated to see those things get in the air
because they were good pilots."
To make a successful bombing run,
the B-17s relied on their bombardier
and a top-secret device known as the Norden bombsight.
"The Norden bombsight
was basically a computer, a mechanical computer.
It was a unique piece of equipment.
It was classified at the time
but we had a set of cross hairs in it
My job was
to put the cross hairs on the target and keep them on the target.
Now the other factor would be
in drift,
so the wind would effect the drifting of the airplane
and my job was to kill the drift
and keep making adjustments into our heading
to the point where the cross hairs would not drift off the target."
"They used to say they could drop them in a pickle barrel from 10,000 feet,
.. that was fiction. it wasn't that good.
But they did some very good bombing."
Over Berlin,
the B-17's would have to fly straight and level
through the heaviest flak barrage imaginable
before the bombardier can release his bombs accurately.
"The bombardier actually flew the airplane on the bomb run.
The airplane would be put on automatic pilot
and his bombsight
would automatically
compute the angle that the bomb should drop.
It would do a very good job of getting the bomb on the target."
"What will drive you up a wall
is if whoever that lead bombardier is up there
goes over the target
and doesn't drop.
Then you make a 360-degree circle around
and come back over the target again,
and you've got to go through that same flak all over again.
And if you could, you'd get out there
and beat that guy half to death."
Nicknamed the 'Big B' by the crews of the B-17,
the 'heavies' of the 8th Air Force,
prepare for a grim attrition fight over Berlin.
For many,
it would be their last mission of their war.
On March the 4th 1944,
William Menzies was on his way to Berlin.
"I called the top turret and I says,
'We got fighters coming in.'
He says, "no,no, they're ours __ __... "
But I said, "Below them,
look at them." and about that time they opened up.
I say, "What the hell do you think those are landing lights?
They show and shining at us?
You've become only one person
on that little old airplane. They're all after you.
That's what I'm saying.
When they're shooting at you,
you're in the smallest part of the airplane,
But then,
it points to land right between your eyes,
you know, like an inverted ice cream cone.
I saw somebody go out,
and I got on my intercom to find out
what was happening, and I had no intercom. So I thought,
'Well, I'd better find out what's happening.' So
I left my guns because
they weren't doing me too much good.
And I crawled out of my gun position;
I crawled through there with my harness on.
I'd left my parachute where it was.
There was one guy laying in the waist. His chute was pulled.
But ...
he wasn't moving, so I assumed he was dead.
Smitty, my co-pilot,
I could see him down on the bomb bay.
I don't know whether he was getting ready to jump or not;
and he says
.. he goes like that,
and I assumed he said to go.
But I couldn't go. My chute was back in the tail, so
I turned around and I crawled back,
and as I was crawling back in, I hooked my harness on something
and I backed up. I couldn't get off of it.
I went forward, I couldn't get off of it,
and panic was setting in now.
And I got talking to the man upstairs in a hurry;
I told him I'd even go back to church if he gets me out of this one.
When people up front to leave it.
It's time for me to leave.
I didn't want to be in it if it started to spin,
I'd made up my mind I wasn't going to be in it if it ever hit the ground."
William Menzies
parachuted safely away from the aircraft.
but was captured.
For him, the war was over.
On March the 4th 1944,
the B-17's pounded a suburb of Berlin.
And 2 days later, they revisited the city,
but this 2nd raid was costly.
69 bombers were shot down in those cities.
The largest loss of 'heavies' the 8th Air Force had suffered on a single raid.
But the men of the 8th had fought hard.
160 German fighters were destroyed
and Berlin was in flames.
In the sustained and ruthless bombardment,
Boeing's Flying Fortress
reduced almost 60% of the city to rubble.
But the crews of the B-17s had little time for remorse.
"Our war was up there
with the fighters,
. You know, I'm saying.. I'm not trying to make little of this,
I'm just saying that's the way we looked at it.
This was our war, 5 miles in the sky.
Down in there,
.. we didn't even
.. I didn't consider
that people were dying."
Out of the smoky haze of the battle for Berlin,
emerged an icon of the American air war in Europe
--- the B-17 Flying Fortress.
With Berlin in ruins
and the Luftwaffe down to a mere token force,
the B-17's and their crews were given a new target.
One that will end the war in Europe
once and for all.
By early 1944,
German oil production,
the lifeblood of the Reich's war machine,
had remained largely immune to the air war.
Though the Allies already attempted
to knock out the oil production facilities at Ploesti in Romania,
German synthetic oil supplies continued to be produced.
"At the end of March 1944,
when final plans
for the Allied invasion of Europe were being drawn up,
about 30% of the total petroleum available to Germany
came from the refineries at Ploesti, Romania."
"At the beginning of 1944,
following the systematic destruction
of the German aircraft manufacturing industries,
the strategic bombing target became oil.
Oil and lubricants
are the lifeline of any army
and the Army Air Force reasoned
that by striking oil production sites,
the enemy could be hampered in it's ability to wage war."
With its oil reserves,
Hitler's war machine could
and would fight on.
As a matter of urgency, planes were put in place
to smash Germany's fuel production.
Once again the B-17 Flying Fortresses
would be in the frontline.
On May 12th 1944,
the American attacks on German oil production began.
During the month, strategic bombers
dropped some 5,100 tons of bombs on oil targets.
In August,
the tonnage skyrocketed
to 26,300 tons.
And in November,
it reached a climax.
No less than 35,000 tons of heavy-duty explosives
were dropped on crucial oil installations.
But this offensive was taking its toll.
In the 1st 3 months against these oil targets,
the 8th lost 922 'heavies'
- a staggering number.
Another 10,000 men
would never make it home.
"The defense of those targets was immense.
If I recall,
there was something on the order of
3,300 anti-aircraft guns around Leipzig
at the end of the war.
What happened with the Germans
is they would pull all their anti-aircraft guns back in
as they started losing territory.
So the later part of the war,
it wasn't fighters that was your major opposition,
It was anti-aircraft
because they had the concentration of those guns.
And those 88's would come right there with us."
By September,
German fuel production was down to a quarter of its normal capacity.
The remnants of the Luftwaffe were grounded
out of gruel,
and became target practice
for the B-17's escort fighters.
"Fighters returning from unchallenged escort missions
were ordered to seek targets of opportunity.
Since the enemy did not come up to fight,
down they went to blast his planes and burn them in their airdromes."
500 enemy aircraft were being destroyed each week
--- many of them on the ground.
By late November 1944,
almost the entire might of the 8th Air Force
was directed at destroying German oil facilities.
Leading from the front,
the B-17 spearheads
what the Reich's Armaments Minister Albert Speer called,
"the end of German armament production".
Without fuel,
entire units of the German army
were forced to abandon their vehicles.
For them,
the game was up.
Berlin was still to be taken.
But with the Allies closing in for the kill,
the strategic bombing campaign was over.
The B-17 had done its job.
By May the 7th 1945,
as Germany surrendered,
it had lost 95% of its fuel industry.
Its war machine
had ground to a halt.
In just over 1,000 days of combat,
the 8th Air Force had used up 99 million rounds of ammunition,
and destroyed 18,810 enemy aircraft.
Of the 1.5 million tons of bombs
dropped by all Allied aircraft in Europe,
the B-17 Flying Fortress accounted for almost a third.
The airplane that crashed during testing back in 1937
and was almost never built
had become a war winner
- and a legend in combat history.
"17'S came back
with some of the most horrible damage you've ever seen,
almost broken in 2 some of them, but they'd get back
and they land.
They could take more punishment, I think, than any other bomber aircraft."
"Well, I think It was a wonderful airplane,
and it took a heck of a lot of beating
and
if it hadn't been for the B-17,
I more like wouldn't be sitting here talking to you.
Because it could be any other aircraft, I would more likely have been dead."
In just 4 years,
more than 12,000 B-17s were built.
250,000 Men had flown them in Europe,
and more than 46,500
American airmen had been killed or wounded.
The B-17 Flying Fortress had lived up to its billing.
Despite the losses,
it'd proved itself to be a durable
and dependable aircraft.
And one that extracted a high price in combat
helping to end German resistance in the 2nd WW.
"I don't think we could have won it without the B-17 or something
by another name
that did the same thing
that a B-17 did.
And there was no other plane at the time that could do that."
Everyone that I've known that flew in the B-17
was just proud as punch about the unit in its entirety.
to good engine,
good unit.
It's a good plane.
The epitaph, if there is one, it shout be it.
This is the best airplane -
bomber
that ever flew in WWII.
My testimony.