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Between 1939 and 1945,
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125,000 young men faced the most dangerous task
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of any British serviceman in the war.
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They suffered the highest casualty rates.
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Nearly half of them, 55,000, were killed.
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It looks like hell. And you really think this is going to be it.
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They were the bomber crews, who took on Hitler when airpower was the only way of striking back at Nazi Germany.
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We were involved in total war. We were involved in fighting for our lives.
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I'm Ewan McGregor, and this is my brother, Colin.
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We've always had a fascination with the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.
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Last year we made a documentary about the Battle of Britain.
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But we wanted to know what happened next.
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The few had saved us from invasion, and the RAF was already building a huge force
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that would take the fight over into Germany.
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And that force was Bomber Command, and during my career in the RAF, I, too, was a bomber pilot.
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I flew this supersonic Tornado, unlike my predecessors,
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who flew the legendary Lancaster,
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and I'm going to get the chance to see if I can fly the last remaining Lancaster in Britain.
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The pilot was one of a team of seven who lived, fought and often died together.
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I'm going to explore what it was like to be part of this band of brothers in the air.
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Their story is one of endurance, teamwork and understated heroism.
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No, I'd never flown before. Hadn't even driven a motor car before.
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You'd got a job on.
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And that's what you just did, you just sat there and did it.
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But it's also a story that is dogged by controversy.
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Despite the undoubted heroism,
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the men of Bomber Command found themselves to be ignored after the war.
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The massive attacks on Hamburg and Dresden killed thousands of civilians
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and were judged by many to be unnecessary.
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There was a war on, and we had to win,
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because God knows how it would have turned out if we hadn't have won.
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In 1940, the RAF's fighters repelled invasion in the Battle of Britain.
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But the German Luftwaffe continued to bomb Britain's cities in the Blitz.
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And with the British army defeated at Dunkirk,
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Prime Minster Winston Churchill identified the only way to hit back.
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"Our supreme effort must be to gain overwhelming mastery of the air.
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The fighters are our salvation, but the bombers alone provide us the means of victory."
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Winston Churchill, 1940.
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And one aircraft, more than any other, symbolises that struggle for victory.
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RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire is home to the last flying Lancaster Bomber in Britain.
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It's maintained by the RAF's Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
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Squadron Leader Ian Smith is its guardian.
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She is one of two airworthy Lancasters in the world.
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There's only two left flying?
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Yeah. And the other one's in Canada.
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- And here she is, in all her glory.
- Wow! Absolutely incredible.
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- Isn't she stunning?
- Yeah. So many would they have built then?
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- 7,377 Lancasters were built.
- Yeah.
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But circa three and a half thousand were shot down over Germany.
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Lancaster was the best aircraft ever during the war.
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It could hold a very big bomb load,
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it could take a lot of punishment,
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and it was a real pleasure to fly.
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Four beautiful Rolls Royce Merlin engines at the age of 22?
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Who wouldn't enjoy that?
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Ah, a fantastic aeroplane, beautiful.
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She was a real lady.
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And like all ladies,
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if you treat them right, they go!
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The Lancaster carried the heaviest bomb load of any bomber in the war.
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It meant there was little space inside.
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Mind your head.
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And what will be transparent straight away is just how,
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despite the fact that it's an enormous aeroplane.
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- Yeah.
- Just how little room there is in here.
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Just think, you're just in normal gear here.
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- Imagine you had a flying kit on.
- Yeah.
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I can't actually do it with my jeans, cos they are slightly too tight anyway.
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Imagine with a flying jacket on.
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It's all very well doing it in daylight,
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but if this aeroplane was on fire, spinning out of control in the dark,
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it would be a bit of a challenge, wouldn't it?
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Ah, just a bit!
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God!
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Oh yeah, look at this.
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Oh, it's incredibly open at the side, it's amazing.
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This is exactly as she would have been when she was flying in wartime.
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- All these instruments are original, are they?
- Yeah, absolutely.
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So, the pilot, the captain of the aeroplane would have sat
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in the left hand seat in front of you, Ewan,
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and this is the bullet proof plate here at the back there,
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which would have protected him to some degree.
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You've got a really good view and all the rest of it,
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but it does feel very vulnerable, doesn't it?
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You do feel really vulnerable up here.
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I mean this is, literally, only three eights of an inch Perspex,
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and the side of the walls of the aeroplane is two millimetres of aluminium,
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which won't stop anything.
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To realise my dream of piloting this precious and iconic aircraft,
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I need to train first on some other heavy planes from the era.
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The roar of a wartime Spitfire heralds the arrival of the man
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the RAF trusts to supervise that training.
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This fellow taxiing in in his Spitfire now is your instructor.
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Oh right!
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And he's going to take you through the training
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- for you to be able to see what the boys went through to fly the Lancaster.
- OK.
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Making this dramatic entrance is Air Marshall Cliff Spink, a former RAF pilot.
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He's an expert on Second World War planes, and recently taught me to fly the Spitfire.
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- Hello!
- Hello!
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There's a pilot we recognise.
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They told me that the McGregors were here,
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so I thought I'd better come and make sure you didn't get up to any mischief.
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- Good to see you again.
- Good to see you, Colin.
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Going to see if you remembered all that you learned last year.
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Yeah, exactly, yeah. I'm going to have to shift my view a little higher up next, I think.
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Last summer, Cliff guided me through the basic training all wartime RAF pilots experienced
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before I was allowed to pilot a single-engine Spitfire.
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But this time, I'll have to master a two-engine World War Two transport plane
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before I'm allowed to pilot the four-engine Lancaster.
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For me, as a member of 617 Squadron, it's probably the greatest privilege that you could ever get
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just to fly a Lancaster, so, you know, certainly a career-long ambition of mine to do.
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The Lancaster would become the most successful bomber of the war,
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but it only came into service two and a half years into the conflict.
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In the early days of World War Two, Bomber Command was ineffective.
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Its force of just 280 light bombers, flying in daylight, sustained losses of up to 50%.
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In one disastrous attack on �lborg in Denmark, all eleven planes were shot down.
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Then, on November 14th 1940,
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a German night raid on Coventry showed the RAF how to bomb effectively.
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Steven Bungay, an expert on the Air War, has brought us to look at newsreel of the attack.
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- NEWSREEL:
- All the available German night bombers were put into the air.
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On the night of November 14th, a million pounds of bombs were dropped on the city.
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It was the most devastating raid of the war so far.
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Coventry was smashed as bad as Warsaw and Rotterdam.
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60,000 buildings were destroyed, and 568 civilians lost their lives.
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Coventry was a centre of aircraft manufacture,
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but instead of targeting just the factories, the Luftwaffe chose to flatten the whole city.
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- Incredible.
- Yeah.
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The mass grave and things, I had never seen that, I didn't know that went on.
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What the Germans achieved in Coventry was a concentration of bombing.
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It wasn't just scattering things over quite a wide area.
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And that's very important for the consequences that the RAF drew from this.
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They realised that if you had some specialists using specialised equipment,
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which we didn't have at the time but quickly started to develop,
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then you could achieve concentration.
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And concentration had a big impact.
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Bomber Command now knew what it had to do.
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If it couldn't hit individual factories,
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it would destroy everything around them in concentrated raids.
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This became known as area bombing.
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The objective was industrial disruption.
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By destroying infrastructure, simply the means that people use to get to
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work in the morning, you can produce a dip in industrial production.
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The targets were the major German industrial cities,
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like Berlin and Hamburg,
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and the manufacturing heartland of the Ruhr.
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But it would take nearly two years before Bomber Command could put its plan into action.
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If I'm going to fly the Lancaster by the end of the week, I'll have to start my training.
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So I've come to White Waltham, a former RAF base, to learn on this wartime Dakota.
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My supervisor, Cliff, is hooking me up with Kath Burnham.
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Hi, Kath.
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She's one of only two qualified Dakota instructors in the country.
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- Nice to meet you.
- Colin McGregor.
- He's your new student.
- Very good.
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I hope he doesn't let me down. He flew the Tiger Moth and the Harvard and the Spitfire last year.
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I hate him already(!) Yeah. Go on.
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- Back on the heavy metal now.
- Great stuff.
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- So, best of luck and I'll see you tomorrow.
- Yeah, cheers.
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- Shall we go in?
- Yeah, let's do it.
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This is a pretty solid old aeroplane, the DC-3.
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It's excellent for him to get a feel for that,
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before he gets on to something which is extra tonnage of the Lancaster.
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That's it.
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Now I've got Kath next to me, and I've got to make sure that when she asks me to do something
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I do it correctly.
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It's going to have to happen like that, so I'm quite nervous about it.
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He's asking all the right questions, it's always a good start.
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And, um, looking a little bit apprehensive, I think.
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You tell me it's turning.
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This World War Two veteran is so unlike the type of plane
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I fly today in my job as a commercial pilot.
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And even though it needs Kath to help me get it off the ground,
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I'm going to have my hands full piloting this beast.
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Cliff will be passing a critical eye over the proceedings.
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If I shout "bird" just put your hands over your eyes. This is glass.
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OK, it'll smash, yeah.
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Now, after all the pre-flight checks, it's time for the real test.
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Take off.
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There's so much to concentrate on.
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It's so difficult to control this type of plane on the ground.
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I'm straining to keep it on a straight track.
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Oh, yes!
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Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo! That was nice.
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That looked all right, didn't it? Nice and straight.
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Cor, sounds amazing, doesn't it sound brilliant, that plane?
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He's a very good pilot, of course, one of the best.
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It's hard to describe what it feels like.
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It's like driving a vintage bus with manual gears, after being used to a modern sports car.
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That was good. To me, anyway. When you're in the back of a big aeroplane like this,
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you sense the yaw, and he was not paddling too much,
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which suggests he was keeping it reasonably straight.
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I've been flying for more than 20 years and this tough.
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It makes you think about those 18-year-old trainees flying
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a monster like this for the first time.
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Attention!
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At RAF flying schools, potential pilots were cherry-picked from the raw recruits.
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The remaining volunteers went on to specialise in other crew disciplines.
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All pilot recruits were then sent abroad to one of the 333 Empire air training schools.
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They were scattered throughout the British Empire.
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18-year-old Desmond Pelly went straight from Charterhouse School to learn to fly in Canada.
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Canada, of course, happened to be an extremely good place for training.
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Because there were no blackout conditions,
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and you flew in completely peacetime conditions,
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which was wonderful.
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Reg Barker was just 19.
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To be up in the sky, on your own, in a beautiful aeroplane,
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with the freedom of the sky.
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Oh, fantastic. What a privilege it was.
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No, I'd never flown before. Hadn't even driven a motor car before.
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- Remind me when you take flat one again?
- With the gear.
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- With the gear, so that's already done.
- That's it, yeah.
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So when you're at final and you're stable...
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On my training flight in the skies above Berkshire,
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I'm still wrestling with this demanding twin-engine workhorse.
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But now I've got the measure of the controls I'm really enjoying it. This is real, physical flying.
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He's on final approach. They've got the gear down.
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So, as you can see, he's working pretty hard.
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What I'm nervous about now is getting this plane back onto the bumpy grass runway.
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The tricky part is stopping it swerving on landing.
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OK, this is the big moment, let's see if he does it.
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- Bingo!
- And take the flap down. Busy with your feet. OK, pop the tail down.
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- Now the fun really starts, is keeping it straight.
- Well done!
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- That was, that was very good.
- Good man.
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He's just trying to show me up now.
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Landing's one thing, but with a tail will aeroplane,
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the next thing is keeping it straight.
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Where is it? There. Ooh!
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KATH LAUGHS
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You did that on purpose!
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I didn't kill anybody!
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Yeah, well done. Mind the little red sign.
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Yeah, got it. I think we'll quite while we're ahead, shall we?
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KATH LAUGHS
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Woo-hoo-hoo!
233
00:16:38,240 --> 00:16:41,560
All right Colin?
234
00:16:41,560 --> 00:16:43,200
Good job!
235
00:16:43,200 --> 00:16:46,720
I'm a bit sweaty! It was hard work.
236
00:16:46,720 --> 00:16:49,880
Considering you've never flown one at all, ever, I think not too bad, eh?
237
00:16:49,880 --> 00:16:51,600
- It was very good.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
238
00:16:51,600 --> 00:16:53,560
How does it feel, what does it feel like to fly?
239
00:16:53,560 --> 00:16:56,080
- It's beautiful in the air, it's really solid, you know?
- Yeah.
240
00:16:56,080 --> 00:16:58,800
I mean you, like you say, you've gotta come in and command it,
241
00:16:58,800 --> 00:17:01,120
you've gotta, you know, tell it where you want it to go.
242
00:17:03,240 --> 00:17:08,640
Before I finally get my hands on the Lancaster, Cliff has a much tougher task up his sleeve.
243
00:17:14,280 --> 00:17:19,200
If you went to the cinema in 1941 you'd have believed that the bombing campaign was going very well.
244
00:17:19,200 --> 00:17:21,760
Let go of a thousand pound, Mick.
245
00:17:21,760 --> 00:17:24,600
Bomber Command had switched to night-time raids,
246
00:17:24,600 --> 00:17:28,040
and the crews were reporting that they were hitting their targets.
247
00:17:31,120 --> 00:17:33,360
I got a goal there with the last one!
248
00:17:33,360 --> 00:17:35,800
Good man. Make a Nazi cigar.
249
00:17:35,800 --> 00:17:40,880
But Prime Minister Winston Churchill was about to discover the shocking truth.
250
00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:47,840
At the National Archives in Kew, I'm meeting archivist Jessica Lutkin,
251
00:17:47,840 --> 00:17:51,480
who's going to show me what was really going on in 1941.
252
00:17:52,760 --> 00:17:58,440
Right, this is an important document for the history of Bomber Command and it was written in 1941,
253
00:17:58,440 --> 00:18:01,560
and it's an analysis of the success rate
254
00:18:01,560 --> 00:18:05,640
of the bombing campaigns that went on over in Germany.
255
00:18:05,640 --> 00:18:10,920
It was the first scientific report that was done, so the first time they had statistics.
256
00:18:10,920 --> 00:18:16,440
Before that, it was just the crews reporting back and saying whether they'd hit target or not.
257
00:18:16,440 --> 00:18:19,440
How did they gather that evidence? How did they get scientific evidence?
258
00:18:19,440 --> 00:18:23,280
They used photographs. They used photographs on the undercarriages of the planes
259
00:18:23,280 --> 00:18:27,320
that would take pictures of when the bombs were set off,
260
00:18:27,320 --> 00:18:31,120
and from those photographs, they could then write a report.
261
00:18:31,120 --> 00:18:34,720
I want to make a sort of snooker joke but I can't think of one.
262
00:18:34,720 --> 00:18:39,240
"For those of you watching in black and white, the pink is next to the blue."
263
00:18:39,240 --> 00:18:44,320
Right. So, let me turn to a report for you. So there you are.
264
00:18:45,880 --> 00:18:51,080
"An examination of night photographs taken during night bombing in June and July
265
00:18:51,080 --> 00:18:53,560
points to the following conclusions.
266
00:18:53,560 --> 00:18:59,640
Of the aircraft recorded as attacking their target, only one in three got within five miles.
267
00:18:59,640 --> 00:19:04,080
And over Germany as a whole, the proportion was only one in four.
268
00:19:04,080 --> 00:19:06,080
And over the Ruhr, it was only one in ten."
269
00:19:06,080 --> 00:19:09,480
- Yes.
- Does that mean only one in ten got over the target?
270
00:19:09,480 --> 00:19:11,680
Or the bombs dropped hit the target?
271
00:19:11,680 --> 00:19:14,280
Only one in ten actually reached the target.
272
00:19:14,280 --> 00:19:19,080
So what would the reaction have been when this report was read by the top brass?
273
00:19:19,080 --> 00:19:21,080
And what was, what was the reaction to it?
274
00:19:21,080 --> 00:19:23,600
It was shock. It was simple shock.
275
00:19:23,600 --> 00:19:26,280
They couldn't believe just how bad things were.
276
00:19:26,280 --> 00:19:28,040
Wow!
277
00:19:29,600 --> 00:19:35,880
Surprising to see how ineffective the bombing campaign was early on.
278
00:19:35,880 --> 00:19:42,800
And clearly to Churchill, and to the powers that be at the time, that it was so ineffective.
279
00:19:42,800 --> 00:19:46,680
And yeah, it'll be interesting to see how they put that right,
280
00:19:46,680 --> 00:19:50,840
what they put in place to try and improve matters.
281
00:19:53,160 --> 00:19:55,440
For Churchill, the answer was simple.
282
00:19:55,440 --> 00:19:59,400
Bomber command needed a complete overhaul, and he started at the top.
283
00:20:03,360 --> 00:20:08,160
In February 1942, Arthur Harris was appointed its new Commander-in-chief.
284
00:20:09,760 --> 00:20:15,120
We're meeting author Patrick Bishop to find out more about Harris.
285
00:20:15,120 --> 00:20:20,280
The one name that keeps cropping up during our journey through this research is Bomber Harris.
286
00:20:20,280 --> 00:20:24,000
Well, Bomber Harris was the name that the general public knew him by,
287
00:20:24,000 --> 00:20:26,160
but among his peers he was Burt Harris,
288
00:20:26,160 --> 00:20:29,560
and to his men he was Butch.
289
00:20:29,560 --> 00:20:34,680
He had a bristly little moustache that gave him this air of porcine belligerence,
290
00:20:34,680 --> 00:20:37,360
and you crossed him at your peril.
291
00:20:37,360 --> 00:20:43,120
But what he did have was enormous drive and enormous energy and enormous confidence,
292
00:20:43,120 --> 00:20:47,360
and he brought all those qualities to Bomber Command.
293
00:20:47,360 --> 00:20:49,000
He arrived at a good time,
294
00:20:49,000 --> 00:20:52,160
these big four-engined bombers were just arriving at the squadrons,
295
00:20:52,160 --> 00:20:57,840
and he turned these heavy bombers into weapons of mass destruction.
296
00:20:57,840 --> 00:21:00,760
I mean, you can date from his arrival,
297
00:21:00,760 --> 00:21:04,560
the time when things start getting very unpleasant for the Germans.
298
00:21:04,560 --> 00:21:07,480
Was he liked, do you think, by the crews?
299
00:21:07,480 --> 00:21:11,160
I think he was respected enormously.
300
00:21:11,160 --> 00:21:16,360
And they, I think, understood what it was that he was doing,
301
00:21:16,360 --> 00:21:19,520
and the fact that their lives were being put on the line,
302
00:21:19,520 --> 00:21:22,960
I think they, they understood that that's what had to be done.
303
00:21:22,960 --> 00:21:25,800
I mean, hard men are needed in wartime, and he was certainly that.
304
00:21:27,840 --> 00:21:33,640
Harris had an unflinching belief that bombing alone could win the war. And he didn't mince his words.
305
00:21:35,240 --> 00:21:37,240
"The Nazis entered this war
306
00:21:37,240 --> 00:21:38,920
under the rather childish delusion
307
00:21:38,920 --> 00:21:41,520
that they were going to bomb everybody else
308
00:21:41,520 --> 00:21:44,000
and nobody was going to bomb them.
309
00:21:44,000 --> 00:21:49,160
At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places,
310
00:21:49,160 --> 00:21:53,440
they put that rather naive theory into operation.
311
00:21:53,440 --> 00:21:58,280
They have sewed the wind and now they are going to reap the whirlwind."
312
00:22:00,080 --> 00:22:04,960
That whirlwind had four engines and it was called the Lancaster.
313
00:22:04,960 --> 00:22:10,120
With a top speed of nearly 300 miles an hour, it was faster than any of its predecessors.
314
00:22:11,600 --> 00:22:15,040
It also carried the biggest bomb load of any aircraft in the war.
315
00:22:15,040 --> 00:22:18,040
- COMMENTARY:
- It's 33 ft long. When it's released its load,
316
00:22:18,040 --> 00:22:21,840
another two or three acres of Germany will never be the same again.
317
00:22:23,040 --> 00:22:26,200
Harris now had the weapon he needed.
318
00:22:26,200 --> 00:22:29,280
He placed it at the centre of his plans to build a huge force
319
00:22:29,280 --> 00:22:33,560
that he believed could break the Germans by area bombing alone.
320
00:22:35,800 --> 00:22:40,640
He dreamed of assembling a thousand bombers for a single raid,
321
00:22:40,640 --> 00:22:43,920
so he doggedly pursued the Air Ministry to build more planes.
322
00:22:46,400 --> 00:22:51,960
The drive to get the new heavy bombers out of the factory demanded a huge workforce.
323
00:22:56,520 --> 00:22:59,320
I'm meeting Susan Jones, who, as a teenager,
324
00:22:59,320 --> 00:23:02,520
worked as a riveter on the new, state-of-the-art Lancaster.
325
00:23:04,640 --> 00:23:07,920
So Sue, this is the first time you've seen your plane for a little while, isn't it?
326
00:23:07,920 --> 00:23:14,320
- It's so emotional. You know, I could just cry now, looking at her.
- Yeah.
327
00:23:14,320 --> 00:23:16,600
She's absolutely brilliant.
328
00:23:16,600 --> 00:23:20,120
How long did you build these planes for?
329
00:23:20,120 --> 00:23:21,680
Five years.
330
00:23:21,680 --> 00:23:24,000
- From what age?
- 16.
331
00:23:24,000 --> 00:23:29,240
- 16.
- Regular nights. Seven at night to seven in the morning.
332
00:23:29,240 --> 00:23:33,360
- For five years?
- Five years. Happiest days of my life.
333
00:23:33,360 --> 00:23:34,840
Oh, they were brilliant.
334
00:23:36,440 --> 00:23:39,640
These four-engine bombers were affectionately known
335
00:23:39,640 --> 00:23:43,360
as 10,000 rivets flying in close formation.
336
00:23:43,360 --> 00:23:45,080
- You hold it upright, go on.
- Yep.
337
00:23:45,080 --> 00:23:47,520
And then I'll hold onto the back, and then when I call "rivet",
338
00:23:47,520 --> 00:23:50,120
- just give it a couple of seconds on the gun.
- Just a touch.
339
00:23:50,120 --> 00:23:51,160
Rivet!
340
00:23:51,160 --> 00:23:52,280
That's it.
341
00:23:52,280 --> 00:23:56,120
- There we go. That's one done.
- That's it?
- Yeah.
- OK, let's have another go.
342
00:23:56,120 --> 00:23:58,680
Oooh, you'll have to be quicker than that.
343
00:23:58,680 --> 00:24:00,200
Rivet!
344
00:24:00,200 --> 00:24:03,600
- There we go.
- That's a good rivet, though, no?
- Let me see.
- Yeah, it's not bad.
345
00:24:03,600 --> 00:24:05,560
- Can you get that underneath there?
- Yeah.
346
00:24:08,280 --> 00:24:11,520
- Oh sorry, I didn't wait for your command, I beg your pardon.
- Oh!
347
00:24:11,520 --> 00:24:13,840
That will definitely not pass inspection!
348
00:24:13,840 --> 00:24:15,280
I think you should have a go.
349
00:24:17,360 --> 00:24:19,640
- It's a bit heavy for me, this one.
- OK, I'll hold it with you.
350
00:24:22,240 --> 00:24:23,440
Right.
351
00:24:23,440 --> 00:24:24,960
Rivet!
352
00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:28,400
- There we go.
- OK.
- Oh, that's a professional one, you see!
353
00:24:28,400 --> 00:24:30,080
That's a real pro, that one.
354
00:24:31,200 --> 00:24:33,240
Think I'll get a job here?
355
00:24:35,960 --> 00:24:40,520
In 1942, 700 of the revolutionary new Lancasters
356
00:24:40,520 --> 00:24:42,520
were delivered to frontline bases.
357
00:24:43,960 --> 00:24:46,280
The Lancaster was, you know,
358
00:24:46,280 --> 00:24:50,160
something else. It was a real war machine,
359
00:24:50,160 --> 00:24:51,960
it looked the part.
360
00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:54,480
It's still, to me, a powerful, powerful machine,
361
00:24:54,480 --> 00:24:57,880
I'm very proud, you know, I was associated with it.
362
00:24:57,880 --> 00:25:01,520
Whatever manoeuvre you wanted it
363
00:25:01,520 --> 00:25:04,520
to do, it did. It did. It did.
364
00:25:05,640 --> 00:25:07,000
Brilliant.
365
00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:10,200
You felt comfortable in it.
366
00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:14,440
It could take a lot of punishment.
367
00:25:14,440 --> 00:25:16,320
It could fly on two engines
368
00:25:16,320 --> 00:25:18,200
and one side quite easily.
369
00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:19,800
In fact, I do know of one chap
370
00:25:19,800 --> 00:25:22,240
who brought a Lancaster all the way back from Germany
371
00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:23,520
on one engine.
372
00:25:25,640 --> 00:25:30,200
To fly the new bombers, trainees were pouring out of the flying schools.
373
00:25:30,200 --> 00:25:32,200
And it wasn't just the pilots.
374
00:25:32,200 --> 00:25:38,560
Each Lancaster needed six more crew members. Two gunners, the flight engineer,
375
00:25:38,560 --> 00:25:43,080
the navigator, the bomb aimer, and the wireless operator.
376
00:25:44,480 --> 00:25:49,480
Bomber command was also a multi-national force.
377
00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:54,040
One in four of its recruits came from overseas. All were volunteers.
378
00:25:55,720 --> 00:25:59,520
In a wartime hangar, wireless operator John de Hoop recalls
379
00:25:59,520 --> 00:26:02,760
the reasons he joined up when he was just 18.
380
00:26:02,760 --> 00:26:05,520
One, you got more money.
381
00:26:05,520 --> 00:26:08,280
Two, you got sheets with your blankets,
382
00:26:08,280 --> 00:26:10,880
- which I thought was so civilised.
- Yeah.
383
00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:15,360
Three, you were given a pair of shoes and a pair of boots,
384
00:26:15,360 --> 00:26:18,560
rather than two pairs of boots, I hated wearing boots.
385
00:26:18,560 --> 00:26:22,640
And fourthly, because once you'd got your wing,
386
00:26:22,640 --> 00:26:26,760
using a colloquial term of the time, it pulled in the birds.
387
00:26:26,760 --> 00:26:28,280
COLIN LAUGHS
388
00:26:29,880 --> 00:26:35,400
The process of turning the individuals into a team was known as crewing up.
389
00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:38,080
This wasn't the usual hierarchical military process.
390
00:26:38,080 --> 00:26:40,800
It was rather more democratic.
391
00:26:40,800 --> 00:26:44,480
Looking back, it seemed a bit chaotic,
392
00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:46,440
because you'd be put in a hangar and they said,
393
00:26:46,440 --> 00:26:49,600
"Right, get on with it, get crewed up", and closed the doors.
394
00:26:49,600 --> 00:26:51,400
So you were stuck in a great big room.
395
00:26:51,400 --> 00:26:54,280
Full of pilots and navigators,
396
00:26:54,280 --> 00:26:57,040
bomb aimers, wireless operators
397
00:26:57,040 --> 00:26:58,440
and two gunners.
398
00:26:58,440 --> 00:27:00,680
And told yourself, get yourself crewed up.
399
00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:04,000
You stand around wondering what's going to happen next, who should you go with?
400
00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:09,240
And this chap came up, he was obviously older than we,
401
00:27:09,240 --> 00:27:14,320
and he said, "I'm a rear gunner," he said, "Are you two chaps looking for a crew?"
402
00:27:14,320 --> 00:27:18,160
We said, "Yeah, yes we are." And he said, "Well I've found a pilot.
403
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:22,400
I've questioned him, and he told me he had a crash while he was training,
404
00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:25,520
so I think he'll be bloody all right in future, he'll do for us!"
405
00:27:25,520 --> 00:27:28,200
So I said, "Well, OK, that suits us." So off we went.
406
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:29,320
So that was the crew!
407
00:27:31,200 --> 00:27:33,960
This was a remarkable mixing of classes,
408
00:27:33,960 --> 00:27:37,760
ages and nationalities, unthinkable before the war.
409
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:40,760
A crew might consist of a former public schoolboy,
410
00:27:40,760 --> 00:27:45,840
a London docker, a farmer from New Zealand and a Canadian bank clerk.
411
00:27:47,720 --> 00:27:51,080
All of a sudden, we became blood brothers.
412
00:27:51,080 --> 00:27:55,880
We helped each other out in everything. And we were a good team.
413
00:27:55,880 --> 00:27:58,600
If we hadn't have been I wouldn't be here today.
414
00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:03,880
The one thing that I remember with some emotion is the fact
415
00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:08,720
that in the billet, sharing with another crew, all Kiwis,
416
00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:12,160
and I recall both crews went on an operation,
417
00:28:12,160 --> 00:28:18,440
and when we came back all their kit had gone, and bed stripped,
418
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:25,120
and I remember sitting on our beds and being quite shattered
419
00:28:25,120 --> 00:28:29,720
by this experience of losing these guys who'd been with us.
420
00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:32,680
So we did what most blokes would do in that case,
421
00:28:32,680 --> 00:28:36,000
there's only one thing to do, go down the pub and get sozzled.
422
00:28:38,880 --> 00:28:42,240
The crews were now setting out nightly in the new four-engine bombers
423
00:28:42,240 --> 00:28:47,000
to carry out Harris's grand plan of defeating Germany by area bombing alone.
424
00:28:50,360 --> 00:28:52,200
A mission could last up to ten hours,
425
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:55,400
targeting industrial centres deep in the heart of Germany.
426
00:28:56,960 --> 00:29:00,480
The telephone perhaps would ring.
427
00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:05,280
Then the Flight Commander would call "That's it, boys! It's on."
428
00:29:05,280 --> 00:29:07,440
Then there'd be a deadly hush.
429
00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:10,000
That meant that night, we were going to be on ops.
430
00:29:12,280 --> 00:29:16,440
We would disappear up to the mess for your meal,
431
00:29:16,440 --> 00:29:20,600
always eggs and bacon and sausage, a bit of fried bread.
432
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:25,640
Then you would go up to the briefing room and there
433
00:29:25,640 --> 00:29:31,160
they would draw back the curtain and you could see where your target was.
434
00:29:31,160 --> 00:29:36,720
Then there'd be a big "ohh!" if it was, you know, a long one.
435
00:29:38,840 --> 00:29:43,120
Once the planes were loaded up with bombs and fuel, the crews were ready to go.
436
00:29:45,080 --> 00:29:49,880
Once you got on the end of a runway to take off,
437
00:29:49,880 --> 00:29:53,880
then the tension was really wound up.
438
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:56,160
There was no talking at all. None.
439
00:30:01,320 --> 00:30:06,000
You waited for a green aldis lamp, and you took off and saw them waving to you to take off.
440
00:30:10,520 --> 00:30:15,080
Used to think, "Am I going to be back here in a few hours' time?"
441
00:30:22,400 --> 00:30:25,320
Navigator Douglas Hudson recalls an extraordinary moment
442
00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:28,800
just as his bomber force headed out across the North Sea.
443
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:34,400
There was a flight of German bombers coming almost on the reciprocal,
444
00:30:34,400 --> 00:30:37,240
on the opposite track.
445
00:30:37,240 --> 00:30:41,040
So the skipper said, don't do anything unless they do.
446
00:30:41,040 --> 00:30:46,200
And you know what they did? They just gave us a wing salute.
447
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:49,720
And they went on to bomb Goole. And we went on to bomb Stuttgart.
448
00:30:51,120 --> 00:30:53,480
The crews would have to remain alert for many hours,
449
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:57,760
and something stronger than coffee was on offer.
450
00:30:57,760 --> 00:30:58,800
Amphetamine pills.
451
00:31:00,440 --> 00:31:02,120
They gave us wakey-wakey tablets.
452
00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:04,960
Well, we used to call them wakey-wakey tablets!
453
00:31:04,960 --> 00:31:08,520
Personally, myself, I never, ever took them.
454
00:31:08,520 --> 00:31:12,200
I used to stick mine with a bit of chewing gum on the side,
455
00:31:12,200 --> 00:31:15,160
to the inside of the rear turret, you know?
456
00:31:15,160 --> 00:31:18,520
I only did it once. I didn't need them again.
457
00:31:19,880 --> 00:31:24,120
I was wound up before I went anyway, like the seven in the crew.
458
00:31:25,320 --> 00:31:30,600
Stan Bradford was a mid-upper gunner. He's also a decorated ace.
459
00:31:30,600 --> 00:31:33,280
He shot down five German fighters.
460
00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:39,720
Never, ever, ever in my life was I ever comfortable. No. No.
461
00:31:39,720 --> 00:31:41,840
Frightened to death.
462
00:31:41,840 --> 00:31:44,800
And anybody that says he wasn't, well, he's a bloody liar.
463
00:31:46,520 --> 00:31:50,080
The crews were about to run the gauntlet of the German air defences.
464
00:31:57,640 --> 00:32:03,680
Back at White Waltham, I'm ready for the next stage of my training on another Dakota.
465
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:06,800
It brings me one step closer to flying the Lancaster.
466
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:13,440
And Cliff wants to use the flight to give me a flavour
467
00:32:13,440 --> 00:32:18,320
of how difficult the most basic navigation task was during World War Two.
468
00:32:20,920 --> 00:32:26,520
I've plotted the course and I need Colin to fly at a set speed to get to the destination on time.
469
00:32:27,920 --> 00:32:30,560
- So, what sort of speed do I need to fly?
- 120.
470
00:32:30,560 --> 00:32:31,880
- 120 what?
- 120 knots.
471
00:32:31,880 --> 00:32:33,480
- Knots?
- Knots.
472
00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:35,000
No, this is in miles per hour.
473
00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:38,080
- It is.
- Is it?
- Yeah.
474
00:32:38,080 --> 00:32:41,240
Well, we've worked it all out in nautical miles.
475
00:32:41,240 --> 00:32:44,920
I'm not mucking around, man. It's in miles an hour?
476
00:32:44,920 --> 00:32:47,000
What's the speed dials in this one?
477
00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:48,120
Miles an hour.
478
00:32:48,120 --> 00:32:50,800
- That's what I thought.
- OK.
- Can you manage that conversion?
479
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:53,120
I don't know how to convert it. What is the conversion?
480
00:32:53,120 --> 00:32:55,080
Were you not taught? What, come on, basics!
481
00:32:57,600 --> 00:33:00,600
What are the basics? Go on, how do you convert it from knots to miles then?
482
00:33:00,600 --> 00:33:03,000
Well, I'll just have to fly 138 miles per hour.
483
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:05,720
- And that will equal 120 knots.
- Is that right?
- Yeah.
484
00:33:05,720 --> 00:33:10,920
OK, good, good, good on you! No-one told me about the nautical miles.
485
00:33:10,920 --> 00:33:13,840
Thankfully World War Two navigators were better informed.
486
00:33:13,840 --> 00:33:16,520
It's properly exciting to be here.
487
00:33:16,520 --> 00:33:20,600
I'm a bit nervous about the navigation, but we'll just have to see how that goes.
488
00:33:20,600 --> 00:33:23,520
But it is unbelievably exciting to be in this aeroplane.
489
00:33:23,520 --> 00:33:29,440
Yeah, maybe we'll end up somewhere fancy in Normandy or something, and we can have a crepe!
490
00:33:36,400 --> 00:33:40,120
Modern planes have GPS, radar and air traffic control.
491
00:33:41,840 --> 00:33:46,400
But all trainee navigators had was a map, a compass and a watch.
492
00:33:59,800 --> 00:34:05,000
First, Cliff wants me to navigate south to a point on the Isle of Wight.
493
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:08,280
This is exactly the kind of training trip a new crew would have undertaken.
494
00:34:16,240 --> 00:34:19,520
INAUDIBLE RADIO CHATTER
495
00:34:25,440 --> 00:34:29,920
What I need to do now is use landmarks along the way to make sure I'm on course and on time.
496
00:34:35,680 --> 00:34:37,720
You should be crossing a road.
497
00:34:40,040 --> 00:34:43,640
Yeah, I've got a main road we're just crossing now. It's quite heavily wooded.
498
00:34:43,640 --> 00:34:46,120
Bang on. Well done, pilot!
499
00:34:48,160 --> 00:34:51,680
But after a good start, I think I may have lost an entire town.
500
00:34:52,840 --> 00:34:56,720
You wouldn't happen to know where Haslemere is, sir, would you?
501
00:34:56,720 --> 00:34:59,720
- No, no, I'm not a navigator here.
- Haslemere?
502
00:35:00,840 --> 00:35:06,200
How big is it? Well there's a town there, just west of the nose. Looks quite big.
503
00:35:09,800 --> 00:35:14,080
- We are three minutes to target, three minutes.
- OK.
504
00:35:14,080 --> 00:35:18,440
- A little bit over to the right, Colin. Two degrees.
- Good man. You've got it, you've got it.
505
00:35:22,440 --> 00:35:25,800
And we're coming a little...the target's just a little way to the right there, Colin,
506
00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:27,600
that building on the...
507
00:35:27,600 --> 00:35:30,880
The building, is it? All right. Just here.
508
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:33,120
- Bugger me, Ewan, you've found it!
- Yeah.
509
00:35:33,120 --> 00:35:35,920
Yeah. There you go, smack over the top. Well done, mate.
510
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:38,520
- Going out to there now. Target now.
- Yep.
511
00:35:38,520 --> 00:35:43,920
We've reached the first destination. Not bad for a beginner.
512
00:35:43,920 --> 00:35:46,480
When we were flying the Lancaster,
513
00:35:46,480 --> 00:35:48,840
my Canadian navigator was able
514
00:35:48,840 --> 00:35:51,200
to produce a fix every six minutes
515
00:35:51,200 --> 00:35:52,960
throughout the flight,
516
00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:57,680
which I think was a tremendous achievement of concentration,
517
00:35:57,680 --> 00:36:00,320
in order that we would arrive at our target dead on the time that
518
00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:02,880
we'd been instructed to arrive.
519
00:36:02,880 --> 00:36:06,720
Look at that, dead on, zero nine zero. Very nice, pilot, carry on.
520
00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:12,520
Now for the tricky part.
521
00:36:13,600 --> 00:36:17,520
Cliff wants to take me on a simulated bombing run over water.
522
00:36:18,560 --> 00:36:23,080
It's the closest I'll get to night flying. So, no landmarks to help me at all.
523
00:36:31,280 --> 00:36:33,200
Target's just on the left there, captain.
524
00:36:33,200 --> 00:36:35,600
Right, so that's the lighthouse, is it?
525
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:38,680
There it is, my destination. The lighthouse at Beachy Head.
526
00:36:40,800 --> 00:36:43,480
Ah, we're going to be over it, but we're going to be one...
527
00:36:43,480 --> 00:36:45,040
Going to be a bit early, I think.
528
00:36:45,040 --> 00:36:47,760
Maybe a little early, yeah. One minute now. So.
529
00:36:47,760 --> 00:36:50,640
We've got to the target a minute early.
530
00:36:50,640 --> 00:36:53,760
60 seconds that mark the difference between success and failure.
531
00:36:53,760 --> 00:36:59,160
In a night bombing run, we would have dropped our bombs into the darkness.
532
00:36:59,160 --> 00:37:01,080
We're going over the top now.
533
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:08,600
On a raid to Berlin, we would have overshot by a disastrous 20 miles.
534
00:37:12,320 --> 00:37:16,320
But navigating at night wasn't the only problem the bomber crews faced.
535
00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:21,600
As they crossed the North Sea, they were picked up by German radar.
536
00:37:24,880 --> 00:37:27,680
The closer they got to their destination,
537
00:37:27,680 --> 00:37:31,520
the more intense the searchlights and the flak from the anti-aircraft guns.
538
00:37:32,720 --> 00:37:37,920
We were caught in searchlights and they had us for 35 minutes.
539
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:42,840
Now, you could guarantee, basically, that if you were caught
540
00:37:42,840 --> 00:37:48,080
in searchlights, you could say goodnight, nurse, that was your lot.
541
00:37:48,080 --> 00:37:51,200
But fortunately for us, we came through it.
542
00:37:53,440 --> 00:37:58,280
The Germans had the ideal anti-aircraft weapon in the 88mm gun.
543
00:37:58,280 --> 00:38:03,880
Thousands were diverted from the Russian front to stop the RAF getting through.
544
00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:13,520
You can view the target on flames and surrounded by millions of shell bursts.
545
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:15,200
It looks like hell.
546
00:38:15,200 --> 00:38:17,000
And you really think
547
00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:21,040
that this is going to be it.
548
00:38:23,720 --> 00:38:27,120
To overwhelm the enemy's defences, the bombers travelled through
549
00:38:27,120 --> 00:38:31,040
the target area in a tightly packed bomber stream.
550
00:38:31,040 --> 00:38:34,080
It meant there was always the danger of mid-air collision.
551
00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:41,960
Another Lancaster came out from our starboard side
552
00:38:41,960 --> 00:38:44,120
and stuck his wing tip straight into us.
553
00:38:45,600 --> 00:38:47,440
Just under the mid-upper turret.
554
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:53,040
There was, putting it crudely, a bloody big bang.
555
00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:59,200
Even though the tail of the aircraft was close to breaking away,
556
00:38:59,200 --> 00:39:01,920
Dave refused to abandon his position.
557
00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:07,000
The skipper said to me, "Well David, you can bail out if you wish."
558
00:39:08,680 --> 00:39:12,840
We could still have been attacked by enemy aircraft.
559
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:17,280
My turret was still operational. So why should I jump out?
560
00:39:17,280 --> 00:39:18,520
What, leave my mates?
561
00:39:30,080 --> 00:39:32,920
If the plane made it to the target,
562
00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:36,480
then the most dangerous part of all. The bombing run itself.
563
00:39:38,280 --> 00:39:42,880
The pilot had to fly straight and level, no matter what.
564
00:39:42,880 --> 00:39:47,080
You say bombs away, and you could also look into the bomb bay
565
00:39:47,080 --> 00:39:50,360
from the bomb aimer's position to make sure they've all gone.
566
00:39:50,360 --> 00:39:53,480
And if they have, close the bomb doors
567
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:56,080
and then the pilot gets out of the trouble.
568
00:39:57,680 --> 00:39:59,040
Then the aircraft lifted,
569
00:39:59,040 --> 00:40:00,520
having got rid of the weight,
570
00:40:00,520 --> 00:40:02,000
we were all very relieved,
571
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:03,120
shut the bomb doors,
572
00:40:03,120 --> 00:40:04,560
and away we went for home.
573
00:40:14,520 --> 00:40:17,280
Bomber Harris was a man in a hurry.
574
00:40:17,280 --> 00:40:20,600
By May 1942, just three months into the job,
575
00:40:20,600 --> 00:40:25,040
he mustered enough resources to unleash 1,000 bombers in a single raid.
576
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:28,680
The target was Cologne.
577
00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:31,960
The first wave was so successful,
578
00:40:31,960 --> 00:40:36,440
that by the time the second wave took off they didn't need their navigators.
579
00:40:38,920 --> 00:40:40,600
"Before we crossed the English coast,
580
00:40:40,600 --> 00:40:42,800
the skipper said to the navigator,
581
00:40:42,800 --> 00:40:45,480
"I think I can see a red glow in the sky.
582
00:40:45,480 --> 00:40:47,440
It's a long, long way away."
583
00:40:47,440 --> 00:40:50,440
The navigator replied, "That's Cologne.
584
00:40:50,440 --> 00:40:53,000
You don't need me any more, just head for it."
585
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:56,040
We could actually see Cologne burning from England.
586
00:40:56,040 --> 00:41:00,480
Looking out, it was just a small red glow on the horizon.
587
00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:03,200
When we got there, the whole place was a sea of fire
588
00:41:03,200 --> 00:41:06,440
and we dropped out bombs into the middle of it.
589
00:41:06,440 --> 00:41:08,400
It was a piece of cake really.
590
00:41:10,840 --> 00:41:14,800
The raid destroyed 2,500 industrial buildings.
591
00:41:14,800 --> 00:41:21,240
It killed 469 civilians and bombed more than 40,000 out of their homes.
592
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:27,400
It shook the Nazi high command so much that Cologne survivors
593
00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:31,000
were ordered to remain silent about the devastation on pain of death.
594
00:41:34,320 --> 00:41:39,240
For Harris, it was confirmation that his masterplan would work.
595
00:41:39,240 --> 00:41:45,240
There are a lot of people who say that bombing can never win a war.
596
00:41:45,240 --> 00:41:49,400
Well, my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet,
597
00:41:49,400 --> 00:41:50,520
and we shall see.
598
00:41:51,960 --> 00:41:53,760
Soon, the Ruhr, Essen, Berlin
599
00:41:53,760 --> 00:41:55,680
and countless other cities were
600
00:41:55,680 --> 00:41:59,120
the targets of area bombing, being hit night after night.
601
00:42:01,880 --> 00:42:04,520
The bomber crews were now undertaking large-scale
602
00:42:04,520 --> 00:42:05,920
raids into the heart of Germany.
603
00:42:07,120 --> 00:42:11,560
They were often flying twice a week to targets up to six hours away.
604
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:16,640
And with US entry into the war in January 1942,
605
00:42:16,640 --> 00:42:20,520
Bomber Command now had a formidable ally.
606
00:42:22,520 --> 00:42:26,160
In the summer, the US began to bomb by day.
607
00:42:26,160 --> 00:42:30,120
It meant the Allies could hit German war industry around the clock.
608
00:42:38,680 --> 00:42:41,480
But there was a price to pay.
609
00:42:41,480 --> 00:42:44,240
The German defences were becoming ever more deadly.
610
00:42:44,240 --> 00:42:48,640
A Lancaster lasted for, on average, just seven missions over Germany.
611
00:42:48,640 --> 00:42:53,880
Only one in six of the crews was expected to survive a tour of 30 operations.
612
00:42:57,080 --> 00:43:01,240
The biggest threat was German night fighters.
613
00:43:01,240 --> 00:43:05,920
The tail gunners were the bomber's first line of defence.
614
00:43:05,920 --> 00:43:10,520
Learning how to hit a fast moving fighter plane involved constant practise.
615
00:43:15,160 --> 00:43:19,520
87-year-old Dave Fellowes wants to show Colin and I how he did it.
616
00:43:21,240 --> 00:43:25,520
So you did use clay pigeon shooting as, you know, these clays as practise, didn't you?
617
00:43:25,520 --> 00:43:29,760
We did, a lot. Right from the very elementary gunnery school.
618
00:43:29,760 --> 00:43:33,200
Because it was the best way of teaching deflection,
619
00:43:33,200 --> 00:43:35,680
and also your line of sight.
620
00:43:35,680 --> 00:43:36,720
Pull.
621
00:43:38,840 --> 00:43:43,520
Gunners were given a regular allocation of clays, so that they continued to practise.
622
00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:47,200
Pull.
623
00:43:50,480 --> 00:43:52,200
18 inches ahead.
624
00:43:53,800 --> 00:43:55,760
Oh, dear.
625
00:43:55,760 --> 00:43:58,200
< Try a bit more over towards me.
626
00:43:58,200 --> 00:44:00,320
Try a bit more up in the air.
627
00:44:00,320 --> 00:44:04,240
I feel the fraternal competition kind of starting to swell.
628
00:44:04,240 --> 00:44:05,640
Pull.
629
00:44:06,800 --> 00:44:08,880
It's hard to hit these fast-moving clays.
630
00:44:08,880 --> 00:44:10,080
Pull.
631
00:44:10,080 --> 00:44:13,120
Shooting down night fighters must have been infinitely more difficult.
632
00:44:13,120 --> 00:44:14,480
OK!
633
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:19,880
Really close.
634
00:44:21,360 --> 00:44:23,680
Ha-ha-ha!
635
00:44:23,680 --> 00:44:25,440
From going through the training,
636
00:44:25,440 --> 00:44:29,760
to actually flying in the rear turret there for a real mission must have been a big, big difference.
637
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:32,560
- I had eyes sticking out like organ stops.
- Did you?
638
00:44:32,560 --> 00:44:37,120
Looking for an aeroplane that was an enemy one.
639
00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:39,440
Up!
640
00:44:41,000 --> 00:44:43,680
- Cor, he's right in there, isn't he?
- He's right quick, isn't he?
641
00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:51,040
- Oh, you got a bit off the side of that one.
- Yeah. We winged it.
642
00:44:51,040 --> 00:44:54,320
You winged it, you definitely winged that last one there.
643
00:44:54,320 --> 00:44:59,120
Having trained with a shotgun, Dave then had to master the .303 calibre machine gun.
644
00:45:01,040 --> 00:45:03,840
Armourer David Main wants to show us how effective they were.
645
00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:08,560
- Ready?
- OK.
- OK.
646
00:45:11,120 --> 00:45:15,080
I'm shooting at metal plate the same thickness as the armour on a German night fighter.
647
00:45:16,400 --> 00:45:18,600
OK, Ewan, in your own time, go on.
648
00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:28,160
OK. Clear.
649
00:45:29,880 --> 00:45:32,640
- This was protection for the pilot and air crew.
- Yeah.
650
00:45:32,640 --> 00:45:34,560
Usually round his seat.
651
00:45:34,560 --> 00:45:38,880
And it's actually failed to penetrate in the armour piercing or the ball.
652
00:45:38,880 --> 00:45:41,080
- Oh, yeah, yeah. The ball didn't go through.
- No.
653
00:45:41,080 --> 00:45:44,200
- And the armour piercing sort of didn't go through either.
- No.
654
00:45:44,200 --> 00:45:46,160
It broke the back but it didn't go through.
655
00:45:46,160 --> 00:45:48,120
More than survivable, that kind of thing.
656
00:45:48,120 --> 00:45:50,600
Dave's chance of shooting the aircraft down was purely
657
00:45:50,600 --> 00:45:55,160
hitting a fuel line, a hydraulics line, or a control service.
658
00:45:55,160 --> 00:45:58,200
That is the only thing that was going to bring that aircraft down using a .303.
659
00:46:01,320 --> 00:46:05,680
The tail gunner strikes me as the loneliest and toughest job of all.
660
00:46:05,680 --> 00:46:09,720
I want to get some sense of what it was like for Dave, aged just 19.
661
00:46:09,720 --> 00:46:12,720
So, I'm going to squeeze into a Lancaster turret, wearing all
662
00:46:12,720 --> 00:46:15,480
the gear he wore to withstand the sub-zero temperatures.
663
00:46:31,360 --> 00:46:34,160
That would shut behind me.
664
00:46:36,080 --> 00:46:37,480
That's quite weird.
665
00:46:39,480 --> 00:46:43,560
I mean that is quite, that's quite a claustrophobic feeling.
666
00:46:43,560 --> 00:46:48,640
So, that's your world, now. For nine hours or more, this is my world.
667
00:46:51,800 --> 00:46:56,960
Well, if we'd have had a thermometer in there, it would never have got above zero, that's for sure.
668
00:46:56,960 --> 00:46:58,520
It was cold.
669
00:46:58,520 --> 00:47:00,240
It was no good taking a flask,
670
00:47:00,240 --> 00:47:05,000
because at around 20-odd thousand feet or more it used to freeze up anyhow.
671
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:10,800
They gave you a bar of chocolate, but that froze so hard you couldn't even chew it.
672
00:47:10,800 --> 00:47:13,160
You couldn't stand, couldn't do anything.
673
00:47:13,160 --> 00:47:18,320
All you could do is move like this. That's all you could do.
674
00:47:20,360 --> 00:47:22,440
It's difficult enough getting in,
675
00:47:22,440 --> 00:47:24,680
but getting out in a hurry was another thing altogether.
676
00:47:26,400 --> 00:47:29,920
So, if I had to bale out of this, my parachute's out there.
677
00:47:29,920 --> 00:47:33,800
OK, I would have to turn the turret into this position,
678
00:47:33,800 --> 00:47:35,600
so the doors were there.
679
00:47:35,600 --> 00:47:39,800
I'd have to open the doors like this.
680
00:47:43,000 --> 00:47:44,640
This is when it gets a bit stuck.
681
00:47:45,920 --> 00:47:48,480
I'd have to lean back,
682
00:47:48,480 --> 00:47:53,680
grab my parachute here, off that,
683
00:47:53,680 --> 00:47:56,920
and get it back here, clip my parachute on,
684
00:47:56,920 --> 00:48:01,760
then I'd have to turn the turret round so that my back was
685
00:48:01,760 --> 00:48:07,960
outside here, and then fall backwards out, into the night.
686
00:48:07,960 --> 00:48:13,000
And if the plane was on fire, or if the plane was in a spin,
687
00:48:13,000 --> 00:48:17,640
which it often was, it would be, I mean, almost impossible, I think.
688
00:48:17,640 --> 00:48:21,440
Which is why so many of the poor rear gunners didn't make it,
689
00:48:21,440 --> 00:48:23,040
you know, they didn't get out.
690
00:48:23,040 --> 00:48:25,800
I knew where my parachute was.
691
00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:30,040
If the skipper gave the orders to bale out, I knew exactly what to do.
692
00:48:30,040 --> 00:48:33,240
We had an attitude in our aircraft, in our crew,
693
00:48:33,240 --> 00:48:36,640
if the aeroplane stays up there, we stay with the aeroplane.
694
00:48:36,640 --> 00:48:37,960
Simple as that.
695
00:48:39,240 --> 00:48:41,880
"From my mother's sleep I fell into the state,
696
00:48:41,880 --> 00:48:43,040
"and I hunched
697
00:48:43,040 --> 00:48:44,120
"in its belly
698
00:48:44,120 --> 00:48:46,080
"till my wet fur froze.
699
00:48:46,080 --> 00:48:47,840
"Six miles from Earth,
700
00:48:47,840 --> 00:48:49,160
"loosed from its dream
701
00:48:49,160 --> 00:48:50,360
"of life,
702
00:48:50,360 --> 00:48:53,680
"I woke to black flack and the nightmare fighters."
703
00:48:54,720 --> 00:48:58,600
"And when I died, they washed me out of the turret with a hose."
704
00:49:05,040 --> 00:49:09,720
With limited firepower, the crews employed another tactic to avoid German night fighters.
705
00:49:09,720 --> 00:49:10,960
The corkscrew.
706
00:49:12,560 --> 00:49:17,920
This was a series of fast dives and climbs more suited to a fighter.
707
00:49:17,920 --> 00:49:20,040
But the brilliant Lancaster was more than up to it.
708
00:49:22,240 --> 00:49:23,800
If your gunner suddenly said
709
00:49:23,800 --> 00:49:24,840
"Corkscrew port",
710
00:49:24,840 --> 00:49:26,080
you went right the way,
711
00:49:26,080 --> 00:49:27,160
turned it, right down
712
00:49:27,160 --> 00:49:28,720
like that, you screwed around
713
00:49:28,720 --> 00:49:30,800
at the bottom, you went up the gauge,
714
00:49:30,800 --> 00:49:32,520
screwed over the top and down.
715
00:49:32,520 --> 00:49:34,840
And you can imagine the strain on that aircraft.
716
00:49:34,840 --> 00:49:38,360
And with a full bomb load on, you were doing this sort of thing.
717
00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:42,000
We were attacked four times on one night by fighters.
718
00:49:42,000 --> 00:49:44,920
And we escaped from them every single time by corkscrewing.
719
00:49:49,000 --> 00:49:52,480
But the corkscrew was only useful if you could see the enemy coming.
720
00:49:52,480 --> 00:49:59,160
In 1943, crews reported seeing other planes blow up in mid-air for no apparent reason.
721
00:50:00,880 --> 00:50:05,600
The Luftwaffe had developed a new deadly secret weapon,
722
00:50:05,600 --> 00:50:08,240
known, rather bizarrely, as jazz music.
723
00:50:08,240 --> 00:50:09,360
Schraege Musik.
724
00:50:09,360 --> 00:50:12,680
German night fighter pilots realised
725
00:50:12,680 --> 00:50:14,880
that the bombers had a blind spot,
726
00:50:14,880 --> 00:50:16,280
namely underneath.
727
00:50:16,280 --> 00:50:18,600
They were able to come up underneath,
728
00:50:18,600 --> 00:50:24,080
and they had a couple of guns pointing up at an angle through the cockpit.
729
00:50:24,080 --> 00:50:27,000
The bomber they were attacking wouldn't see them,
730
00:50:27,000 --> 00:50:28,240
it wouldn't hear them.
731
00:50:28,240 --> 00:50:30,640
The first thing they would know is there'd be cannon shells
732
00:50:30,640 --> 00:50:32,480
ripping through the aircraft from beneath.
733
00:50:32,480 --> 00:50:38,360
If the thing was below you firing this jazz music cannon, there was no way out.
734
00:50:40,960 --> 00:50:44,360
One of the pilots who used this deadly weapon was Rolf Ebhart.
735
00:50:44,360 --> 00:50:48,760
He flew the Messerschmitt 110, hunting down British bombers.
736
00:50:50,360 --> 00:50:52,640
He shot down eight.
737
00:50:52,640 --> 00:50:56,240
Tell us about the first time you engaged a Lancaster.
738
00:50:56,240 --> 00:50:59,880
I saw it about 120 yards higher.
739
00:50:59,880 --> 00:51:04,640
So I was shaking and my heart was throbbing, of course.
740
00:51:04,640 --> 00:51:10,560
And I said to me, "Don't miss, don't miss, so I positioned myself under the Lancaster,
741
00:51:10,560 --> 00:51:14,200
and not thinking that the Lancaster
742
00:51:14,200 --> 00:51:18,560
was on the flight to the target,
743
00:51:18,560 --> 00:51:21,760
so it had all the bombs in,
744
00:51:21,760 --> 00:51:25,120
I aimed in the middle of the fuselage
745
00:51:25,120 --> 00:51:28,720
and the thing exploded after a second.
746
00:51:29,760 --> 00:51:36,120
And the result was I couldn't see anything any more,
747
00:51:36,120 --> 00:51:41,120
I was so blinded, for about five minutes, then slowly the sight came back.
748
00:51:42,480 --> 00:51:47,800
Rolf was so close to his victims that he was able to record their serial numbers in his logbook.
749
00:51:52,440 --> 00:51:56,520
Abschluss, Lancaster. Abschluss, Lancaster.
750
00:51:56,520 --> 00:52:02,240
I've got the code number from some of them.
751
00:52:02,240 --> 00:52:06,400
It was a third, Halifax.
752
00:52:06,400 --> 00:52:09,800
And here, three in one night, within 15 minutes.
753
00:52:11,880 --> 00:52:14,440
The new upward firing cannon meant that in 1943,
754
00:52:14,440 --> 00:52:18,680
the night fighters were accounting for 70% of Bomber Command losses.
755
00:52:22,400 --> 00:52:26,320
One man lived to tell his story of this invisible enemy.
756
00:52:28,600 --> 00:52:31,800
Reg Barker's Lancaster was torn apart by Schraege Musik.
757
00:52:33,640 --> 00:52:38,320
His plane went into an uncontrollable dive and Reg began to black out.
758
00:52:39,680 --> 00:52:41,560
I couldn't move a little finger, even,
759
00:52:41,560 --> 00:52:45,920
I was pinned up against the canopy of the roof, the roof canopy of the cockpit.
760
00:52:45,920 --> 00:52:48,960
And I could see the fires burning below,
761
00:52:48,960 --> 00:52:50,880
the fires that we'd started in Kiel.
762
00:52:53,240 --> 00:52:58,520
And it was quite evident that it would only be seconds,
763
00:52:58,520 --> 00:53:00,440
perhaps, before we hit the earth.
764
00:53:00,440 --> 00:53:04,840
Then suddenly it, all was peace. All went quiet.
765
00:53:04,840 --> 00:53:09,280
Had I arrived in the place, in the heavenly abode
766
00:53:09,280 --> 00:53:12,920
to which, no doubt, the Almighty had intended? I don't know.
767
00:53:15,640 --> 00:53:18,120
Suddenly there was a swishing sound,
768
00:53:18,120 --> 00:53:21,560
which I realised afterwards
769
00:53:21,560 --> 00:53:24,480
was the wind tearing through my clothes.
770
00:53:24,480 --> 00:53:27,520
I was out in the sky, I wasn't in the cockpit any more.
771
00:53:27,520 --> 00:53:31,480
How that happened really is only a matter of conjecture.
772
00:53:31,480 --> 00:53:35,960
And I could see my aircraft coming down beside me,
773
00:53:35,960 --> 00:53:38,640
very much ablaze, of course.
774
00:53:39,720 --> 00:53:45,160
The parachute opened and I could see below me the trees of a wood,
775
00:53:45,160 --> 00:53:48,360
floodlit by the flaming aircraft.
776
00:53:48,360 --> 00:53:51,440
At that moment, I dropped into the treetops.
777
00:53:51,440 --> 00:53:55,080
So that was a miraculous escape.
778
00:53:55,080 --> 00:53:58,400
Reg spent the rest of the conflict as a prisoner of war.
779
00:53:58,400 --> 00:54:02,840
So these are my identity tags, dog tags as we called them.
780
00:54:02,840 --> 00:54:06,080
One was my RAF officer's tag,
781
00:54:06,080 --> 00:54:11,320
and the other one is the one issued to me by the Germans
782
00:54:11,320 --> 00:54:15,320
when I became a guest of the Nazis.
783
00:54:15,320 --> 00:54:19,200
Stalag Luft 1, it says. 5182, that's me.
784
00:54:21,240 --> 00:54:26,800
The nightly dice with death was a horrendous strain for the young men of Bomber Command.
785
00:54:26,800 --> 00:54:32,560
Gunner Stan Bradford remembers a crew-member who cracked up on a mission.
786
00:54:32,560 --> 00:54:39,440
During one trip, we had a problem with our engineer.
787
00:54:41,520 --> 00:54:44,040
To this day, Stan won't reveal his name.
788
00:54:45,520 --> 00:54:49,240
There was no Ginger. I'm not letting his name out.
789
00:54:49,240 --> 00:54:51,600
Ginger, he was ginger haired.
790
00:54:51,600 --> 00:54:56,680
And Ginger, he wasn't available.
791
00:54:57,680 --> 00:55:00,160
He was hiding behind the pilot's seat.
792
00:55:01,920 --> 00:55:04,960
He was just took away. We never saw him again.
793
00:55:06,240 --> 00:55:11,000
Your documents would be stamped LMF, lack of moral fibre.
794
00:55:12,640 --> 00:55:15,520
And that put you in a terrible situation afterwards,
795
00:55:15,520 --> 00:55:19,160
if anybody would have asked to see his documents, service documents.
796
00:55:25,400 --> 00:55:26,880
Cases of LMF were rare.
797
00:55:28,240 --> 00:55:31,880
For the rest, their stress was released in other ways.
798
00:55:33,800 --> 00:55:35,480
There were some extreme cases,
799
00:55:35,480 --> 00:55:37,600
people were shooting off revolvers
800
00:55:37,600 --> 00:55:39,440
out of the windows at night,
801
00:55:39,440 --> 00:55:45,240
and, you know, really low level beat-ups of the aerodrome,
802
00:55:45,240 --> 00:55:49,880
and all sorts of things, and they would just get told off.
803
00:55:49,880 --> 00:55:52,280
They realised that you had to let off steam.
804
00:56:01,440 --> 00:56:06,240
Across the East of England, hundreds of bomber bases were bursting with thousands of young men,
805
00:56:06,240 --> 00:56:10,080
desperate to get away from the war for a few short hours.
806
00:56:10,080 --> 00:56:12,080
We always did everything together.
807
00:56:12,080 --> 00:56:17,040
So, when we went out together, we had to get on by two-seater MG.
808
00:56:17,040 --> 00:56:22,040
So, we sat three on the hood at the back, three on the front seat,
809
00:56:22,040 --> 00:56:24,120
and two on the front mud guards.
810
00:56:24,120 --> 00:56:26,320
And we used to strap them round their waist
811
00:56:26,320 --> 00:56:29,000
and over the bonnet so they didn't fall off.
812
00:56:29,000 --> 00:56:31,760
And only on one occasion was I stopped by the police,
813
00:56:31,760 --> 00:56:34,480
not because we were breaking the law, but he wanted to make
814
00:56:34,480 --> 00:56:37,240
quite sure the two on the front mudguards weren't going to fall off.
815
00:56:44,600 --> 00:56:47,680
Ewan and I have come to the Bluebell in Lincolnshire,
816
00:56:47,680 --> 00:56:49,800
a favourite haunt of the Bomber boys.
817
00:56:49,800 --> 00:56:52,160
Here, the crews would drink the pub dry.
818
00:56:53,760 --> 00:56:57,200
We're meeting Dave, pilot Tony Iveson
819
00:56:57,200 --> 00:56:59,360
and navigator Douglas Hudson.
820
00:56:59,360 --> 00:57:01,440
A lot of silly things happened.
821
00:57:01,440 --> 00:57:04,520
But I guess you were young guys, weren't you? You were 20, 20 years old?
822
00:57:04,520 --> 00:57:07,400
- There wasn't any malice aforethought at all.
- No.
823
00:57:07,400 --> 00:57:10,040
Like the burning of the pianos that took place
824
00:57:10,040 --> 00:57:13,040
and all the other things, motorbikes in the mess.
825
00:57:13,040 --> 00:57:15,360
- Oh, that!
- Oh, yes!
826
00:57:15,360 --> 00:57:16,560
Doing a doughnut in the mess.
827
00:57:16,560 --> 00:57:19,120
Doing doughnuts round the mess. Now that appeals to me!
828
00:57:19,120 --> 00:57:21,520
Well, the boys with me brought a cow in the mess one day.
829
00:57:21,520 --> 00:57:23,960
They got this cow in the mess and it didn't half make a mess!
830
00:57:27,280 --> 00:57:31,800
Many of the young men were inexperienced, baffled by the opposite sex.
831
00:57:31,800 --> 00:57:35,920
Most of us were to bloody young to understand female company at that age.
832
00:57:35,920 --> 00:57:38,800
We were all fingers and bloody thumbs!
833
00:57:38,800 --> 00:57:42,880
And we were also told and shown films,
834
00:57:42,880 --> 00:57:46,760
vivid, vivid American films about VD.
835
00:57:46,760 --> 00:57:50,160
You know, the horrors of what could happen to you.
836
00:57:50,160 --> 00:57:53,640
Well, that used to put you off for life! Nearly.
837
00:57:53,640 --> 00:57:55,920
"If she's easy, she's got it."
838
00:57:57,520 --> 00:58:01,400
"If she's got it, you'll get it."
839
00:58:01,400 --> 00:58:04,440
"And remember, a blob on the knob slows demob."
840
00:58:04,440 --> 00:58:07,840
LAUGHTER
841
00:58:07,840 --> 00:58:10,720
Yeah, I haven't heard that one before. Very good!
842
00:58:14,640 --> 00:58:19,760
By 1943, Bomber Command was fighting the war with an even greater ferocity.
843
00:58:20,840 --> 00:58:24,240
It was dropping more and more bombs.
844
00:58:24,240 --> 00:58:27,240
But German industry didn't appear to be collapsing.
845
00:58:27,240 --> 00:58:29,360
After a while, people began to suspect that
846
00:58:29,360 --> 00:58:31,440
factories could be repaired
847
00:58:31,440 --> 00:58:34,240
and got working again fairly quickly,
848
00:58:34,240 --> 00:58:36,400
so the next point of vulnerability
849
00:58:36,400 --> 00:58:38,640
was actually seen to be the workers,
850
00:58:38,640 --> 00:58:41,760
and this was the beginning of the sinister thought that,
851
00:58:41,760 --> 00:58:46,320
actually, the real target is civilian workers.
852
00:58:46,320 --> 00:58:50,200
The term used to describe this policy was "de-housing".
853
00:58:52,680 --> 00:58:56,840
The aim was not just to blow up, it was to burn as well.
854
00:58:56,840 --> 00:59:01,120
Bomber Command was now dropping more incendiaries than high explosives.
855
00:59:01,120 --> 00:59:07,000
In July 1943, Harris used this lethal cocktail to devastating effect.
856
00:59:14,760 --> 00:59:17,280
- COMMENTARY:
- Hamburg, second largest city of the Reich,
857
00:59:17,280 --> 00:59:20,040
is being liquidated in a series of record attacks by the RAF.
858
00:59:20,040 --> 00:59:25,120
The main attack started on Saturday, 24th July, and for nights afterwards,
859
00:59:25,120 --> 00:59:28,760
hundreds of our four engine bombers kept it up hot and strong.
860
00:59:32,280 --> 00:59:36,280
We're travelling to Hamburg to find out more about the impact of the raid.
861
00:59:37,320 --> 00:59:40,560
A number of factors made this attack so shattering.
862
00:59:46,080 --> 00:59:50,800
RAF deception diverted the German night fighters away from the bomber force
863
00:59:50,800 --> 00:59:53,720
and the elite pathfinders marked the target perfectly.
864
00:59:56,760 --> 01:00:00,200
The combination of a hot dry summer and the high proportion
865
01:00:00,200 --> 01:00:05,320
of incendiaries created a phenomenon never seen before. A firestorm.
866
01:00:09,160 --> 01:00:14,360
Temperatures reached 800 degrees. Winds, 150 miles an hour.
867
01:00:16,400 --> 01:00:20,160
Nadia Convery is a Hamburg resident and researcher.
868
01:00:20,160 --> 01:00:22,760
She's brought us to St Nicholas' Church.
869
01:00:24,080 --> 01:00:29,760
It was so prominent in the landscape that the RAF used it as an aiming point.
870
01:00:29,760 --> 01:00:32,600
Today, it's a memorial to those lost in the bombing.
871
01:00:37,240 --> 01:00:41,560
- God! That's unbelievable, isn't it, the destruction.
- Yeah.
872
01:00:41,560 --> 01:00:46,080
The blockbuster bombs, they would drop first to sort of lift the roofs of the houses,
873
01:00:46,080 --> 01:00:50,120
and then they would drop the incendiary bombs into houses
874
01:00:50,120 --> 01:00:52,680
where there was a lot of wood inside.
875
01:00:52,680 --> 01:00:56,400
They would just go up in flames, and the streets were quite narrow,
876
01:00:56,400 --> 01:00:58,840
so it was easy for the fire to spread.
877
01:01:01,280 --> 01:01:07,000
And that was the aim, to set fire to them?
878
01:01:07,000 --> 01:01:13,480
That was the aim, and apparently the British researched into how flammable German cities were.
879
01:01:13,480 --> 01:01:18,680
In one area, 96% of the houses were completely gone. Destroyed.
880
01:01:18,680 --> 01:01:19,960
Bloody hell.
881
01:01:19,960 --> 01:01:25,480
The Nazis feared six more raids like it would finish the war.
882
01:01:25,480 --> 01:01:29,680
42,000 men, women and children were killed.
883
01:01:29,680 --> 01:01:33,720
Quite an eye opener, really, when you see those pictures and you see the endless,
884
01:01:33,720 --> 01:01:37,520
endless empty shells of buildings,
885
01:01:37,520 --> 01:01:39,240
and the tons and tons of rubble.
886
01:01:40,320 --> 01:01:42,880
I just keep thinking about families, and children,
887
01:01:42,880 --> 01:01:45,760
and trying to get, you know, as a parent, trying to get your
888
01:01:45,760 --> 01:01:50,360
kids out of that hellhole must have been beyond awful, you know.
889
01:02:05,440 --> 01:02:07,520
Nadia has invited us to a city centre hotel
890
01:02:07,520 --> 01:02:11,080
to meet some of the victims of the Hamburg firestorm.
891
01:02:15,840 --> 01:02:20,440
Hans Werner Prell was 13 at the time. Helga Hunter was 16.
892
01:02:20,440 --> 01:02:21,800
Very nice to meet you, hello.
893
01:02:21,800 --> 01:02:26,120
The story of this suitcase is a special one, actually,
894
01:02:26,120 --> 01:02:31,120
so in this suitcase were important documents, a bit of, you know,
895
01:02:31,120 --> 01:02:33,160
jewellery, that's all that remained.
896
01:02:33,160 --> 01:02:37,600
It's the only thing he saved. He was clutching it through the firestorm.
897
01:02:38,800 --> 01:02:42,000
HANS SPEAKS GERMAN
898
01:02:45,200 --> 01:02:48,640
They could hardly move because of the force of the winds.
899
01:02:48,640 --> 01:02:52,000
And so he's described it quite powerfully.
900
01:02:53,200 --> 01:02:56,560
He said there was this red wall coming towards him,
901
01:02:56,560 --> 01:02:59,520
and then they'd get pushed over and have to get up again,
902
01:02:59,520 --> 01:03:02,160
and try and sort of battle against that force.
903
01:03:02,160 --> 01:03:05,720
So that's quite a powerful image.
904
01:03:05,720 --> 01:03:09,360
He says that just as you're sitting next to me,
905
01:03:09,360 --> 01:03:13,840
people would, would go up in flames next to him.
906
01:03:13,840 --> 01:03:18,240
It's unimaginable, it's just, what he saw, it's just, yeah.
907
01:03:19,680 --> 01:03:25,480
Yeah, I was 16 at that time, on that night. Can I speak German?
908
01:03:25,480 --> 01:03:27,080
Of course.
909
01:03:27,080 --> 01:03:30,960
HELGA SPEAKS GERMAN
910
01:03:33,560 --> 01:03:37,920
The streets had been hit. And everything had gone up in flames.
911
01:03:37,920 --> 01:03:43,840
And so, walking home, she had to pick her way across, you know,
912
01:03:43,840 --> 01:03:47,000
people lying in the streets dead, dead bodies.
913
01:03:49,040 --> 01:03:52,240
Because of the intense heat, the tarmac melted,
914
01:03:52,240 --> 01:03:56,160
and she saw people trying to walk across, and getting stuck,
915
01:03:56,160 --> 01:03:58,520
and then, yeah, not being able to, to free themselves,
916
01:03:58,520 --> 01:04:01,360
and no-one else could help, because they would get stuck then too.
917
01:04:14,880 --> 01:04:18,120
I think when you read about the area bombing campaign,
918
01:04:18,120 --> 01:04:23,120
and how that was described by senior officers and what have you,
919
01:04:23,120 --> 01:04:25,640
there's ways that you can phrase it
920
01:04:25,640 --> 01:04:31,280
to sound like it's not the indiscriminate bombing of civilians, you know,
921
01:04:31,280 --> 01:04:37,440
you can justify it in words by saying that it's a legitimate tactic
922
01:04:37,440 --> 01:04:43,520
to damage the industrial might of the country you're fighting against.
923
01:04:43,520 --> 01:04:46,000
I don't know if you can ever justify one way or the other.
924
01:04:46,000 --> 01:04:49,040
You know, you can't say, you know,
925
01:04:49,040 --> 01:04:55,760
there's a statistic, there was 42,000 civilians killed here in a week in Hamburg, in one raid.
926
01:04:55,760 --> 01:04:58,400
You can't ever justify that.
927
01:04:58,400 --> 01:05:01,080
You can't ever justify the killing of innocent people,
928
01:05:01,080 --> 01:05:04,240
you can't justify the killing of six million Jews and homosexuals
929
01:05:04,240 --> 01:05:06,680
in concentration camps, either, extermination camps,
930
01:05:06,680 --> 01:05:12,000
but it's not really about that, I suppose, it's just trying to understand it.
931
01:05:14,480 --> 01:05:18,760
Yeah. What it took to ultimately defeat that evil.
932
01:05:18,760 --> 01:05:21,080
Yeah, Nazism. Yeah, yeah.
933
01:05:23,920 --> 01:05:29,040
And 70 years ago, things were very different. The war was far from won.
934
01:05:29,040 --> 01:05:34,960
Bomber Harris felt that more raids like Hamburg would bring victory by the spring.
935
01:05:36,160 --> 01:05:39,320
We propose to entirely emasculate
936
01:05:39,320 --> 01:05:44,080
every enemy centre of war production if necessary.
937
01:05:44,080 --> 01:05:47,480
We are well on the way now to that end.
938
01:05:50,000 --> 01:05:54,120
The shadow of raids like Hamburg has influenced the way we've fought wars ever since.
939
01:05:56,640 --> 01:06:01,120
The RAF now uses air power in a much more targeted way.
940
01:06:01,120 --> 01:06:05,400
Bosnia, Iraq, where I served, Libya and Afghanistan,
941
01:06:05,400 --> 01:06:08,600
are so different from the area bombing of World War Two.
942
01:06:11,960 --> 01:06:15,800
We are all use to seeing images of precision strikes.
943
01:06:15,800 --> 01:06:18,760
Collateral damage is no longer acceptable.
944
01:06:23,280 --> 01:06:27,160
My old squadron, the Dambusters, was at the forefront of developing
945
01:06:27,160 --> 01:06:29,040
this new tactical approach to airpower.
946
01:06:31,320 --> 01:06:34,520
It's currently on active service in Afghanistan.
947
01:06:34,520 --> 01:06:37,480
I want to see for myself how the modern RAF copes with
948
01:06:37,480 --> 01:06:42,800
the conflicting demands of using air power and avoiding civilian casualties.
949
01:06:48,400 --> 01:06:53,360
To get to the squadron base in Kandahar, I have fly there by night.
950
01:06:53,360 --> 01:06:55,560
This is to avoid a Taliban attack on our plane.
951
01:06:56,880 --> 01:06:58,920
I've got a full set of body armour on.
952
01:06:58,920 --> 01:07:02,080
Obviously we're in a combat zone at the moment, so, yeah, we've got
953
01:07:02,080 --> 01:07:06,040
to protect ourselves from anything that could get fired up at us.
954
01:07:07,680 --> 01:07:10,080
It's four years since I've been with my old squadron,
955
01:07:10,080 --> 01:07:12,080
so I'm looking forward to getting there
956
01:07:12,080 --> 01:07:15,160
with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.
957
01:07:19,960 --> 01:07:23,240
We're making the journey in a blacked out Hercules.
958
01:07:23,240 --> 01:07:27,520
Just before we arrived, a rocket was launched into the Kandahar base.
959
01:07:31,280 --> 01:07:34,200
This reminds me of what those young bomber crews experienced
960
01:07:34,200 --> 01:07:36,600
setting off on a night mission, 70 years ago.
961
01:07:50,520 --> 01:07:54,600
In World War Two, a thousand bombers would set out on a mission.
962
01:07:54,600 --> 01:07:58,320
Today, the RAF is using a detachment of just eight
963
01:07:58,320 --> 01:08:00,720
supersonic Tornados to achieve its aims.
964
01:08:02,240 --> 01:08:06,640
I mean, my experiences from Iraq are pretty similar to this operation really,
965
01:08:06,640 --> 01:08:08,040
it's a similar sort of size.
966
01:08:08,040 --> 01:08:13,360
But it's still nothing on the scale of World War Two.
967
01:08:13,360 --> 01:08:16,760
I mean, you're talking over 100,000 people flying in World War Two.
968
01:08:18,000 --> 01:08:23,000
The coalition is in the process of handing over power to the Afghan government.
969
01:08:23,000 --> 01:08:26,760
The highly political situation could hardly be more sensitive,
970
01:08:26,760 --> 01:08:29,760
and the last thing they can afford is to inflict any civilian casualties.
971
01:08:32,480 --> 01:08:37,760
But, fortunately, modern planes are much more flexible than the Lancaster of 70 years ago.
972
01:08:37,760 --> 01:08:42,480
They can perform a variety of roles that range from attacking the enemy
973
01:08:42,480 --> 01:08:45,680
to identifying improvised explosive devices hidden in the ground.
974
01:08:50,760 --> 01:08:55,280
Wing Commander Keith Taylor is the current 617 Squadron Commander.
975
01:08:55,280 --> 01:08:58,880
He's at pains to show how he is using the latest technology to avoid collateral damage.
976
01:09:03,120 --> 01:09:06,880
Before he even considers using a weapon to support forces on the ground,
977
01:09:06,880 --> 01:09:10,200
he'll intimidate the enemy first with a low-level fly past.
978
01:09:12,200 --> 01:09:16,080
I did a show of force, and, you know, we pulled up afterwards,
979
01:09:16,080 --> 01:09:20,520
back into the wheel, and asked the ground commander if we'd met his intent.
980
01:09:20,520 --> 01:09:24,640
And his words were, yes, you know, there was a bit of a situation developing down here,
981
01:09:24,640 --> 01:09:29,640
and I just wanted to show, you know, the bad guys that my dog was bigger than his dog.
982
01:09:30,840 --> 01:09:34,600
If that fails, only then will he reach for his range of precision weapons,
983
01:09:34,600 --> 01:09:39,160
from heavy cannon to guided missiles and bombs.
984
01:09:39,160 --> 01:09:41,080
And to help the crews make the right decision,
985
01:09:41,080 --> 01:09:43,560
they are also using some of the world's most powerful cameras,
986
01:09:43,560 --> 01:09:46,120
in what's known as the lightning pod.
987
01:09:47,120 --> 01:09:49,920
So you can, I mean you basically can, even up at sort of 15,
988
01:09:49,920 --> 01:09:52,120
20,000 feet, you can pick out an individual person.
989
01:09:52,120 --> 01:09:54,040
Absolutely, yeah, you can pick out people.
990
01:09:54,040 --> 01:09:56,400
You know, we can really get up close and, in some situations,
991
01:09:56,400 --> 01:10:01,720
identify whether or not the guys are carrying weapons or not.
992
01:10:04,160 --> 01:10:08,800
On the current tour, the Squadron has flown hundreds of missions deterring insurgents,
993
01:10:08,800 --> 01:10:10,520
without dropping a single bomb.
994
01:10:17,120 --> 01:10:20,920
All this makes you realise what a blunt but effective instrument Bomber Command was
995
01:10:20,920 --> 01:10:22,240
for the first years of the war.
996
01:10:26,480 --> 01:10:31,920
But in 1944, Churchill wanted to use the bombers differently.
997
01:10:31,920 --> 01:10:35,000
He felt they were now capable of a much more precise role.
998
01:10:37,720 --> 01:10:41,800
In the build up to D-Day, he wanted Harris to move from bombing German cities
999
01:10:41,800 --> 01:10:45,680
to hitting specific communication and transport targets.
1000
01:10:47,800 --> 01:10:52,600
Bomber Command had made huge advances in the last two years of total war.
1001
01:10:52,600 --> 01:10:56,080
It had become the most destructive force in history.
1002
01:10:56,080 --> 01:11:01,600
But it was now more than capable of carrying out this new task of precision bombing.
1003
01:11:04,160 --> 01:11:05,800
The switch to new methods,
1004
01:11:05,800 --> 01:11:08,400
it was now safer to fly in daylight,
1005
01:11:08,400 --> 01:11:09,480
so some of the raids
1006
01:11:09,480 --> 01:11:10,840
took place in daylight,
1007
01:11:10,840 --> 01:11:12,000
was not welcome to Harris.
1008
01:11:12,000 --> 01:11:15,840
He still stuck to his doctrine that the way to win the war
1009
01:11:15,840 --> 01:11:19,280
was to flatten as many German cities as possible.
1010
01:11:19,280 --> 01:11:23,440
So he put up quite a strong rear guard action, as only he could,
1011
01:11:23,440 --> 01:11:28,280
against a move that everyone else seemed to think was the right one.
1012
01:11:28,280 --> 01:11:32,000
Bomber Command had been a very blunt instrument indeed.
1013
01:11:32,000 --> 01:11:36,440
At this stage in the war, it's now becoming a surgical instrument,
1014
01:11:36,440 --> 01:11:42,320
something that is capable of carrying out applied violence in a very precise way.
1015
01:11:47,120 --> 01:11:50,840
My old squadron, the Dambusters, was pivotal in developing these new tactics.
1016
01:11:53,120 --> 01:11:57,400
They were formed in 1943 to attack the dams of the Ruhr Valley,
1017
01:11:57,400 --> 01:12:00,320
using inventor Barnes Wallis's revolutionary bouncing bomb.
1018
01:12:05,560 --> 01:12:10,320
In 1944, they undertook perhaps the most audacious precision raid of the war.
1019
01:12:13,120 --> 01:12:17,520
We've come to the squadron's former officer's mess, now the Petwood Hotel,
1020
01:12:17,520 --> 01:12:22,040
to meet Squadron Leader Tony Iveson to talk about his part in the raid.
1021
01:12:24,440 --> 01:12:27,200
The Tirpitz was the largest remaining German battleship.
1022
01:12:30,200 --> 01:12:33,760
She represented the most powerful single threat to Allied shipping,
1023
01:12:33,760 --> 01:12:36,640
and it became a British obsession to sink her.
1024
01:12:38,520 --> 01:12:43,480
She was sheltering in the safe haven of the Norwegian Fjords, almost out of range.
1025
01:12:45,200 --> 01:12:49,280
They adapted the Lancaster with more powerful engines,
1026
01:12:49,280 --> 01:12:52,800
and took out the mid-upper turret and the front guns,
1027
01:12:52,800 --> 01:12:59,360
and lots of other heavy stuff, including the armour plating behind my seat.
1028
01:12:59,360 --> 01:13:04,240
The Lancaster could then reach Tromso from northern Scotland,
1029
01:13:04,240 --> 01:13:06,600
which was about, well, it turned out to be
1030
01:13:06,600 --> 01:13:08,840
a twelve and a half hour flight.
1031
01:13:11,360 --> 01:13:13,200
The bomb chosen to sink the Tirpitz
1032
01:13:13,200 --> 01:13:18,960
was the latest Barnes Wallis wonder weapon. The 12,000 lbs "Tallboy".
1033
01:13:18,960 --> 01:13:21,520
We lined up for the run in.
1034
01:13:22,520 --> 01:13:27,760
And the first nine bombs of 617 Squadron went down in 90 seconds.
1035
01:13:27,760 --> 01:13:30,360
So, had you been standing on Tirpitz,
1036
01:13:30,360 --> 01:13:33,040
you had nine five ton bombs arriving,
1037
01:13:33,040 --> 01:13:35,920
through the speed of sound on the way down.
1038
01:13:35,920 --> 01:13:39,800
And there were two direct hits and three near misses.
1039
01:13:39,800 --> 01:13:45,120
And then the 56,000 ton battleship was doomed from that moment.
1040
01:13:45,120 --> 01:13:50,520
- COMMENTARY:
- The ship still firing as the bomb bursts flash and gleam.
1041
01:13:50,520 --> 01:13:53,320
In the smoke of giant explosions, the Tirpitz capsizes and sinks.
1042
01:14:00,200 --> 01:14:04,160
It was an astonishing demonstration of how far Bomber Command had come.
1043
01:14:04,160 --> 01:14:09,760
And it had been achieved with the mighty Lancaster.
1044
01:14:09,760 --> 01:14:13,160
Today is my chance to fly it.
1045
01:14:16,080 --> 01:14:19,160
I think for me, as a member of 617 Squadron,
1046
01:14:19,160 --> 01:14:22,840
it's probably the greatest privilege that you could ever get,
1047
01:14:22,840 --> 01:14:28,000
to fly in a Lancaster, and obviously it's the only one that's left in the UK.
1048
01:14:29,440 --> 01:14:34,120
But the fact that I'm going to be able to do it with Ewan on board as well is really incredible,
1049
01:14:34,120 --> 01:14:37,040
that both of us are going to be able to experience this at the same time,
1050
01:14:37,040 --> 01:14:40,120
and that's what it was all about, it was about being a crew,
1051
01:14:40,120 --> 01:14:44,520
it was about that, that band of brothers kind of feeling,
1052
01:14:44,520 --> 01:14:50,080
so to do it with the person that you feel the closest to is really quite something.
1053
01:14:53,920 --> 01:14:57,880
It's as iconic, the Lancaster, as the Spitfire was.
1054
01:14:57,880 --> 01:15:03,440
The Spitfires were fighting one against one in the air against the enemy.
1055
01:15:03,440 --> 01:15:08,200
And the Lancaster, you know, it's much more complicated than that.
1056
01:15:08,200 --> 01:15:13,920
They were bombing towns and cities, and over the week that we've been doing this,
1057
01:15:13,920 --> 01:15:16,560
the time that we've been doing this has been, you know,
1058
01:15:16,560 --> 01:15:19,440
I've been getting more and more of a sense of how complicated that is.
1059
01:15:23,760 --> 01:15:26,000
The last flying Lancaster is so precious
1060
01:15:26,000 --> 01:15:31,560
that the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight will only take her up in ideal conditions.
1061
01:15:31,560 --> 01:15:33,480
So it's great that the weather is perfect.
1062
01:15:36,920 --> 01:15:39,920
Can't believe you arranged a piper, that's pretty good!
1063
01:15:39,920 --> 01:15:43,440
You've got to remember that this is a war machine, really,
1064
01:15:43,440 --> 01:15:48,720
and people went to war in it, and some, a lot of them didn't come back, so...
1065
01:15:48,720 --> 01:15:52,600
Cor, the pipes make you feel quite emotional as well, don't they, yeah?
1066
01:15:52,600 --> 01:15:54,840
Very nice. Nice touch, that.
1067
01:15:54,840 --> 01:15:58,000
A large crowd, including some of the veterans,
1068
01:15:58,000 --> 01:16:03,240
is here to see the Lancaster on one of the few occasions in the year she takes to the air.
1069
01:16:04,600 --> 01:16:07,360
- This is your end of the aircraft, wasn't it?
- That's right.
1070
01:16:07,360 --> 01:16:10,360
Then when we got the word to go, up the ladder.
1071
01:16:11,480 --> 01:16:15,560
- And then I used to turn to the left.
- Yeah.
1072
01:16:15,560 --> 01:16:17,840
Back in, slide myself into there.
1073
01:16:17,840 --> 01:16:21,480
- Check the rotation of the turret, once the engines had started.
- Yeah.
1074
01:16:21,480 --> 01:16:22,800
Just check everything through.
1075
01:16:22,800 --> 01:16:27,840
Anyone who says he's not afraid is not a human being.
1076
01:16:27,840 --> 01:16:32,680
And the worst period I felt was before a flight, when we knew where we were going,
1077
01:16:32,680 --> 01:16:36,880
and you had the hours getting ready, and you couldn't stop this churning around over your mind,
1078
01:16:36,880 --> 01:16:42,680
but once you were in the aeroplane you had a job to do, and it was a different situation,
1079
01:16:42,680 --> 01:16:45,040
and she was a beautiful aeroplane,
1080
01:16:45,040 --> 01:16:51,440
and you, as a pilot, will understand how thrilling it is to handle such a big machine on take off,
1081
01:16:51,440 --> 01:16:53,760
and feel her ready just to...
1082
01:16:53,760 --> 01:16:58,040
Yes, flying was still, even in those days, exciting.
1083
01:16:58,040 --> 01:17:01,440
Did you shake hands, before you got on, with each other or not?
1084
01:17:01,440 --> 01:17:03,520
Was there none of that sort of thing?
1085
01:17:03,520 --> 01:17:07,120
No, the crew would, the crew would piss on that wheel, but...
1086
01:17:07,120 --> 01:17:10,120
We would do that, but there's just too many people standing around watching,
1087
01:17:10,120 --> 01:17:12,520
otherwise we would do that, we would do that very thing.
1088
01:17:12,520 --> 01:17:14,960
- Thank you very much though.
- Yeah, good luck to you.
- Brilliant.
1089
01:17:14,960 --> 01:17:16,240
- Yeah, cheers.
- Enjoy that trip.
1090
01:17:16,240 --> 01:17:18,840
- Yeah. Thank you very much indeed.
- Thank you very much, thank you.
1091
01:17:18,840 --> 01:17:20,800
- You enjoy that trip. I'm sure you will.
- Thank you.
1092
01:17:39,560 --> 01:17:44,160
INAUDIBLE RADIO CHATTER
1093
01:18:00,800 --> 01:18:04,880
Ah, it's an amazing feeling. Exhilarating, as the tail lifts.
1094
01:18:07,520 --> 01:18:10,240
70 knots. 80 knots.
1095
01:18:14,880 --> 01:18:19,320
Air brakes, air brakes off, feel that breeze.
1096
01:18:20,440 --> 01:18:22,080
Easy level travelling.
1097
01:18:23,160 --> 01:18:25,800
- Travelling left.
- And right.
1098
01:18:40,360 --> 01:18:42,040
Colin up front, now.
1099
01:18:57,880 --> 01:19:01,120
And then it's the moment I've been waiting for.
1100
01:19:01,120 --> 01:19:03,440
I'm handed the controls.
1101
01:19:05,920 --> 01:19:09,680
I'm piloting the RAF's only flying Lancaster.
1102
01:19:09,680 --> 01:19:12,920
And we're just coming up on the left hand side. Is that what you want?
1103
01:19:30,000 --> 01:19:33,840
OK, Ewan's in position. Ewan, you all right in the nose? Thank you, yeah.
1104
01:19:35,040 --> 01:19:38,760
And I'm in the nose of the Lancaster with my brother at the controls.
1105
01:19:38,760 --> 01:19:40,680
What a moment.
1106
01:19:44,120 --> 01:19:47,840
Unbelievable view, isn't it? Fantastic visibility up here.
1107
01:19:49,240 --> 01:19:53,920
We're flying in the Lincolnshire skies that, 70 years ago,
1108
01:19:53,920 --> 01:19:56,840
would have been full of hundreds of bombers about to head off to Germany,
1109
01:19:56,840 --> 01:20:01,560
containing thousands of nervous young men, some who would never come back.
1110
01:20:09,600 --> 01:20:13,040
Then, all too soon, I have to hand back the controls.
1111
01:20:13,040 --> 01:20:14,280
You have control?
1112
01:20:37,440 --> 01:20:40,840
We buzz the crowd below, and then it's time to land.
1113
01:21:08,400 --> 01:21:13,520
The last flying Lancaster in Britain, one of the 7,000 or so
1114
01:21:13,520 --> 01:21:18,480
that flew 156,000 sorties, is safely back on the ground.
1115
01:21:26,000 --> 01:21:28,160
Don't fall out!
1116
01:21:29,720 --> 01:21:31,560
That was unbelievable.
1117
01:21:31,560 --> 01:21:34,040
That was really, properly amazing. Properly amazing.
1118
01:21:34,040 --> 01:21:36,560
It was all kind of angles that I've never seen before in my life,
1119
01:21:36,560 --> 01:21:40,920
taking off from there was just extraordinary, because you see the whole of the wings,
1120
01:21:40,920 --> 01:21:43,760
watch all the four engines starting up in front of you.
1121
01:21:43,760 --> 01:21:46,840
I went through to the front, there's a view I've never seen before,
1122
01:21:46,840 --> 01:21:50,960
like lying on my belly looking down, out at the ground, and the sky,
1123
01:21:50,960 --> 01:21:54,160
and an experience that you can't imagine. Well done.
1124
01:21:54,160 --> 01:21:57,400
Well done. That was really good flying, Colin. Really good flying.
1125
01:22:00,080 --> 01:22:05,480
The Lancaster was a brilliant plane, but it was still a devastating weapon of war.
1126
01:22:06,640 --> 01:22:11,040
And nearly 800 of them took part in the raid in 1945
1127
01:22:11,040 --> 01:22:14,360
that defined how some have judged Bomber Command ever since.
1128
01:22:18,680 --> 01:22:22,640
The D-Day invasion had led to a combined push by land and air forces from the west.
1129
01:22:23,760 --> 01:22:26,600
The Russians, too, were pressing from the east.
1130
01:22:29,520 --> 01:22:34,760
Stalin called on the western allies to help clear the way for the Red Army.
1131
01:22:34,760 --> 01:22:40,720
So, Winston Churchill agreed to the last great bomber offensive of the war.
1132
01:22:40,720 --> 01:22:42,160
The one that everyone remembers.
1133
01:22:43,440 --> 01:22:44,560
The irony is that
1134
01:22:44,560 --> 01:22:47,160
when Bomber Command was finally able to
1135
01:22:47,160 --> 01:22:50,160
do what it had always been trying to do,
1136
01:22:50,160 --> 01:22:53,400
trying to do it had lost a lot of its sense.
1137
01:22:54,560 --> 01:22:57,240
But, Harris being Harris, he carried on.
1138
01:22:58,520 --> 01:23:03,720
And one can say that with Dresden, it turned out to be a city too far.
1139
01:23:05,800 --> 01:23:11,120
In February 1945, the Allies unleashed Operation Thunderclap on the city of Dresden.
1140
01:23:12,400 --> 01:23:14,880
- COMMENTARY:
- Dresden, the capital of Saxony,
1141
01:23:14,880 --> 01:23:18,520
becomes a fantasy of the destructive pyrotechnics of the air war.
1142
01:23:20,960 --> 01:23:25,760
The city was a railway hub through which German troops travelled to the Eastern Front.
1143
01:23:25,760 --> 01:23:30,960
But it was also packed with a million refugees, escaping the Russian onslaught.
1144
01:23:35,600 --> 01:23:40,280
The bombing was so devastating that it whipped up another firestorm.
1145
01:23:44,840 --> 01:23:46,240
It killed 25,000 people.
1146
01:23:52,080 --> 01:23:56,160
Churchill had approved the plan, but within weeks he had changed his tune,
1147
01:23:56,160 --> 01:23:58,720
perhaps with an eye to the imminent peace.
1148
01:24:00,880 --> 01:24:03,880
"The destruction of Dresden remains a serious
1149
01:24:03,880 --> 01:24:08,080
"query against the conduct of the Allied bombing."
1150
01:24:08,080 --> 01:24:09,800
Winston Churchill, 1945.
1151
01:24:12,240 --> 01:24:15,360
Harris was appalled by Churchill's comments.
1152
01:24:15,360 --> 01:24:18,480
To his dying day, he defended the policy of area bombing.
1153
01:24:21,320 --> 01:24:22,400
Harris had been
1154
01:24:22,400 --> 01:24:23,800
an outstanding leader.
1155
01:24:23,800 --> 01:24:25,040
He motivated his men,
1156
01:24:25,040 --> 01:24:26,280
he did what he was told
1157
01:24:26,280 --> 01:24:27,680
very effectively.
1158
01:24:27,680 --> 01:24:30,560
But by the end of the war, it has to be said,
1159
01:24:30,560 --> 01:24:32,960
he was wrong to persist in this notion
1160
01:24:32,960 --> 01:24:35,760
that they should carry on battering German cities when the
1161
01:24:35,760 --> 01:24:37,600
war was obviously won, it was doing no good,
1162
01:24:37,600 --> 01:24:38,720
in fact it was doing harm.
1163
01:24:40,840 --> 01:24:45,320
At the end of the war in Europe, on May 13th, 1945,
1164
01:24:45,320 --> 01:24:49,960
Winston Churchill went on the radio to thank our armed forces.
1165
01:24:49,960 --> 01:24:53,200
He chose not to mention Bomber Command at all.
1166
01:24:57,840 --> 01:24:59,240
I thought we got a rough deal.
1167
01:24:59,240 --> 01:25:03,640
Not so much us, although they didn't give us a medal,
1168
01:25:03,640 --> 01:25:06,920
but that's only a little trinket, really.
1169
01:25:08,000 --> 01:25:10,960
But I thought the treatment that Bomber Harris got
1170
01:25:10,960 --> 01:25:14,400
was absolutely, utterly disgraceful,
1171
01:25:14,400 --> 01:25:18,520
because he was only carrying out the orders of Churchill.
1172
01:25:20,760 --> 01:25:26,280
Harris's vision of a war won by heavy bombers alone never came to pass.
1173
01:25:26,280 --> 01:25:30,000
German war industry was damaged, yet never collapsed.
1174
01:25:31,400 --> 01:25:37,840
But a million troops, and thousands of anti-aircraft guns, were pinned down defending the Reich.
1175
01:25:37,840 --> 01:25:42,480
For those who fought in the campaign, there are few doubts about its value.
1176
01:25:42,480 --> 01:25:48,240
Total war is total war, and we were involved in total war.
1177
01:25:48,240 --> 01:25:51,080
We were involved in fighting for our lives.
1178
01:25:51,080 --> 01:25:56,520
And Bomber Command was the only force that could take the war to Germany for four long years.
1179
01:25:56,520 --> 01:26:00,240
They started it. They were, what did they do?
1180
01:26:00,240 --> 01:26:03,520
Auschwitz and all these places, I mean, Christ Almighty,
1181
01:26:03,520 --> 01:26:07,760
they're the ones that started the bloody war, we didn't.
1182
01:26:07,760 --> 01:26:12,320
And, well we finished it off, Germans went off with their tails between their legs.
1183
01:26:12,320 --> 01:26:15,960
I felt badly about it, in many respects, and yet, you know,
1184
01:26:15,960 --> 01:26:20,480
I mean, the war doesn't have Marquis of Queensbury rules.
1185
01:26:20,480 --> 01:26:22,840
And, of course, immediately after the war,
1186
01:26:22,840 --> 01:26:25,080
we got all the screen of what had happened
1187
01:26:25,080 --> 01:26:28,320
in the concentration camps, and the extermination camps,
1188
01:26:28,320 --> 01:26:32,600
and I suppose, you know, it rather hardens one's heart.
1189
01:26:34,640 --> 01:26:38,760
Today, the controversy around the bombing campaign of World War Two still remains.
1190
01:26:42,840 --> 01:26:47,920
Only in the summer of 2012, nearly 70 years after the war,
1191
01:26:47,920 --> 01:26:50,080
will there be a memorial in London
1192
01:26:50,080 --> 01:26:53,000
to honour the 125,000 men of Bomber Command.
1193
01:26:58,760 --> 01:27:04,360
It's very sad that the 55,500 young men in Bomber Command
1194
01:27:04,360 --> 01:27:08,680
who were killed have never been recognised until now,
1195
01:27:08,680 --> 01:27:15,040
which is too late in my view, it's a pity, but it is a little late.
1196
01:27:15,040 --> 01:27:19,800
But, thank goodness, a memorial is now going to be put up for them.
1197
01:27:28,880 --> 01:27:30,560
I knew when we started this project
1198
01:27:30,560 --> 01:27:34,680
that it was going to be a really difficult journey in places, and it has been difficult.
1199
01:27:34,680 --> 01:27:40,560
You know, our visit to Hamburg has raised some questions in my mind.
1200
01:27:41,680 --> 01:27:47,800
But what this journey has taught me is that these very young men who joined Bomber Command
1201
01:27:47,800 --> 01:27:51,760
joined the only force that was taking the fight to Germany.
1202
01:27:55,760 --> 01:28:00,120
What has struck me is how young they were, and what a terrible price they paid.
1203
01:28:01,200 --> 01:28:04,160
Almost beyond any of the controversy,
1204
01:28:04,160 --> 01:28:07,960
I'm also unmoved in my feelings about the men who flew in those planes.
1205
01:28:07,960 --> 01:28:11,920
Because they were demonstrating such unbelievable bravery to
1206
01:28:11,920 --> 01:28:16,160
get in those bomber planes, night after night after night after night,
1207
01:28:16,160 --> 01:28:20,000
twelve hour missions, freezing cold, cramped, frightened,
1208
01:28:20,000 --> 01:28:24,280
and the fact that they would lose friends and they would still get back in the planes.
1209
01:28:24,280 --> 01:28:26,040
So I haven't changed my mind about them,
1210
01:28:26,040 --> 01:28:29,080
other than they're the heroes that I always thought that they were.
1211
01:28:50,760 --> 01:28:53,880
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
1212
01:28:53,880 --> 01:28:56,920
E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk
111772
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