Original subtitles

Narrator: An American war machine given a second life.

Landing people on the moon was an epic, defining moment

but it wasn't the end of the mission.

An eerie shrine in Bulgaria that offered the promise of immortality.

Children would burst into tears at

the sight of the departed father of their country.

An attack on a British city

designed to grind its people into submission.

As much as 95% of its buildings were damaged or destroyed.

And an Italian labour of love born from the ashes of trauma.

This was architecture intended to look forward

to a new kind of future.

Decaying relics,

decaying relics,

ruins of lost worlds,

sites haunted by the past,

their secrets waiting to be revealed.

In California, usa,

lies a behemoth

with a story that is out of this world.

Obviously we're in San Francisco bay.

This is a bustling bay with lots of industry, lots of naval facilities.

And then you come up and you see this huge vision before you.

And there's no mystery what this is.

It's an aircraft carrier.

It's imposing,

it's sleek,

it's deadly.

Inside, the vessel has everything you'd expect to see

inside, the vessel has everything you'd expect to see

onboard a us Navy ship.

Everywhere you turn

there are more dials, more instruments, more screens.

And then there are rows and rows of beds for the crew.

There's a kitchen,

there's just everything that you need to survive and function.

It's essentially a floating city.

This ship served a vital role in the 20th century's greatest conflict,

but there are features that reveal it also had another mission.

And that's this airstream trailer,

parked conspicuously with a presidential seal on it,

and that suggests that this aircraft carrier had a very specific purpose

in addition to its wartime roles.

Right now we're in what's called 'primary flight',

right now we're in what's called 'primary flight',

and it's basically the same thing

as air-traffic controller at a civilian airport.

The air boss would be running the show up here,

directing flight operations down the flight deck.

Retired us naval officer Ron cappa

has inspected numerous aircraft carriers over his military career.

This one, the USS hornet, is a true legend.

The hornet was part of a carrier task group

that was responsible for launching many strikes.

The carrier could launch planes about every 30 seconds.

They were the most modern and the biggest of the time.

Construction begins in August 1942

and it's finished in August 1943.

It took just one year to build this massive aircraft carrier.

When launched into action against the axis powers in world war ii

when launched into action against the axis powers in world war ii

she was a fearsome beast.

The ship was stocked with some serious air power,

including air groups of fighter, bomber and torpedo squadrons.

If you look at the USS hornet, the history of this ship,

it is intertwined with the history of the American war in the pacific

in world war ii.

The ship fought in multiple campaigns

in new Guinea,

in the Philippines, in iwo jima, saipan.

It had, like, seven battle stars.

The hornet's most famous engagement

was the battle of the philippine sea,

later dubbed the great marianas Turkey shoot.

The battle of the philippine sea was quite historic.

The Japanese were looking for the Americans

and they were in the philippine sea around the Mariana islands,

and the Japanese actually spotted the fleet

and the Japanese actually spotted the fleet

before the Americans had, you know, discovered the Japanese.

The Japanese launched everything they had from their own carriers

to try to wipe out the American carrier fleet.

The hornet was among the ones sent by American admirals in the pacific

to intercept,

and they had this phenomenal shoot-down ratio

where 500 Japanese aircraft shot down

with the loss of something like 30 American planes.

The Japanese fight and fight,

but they get crushed,

and are never able to significantly strike with their carriers again.

As the battle in the pacific theatre raged on,

the hornet's crew worked tirelessly to press home their advantage.

Life for the crew during world war ii

was very hectic, very hot and very busy.

There was something going on all the time,

especially when you're in battle conditions -

you were either preparing for battle,

you were fuelling up ready to go into another battle,

you were fuelling up ready to go into another battle,

you were arming up, you were taking on stores.

There was something going on 24/7 every day.

And they continued to deliver knockout blows.

In just 18 months of combat operations,

the crew of the USS hornet

shot down 668 Japanese planes

and sank over a million tonnes of Japanese ships.

At the war's end, the ship was modernised

and sent back out to sea

to support the fight against Vietnamese communists.

But soon it would be called to take part in its greatest operation yet.

On July 12, 1969,

the hornet slipped her moors at Pearl harbor

and embarked on a new mission in the pacific.

Built for battle, the ship was pressed into the service of science.

One week later,

Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon.

Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon.

- (Crackly) It's one small step for man...

One giant leap for mankind.

God, it looks beautiful from here.

The Apollo 11 mission was so important and so symbolic.

The idea of landing a man on the moon

was something that people have dreamed of for centuries.

You know, for those of us old enough to remember watching this,

it was hard enough getting these guys into space

and then somebody had to pick 'em up,

and that was the job of the USS hornet.

The hornet's basically an airport at sea,

and it's the perfect base of operations to recover this capsule,

which is gonna come hurtling out of space and land in the ocean.

23 July, early afternoon...

The hornet waited in the predesignated splashdown zone,

while the Apollo 11 astronauts made their final checks.

June '69, captain seiberlich was in command.

They did like 15 or 16 simulated retrievals,

you know, to make sure that everything was prepared

and the crew was prepared.

Weeks of planning were about to be put to the test,

as the eyes of the world watched on.

But there was a problem.

Top-secret reconnaissance satellite recon information

held that a storm was threatening the original splashdown zone,

but they couldn't really tell the guys at NASA how they knew this.

It was all very cloak and dagger.

To come down in the middle of a storm like this

could have torn the parachutes that were bringing the capsule in

to shreds,

which meant that they would have hit the water at much too high of speed

and very likely killed the astronauts on impact.

Fearing catastrophe,

the operative that spotted the danger circumvented protocol

to alert a chief naval officer to the peril that lay in wait.

And little-known fact,

the splashdown zone was actually moved 250 miles at the last minute.

On 24 July, in the final hours before splashdown,

the hornet raced to take up its new position.

(Comms chatter)

The crew was on high alert.

Returning astronauts were not the only visitors they were expecting.

Early in the morning,

president Nixon arrived aboard marine one.

You know, my past history in the Navy,

when we had dignitaries aboard it was all spick and span.

You don't want anything to go wrong,

so I'm sure, you know, tensions were high.

It must have been hell for the skipper

having the president of the united states, his commander-in-chief,

onboard, looking over his shoulder.

Meanwhile, the Columbia capsule hurtled back to earth.

Around 6am they see Columbia come through the atmosphere

and land in the water.

So the Navy rescue team came up to the capsule on boats,

began the process of stabilising it and getting the crew out,

but not before they handed them Hazmat suits.

Something that most people don't remember about these lunar missions

is that we had no idea what bacteria, what pathogens

existed on the moon,

so when these guys came back

they had to be very strictly quarantined

in case they were carrying some superbug

that had never been seen on earth before.

Once the astronauts arrived on the hornet,

once the astronauts arrived on the hornet,

they were placed into what would be their home for the next four days.

This is where the astronauts were put inside

to where they could get cleaned up

and get rid of their contamination suits.

As we enter the trailer,

off to my right we have their sitting, eating area right in here.

Back in here is their little kitchenette

and actually one of the first microwaves ever produced.

So after the astronauts were placed inside the quarantine facility,

president Nixon came up

and was talking to them through this window right here.

He waves to them and, you know, sort of pantomime shaking their hand

and has this little chat through the glass with them.

The hornet, with its cargo of returning heroes safely onboard,

then set off for its final destination of Hawaii.

So the astronauts actually stayed in this trailer for the whole journey,

so the astronauts actually stayed in this trailer for the whole journey,

then they were loaded onto a plane, still in the trailer,

flown to Houston,

where they rode out the rest of their quarantine

in a larger facility.

And just a year after participating in this recovery

of the astronauts from Apollo 11,

the USS hornet is mothballed

and, you know, basically put on the shelf.

It's ended its useful life, no longer valuable as a naval asset.

In 1998 the ship was donated to the aircraft carrier hornet foundation,

its service to america immortalised.

The USS hornet was turned into a museum

so that people could come and learn the story of not only world war ii

and those postwar years

but also this special story of NASA's Apollo 11 mission.

But also this special story of NASA's Apollo 11 mission.

As you're moving about the ship,

you're seeing what the sailors of that period of time -

my period of time, to be exact -

were actually dealing with, what we lived through,

what the spaces looked like, how small the passageways were.

The USS hornet to me means a lot,

and to be a part of it right now

is like going back, being a kid again.

And I get to talk to people about the things that the ship did.

I can't express how much I like to do that

and how much I feel part of the ship.

The story tells us, you know, that carriers are basically a way

to achieve a sovereign piece of American real estate

in the middle of the ocean, wherever you need it.

You can have the capacity

to pull a space capsule onboard or recover the crew,

and you can also launch airstrikes from this thing anywhere, anytime.

As the Navy always says,

"don't piss us off. We can be there in 24 hours or less."

In the Bulgarian capital, where few residents have ventured,

is a reminder of a power that once consumed Eastern Europe.

Sofia is a beautiful city.

It has got activity, it's got nightlife.

There are no obvious abandoned buildings here.

Everything looks very well maintained and even pristine.

Yet in the centre of this immaculate town,

hidden from view, is the entrance way to another world.

Here we've got narrow tunnels which are branching off into the darkness.

At the heart of the labyrinthian network lies a spartan room.

It's almost like an old hospital or maybe an asylum.

It's almost like an old hospital or maybe an asylum.

You have these tiled walls and these thick doors.

There's these old refrigerators with big power supplies,

a big metal table.

It's just kind of creepy and strange.

When I look at this table,

all I can think is this is a mortuary slab.

Reality is that these tunnels were used for a kind of dark propaganda

to convince the people to follow a certain way of life.

Behind me there is a building of national bank,

and in front of me there is a national theatre building,

also the building of ministry of defence.

But the real story, the hidden story, is underground.

Ivo maev is a journalist

who has spent many years exploring the city's secret tunnels.

The inconspicuous gateway to Sofia's netherworld

is located near a busy marketplace.

It's Christmas mood here

but it's quite different downstairs.

Very few people know about this place here.

Here is the past of Bulgaria.

Most of the tunnels date back to the cold war,

when Bulgaria was a communist country.

This government ruled over its people with an iron fist.

Georgi dimitrov was the leader of Bulgaria.

He was put into place by the Soviets in 1946

and he was fine with that.

He wanted to be a communist leader.

He had no problem following the directives of the Soviets.

Bulgarians readily accepted dimitrov's dictatorial control,

for they were a population in dire need of hope.

Bulgaria was a desperately poor country at the time,

and the people saw communism as a way out of this grinding poverty

after years of bloodshed and violence.

The Soviets help Bulgaria to very rapidly industrialise,

so ordinary Bulgarians

are suddenly experiencing a very different standard of living

from what went before.

As the country slowly clambered out of destitution,

it soon faced a new threat,

one that demanded the tunnel's construction.

Official propaganda says

that the nuclear war between east and west will happen one day,

that the nuclear war between east and west will happen one day,

and that's why officially

the government promoted tunnels and shelters

as places for security,

a safety zone for people.

The reality of who the tunnels were actually built for

was radically different.

It's believed that this labyrinth

encompasses nearly 150 miles of tunnels built as escape routes,

so that important communist party officials could get away

in case of a nuclear attack.

So all these tunnels went across the city

and went up into all the different important buildings -

the bank, different communist leaders' places.

It was just a really elaborate way for them to get around

with nobody seeing them.

Yet the tunnels weren't just escape routes and passageways

for communist dignitaries.

They would go on to serve a far more macabre purpose.

So dimitrov had been in power about three years

and went on a trip to the Soviet union and died there.

It's unclear what happened.

Nobody quite knows what became of him,

but we know that he died,

and this was a huge blow to the Bulgarian communists.

The solution of the ruling party

was to transform their deceased leader into a deity.

Dimitrov is going to be refrigerated,

embalmed, plasticised,

moisturised

and kept going as long as Bulgaria remains communist.

It was really important

to keep the name and the image of dimitrov alive.

To keep the name and the image of dimitrov alive.

He had become central to this idea of what communism was.

To house his body, the government built an extravagant mausoleum.

Just as the pyramids housed the pharaohs,

this was to be the eternal home of dimitrov

and the centre of political beliefs in Bulgaria.

They put inside a big beacon,

very expensive Soviet equipment for freezing, air-conditioning,

keeping fresh air, and all other functions,

to be not only a shelter in case of nuclear war

but also to keep at least one mummy of the communist gov. Alive.

Located directly below his shrine

was a secret room that connected to the vast tunnel system.

And this is the most interesting place.

Here we can see a big hydraulic platform,

which is fixed just under the centre of mausoleum.

So the body of georgi dimitrov was here

and was pushed up for the visitors in a special glass box.

You had a seven-man team of doctors

that did daily inspections of dimitrov's body.

They even took care of his clothes.

They had a new suit made for him regularly

by his own personal tailor.

Everybody in the whole country

is expected to make a pilgrimage to this communist, godless mausoleum,

as though they were making a pilgrimage

to an ancient Christian Saint's grave.

I visited at least three times when I was in the school.

What I remember -

the cold temperature inside,

the smell of something like hospital,

and see a body of a person

who I saw only in the book,

inside a glass box.

For the next 40 years,

dimitrov's preserved corpse remained an ever-present attraction,

but in 1990 his body would be removed and a scandal uncovered.

It is not unreasonable to ask the question,

did dimitrov fall or was he pushed?

Fall of communism officially was in November 1989.

Fall of communism officially was in November 1989.

One year later

the first post-communist government

decided to have official funeral of georgi dimitrov.

Secretly during the night

his body was transported to the central graveyard

and was buried there.

However, when laid to rest, his remains were not entirely intact.

An embalmer had removed his brain for examination,

as they suspected Russian foul play

was the real reason for his untimely death.

He had been called to the Soviet union by Stalin,

and it's there that he died.

The test proved that dimitrov was poisoned by Mercury,

because in his brain and in his hair

were registered more than 20 times more Mercury

comparing to normal dose for any human body.

It's one of those mysteries that we can't prove but makes some sense.

It's one of those mysteries that we can't prove but makes some sense.

Whatever the truth,

the mausoleum was demolished after dimitrov's removal

and the tunnels abandoned.

It's been over three decades

since communism's dark shadow lifted from over Bulgaria.

Ivo still finds that period painful to remember.

There is no option to have any romantic memories

from the communist times.

This building was controversial enough.

A lot of people hate it and I'm among these people,

because really this place was the heart of communist propaganda.

It was very important the building to be demolished.

In north-east england,

the city of hull hides an extraordinary ruin

in a very ordinary street.

There are houses, grocery stores, bars,

and then right in amongst them all

there's something that you definitely don't expect to see.

This building is in really bad shape,

so much so

that the whole structure is held up by steel girders and scaffolding.

Something much more destructive than just time

has reduced this place to near rubble.

On the edge of town is a brutish construction

that at first glance appears entirely unrelated.

Surrounded by lush green farmlands

is a series of stout concrete structures

that seem to serve no agricultural purpose at all.

And what we're looking at here is a relic of the idea

that you could send enough airplanes and drop enough bombs

to break the will of a people.

These rural ruins and the battered brick shell 6 miles away

are relics of a time

when britain was fighting to preserve its very existence.

The creeping horror

of the idea of going to sleep in your bed and never waking up

drove the people into the countryside.

Well, when I first came in,

it was completely overgrown.

The trees had taken over really at the back

and it was almost like a secret garden.

Hilary byers has fought for decades

to save this site from being torn down.

She works to ensure the tragedy of what happened here

is never forgotten.

We're intending to create memorials around the site

so we shall have boards with names on,

but we shall also have interpretation

explaining to people just what happened here.

In 1914 when this building was originally constructed,

it served the local community as a cinema.

It was called the national picture theatre.

It could seat over 900 people in its stalls and balcony levels,

and it had a 24-foot screen

that stretched across the far end of the cinema.

Their advertising material said,

"our chairs are as comfortable as father's armchair at home."

You know, they were at pains to tell you this was no fleapit.

You know, they were at pains to tell you this was no fleapit.

This was... this was the real deal.

Cinemas like this

provided entertainment for rich and poor alike.

One of the reasons for the popularity of the cinema

is that it was so affordable.

Going to see a show cost under seven cents.

If they were in the cheaper seats,

they would come into this foyer,

they would go up steps here

or over here

and into the auditorium through the doors,

and then, of course,

the floor gradually sloped down towards the screen.

This was a place where people came to enjoy themselves,

to meet up with friends and family,

but something happened to threaten all that.

On 3 September 1939

britain declared war on Nazi Germany,

marking the start

of the most destructive conflict in human history.

Of the most destructive conflict in human history.

One year later

the people of britain felt the full force of Hitler's wrath.

The Germans sent wave after wave of bombers

to drop an immense amount of ordnance all over cities in britain.

The blitz bought the reality of the war

from mainland Europe to the very doorstep of the British people.

Hull was no exception,

and its citizens were subjected to a brutal and sustained attack.

Hull is a really important English city.

It's industrial, it has a port,

but also hull faces Germany across the north sea.

Unlike some industrial places in the United Kingdom,

especially england,

hull is easy to bomb

hull is easy to bomb

because it's easy to get to.

This meant that the city was also the secondary target

for many other German bombing raids.

If you're in hull, the luftwaffe gets you when they're coming,

but they also get you when they're going.

Ordinary citizens resorted to sleeping in the surrounding fields

to survive the night, a practice known as 'trekking'.

They got a decent night's sleep somewhere,

wherever they could,

and came back into the city the next day.

They would rather sleep rough in the country

than get bombed to death in the city.

And the city responded by aiming its defences up towards the sky.

Dennis Chapman is a local historian

that helped rediscover this site in 2014.

That helped rediscover this site in 2014.

Where we are now is in the middle of a...

One of the four gun emplacements,

so the gun itself, which was a 3.7 inch gun,

was centrally located here.

Known as station h31,

it was part of a web of gun batteries around hull

designed to fight back against relentless luftwaffe attacks.

There should be seven ammunition recesses,

so that's where the shells were stored,

and the men would then collect the appropriate shell

and obviously feed it into the gun to be fired.

And then in addition to those recesses,

you've got the two shelters,

which is where the men would have sheltered

when they weren't on the gun.

On a busy night, it would be hectic

because they'd all be working at once,

there'd be information going out to the guns,

they'd be changing all the time

as the position of the aircraft would be changing.

But try as they might,

hull's Valiant defenders could not stop the bombs from falling.

Hull's Valiant defenders could not stop the bombs from falling.

As much as 95% of its buildings were damaged or destroyed.

All of Europe suffered in the second world war,

but the home secretary at the time said it -

no place in britain suffered worse than hull.

The national picture theatre would not escape the carnage,

but it wasn't Hitler who had the last laugh.

The circumstances around this building's destruction

are truly bizarre. You couldn't write it.

On 18 march 1941,

a full house had assembled

to watch one of wartime britain's most popular films.

You've got a movie theatre

filled with moviegoers watching 'the great dictator'.

Filled with moviegoers watching 'the great dictator'.

They're watching Charlie chaplin,

a working-class English guy,

who is mocking Hitler.

As you can imagine, Hitler and his buddies weren't amused at all,

but the film was hugely popular

with audiences in the us, the UK, and other allied countries.

They couldn't get enough of it.

And suddenly the film stops.

The projectionist puts a gel on,

which says that there's an air raid.

For almost seven hours, Hitler's fury rained down on hull.

With the air-raid sirens screaming outside,

the people inside must have been terrified.

And then a bomb hit.

It sent bricks and debris flying back through the building

towards the occupants taking shelter in the foyer.

Towards the occupants taking shelter in the foyer.

The smoke and screaming that surrounded them

must have been all-consuming.

So it's quite ironic that that was the film that was showing

the night that the cinema was bombed.

A room full of English people

watching Charlie chaplin

playing the character that is clearly based on Hitler,

and then Hitler takes a SWAT at them.

He wanted to punish the British for laughing at him.

In total 91 people lost their lives that night,

including nine on the road opposite the cinema.

But by some miracle, nobody in the cinema died.

The national picture theatre was destroyed beyond repair

that fateful night,

yet no amount of bombs could break the people's will

yet no amount of bombs could break the people's will

or stop them laughing at Hitler's expense.

Some British people even look back at this time

with a weird sense of nostalgia.

In england it's called blitz spirit.

The sentiment being

that if we could survive the blitz, we can survive anything.

At the conflict's end,

most of britain's destroyed buildings were slowly torn down

and replaced with modern structures.

That any of this cinema still stands

is tribute to the work of people like hilary.

It's a memorial to everybody,

all the civilians who died during world war ii,

and to the experience of civilians, those who survived as well.

On the outskirts of the Italian capital,

nestled in a wooded glade,

is a structure built in the name of defiance.

We're in the town of fregene,

a seaside community only about 20 miles outside of Rome.

In the middle of a pine forest

lies one of the oddest structures you'll ever see.

It's a feast of geometrical shapes hidden amongst the trees.

They're bundled together in a really chaotic way

like a giant game of Tetris.

It seems clear

whoever built this place had a disregard for the conventional.

The main building is kind of a study in contradictions.

Clearly they're meant to make some kind of architectural statement,

clearly they're meant to make some kind of architectural statement,

so it's not obvious whether it's a house or a small school

or a substation for a power company.

It really... It could be almost anything.

Often structures are a product of their time.

This one was a reaction.

This building cannot just be a house.

It has to serve some kind of function.

This crazy design is somehow also the proclamation of an ideology.

Raynaldo perugini grew up in the bizarre structure.

This was a home in which the normal rules didn't apply.

The project was started by two architecture professors from Rome,

giuseppe perugini and his wife uga de plaisant.

They wanted to build

a kind of a homestead that would reflect the trends

that were moving through architecture at the time.

Italy in the 1950s was changing.

Everything from music to cinema and design

was taking on a new lease of life.

Was taking on a new lease of life.

The inspiration was earlier conflict.

Italy's fascist government collapsed at the end of world war ii,

and in the period that followed

there was a kind of a countermovement

that wanted to reject fascism

and the kind of monolithic style

that we associate with fascist architecture.

And there was no better location

for the two architects to realise their dream

than the glamourous seaside town of fregene.

Fregene is a popular coastal town

that came to prominence in the 1960s and '70s

when it was the centre of the fashion and cinema worlds.

During this period,

it was a place where Italian intellectuals and bohemians

would often gather.

The filmmaker fellini had a house there

the filmmaker fellini had a house there

and actually shot some scenes in several of his movies,

including the film 'la dolce vita'.

Over a period of seven years,

architect giuseppe perugini, his wife and later their son

built this place as their eccentric holiday home.

This is casa albero, which translates simply as 'treehouse'.

And in the mind of perugini,

this was supposed to be a never-ending house

whose life and energy could go on forever.

This main building was only one aspect of the crazy concept.

This main building was only one aspect of the crazy concept.

Innovation, experimentation, boldness -

these are the kind of things that always get people excited,

so this house became the venue for some of the craziest parties

amongst the rich Italian bourgeoisie.

Amongst the rich Italian bourgeoisie.

But casa albero's days were sadly numbered.

By the mid-1970s the family used the building less and less.

Then in 1995 giuseppe perugini died,

followed by his wife nine years later.

After the architect's death, the house fell into disrepair.

It's been vandalised with graffiti,

became a squat and the venue for illegal parties.

That captured the attention of the media,

who then branded this structure as abandoned.

Today this building is a shell of what it once was.

Raynaldo, though, has big plans to change all that.

He's tirelessly trying to preserve his family's vision

and turn it into a cultural hub once again,

and raynaldo is adamant his father's dream should and will live on.

Captioned by ai-media ai-media. TV