Original subtitles

(dramatic music)

[Narrator] Weapons have existed as long as humankind.

For millennia, they have determined

the destiny of generations.

Weapons bring suffering and death.

They show what humans can inflict upon other humans.

But they're also intended to keep the peace

and pave new ways for technology.

(music swells)

Rule the skies and you'll win wars.

For thousands of years, men have developed new weapons

for attacking from above.

These three have made history.

Astonishing experiments will uncover the secret

of their deadly efficiency.

Aerial bombs have marked modern warfare to this day.

How easy is it to hit a target on the ground?

Rockets. They have been deployed in wars for centuries

and have turned into the biggest threat of our time.

It's scary to imagine standing here

with the arrows raining down.

Incendiary arrows have served as wonder weapons

since ancient times.

No one would have heard it.

No one would have seen it coming

until the house is fully ablaze.

Ignite an arrow and fire it.

Sounds easy. But in reality, incendiary arrows

are a master stroke of weapons technology.

Fire provides light, warmth, life.

Since the beginning of our time

human history has always revolved around fire.

And as long as mankind has benefited

from all that fire can give, they have made use of the fact

that it can also take.

Fire is one of the oldest weapons.

It terrifies primitive creatures like humans

and always has done.

If you watch a troupe of chimpanzees running from fire

and you watch a troupe of humans running from fire

you're watching the same thing.

We haven't lost that primeval fear of fire.

(fire blazing)

Incendiary arrows prove particularly effective

in sieges of cities or fortresses.

But how can the arrow stay ablaze

while it's soaring through the air?

(bass guitar solo)

Weapons expert Mike Loades is about to find out

at the Medieval Center in the Danish harbor town

of Nykøbing Falster.

(bow releases)

So today we're used to the idea of death and destruction

coming from the skies-bombs and missiles

raining terror on cities, of cities in flames.

But cities in flames, that's as old as when men

fought with a bow and arrow, because

they used incendiary arrows.

(fire lightly crackling)

Even up to the late medieval era

many peoples built their houses from wood

and covered their roof with straw.

An easy target for an incendiary attack.

We want to know how the fire reaches its goal.

Our expert goes for the easiest option first.

So I've just tied a ordinary bit of cloth

around this to see what it does.

See if it stays alight.

(dramatic music intensifies)

(string pulls back)

(bow releases)

A failed attempt, with a clear result.

Now, well, obviously it's no surprise

that it didn't stay alight, we could barely

get it alight to start with.

So they clearly had a different idea

than just tying a bit of rag around it.

(tribal drumming)

Our search to uncover the secret of incendiary arrows

leads us to a traditional smithy.

Blacksmith Jens Christiansen works on

the essential part of the weapon-an iron head.

In order to be able to carry the fire over long distances

it has to be forged in a very precise manner.

(metal hammer clanging against metal)

It's always a thrill to work with a blacksmith.

They are taking iron, which starts as a bit of rock

in the earth, and they're making things, elaborate shapes.

He's also using his eye to judge the temperature.

His eye is a thermometer.

The color of the flames tells him how hot it is.

And he needs it to be hot to split it

he needs it to be a different temperature

hotter, to forge it, so he's making all sorts of judgements.

(stoking coals)

The forge welding of the four pieces

in the basket, it needs to be exactly at the point.

If you get the heat too far down

your forge will weld the whole thing into a solid piece

and you cannot make the baskets.

Jens Christiansen is forming

a small basket out of the four iron branches

that will later hold an incendiary composition.

This is what makes an arrow an incendiary arrow.

So here is the nearly-finished incendiary arrow.

This is the cage which the incendiary material goes into.

It doesn't have to be an exact size

but this is just to hold things, all that matters

is that the socket will fit on the arrow.

It's got a point, so it's going to stick into something

when it arrives, because it will take time

for this to set anything alight.

But that's it, it's as simple as that.

Are you okay with this?

Beautiful work as ever, Jens.

It's simple, it's elegant, and it's ingenious

but you know, in the whole history of violence

there cannot be a crueler idea

than killing people by burning them to death.

You are absolutely right.

(water sloshing)

And there it is.

The missile is armed with its warhead and ready to go.

(dramatic music)

Athenians, Romans, Teutons, Saracens.

Almost all triumphant warriors use incendiary arrows.

Those who master the elaborate manufacturing technique

have a real advantage in war.

An archer with an incendiary arrow

can do the work of fifty, a hundred archers.

Because if his arrow stays alight, if it hits its target

if the fire starts, then the fire will spread.

You need no more arrows.

The Isle of Rhode 305 BCE.

In a bit of a fight over Alexander the Great's legacy

thousands of soldiers have built siege towers

before the walls of the city.

But the Rhodians defend themselves with burning arrows.

You have to protect siege equipment like mobile towers

from incendiary arrows and incendiary compositions.

Sometimes this was achieved with metal plates

or by putting up the hides of freshly-skinned animals,

attaching the flesh side to the exterior walls of the towers

to prevent them from catching fire.

The siege towers are set ablaze nevertheless.

The attack has failed.

The Rhodians erect the famous Colossus of Rhodes

to honor their sun god Helios.

They owe their victory to incendiary arrows.

(climactic twanging)

The iron head on the arrow is only part of its secret.

What's inside the basket is critical.

Mike Loades and Jens Christiansen know which substances

are most suitable for the incendiary composition.

This knowledge often determines the outcome of ancient

and medieval conflicts.

Chemistry decides on victory and defeat.

Or rather, alchemy.

That is the name of this science in the ancient world.

The earliest written records are from Egypt.

For incendiary arrows, knowledge about pitch

sulfur, and carbon is essential.

The origins of alchemy can be traced back

to the moments in history where people were

actively looking into different materials

and consciously trying to combine them.

You'll find the first examples

of man experimenting with sulfur in the Neolithic period.

That's where it all began.

Alchemists also do a lot of research

for weapons development.

Around the year 1000, experiments with sulfur

lead to the invention of black powder in China.

In fact, many of the groundbreaking findings of our past

were unplanned.

They did a lot of experimenting of course

and obviously they stumbled upon discoveries.

Take pyrite, for example, it's basically fool's gold

and if you heat it, it starts to produce fumes.

These fumes condensate on a cold surface and you get sulfur.

It's amazing what you can discover

when you're not even looking.

Countless experiments over many centuries.

The alchemists make discoveries that will go down in history

Their knowledge is protected like state secrets.

This is also how Mike Loades and Jens Christiansen know

what kind of incendiary composition is needed

for their iron basket.

Pitch, sulfur, deadwood, and hemp

ensure that the arrow keeps burning.

And then, for good measure, we can dip that in tar.

The last step, now the weapon

is ready for action.

(electric guitar intensifies)

Will it be possible to set fire to the target

thanks to the incendiary composition in the iron head?

Mike Loades wants to put that to the test.

(fire crackling)

So this is the arrow that I made with Jens

so it's got the sulfur at its core

around that is the deadwood, and then on the outside

is the toe dipped in tar, so we've got the tar going

the pitch is going on the outside

let's see how it will perform.

Hopefully that's getting hot enough

to get the deadwood lit inside.

(arrow releases, music swelling)

Well look at that!

It's actually taking!

That house is going to burn, and if this was a night raid

the soft tap of that arrow into that roof-

no one would have heard it, no one would have seen it coming

until the house is fully ablaze.

It's a most vicious form of warfare.

A terrible terror attack, to drive the citizens

from the city, to make them turn against their overlords

and give up and open the gates.

A wooden house with its straw roof

will be destroyed within two minutes

of the fire attack from above.

An elaborate arrowhead and a sticky incendiary mix

a millennia old technique deployed in countless conflicts.

It started as a single incendiary arrow.

Look at it now, look at that blaze.

It was a silent attack, and within minutes

the whole structure is ablaze.

(fire roaring)

Absolute terror.

(dramatic violin music)

An effective medieval weapon.

Not only does it get the job done on land

but also on water.

For centuries, the biggest threat to Naval warfare

are neither grappling hooks nor cannons

but incendiary arrows.

(orchestral music swelling)

Medieval ships are made of wood and pitch

and are highly flammable, and a lot of the sailors

during the Middle Ages couldn't swim.

So they faced a pretty grim choice

between either drowning or burning to death.

Throughout the 20th century

progress in the chemical industry brings about

ever more effective incendiary weapons.

They're called thermite, phosphor, napalm

and bring real hellfire to Earth.

Napalm is actually an abbreviation

for napthenic acid and palmitic acid, NAPALM.

If you mix it with gasoline, you produce a very sticky

and extremely flammable mass.

Even the tiniest drops of this incendiary composite

can burn through every layer of skin

right down to the flesh within seconds.

You basically measure the expansion

or the percentage of the body surface

that's effected by these severe, profound burns.

Napalam can penetrate the skin very deeply

down to the subcutaneous fatty tissue

or even the muscles.

It's already considered life-threatening

when burns are sustained to 30% of the skin's surface.

At 50%, the chance of survival is very very slim.

The Vietnam War draws the world's attention

to the disastrous effects of napalm.

On the eighth of June, 1972

the then nine-year-old Vietnamese girl Kim Fuchs

suffers severe burns in a US napalm air strike.

It's a miracle that she survives.

The photograph of the napalm girl is used

as a symbol worldwide in support of anti-war attitudes

and leads to the Americans accelerating their withdrawal

from Vietnam.

For Kim Fuchs, the scars on her skin

forever serve as a reminder of the terrible pain

she endured on that fateful day.

The use of napalm against civilian populations

was banned by the United Nations in 1980.

(dramatic music, arrows firing)

Historically-speaking, the most important incendiary weapons

were incendiary arrows.

Their era ends as firearms conquer the battlegrounds.

At the time, new and more effective weapons

for the attack from above are already available: rockets.

Their history dates back to the Middle Ages

and takes us to the far east.

It is the year 1232.

The Mongols are attacking the Jin Empire in north China.

During the siege of Kaifeng, the Chinese finally deploy

a weapon that their opponents have never

been confronted with before.

The Chinese, however, are already familiar with it

but for a whole different purpose.

The Chinese had used gunpowder and fireworks before

but in the past, only to scare away evil spirits.

(speaking foreign language)

It can scare away evil spirits

why not even enemies as well?

The Chinese aim bamboo canes filled with gunpowder

at the fast-approaching invaders.

(high-pitched whirring)

While a military impact is negligible

the psychological effect is powerful.

(distressed horse whinny)

The rocket attack produces noise and dense smoke.

The Mongol horses buck and bolt.

The attackers withdraw for the time being.

The rocket is a very effective weapon

not because it kills people, but because it terrifies horses

and the main enemy of China throughout history

has been nomadic horse armies coming down from the north.

The Mongols, the Huns... so the rocket is

a really good weapon for the Chinese

because it attacks the thing that makes the enemy dangerous

their mobility, their speed, their ability to

outmaneuver the Chinese.

(dramatic orchestral drum music)

Thuringia, Germany. Weapons expert Wolfgang Stabe

is building an advanced rocket

originally developed in Korea in the 15th century.

The rocket, called hwacha, is much more

than just psychological warfare.

It can fire up to a hundred deadly projectiles

simultaneously.

The first rocket launcher in history.

You can hardly imagine that such a small cart

with so many arrows has such a disastrous effect.

Wolfgang Stabe and his team set up the rocket

as one would have done in the old days, manually.

A paper tube filled with black powder

is attached to ordinary arrows.

When the black powder is ignited

the recoil pushes the rocket forward with explosive power

up to 500 meters.

(dramatic music)

In our experiment, we are using balloons

to represent the enemy's formation.

The trick of the Korean hwacha is its ignition mechanism.

One man can fire a hundred arrows at the same time.

The ignition technique is quite simple.

This main fuse chord ignites the first row.

If that one starts to burn, the second fuse

ignites the second row.

That means the ones up here will already be going off

parallel to this row, so the last one

will be that one down there.

But will the principle work in our experiment?

(fizzing and whirring)

At the end of the 16th century

Koreans are opposing a Japanese invasion.

The Japanese send their samurai battalions

fighting in fixed formation, the ideal target

for the hwacha rocket missiles, in theory.

In our test setting, the success is... modest.

Well, that's a result.

I didn't quite hit the target, but at the end of the day

I'd say it was a dangerous weapon.

The recoil principle has worked.

The weapon is sophisticated.

To be honest, this really scares me.

If I stood here and arrows rained down on me

I think I'd just run away, and I have no idea

where they'll land, all in all quite a potent weapon.

Not perfectly accurate, but one single man

can fire one hundred arrows in the blink of an eye.

Our hwacha replica has fired all of its 100 rockets.

We probably could not have taken down attacking samurais

with our experiment, but in reality

armies did not use just one hwacha, but dozens of them.

Their effect will thwart the plans of

Japanese general Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

He wants to invade the Korean Peninsula

at the end of the 16th century.

The Korean troops fiercely oppose the Japanese

during the long Imjin War.

Throughout this conflict, with the help of their hwachas

the Koreans are repeatedly successful

in stopping the Japanese.

(dramatic orchestral music)

Huang Jiu, February 1593, three thousand Koreans

are facing ten thousand Japanese soldiers.

What they did was defend themselves with forty hwachas

firing several thousand arrows at the Japanese.

They fled the territory, resulting in

a stunning victory for the Koreans.

The Europeans get to know the Asian rocket technology

in India, and learn to fear it.

In the eighteenth century, the English encountered

Indian rockets, these are quite powerful, they had

metal cases, and if they hit something like a man

or a horse, they could be quite dangerous.

British general William Congreve

continues developing the weapon

and soon receives support from other generals.

It's a cheap, light, man-portable bombardment device.

Unlike an artillery piece, which needs a large crew

to move it and to operate it because it's heavy.

The rocket, it's a self contained fire and forget weapon.

All you need is a few bits of wood to make a ramp

and you just fire it.

The Congreve rocket is not a multiple rocket launcher

like the hwacha, but when it hits a target

it explodes and releases sharp metal shards.

Our next test.

We've adapted a real rocket to ensure

that it no longer poses a danger to us.

Small parts made of plastic, not metal like the original.

And for the shrapnel effect, we used peas.

They're less dangerous.

Again, gunpowder triggers the crucial recoil effect.

Yet what makes this rocket so special

is the combination of explosive and propellant.

That's what makes it so perilous.

Therefore, Wolfgang Stabe endeavors

to build us a safe version.

The rocket is ready, and it's just as explosive

as the original back in the 19th century.

Let's go and witness the bang.

But is there a way of knowing how high and how far

the weapon will fire once it's up in the air?

Where will the detonation take place?

We need to do a test run.

This is exactly how they did it in the past.

They used a tripod of sorts, where they could

adjust the angle, but they had to try and observe

the trajectory, otherwise it would've been impossible

to make a targeted shot.

We'll do the same, make some warm up shots

then we'll set up our targets.

Wolfgang Stabe resorts to remote ignition

to be on the safe side.

This way, we can fire the rocket from a safe distance

because I don't know where it will go.

It could also blow up in our faces.

The homemade rocket is in position.

Wolfgang Stabe connects it to the ignition cable.

Now we're all set.

Three... Two... One...

(rocket whirring)

(tiny crackle)

There was some crosswind, so it drifted off a little.

But we're at the distance that we need

and I think we can see some results this way.

We'll set up a few targets at a safe distance.

(air pump blowing air)

Mangzhai's balloons will once again take the place

of our enemy.

The plan is to make the rocket hit them

right in the middle and explode.

A real world experiment.

Over there are the attackers, our balloons

here is the rocket, ready to be fired.

Will the single rocket be more effective

than the projectile downpour of the hwacha?

All safe, I'm counting down.

Three... Two... One... And fire.

(match strikes, fuse fizzling)

(rocket hisses)

And it's working!

The rocket explodes exactly where it's supposed to.

In a real battle, it would've shot metal shards

through the air, not peas.

It went right down into the middle of them.

As a soldier, you probably wouldn't even notice it.

And you can see where all the shreds go

in our case the peas, and they destroy everything

within a five meter radius. Nasty.

Unlike our replica, the 19th century

Congreve rocket has a metal casing.

Its deployment in battle is devastating.

Especially when fired in salvos of hundreds at a time.

This is our shrapnel, because we couldn't use metal here.

But what we can see is that even these tiny peas

fly so far that they're able to destroy the balloons.

Just imagine being hit by shrapnel like that.

Congreve keeps developing these weapons

to make them more accurate, with more accurate charges

by moving the stick so it's central rather than on one side

and increasing the size so it can carry

a payload of several kilos incendiary or explosive warhead.

And these will be used right the way

through the 19th century in Britain's wars of empire

as the only way of getting heavy weapons

onto target in difficult areas.

Congreve rockets are also used

in the Battle of Leipzig in 1813.

The largest military encounter of the 19th century

with more than 600,000 soldiers.

While Napoleon is attacking the Prussians on their allies

a British rocket brigade comes to their aid.

It hit the group right in the center between the soldiers

between the cavalry, exploding like shrapnel

hurting or killing many people, a brutal effect.

The effect of these early rockets on the battlefield

is so impressive, that it will go down in one of history's

best-known national anthems.

Congreve's rockets achieve notoriety

in the American national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner

which refers to "the Rockets' red glare"

and the bombs in the air.

It was written by Francis Scott Key

who watched the British bombard Baltimore

with rockets and mortars in 1814

and he wrote the piece the next morning when

all of these incendiary fireworks had failed

to drive the Americans out of Baltimore.

They put the rocket into the heart of every American

because they all know the words.

Rockets can be more than just effective weapons.

An American engineer and inventor

seized their potential early on.

US physicist Robert Goddard claims as early as 1919

that it will soon be possible for men

to reach the moon with the help of rockets.

No one wants to believe him until Goddard launches

the first rocket fueled with gasoline and liquid oxygen.

From our point of view today, you would probably say

that the experiment failed because the rocket

rose into the air for no more than two and a half seconds.

Nevertheless, it was a groundbreaking success

since it was the first ever liquid-fueled rocket.

This revolutionized rocket propellant technology.

Goddard's subsequent rocket launches

like this one in New Mexico in 1930, are more successful.

His most essential finding: when using a liquid propellant

the recoil mechanism can even work in a vacuum.

That means in space.

Robert Goddard doesn't live to see

the first trip to outer space.

He, however, set the standards.

Liquid propellant is here to stay.

(rocket launching)

(dramatic bass humming)

Once again, war accelerates progress.

Pier Nomanda, at the Baltic Sea coast of Germany.

Scientists design new weapons for Hitler.

They develop the first functioning cruise missile in history

called the V-1, a flying bomb

with wings and pulse-jet engine.

The V-1 is a German terror weapon

most frequently deployed against the residents of London.

It has a fuel supply limit, which means...

When it's flown a certain distance, it cuts out and crashes.

That distance is from the launch base to central London.

So they used to bombard London, and quite quickly

the British work out these things are slow

and quite cumbersome, and the best thing to do

is to get some fighter planes up there

and literally tip them over.

So the British fighters fly alongside

and literally just lift a wing and tip this thing

out of balance, and it crashes to the ground

in the fields before it gets to London.

A more terrifying successor soon follows the wing bomb

that bears the name Vengeance Weapon 1.

The engineer behind the new weapon is Werner von Braun.

His rocket has an operational altitude of 100 kilometers

the boundary between our atmosphere and outer space.

At the time, this marked an unprecedented achievement.

The V-2 is operational by September 1944.

While the V-1 could be heard and sirens

could warn the population, the V-2

dropped silently down on London.

It's a supersonic rocket.

Its deployment claims about 8000 lives.

Fortunately, the British have worked out the best answer

to this is to misreport the impacts.

So they're reporting the impacts as being

much further away than they actually are

and so the Germans adjust their targeting

and fire them into fields, because the Germans

can't get any reconnaissance over Britain

to see where they're impacting, they're reading newspapers

and newspapers aren't telling the truth.

But the V-2 does not only claim victims in England.

Prisoners in the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp, Germany

are forced to build the weapon under inhumane conditions.

When the US forces liberate the camp

they stumble upon terrible sights.

For the rocket program, more than 20,000 prisoners

lost their lives due to forced labor.

Paradoxically, far more people died

when manufacturing the weapon,

than as a result of its actual deployment.

Hitler's rocket pioneer is not

held accountable after the war.

He migrates to the U.S, and develops

ever more potent rockets.

And then we have our rocket arms race

in which the two superpowers go around boasting

that their missile is bigger than the other guy's missile.

Fourth of October, 1957, the Soviet Union sends

the first artificial satellite into space.

The message is clear: we can attack

any place on Earth with a rocket like this.

During the Cold War, east and west

could have annihilated their enemies several times over

with their arsenal of nuclear bombs.

What are they telling us?

You know, this is overt display.

"Look at me, look at what I can do."

(bass rumbles)

What you'd have done in the old days

with a big army and a large navy

and some fabulous airplanes, you now do with a rocket.

The rocket is your stand up symbol.

And one of the biggest threats of our time.

The greatest suffering in the wars

of the 20th century, however, is not caused by rockets

but by another weapon deployed

from the skies, the aerial bomb.

More than three tons of explosives

are dropped from the skies, whole cities are ravaged.

(dramatic music, faint ringing)

The history of bombing begins

in the Italian War of Independence in 1849.

Venice fights against Austria.

Field Marshal Radetzky faces a problem.

He can't reach Venice with his current arsenal.

The Austrian cannonballs all end up in the water.

In the summer of 1849, they find a way.

Explosives attached to balloons hover over the lagoon city.

It is the first airborne bomb attack in history.

I don't think it's even possible to imagine

the terror that went through people's minds

when a bomb dropped from above.

"It's coming from the sky, where do we go?"

"There's nowhere to run, there's no place to hide."

"It's falling on us and we can't do anything about it."

And for that to have happened for the first time

so people didn't know what it was

people didn't know how to protect themselves.

Venice is struck by cholera, people are hit by famine.

The balloon bombs are the tipping point, the city surrenders

That the explosives actually hit their target, however

was just a stroke of luck for Austria.

The concept of a balloon bomb

is of course complete nonsense.

Even if I knew the exact wind conditions

in the place where I want to drop the bomb

that could be totally different a hundred meters away

or in another atmospheric layer.

Wind reacts differently at different altitudes.

So, technically, this was not a very good idea.

(dramatic piano)

Airplanes offer more accuracy.

At the beginning of the 20th century

powered airplanes make their debut.

In December 1903, the Wright Brothers

have their big breakthrough-the first powered flight.

Kitty Hawk floats in the air for 59 seconds.

It catches the military's attention in no time.

Giulio Gavotti is a pilot in

the Italo-Turkish War in Libyan.

On the first of November, 1911

he drops four grenades from his airplane.

They explode, but no one gets hurt.

Gavotti is the first man to make an aerial bombardment.

Bulgarian captain Simeon Petrov

is the first to refine the idea.

Knowing that ordinary grenades just tumble to the ground

he develops a more effective type of bomb.

(static, dramatic sting)

The more clever you were in designing the fins

and the nose cone of the bomb, the more

accurate it would be, the more likely it was to hit

the target you were aiming at, rather than

just land on the ground somewhere.

So bomb design is not just about

the thing that goes bang, it's about the bit

that gets it to the ground accurately and precisely.

Petrov's aerial bomb is the first of its kind

and gains worldwide popularity.

It is initially deployed in 1912.

The fins make the new bomb travel aerodynamically

and stabilize it in the air.

Even if it's dropped manually, like in World War I.

Our next experiment...

Together with historian Stephen Bull

we want to simulate the aiming process

of World War I pilots.

These are copies of some of the bombs

from the first World War, and the weight is probably

as much as one man can handle, conveniently.

If you go much heavier than this

you're going to need better technology.

How accurate can a bomb be dropped manually?

(tarp ruffling)

A red cross on an airfield is our target.

So just how easy is it to hit a target on the ground

from a moving aircraft by throwing a bomb

over the side of the plane?

We're about to find out.

The rules are simple: above the target

the aerial bomb is dropped by eye.

An experienced airplane crew provides support

for Stephen Bull.

Once the bomb models are loaded

they will rise to an altitude of 400 meters.

So we're inside the bombing aircraft now.

This is an Antonov An-2 biplane

so its characteristics are quite similar

to some of the first World War aircraft

that would have been used to drop bombs.

This plane can fly very slowly.

In fact if the wind speeds are strong

it can appear to be stationary.

The downside is that we have to keep the door open

so it's going to be quite exciting.

(dramatic music, propeller whirring)

The machine gains altitude and accelerates

to 150 kilometers an hour, conditions similar

to those during an airstrike in World War I.

(wind turbulence, propeller whirring)

They've got the bomb ready in position

and the guys are in the doorway.

(dramatic violin)

A little bit more to the right

before maintaining their position and altitude.

Bomb's in the doorway, they're looking for the cross

I'm looking for the cross.

Bomb's away!

I'm trying to see where it's landed.

I'm really not sure how close to the target we were.

The bomb was successfully dropped by eye.

But has it hit its intended target?

How close did we get to the actual cross?

So according to an eyewitness

the bomb is roundabout here, somewhere.

(grass crunching)

Ah, this is the remains of plaster

and the central section of the bomb and the fins

and it's actually embedded in the ground.

I would've thought twenty, thirty centimeters.

Yup, and there is the nose of the bomb

and the fins really are no longer fins

so it's completely mangled.

If it had been full of explosives

you wouldn't even have this much left.

Quite a mess.

Our bomb dummy has hit the ground

about 90 meters off the target.

I think we've done reasonably well.

But even so, if this was a small group of men

we'd been aiming at, we'd have missed it.

The results obtained by World War I pilots

were likely pure luck.

Hitting a target by eye alone

is already a huge challenge, even in

the best of weather conditions.

If there are storm winds, it is futile

to even go up in the air.

Nevertheless, the weather has always been

a decisive factor for the military.

During the D-Day landing operation in Normandy in 1944

the Allies are waiting to start the liberation of Europe.

The US meteorologists predict a short anti-cyclone

for the sixth of June, a golden opportunity

since the Germans are expecting more rain.

The Allies invade, and surprise the German soldiers.

Despite large losses, the landing is successful.

Weather has also played a major role

in the outcome of medieval wars.

Many commanders in chief avoid going to battle

in rainy conditions; a muddy battleground

is disadvantageous for both sides.

Crécy, 1346: in the first major land battle

between France and England in the Hundred Years' War

the enemies take to the fields despite the bad weather.

But France's crossbow shooters struggle in the rain.

The strings are too wet, the ground is too slippery

for the shooters to get a solid standing.

The inability to control the weather

is probably one of the most... frustrating and draining

and psychologically-damaging aspects of war.

But how well can you factor in wind and weather?

We want to give it another try.

Dropping a bomb manually, but taking the wind into account.

What you may not realize is that the bomb

will be leaving the aircraft at the same speed

as the aircraft is moving, so we're going to have to

judge carefully the distance between

the release and the target.

We place a white cross 375 meters away from the red cross.

The bomb has to be dropped from this

position to land within the red.

According to our calculations regarding

altitude, speed, air resistance and the weight of the bomb

this is the perfect place to release it.

I'm very close to a 400 meter drop

and I just don't wanna get any closer.

He's looking for the cross.

The white cross is directly underneath us.

Bombs away!

Well I really don't know where they've gone yet.

(suspenseful music)

Did the bomb get closer to the target than the first time?

Back on solid ground, Stephen Bull begins

to search for our bomb, not as easy as it seems.

I've got one, I've got a bomb!

(crew laughing faintly)

I can feel the tail fins, and some...

About half a meter down.

The impact site is about fifty meters off target.

An improvement compared to the first trial.

Can I pull it out, it's very so hard

and so deep, we'll need two men, three men.

And a spade. (chuckles) (offscreen crew) Okay.

The dummy bomb has dug deep

into the ground nose-first.

(sad guitar)

A dud from a real attack would be comparably

deeply buried and comparably difficult to find.

Okay, so we've been using a strong guy

and a shovel, and it's an hour later

and we still can't shift this bomb.

But we can be sure that it was one

that was put here by means of calculation

aimed at the white aiming mark from above

and fell near to our target area, the red cross.

So maths can help, but during the first World War

it was both luck and judgment.

(eerie music)

It isn't until World War II

that bombings become more accurate.

(airplanes flying overhead)

Making use of targeted dives, German bombers

like the Junkers 87 are able to hit their targets

within a radius of a couple of meters.

(bomb sirens blaring)

Improved targeting devices and the new strategy of

carpet bombing are a game changer.

With bigger machines and an increasing number of bombs

the Germans attack city centers and industrial zones.

Bombs rain down on Warsaw, Waterdam, and Coventry.

Then the British and American bombers strike back.

(airplanes flying overhead)

Both sides are hit hard, entire cities soon lay in ashes.

Houses turn to rubble, 600,000 people die.

The killing of civilians is not collateral damage.

It is actively planned.

Commander and chief of the British bomber command

Arthur Harris wants to demoralize the German population.

Moral bombing is used in a targeted manner

to demoralize civilian populations on both sides.

Human losses were consciously factored in

as a means to achieve one's military objectives.

The Allies' bombardments are not accurate.

Dropped on densely-populated cities, however

the downpour of bombs hits apartment buildings

even without precise target calculations.

There's a deadly strategy behind the bombardments.

First, explosive bombs are dropped to demolish

the roofs and windows of apartment buildings and houses.

These bombs are followed by phosphorous and thermite

incendiary bombs, to ensure that the now

unprotected buildings catch fire.

The firefighter squads are in for another shock.

Some of the bombs have time fuses.

Trying to extinguish the fires is life-threatening.

Hamburg is hit by Operation Gomorrah in the summer of '43.

The British bombers initially target

the city center and the port, before moving on

to the eastern part of the city

a working-class neighborhood.

An inferno rages in the city, more than 30,000 people perish

I can see how people, if they're being bombed

want the war to end, and they want the war

to end immediately.

However, what happens generally is that people

build up more anger and resentment against the enemy

If they've lost their loved ones

if they're being bombed continually

all it does is create more anger

and more trauma and more despair.

The moral bombing attempts fail.

The Germans' will to persevere

is not weakened by the bombardments.

Quite on the contrary...

Essentially the incompetence of strategic bombing

early in the war led to a reduction

in the moral standards of targeting

something that no soldier on the ground

would think was acceptable, the random killing of civilians

became standard practice for air forces.

All air forces, anybody will just drop some bombs.

Once you get there, bomb them.

The barbarity reaches a new climax

in aerial warfare over Japan.

Tokyo, ninth of March, 1945.

The majority of the city is destroyed.

More than 100,000 people die in the attack

more than in the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Time and time again, the aerial bomb returns

to countless war theaters after 1945.

Be it Vietnam or Syria, the aerial bomb remains

the standard weapon for the attack from above.

(explosion)

The airplanes carrying the bombs, however, change.

Not to protect civilians, but rather the pilots.

Originally designed for observation

drones can silently drop bombs at command

and are completely unmanned.

(mysterious music)

Pilots are fallible, they're very expensive

to carry in airplanes.

They double the size of the airplane

their life support systems eat up space and burn fuel.

The fact that we've taken the pilot out of the airplane

doesn't change anything, it's still a human choice.

During an attack, the drone pilots are located

in the safe confines of command centers

situated far from the war itself.

That person who's operating that machinery

still has to have that moral dilemma

and still has to try and justify their actions

to themselves in order to go through

that psychological process of dealing

with the act of killing, which is

essentially still what it is.

The drone pilots see what happens

after the bomb has been dropped

and they know that they were the ones to push the button.

Drones don't kill people, people kill people using drones.

That's where we are; if we tip over

and give artificial intelligence a role

in making those decisions, that's a whole different thing.

We haven't got there, and I don't think

we're going that way... just yet.

The attack from above.

Mankind has let fire rain down from the skies

for thousands of years, like the Lord did

on Sodom and Gomorrah.