All language subtitles for World.War.II.With.Tom.Hanks.S01E12.Battle.For.The.Skies.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

In 1942 and into 1943,

hundreds of thousands of Americans
descend on the East of England

to live, fight, and maybe die
in the joint effort

to defeat Nazi Germany from the air.

Combat at 25,000ft, and 300mph,

has never been attempted before.

The physical, mental and emotional
challenges will be unique.

Victory in World War II
will be largely determined

by who controls the skies:

the German Luftwaffe
or the Allied air forces.

All wars changed the world,

but none of them changed the world
like the Second World War did.

Japan's on the march,
Germany's on the march...

...no-one can imagine the nightmare
they're about to unleash...

...the most destructive war
in human history.

Suddenly, the world
is turned upside down,

and all hell is let loose.

The West is stunned
by the speed of the advance.

You get the Allies,
led by the big three,

Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin:

men who are dealing with
immensely complicated questions.

It's the biggest military
operation of human history.

The Allies have to come together,
not just militarily,

but industrial scale:
it's a global perspective.

They have to fight
in every climate,

from the Arctic,
to the jungles of the Pacific,

to the deserts of Africa
and the depths of the ocean.

But there was
no certainty of victory.

It was going to be
a horrific bloodbath.

We see humans
at their absolute worst,

how they treat other human beings.

And we see them
at their absolute best,

willing to give their lives
that others might live.

World War II was a struggle
in which

there could be one victor...
and one vanquished.

The Third Reich is building

elaborate coastal defences
in Europe.

As they continue
to battle the Soviets in the east,

the Germans know that it's only
a matter of time

before Britain and America
attack from the west.

From the English Channel
to the plains of Russia,

Germany controls most of Europe.

Hitler has turned Europe

into an apparently
impregnable fortress.

But as people said at the time,

'Yes, but he forgot
to put a roof over it.'

And the Allied bombers
are going to take advantage of that.

In the First World War,

both sides bombed each other
to little effect.

But as aviation evolves,

a new concept of warfare develops
in the 1920s and 1930s:

strategic bombing.

Its proponents
are a group of officers

from the US Air Corps
Tactical School.

They come to be known
as the Bomber Barons.

The theory is we'll use
this novel weapon in a novel way,

not to attack the enemy's armies,

to attack the enemy's homeland:

his factories, his infrastructure,
destroying his economy,

and thus making it impossible
for the enemy to make war.

These air power advocates say
this is a better way to fight war.

No need for that horrible
trench deadlock from World War I.

That's the old way.

The new way is strategic bombing.

East Anglia is the England
of little churches,

hedges, fields, medieval buildings.

And it's turned...

into one gigantic...

...aircraft carrier.

In the spring of 1942,

the US Eighth Air Force
begins construction

on dozens of air bases,

transforming a quiet corner
of East England

into one of the most vital fronts
of the entire Second World War.

It's flat,
it's perfect for airfields.

So you get this massive, massive
influx of American bombers...

...carrying the most destructive
weapons ever produced.

And just as strikingly,
young American airmen.

They all had grown up dreaming
of flying above the clouds

at over 300mph...

...something their parents and
grandparents could never imagine.

And all of a sudden,
here's this opportunity.

The English used to complain,
'They're oversexed,

they're overpaid,

and they're over here.'

The Royal Air Force
has been striking

the German homeland for two years.

Take off, off you go.
Off you go, over.

Prime Minister
Winston Churchill understands

how important such raids are
for British morale.

But the RAF pays a grievous cost.

And in these early months
of the war,

there were raids with
hardly any aircraft coming back.

And the most important lesson
they took away from it is that

daytime bombing was a very
hazardous thing to undertake.

Arthur Harris is the man

put in charge
of Britain's Bomber Command.

And it's his idea
to switch to night bombing:

to use night as a cloak

to protect these bomber forces

so that they can drop their bombs

and they have a better chance
of making it home.

So what they're doing
is merely area bombing.

They're flying over German cities
at night

and letting loose their bomb loads.

And that means civilian casualties.

There's a lot of retribution
in this British strategy.

The Blitz had smashed British cities

and factories in the winter
of 1940-1941.

And the Brits plan
to smash German society so badly

that it knocks them out of the war.

They sowed the wind, and now...

they are going
to reap the whirlwind.

Meeting in Casablanca,

President Roosevelt, Prime
Minister Churchill, and their staffs

strategise how to continue the
Allied assault on the Third Reich.

One of the major outcomes
of the Casablanca Conference

is the Allies declared unconditional
surrender as their war aim.

But something else happens
at Casablanca as well...

...an argument on air strategy
between the British and Americans.

The US Army Air Force,

particularly its Commander,
General Henry 'Hap' Arnold,

insists that
daylight precision bombing

on critical wartime industries
will be more effective.

And as so often
in World War II,

American expectations
come up against British experience.

Churchill is gonna go to FDR
and tell him that, 'Look.

Your daylight precision stuff,
it's not gonna work.

We tried it, it didn't work.

That's why we are doing
bombing operations at night.

And that is the way forward.'

Well, Hap Arnold gets wind of this.

Arnold's a pioneer in aviation,

taught by the Wright Brothers
how to fly,

and he is a believer
in strategic air power.

And when the British say, 'Hey,

you guys should bomb at night
just like we do,'

he says, 'No, no, air power
could be used in a better way.'

The American plan
rests on a cutting-edge device...

...the Norden bombsight.

The Norden bombsight
is an analogue computer.

You punch in various data:

wind speed, altitude,
wind direction,

air pressure, and it correlates
all those things together

and tells you exactly
when to drop the bomb.

According
to the advertising slogans,

it can drop a bomb
in a pickle barrel at 18,000ft.

Americans claimed
the Norden bombsight,

which requires daylight
and clear weather,

promises greater precision,

and therefore
fewer civilian casualties.

So Henry Arnold and his advisors
come up with this plan,

the Combined Bomber Offensive,

which means
the British bombing at night

and the Americans bombing
precision targets during the day.

The Americans are gonna sell
it as this round-the-clock bombing.

And this utterly appeals
to Churchill,

with the idea that his adversary
will never catch a break.

Attacking an enemy
from 25,000ft

presents unique challenges.

Temperatures dip below -50F.

If an airman's supply of oxygen is
cut off for more than 60 seconds...

...he will die.

You look out the window
as a crewman on a B-17,

and you begin to see black puffs.

And they might not look
too dangerous...

...until one actually makes contact.

The most infamous
German weapon of them all

was the Flak 88mm gun.

It's capable of sending
29lb explosive projectiles...

...to altitudes approaching 30,000ft.

The dilemma with Flak is you
can't manoeuvre to avoid it...

...so the best you can do
is sit tight and grit your teeth.

Once the Flak stops,
there's silence.

It's a deathly silence,
because they know what's coming.

There's four of 'em,
one o'clock high.

They're coming around.

German fighter pilots
are seasoned combat veterans.

Many of them have hundreds of kills

cos they've been engaged
in this war since 1939.

The best way
to kill a German fighter

is to send Allied fighters
to shoot them down,

but when the United States
starts to bomb Germany proper,

their fighters don't have the range
to be able to escort bombers

all the way to a target.

So the B-17 is bristling
with machine guns

around the fuselage of the aircraft.

Three planes, nine o'clock,
coming around.

Too fast, six o'clock up, coming in.

It really is a flying fortress.

Bomber crews
were these interdependent societies

in which every person
was dependent upon

the person sitting next to 'em
and the person sitting behind them.

Breaking 11, breaking 11.
I got him.

B-17 out of control
at three o'clock.

Come on, you guys.
Get out of that plane. Bail out.

Come on, get out of there.

A few miles
from the actual target,

the bomber will start
what's called the bomb run.

It's all done visually.

You have to hold altitude,
hold air speed, and hold heading

so the bombardier can dial in
on the Norden bombsight.

Cos if you don't hit the target,
you gotta come back again.

War sometimes breaks down
to individual moments of terror.

You're watching other planes being
literally blown out of the sky.

And you have to drop the bombs
with precision...

...and then make it out again
on the way home.

Bombs away!

In combat conditions,
the accuracy of the Norden bombsight

is not as precise
as the Air Force predicted.

The casualties
are greater than they feared.

These missions would
come back with 10%, 20% losses.

And of course,
the pilots are highly trained,

highly technical people
that are very difficult to replace.

No-one in history
has ever tried

strategic bombing
on this scale before.

As generals, and strategists,
and air marshals are working out

the future of air war,
these men are guinea pigs.

Mission by mission,
the Eighth Air Force slowly develops

the methods needed
to damage their intended targets.

But Adolf Hitler's attention
remains fixed

on his battle with the Soviets.

He had seen
the German losses back in 1940

when the Luftwaffe
was attacking England.

And to him it looked like...

strategic air power doesn't win
wars, ground forces win wars.

So Hitler's viewpoint about
an air force is that it exists...

to support the ground troops.

With the loss at Stalingrad,

including the capture
of his entire 6th Army,

Hitler is focused
on the Eastern Front.

But the Allied raids do alarm

Luftwaffe Air Marshal
Hermann Goering.

Goering is hearing
from his local and regional

Luftwaffe commanders that they
really need more fighter aircraft.

But in a sense, Goering's trapped.

If he detaches air power
from the Eastern Front,

a situation that is already critical
is soon going to turn mortal.

The Germans now
are gonna streamline procedures...

...and make things more efficient.

They start producing more aircraft,
more armaments...

...in the middle
of the Combined Bomber Offensive.

So from 1943 on,

there's an exponential increase
in German industrial output.

With German fighter production
on the upswing,

the Allied governments
are becoming increasingly concerned,

and they're getting a little tired
of hearing their airmen say,

'We can bring Germany to its knees,'

when they don't see any evidence
that that's true.

In May,
Churchill and Roosevelt meet

to finalise plans
in the Mediterranean.

They also commit to
a cross-channel invasion of France.

Since America came into the war,
they've had a strategy...

to land a gigantic force somewhere
in northwestern France...

and then driving straight
into the heart of Germany.

Codenamed Operation Overlord,

the attack is scheduled
for spring of the next year.

Achieving air supremacy
over occupied Europe

is crucial to the success
of the invasion.

At this point, everybody recognises
amphibious operations can't happen

unless you control the seas
and have control of the air.

So the top commanders all agree
that the number-one priority

is destroying the Luftwaffe.

And that means the bomber force
is given the job

of smashing the infrastructure
of the Luftwaffe on the ground...

...so when the Allies land on D-Day
and in the ground fighting

that follows, there'll be
no German aircraft interfering.

The RAF and Eighth Air Force
join efforts

for what they term Blitz Week:

attacks on various cities
across Germany.

Their first joint target
is a busy port with dockyards,

submarine pens and manufacturing.

It's also a home
to over a million people.

Hamburg is a real centre

of aircraft production,
so for the Americans,

there's lots of specific military
industrial targets they can attack.

But the Brits look at the types
of housing there and they think

they're very vulnerable to fire.

So they're going
to burn neighbourhoods.

They're gonna de-house
German people.

And that means workers
are gonna be killed,

factories will grind to a halt,
supply chains will break down.

It's codenamed
Operation Gomorrah,

after the Old Testament city that
was destroyed by fire from above.

This is gonna be eight days
and seven nights

of pounding the city of Hamburg.

It's very carefully planned.

First, there are high explosives
to blow out windows,

to blow out roofs,
to knock down buildings.

And they'll drop incendiaries,
smaller bombs,

that just burn like firecrackers,
and with these roof tiles gone,

the wooden structure
of the roofs is exposed.

These little incendiaries will land
in those roofs and just set fires.

The British want revenge
on Hamburg for the Blitz.

The Americans have been singing the
strategic bombing song for years,

and now they can show
the destructive nature...

of the Combined Bomber Offensive...

to wipe a city off the map.

In the summer of 1943...

...Allied air forces
launch Blitz Week...

...the largest series of raids
on Germany to date.

The British and American
air forces

have supposedly
been working together:

the British bombing by night,
the US by day.

But they haven't been bombing
the same target cities.

That changes in the summer of 1943.

The Allies' first joint target
is the city of Hamburg.

On the night of July 24th,
the raids begin.

The RAF drops incendiary bombs.

But in the following days,

American B-17s
are unable to hit their targets.

The Americans intended
to bomb aircraft factories,

but the use of incendiaries
created so much smoke

that the Norden bombsights
were essentially blinded.

They can't actually
see their targets, so they're almost

reduced to doing area bombing,
not unlike the British.

On July 27th,

a heat wave
sends temperatures soaring

as the RAF returns
for a fourth night of strikes.

It's very hot, it's very dry.

And the meteorological conditions
are ripe for firestorm.

This time, the fires burn so hot,

the oxygen that these fires demand
causes a windstorm.

Winds are over 150mph.

The firestorm works
a little bit like a blast furnace.

It's a localised weather system
that will see that fire spread

at the speed of a galloping horse.

A gigantic updraft results,

that robs people
cowering in their shelters of oxygen

and leads to death by asphyxiation.

Temperatures go up to 1,000C.

It's the most devastating firestorm
that's ever been created.

Stories are of people
trying to run out of shelters

with children near them,

burning, with their hands and feet
stuck in melting asphalt,

with the buildings
falling down on top of them.

The city of Hamburg...

...is devastated.

Operation Gomorrah
kills over 40,000 civilians.

Almost two-thirds of the city's
houses are burnt to the ground...

...leaving
a million residents homeless.

Churchill is worried about the
human cost of what they're doing.

He's worried about
how history will look at it.

And there's a line
from Churchill supposedly,

where he looks
at some of the movies of Hamburg...

...and goes, 'Are we beasts?'

The striking thing
about air power...

is it makes all of us combatants.

It's not just about the battlefield.

The battlefield
is actually civilian populations.

The destruction
stuns Nazi high command.

One of Hitler's ministers
tells him that,

'Hamburg put the fear of God in me.'

But Hitler refuses to visit the city

or receive a delegation of civilians
who had saved lives during the fire.

Hamburg is a shock
to the entire German war effort.

Goering has told Hitler, repeatedly,

that he had
this bomber problem under control,

and now here lies the second-largest
city in Germany in ashes.

Accounts of the bombing of
Hamburg spread throughout Germany.

Hitler begins to transfer
German fighter planes

from the Eastern Front and
the Mediterranean to the fatherland.

In addition,
the Germans ring their major cities

with these gigantic,
monumental Flak towers.

150ft tall,

11ft-thick concrete walls,

bristling with guns.

Not only are they highly effective
against incoming bombers,

their guns
barking the sound and fury

remind the people
that Hitler is looking out for them.

Back in Britain,
there was big disagreement,

at the time,
with how the raid on Hamburg goes.

From Harris's point of view,
this is a war-winning strategy:

that if you hit people hard enough,

you can cause a breakdown
of their will to fight.

But for Arnold,
Hamburg was not a success.

It proved the inefficiency
of area bombing.

He wants to strike precise targets:

the factories that are
keeping the Luftwaffe in the air.

Henry Arnold
thinks strategic bombing can work.

We just need to do it harder.

The combined American-British
raid on Hamburg levels a city...

...but does little
to destroy the Luftwaffe

before the invasion of Europe.

By August of 1943,

the Eighth Air Force is receiving
enough planes and personnel

to launch
the large formations required

to decimate
German aircraft production.

Bomber Baron theory
is about to be put into practice.

What is keeping the Luftwaffe in
the air are the factories behind it.

That's what Arnold wants to strike.

And he thinks the way to do that
is to double down

on daylight precision bombing:

more planes, more raids,

more attacks on the same target...

until the Germans break.

Arnold now demands maximum
effort from the Eighth Air Force.

Normally, there are planes
that are being worked on,

or repaired,
or air crew that are resting,

so that every now and then,
they get a day off.

But now when you go maximum effort,

it means you put
everything in the air every time.

Previously, around 90 B-17s
would fly each mission,

but that number will soon double...

and triple.

The Americans
are obsessed with this view

of the German economy as a series
of interconnected hubs and spokes.

So if they hit the right domino,
they'll all come down.

These are called
bottleneck industries...

...industries where just a few plants

and locations
control all the production.

Bombing bottleneck targets

seems to be a more efficient use
of your air force.

One big raid, one factory destroyed,

a crucial sector
of the German war economy crippled.

Probably the most
consequential bottleneck industry

with regards to the Luftwaffe...

...is ball bearings.

Anything that moves
needs a ball bearing.

Anything that turns
needs a ball bearing,

including German aircraft engines,

propellers turning, landing wheels,

and also all the machines and
machinery that build those products.

So it's a twofer.

On August 17th,

one year to the day from their first
attack on occupied Europe,

the Eighth Air Force
launches a dual raid.

The first strike on Regensburg

is meant to draw off
German fighters

so that the rest of the force
can hit the primary target,

Germany's largest ball bearing
factory in Schweinfurt.

Three weeks later, the Eighth
strikes another plant in Stuttgart.

In these raids alone,

the Eighth loses
nearly a hundred planes,

and a thousand crew
killed or captured.

Ball bearing production
is interrupted...

...but only temporarily.

The Allies are always surprised
at how rapidly

the Germans rebuild
their cities and factories.

But they do so with this

almost inexhaustible supply
of slave labour...

...prisoners of war
in the hundreds of thousands.

They're barely fed.

When one dies,
they can be simply discarded

and another one put in their place.

Forced labourers
from occupied countries

are ordered by the Nazis
to reconstruct German factories.

They also dispersed
the German aircraft industry...

...so that it can't be taken out
in any one strike

cos it's not all in one place.

And they put it underground.

They used old salt mines.

They used old quarries.

Now you can't hit it.
Now you can't bomb it.

There is nothing you can do.

Because you can't bomb a facility
when it's underground.

This ultimately means
German aircraft production

will continue to increase.

By the fall of 1943,

the Eighth Air Force is bombing
targets deep inside the Reich

and returning to ones
they've already hit.

In early October,

they fly a series
of maximum effort raids,

including a second strike
on the plant in Schweinfurt...

...all in a single week.

There is a limit to how much
the human psyche can take.

And on many occasions,
bomber crews reach that limit.

You're five miles up, and you're
braving death every second.

Fighters, Flak, fighters, Flak:

an adrenaline rush
overloading your nervous system.

And then you land.

And it's quiet.

You're back at a base
in East Anglia.

You have a hot meal.

You sleep in a comfortable bed.

And then, maybe,
you do it again tomorrow.

More fighters, more flak.

You'd think you were gonna die...

ten times
in the course of this bomb raid.

And that night,
you'd be drinking Scotch

with a couple of friends
at the commissary.

It was almost impossible
to reconcile.

The longer you did it,

you would become more and more aware
of how vulnerable you were.

By the end of the month,

the Eighth Air Force
has endured horrific losses.

The men call it...

Black October.

If you're
an American airman,

you have a 20% chance of being
killed on any mission you undertake.

One in five:
that is forbidding math.

Adding to that, they don't appear
to be having an appreciable impact

on the German war effort,

leading to an incipient collapse
of airman morale.

They start to see
the losses around them and go,

'We're just gonna fly
until we're dead.'

A series of American raids
in Black October

shows the cost
of daytime precision bombing.

The loss rates, the limitations
of the Norden bombsight,

the weather: all these things
play in, and factor in

how ineffective
the bombing campaign is in 1943.

You could easily say
that the Luftwaffe

still owned the skies over Germany.

In the late fall, bad weather
forces the Eighth Air Force

to suspend missions,

giving ground crews the winter
to patch battered planes.

But the RAF launches
its largest campaign yet...

...a sustained assault on Berlin.

These are gonna be massive raids,
16 of them in the heart of Germany.

The British goal over Berlin...

is to destroy German morale.

That's the way to beat Germany,
not to destroy individual factories.

Harris thinks these Berlin raids
will cost 400 to 500 bombers,

but they'll cost Germany the war.

The RAF winter raids
to Berlin...

...push the limit and stamina
of British air crews...

...with modest results.

Harris is
presciently accurate.

They lose 400 to 500 aircraft

and almost 5,000 airmen.

The Berlin bombing campaign
is an epic effort...

...but unfortunately an epic failure.

Both air forces
are finding their plans

are not corresponding with reality.

They're having almost no impact
on the Luftwaffe at all.

They're simply getting
more of their planes shot down

and more of their crewmen
killed or captured.

After months of heavy losses,

the Eighth Air Force
is at a crossroads.

Arnold realises
the bombers can't do it alone.

If he wants these bombers
to make a difference in this war,

he's got to send fighters
to the target with them.

The Allied air forces
have the P-38 Lightning...

...and the P-47 Thunderbolt...

...two absolutely excellent
fighter aircraft

...capable of dogfighting just about
as well as anything else in the sky.

They only had one limitation,
and that was range.

At the time,
aeronautical engineers believed

having an aircraft that could
fly almost a thousand miles,

into Germany and back,
with enough firepower,

enough manoeuvrability,
enough engine power...

is an engineering impossibility.

But a new fighter
is already being produced

by the United States...
for the British...

...the P-51 Mustang.

And the Brits test fly it,
and they go,

'Thanks. It's OK.'

Below 15,000ft, it's fine,

but we're looking for something
higher altitude.

Then we get the idea of putting

a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine
in this thing.

So you have a British-made engine,

an American airframe, made it
together, and it's gangbusters.

That's when it turns
into this magical machine.

It's fast, it flies high.

It's so efficient
that it could escort a bomber

all the way
to downtown Berlin and back.

It's the equivalent or better
than anything the Germans have.

The Americans and British
are allies,

but in many ways, they've been
working at cross purposes,

especially in the air campaign.

But now the US and British
war efforts come together

to produce an aircraft that is
greater than the sum of its parts.

It embodies the Anglo-American
coalition in World War II.

The P-51 is a game-changer,

but it requires, mind you, an entire
rethink of American aerial doctrine.

Allied planners realised
that if they threaten targets

that are essential
to the German war efforts,

and force the Germans to send up
fighters to protect those targets...

...the P-51s can pounce
and shoot them down.

The Allies have
started out thinking B-17s...

will destroy the German air force
on the ground.

By early 1944,
they realise the P-51...

...is going to destroy
the German air force...

...in the air.

Knowing that
command of the air is crucial

to the upcoming
cross-Channel invasion,

Allied air forces
launch Operation Argument,

a five-day series of bombing raids
over major German cities.

This is the critical hour for
the Combined Bomber Offensive.

Because the Allies
now know they're approaching

the time for the D-Day landings.

They need to draw up the Luftwaffe

so that the P-51
can destroy it in the skies.

The plan is to send
thousands of bombers

knowing that the Luftwaffe
will have no choice

but to send everything
it has up in the skies

to defend the homeland.

So in a way,
the bombers are the bait.

Fitted with extra fuel tanks,

the P-51 Mustangs are capable
of penetrating deep into Germany.

Their primary mission
has been protecting the bombers.

Now they're ordered to actively
pursue German fighters...

...even if it leaves
the formations vulnerable.

The mission of the American
fighters is to be aggressive...

...and go after the Luftwaffe
in the air to kill them...

...in any way, shape, or form.

Operation Argument,
known as Big Week,

begins a battle of attrition

between the Allied air forces
and the Luftwaffe.

The success
of the upcoming invasion...

...hangs in the balance.

The United States
is gonna lose about

a quarter of the Eighth Air Force
in that fight.

The Germans are gonna lose
about a third of their fighter force

and 18% of their fighter pilots.

This is something
the Allies can sustain.

The Germans cannot.

From the US perspective,

this is a war economy that is
churning out hundreds and hundreds

of heavy bombers
every day of the year.

Young men are signing up in droves.

And so
the cold-blooded calculation is...

that no matter
how heavy US losses are,

America can replace
its planes and pilots.

In the month after Big Week,

American fighters down more
German planes over Europe...

...than in the previous two years.

The Luftwaffe is being destroyed
in the air and on the ground.

It's really this symbiosis.

Mustangs,
they're killing German fighters,

which means the bombers
can now be more accurate.

Which means they're doing
a better job of attacking...

the German aircraft industry.

It's a cycle
that's destroying the Luftwaffe.

By June 1944,

there are few
experienced Luftwaffe pilots...

left alive.

By the time the D-Day
comes, the Allies own the air.

That's why you see
very few Luftwaffe fighters

over the beaches of Normandy
on June 6th 1944.

Control of the air
is decisively established.

The Luftwaffe will be
incapable of opposing

the upcoming Allied invasion.

But again, the cost is high.

Fewer than a quarter of British
and American bomber crews

survive the campaign.

The tragedy of the air war
is that the bomber crews

were essentially testing out
an unproven theory.

Any time you're talking
about high technology,

and cutting-edge weaponry,

there is an element
of experimentation involved.

And some of the ways, unfortunately,
that you learn in war...

is by dying.

Sometimes in wartime,
there's no other way to learn.

When both the British and American
air forces worked together,

bombers and fighters together,

they proved to be the most effective
aerial instrument of war in history.

The battle in the air over Europe
isn't won by B-17s or P-51s.

It's won by the men
who fight in those planes,

and the men and women
who support them on the ground.

What they accomplish, the
destruction of the German Luftwaffe,

will make possible the greatest
land and sea invasion in history.