Weapons of WWII with Stephen Ambrose: Bombers and Fighters

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greenlight.com slash iHeart. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Stephen Ambrose was one of America's leading biographers and historians. Ambrose passed in 2002, but his epic storytelling accounts can now be heard here at Our American Stories, thanks to those who run his estate. Our next story is about the fundamental importance of air superiority in World War II.

Here's Stephen Ambrose. The bombers in the Second World War were very much bigger than anything that the First World War had seen. Going up to the really big ones like the B-17, the B-17, the most famous of all, a four-engine bomber called the Flying Fortress.

They all had in common these things. They carried a lot of armament so that they could self-defend. That is, there'd be a gunner in the nose, a gunner in the tail, a gunner in the belly, a gunner in the turret above. These men were all there for defensive purposes to drive off enemy fighters. And at the expense of speed and maneuverability, because they were all very heavy, people in the Air Ministry in Britain worked it out that statistically your chances in a bomber were going to be very much higher over Berlin or Bremen or Hamburg or wherever the target was. Your chances were going to be a lot higher if you got rid of all those gunners, got rid of all their guns, lightened your plane up so it could fly higher and faster.

And they said, so our advice to you is to get them out of there. And to a man, the air crews, including the pilots and the bombardier and the navigator said, no way. We want to be shooting back.

The experts would say, but your chances of survival are going to be so much better if you're up higher flying faster. We want to be shooting back was the reply always. The American B-17 was called the Flying Fortress. The idea when it was designed and in its initial deployments was that they had a lot more range than a fighter aircraft and they could set out from England was the idea over targets inside Germany and could beat off any German attack from fighter aircraft coming up to meet them.

They found out pretty early on that that really wasn't so. Even if the B-17s did everything right, according to theory, kept their formations. Nevertheless, those German fighters were going to get through very heavy losses. The British response to this was night attacks. Now, of course, the price you pay for a bombing raid at night because you can't see the target. So they went to, well, we'll bomb cities.

You can hardly miss a city as big as Berlin, right? The Americans didn't accept that proposition that, first of all, we've got to give up daylight raids. It was to them a confession of failure in the air war and certainly said in a more open way that the British method wasn't going to end the war or speed up the end of the war in any way at all.

I mean, just bombing cities ain't going to be any good. The British replied that, well, we keep the workers awake at night. You know, there's a bombing raid at midnight. They got to hear the sirens. They're up at 11. They got to get into the subways. They don't get out until you're all clear at 3 a.m.

They got to go to work at 6 a.m. And so they're not going to be very efficient at work. Well, I'll tell you, that was putting a lot of effort into seeing to it that a few German workers lost some sleep at night. But the American use of the weapon also has to be criticized. The Americans thought there has got to be a key somewhere. There's got to be a target somewhere. If you find that target and you knock it out, Germany can't make war anymore.

One point they had a terrific idea. Ball bearings. Everything in the world moves on ball bearings. No wheel can turn without ball bearings. There's not a car in Germany. There's not a tank.

There's not a truck. There's nothing in Germany that can move without ball bearings. They only make ball bearings in one place. And Regensburg will knock that out and Germany will screech to a halt.

And Hitler will have to surrender. So they went after the ball bearing plant. And then nothing happened.

They had forgotten some basic principles of economics. For one thing, there were ball bearings already in storage at the various plants that were making the trucks and tanks and airplanes for Germany. For another, there were ball bearings in transit. And for a third, ball bearings aren't all that hard to make. For a fourth, as very often happened in all of these factory busting raids, it looked very impressive from the air.

A lot of smoke, a lot of fire. So they were out of business, right? The machine tools hadn't been damaged at all. You'd blown off some roofs.

But the machine tools had all survived. Now, it would be wrong to dismiss Operation Point Blank, the strategic bombing of Germany, that quickly. It forced the Germans back into much smaller factories and many of them underground, almost to a cottage industry.

Kind of a situation. But it continued. In fact, Germany reached the peak of her production in the Second World War in the fall of 1944. At one point, the idea was, we'll knock out hydroelectric plants.

They're not so easy to knock out, it turned out. Then it was going to be oil refineries. And that was the most productive target.

If they'd have come to that earlier and stayed at it harder, they might well have brought Germany to a halt. Well, as far as the GIs, the infantry stationed in England during the build-up, were concerned, these airmen had the softest, cushiest life imaginable. They were in barracks. They had warm beds.

They had hot foods. They got passes to London all the time. They just sat around and played cards and went in and got drunk at night.

And it was just a marvelous life. To the men leading the life, it was the worst possible life. They had nothing to do in England. So they just were killing time. They were there for the purpose of carrying out raids over Germany. And when the weather was appropriate and they carried out these raids, it meant hours of boredom, droning on in a four-engine plane from England all the way over to Berlin.

Then anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour of pure stark terror. Statistically, you could not survive in the Eighth Air Force. They were promised, after 35 missions, you get to go home.

KEGS 22 is exactly right about this. They just kept raising the number of missions. I know guys that flew as many as 100 missions. But statistically, you couldn't do that. Statistically, in 25 missions, you were sure to be shot down.

Your chances then were poor. If you did survive, you were going to be picked up as a POW. Your chances of being successfully put into a POW cage were pretty slim because the German civilians, if they got to you before the Luftwaffe did, they'd run you through the pit floor. Now, of course, the German military authorities wanted to capture pilots and crews, not to kill them out in the field, because they wanted to interrogate them.

If you finally got into a POW cage, then your chances of surviving the war were pretty good, although it was going to be a rough war. And a terrific job on the production and editing by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to the folks who run the Stephen Ambrose estate and for use of these terrific stories about World War II, particularly the part that had to do with our industrial capacity, and moreover, the strategic and tactical efforts on our nation's behalf. And we learn a lot about, well, the life of some of these guys, specifically the 8th Air Force, whereby 25 missions, you were sure to be shot down.

And as Ambrose pointed out, some of the men he interviewed and talked to, they performed as many as 100 missions. The story of our mighty planes and the men who flew them, and the men who defended them, here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we bring you stories of America, stories of us. And it's because of listeners like you that we're able to tell the story of this great and beautiful country every day.

Our stories will always be free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, consider making a tax-deductible donation to Our American Stories. Visit OurAmericanStories.com to give.

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