280 million pounds to make? How in the world do they expect to make that back?
Twelve O’Clock High was a great picture IMO.
The TV series was OK but not as good. I do remember that the TV series inadvertently gave WWII chops to actor Frank Overton who went on to play the four star SAC Commander General Bogan in the Cold War movie classic Fail-Safe.
I do plan on catching this one on Apple+.
I recommend the multi-part YouTube videos by a British dude who calls himself “Lord Hardthrasher” on bombing campaigns, as carried out by both the RAF and the US Eighth Army Air Force.
By his account, yes the British resorted to “carpet bombing”, although their losses remained high and they still weren’t hitting anything of value to the war effort, but the American daylight raids weren’t hitting anything either, until maybe very late in the war, and losses remained high even with the long-range escort fighters.
Hardthrasher offers the view that the raids up until D-Day in June, 1944 were known not to be hitting anything, but the purpose of the raids was no longer to hit anything, rather, to conduct strikes against targets the Germans deemed important enough to send up their fighter aircraft to defend, which were in turn engaged by the escort fighters with the purpose of not so much defending the bombers on any particular raid but on inflicting attrition on the Luftwafe in preparation for D-day.
One controversial decision was to not have the fighters fly close-by the bomber formations, where they would have saved more bombers in trade for fighter losses. Instead, the fighters flew well above the bombers with the aim of maximizing attrition of the Luftwafe fighers.
The general in charge of the American bombing campaign at this point was General Jimmy Doolittle, yes, “the” Jimmy Doolittle of raid-on-Tokyo fame. In case you think both the American and British generals were stubborn and arrogant and didn’t talk to each other and learn from each other, Jimmy Doolittle consulted extensively with British Air Chief Marshall Hugh “Stuffy” Dowding. In the Battle of Britain, Germany failed, just barely in doing to England, what Doolittle was doing to Germany, just barely succeeding, that is, in eliminating the enemy’s air force as a factor in a planned cross-Channel invasion.
Although at enormous cost in bomber crews, even with fighter escort, General Eisenhower was able to in confidence tell his troops, “I you see a plane overhead on D-day, it is one of ours, not their’s.”
Now you could say this guy calling himself “Lord Hardthrasher” is “full of it” and being provocative to garner traffic to his YouTube videos. It was the British mathematician/physicist Freeman Dyson who broke through the official narrative of the air war against Germany, writing about his experience as a young operations analyst in England and survivor’s guilt about what he knew the bomber crews were enduring, in his New Yorker essay The Children’s Crusade, which was also published as a book chapter in his breakout popular-press book Disturbing the Universe.
Hardthrasher is some YouTuber with a pseudonym and Dyson, although not receiving the Nobel Prize, was an important contributor to Quantum Electrodynamics who earlier had an important role in the British air campaign. What Hardthrasher is saying, however, is corroborated by a public and respected source.
It is very easy to do a complete 180 from the “hooray for our side” narrative of WW-II history and turn this around in a “cool” stance of an anonymous Internet commenter to trash everything the US and Great Britain did. Hardthrasher appears to back up what he is posting with a lot of historical research connecting military leaders to decisions and their consequences, and I find his videos though-provoking.
Not to put to fine a point on it, but I do recall reading that there were problems with the Norden bombsight at the beginning of its use. Bugs had to be worked out.
Can’t speak for the B-17 but the B-29 had issues as well. IIRC problems surrounding getting the superchargers to work correctly at altitude etc.
The fighter escort range issue sorted itself out as the war progressed as near the end of the war in Europe with P-51’s with drop tanks were essentially able to follow the bombers all the way to target and back.
In looking at bomber and fighter gun camera footage from strafing runs, it quickly becomes obvious that WW-II pilots often couldn’t hit the side of a barn. But of course they didn’t have to score many hits to do a lot of damage.
Part 6 of his series is especially interesting, in which he argues that the P-47 maintained about the same high-altitude escort range as the P-51 during the entire war, but was never used in that role because it would’ve required admitting that the early unescorted B-17 missions that got chewed up by the Luftwaffe indicated that the officers running bomber command were both arrogant and incompetent and should’ve been cashiered.
I have not but thanks for the link I’m watching it (Part 6) now and hope to finish it today or tomorrow.
I have no doubt as to the truth of what Greg’s Airplanes is showing us and much about word-of-mouth vs researched history.
Greg’s Airplanes is a treasure for aero-space geeks who need to know everything about all things in the sky.
The P-47 vs P-51 argument also goes into the Big Radial Engine with more power along with more drag, somewhat greater tolerance of battle damage and certainly more fuel consumption in contrast with the liquid-cooled V24 engine. The P-51 with its Merlin engine and accompanying 2-stage supercharger offered the necessary high-altitude performance, but the P-47 with its simply enormous turbo-supercharger connected with ducts to a placement behind the cockpit was the high-altitude champ. The P-51 could have been more nimble than the P-47 said to have heavy controls near its top speed.
According to Greg, the P-47 would have had to carry bigger drop tanks, but I guess the US and its UK ally had the logistics that the extra fuel wasn’t a problem? There is this story that not putting the P-47 into the escort role was face-saving to the generals who thought the bombers could successfully concentrate fire to defend themselves, but I don’t remember the source if it was Greg’s Airplanes, the P-47 was retired and the more-vulnerable-to-small-arms-fire P-51 was used in Korea for close air support. But the ultimate Big Radial Engine aircraft in the form of the A-1 Skyraider served through Vietnam until its replacement with the A-10 “Warthog”?
I certainly agree that Greg does his research in his deep dive into the technical manuals and NACA reports to supply corroboration of the anecdotal reports as to relative performance of different aircraft types.
I watched a youtube vid recently about the Norden bombsight. Made the point that it was a triumph of marketing over technical performance. Sperry had one which was better but lost out because of better Norden marketing and contacts.
280 mil GBP and they still couldn’t be bothered to give the squadron B-17Gs instead of B-17Fs for the Schweinfurt raid.
I know, I know. But they had a bunch of historical consultants, and adding the chin turret was a big deal. The 100th had almost completely converted from the F to the G in early 1943.
Also interesting how myths get started. “We needed the P-51 to escort bombers into Germany!” No, the P-47 and P-38 could go deep into Germany if the Bomber Mafia hadn’t been so sure that the B-17 could do it without escorts. The P-51 was an excellent plane; probably better objectively than the P-47 in every aspect (except of course ruggedness, and maybe dive speed and roll rate at high speed). But maybe the most important factor was its price: a P-51 cost about half what a P-47 did.
And you know what? The Brits deserve a lot of criticism for how they handled the war. Monty got a lot of people killed with his schemes. Churchill was wrong a lot as well. Thank God we had Eisenhower and he learned quickly from the rough start with Operation Torch.
280 million pounds to make? How in the world do they expect to make that back?
Twelve O’Clock High was a great picture IMO.
The TV series was OK but not as good. I do remember that the TV series inadvertently gave WWII chops to actor Frank Overton who went on to play the four star SAC Commander General Bogan in the Cold War movie classic Fail-Safe.
I do plan on catching this one on Apple+.
I recommend the multi-part YouTube videos by a British dude who calls himself “Lord Hardthrasher” on bombing campaigns, as carried out by both the RAF and the US Eighth Army Air Force.
By his account, yes the British resorted to “carpet bombing”, although their losses remained high and they still weren’t hitting anything of value to the war effort, but the American daylight raids weren’t hitting anything either, until maybe very late in the war, and losses remained high even with the long-range escort fighters.
Hardthrasher offers the view that the raids up until D-Day in June, 1944 were known not to be hitting anything, but the purpose of the raids was no longer to hit anything, rather, to conduct strikes against targets the Germans deemed important enough to send up their fighter aircraft to defend, which were in turn engaged by the escort fighters with the purpose of not so much defending the bombers on any particular raid but on inflicting attrition on the Luftwafe in preparation for D-day.
One controversial decision was to not have the fighters fly close-by the bomber formations, where they would have saved more bombers in trade for fighter losses. Instead, the fighters flew well above the bombers with the aim of maximizing attrition of the Luftwafe fighers.
The general in charge of the American bombing campaign at this point was General Jimmy Doolittle, yes, “the” Jimmy Doolittle of raid-on-Tokyo fame. In case you think both the American and British generals were stubborn and arrogant and didn’t talk to each other and learn from each other, Jimmy Doolittle consulted extensively with British Air Chief Marshall Hugh “Stuffy” Dowding. In the Battle of Britain, Germany failed, just barely in doing to England, what Doolittle was doing to Germany, just barely succeeding, that is, in eliminating the enemy’s air force as a factor in a planned cross-Channel invasion.
Although at enormous cost in bomber crews, even with fighter escort, General Eisenhower was able to in confidence tell his troops, “I you see a plane overhead on D-day, it is one of ours, not their’s.”
Now you could say this guy calling himself “Lord Hardthrasher” is “full of it” and being provocative to garner traffic to his YouTube videos. It was the British mathematician/physicist Freeman Dyson who broke through the official narrative of the air war against Germany, writing about his experience as a young operations analyst in England and survivor’s guilt about what he knew the bomber crews were enduring, in his New Yorker essay The Children’s Crusade, which was also published as a book chapter in his breakout popular-press book Disturbing the Universe.
Hardthrasher is some YouTuber with a pseudonym and Dyson, although not receiving the Nobel Prize, was an important contributor to Quantum Electrodynamics who earlier had an important role in the British air campaign. What Hardthrasher is saying, however, is corroborated by a public and respected source.
It is very easy to do a complete 180 from the “hooray for our side” narrative of WW-II history and turn this around in a “cool” stance of an anonymous Internet commenter to trash everything the US and Great Britain did. Hardthrasher appears to back up what he is posting with a lot of historical research connecting military leaders to decisions and their consequences, and I find his videos though-provoking.
Not to put to fine a point on it, but I do recall reading that there were problems with the Norden bombsight at the beginning of its use. Bugs had to be worked out.
Can’t speak for the B-17 but the B-29 had issues as well. IIRC problems surrounding getting the superchargers to work correctly at altitude etc.
The fighter escort range issue sorted itself out as the war progressed as near the end of the war in Europe with P-51’s with drop tanks were essentially able to follow the bombers all the way to target and back.
In looking at bomber and fighter gun camera footage from strafing runs, it quickly becomes obvious that WW-II pilots often couldn’t hit the side of a barn. But of course they didn’t have to score many hits to do a lot of damage.
Anyway, have you seen Greg’s Airplanes series on the P-47 (playlist)?
Part 6 of his series is especially interesting, in which he argues that the P-47 maintained about the same high-altitude escort range as the P-51 during the entire war, but was never used in that role because it would’ve required admitting that the early unescorted B-17 missions that got chewed up by the Luftwaffe indicated that the officers running bomber command were both arrogant and incompetent and should’ve been cashiered.
I have not but thanks for the link I’m watching it (Part 6) now and hope to finish it today or tomorrow.
I have no doubt as to the truth of what Greg’s Airplanes is showing us and much about word-of-mouth vs researched history.
Greg’s Airplanes is a treasure for aero-space geeks who need to know everything about all things in the sky.
The P-47 vs P-51 argument also goes into the Big Radial Engine with more power along with more drag, somewhat greater tolerance of battle damage and certainly more fuel consumption in contrast with the liquid-cooled V24 engine. The P-51 with its Merlin engine and accompanying 2-stage supercharger offered the necessary high-altitude performance, but the P-47 with its simply enormous turbo-supercharger connected with ducts to a placement behind the cockpit was the high-altitude champ. The P-51 could have been more nimble than the P-47 said to have heavy controls near its top speed.
According to Greg, the P-47 would have had to carry bigger drop tanks, but I guess the US and its UK ally had the logistics that the extra fuel wasn’t a problem? There is this story that not putting the P-47 into the escort role was face-saving to the generals who thought the bombers could successfully concentrate fire to defend themselves, but I don’t remember the source if it was Greg’s Airplanes, the P-47 was retired and the more-vulnerable-to-small-arms-fire P-51 was used in Korea for close air support. But the ultimate Big Radial Engine aircraft in the form of the A-1 Skyraider served through Vietnam until its replacement with the A-10 “Warthog”?
I certainly agree that Greg does his research in his deep dive into the technical manuals and NACA reports to supply corroboration of the anecdotal reports as to relative performance of different aircraft types.
I watched a youtube vid recently about the Norden bombsight. Made the point that it was a triumph of marketing over technical performance. Sperry had one which was better but lost out because of better Norden marketing and contacts.
280 mil GBP and they still couldn’t be bothered to give the squadron B-17Gs instead of B-17Fs for the Schweinfurt raid.
I know, I know. But they had a bunch of historical consultants, and adding the chin turret was a big deal. The 100th had almost completely converted from the F to the G in early 1943.
Also interesting how myths get started. “We needed the P-51 to escort bombers into Germany!” No, the P-47 and P-38 could go deep into Germany if the Bomber Mafia hadn’t been so sure that the B-17 could do it without escorts. The P-51 was an excellent plane; probably better objectively than the P-47 in every aspect (except of course ruggedness, and maybe dive speed and roll rate at high speed). But maybe the most important factor was its price: a P-51 cost about half what a P-47 did.
And you know what? The Brits deserve a lot of criticism for how they handled the war. Monty got a lot of people killed with his schemes. Churchill was wrong a lot as well. Thank God we had Eisenhower and he learned quickly from the rough start with Operation Torch.