Original subtitles

♪

(planes droning)

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♪

(explosions)

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♪

(plane droning)

♪

♪

♪

♪

(birds chirping)

♪

(bell chiming)

♪

This is a battlefront.

A battlefront like no other in the long history

of mankind's wars.

This is an air front.

♪

♪

The working day begins as it will end

with the ground crews,

as much a part of the fortress as her wings.

If you're a mechanic, you've got your own bomber.

You get attached to it,

but you know when your ship goes out on a mission,

you may never see it again.

So you do your work as well as it can be done,

perfectly, because you wouldn't want

anything to go wrong that would be your fault.

♪

Today, the bombs will be taken from these bomb dumps

somewhere in England

and delivered to specific points

in Wilhelmshaven, Germany.

♪

To deliver them is the job of the Eighth Bomber Command,

just a hauling job,

yet one of the most difficult and complicated

of military operations.

♪

♪

General-purpose demolition bombs,

impact velocity as high as 750 miles an hour.

Pierce five inches of armor plate,

destroy a factory.

♪

Briefing at 0800.

Pilots, bombardiers, and navigators

take their places.

The group commander, Colonel Stanley Wray,

steps up to the target map

and for the first time, you learn where you're going.

Sometimes your face turns white when you find out.

Sometimes the feeling you won't come back

tightens your insides.

Not so long ago, you were sitting like this in a college

or high school classroom,

not listening too hard, perhaps even a little sleepy.

But you listen here.

And as you listen, you don't have time

to think of yourself.

Fear fades.

You concentrate on the mission,

type of formation, assembly point,

zero hour, route to target,

weather, enemy fighters, enemy flak, route back home.

If forced down in enemy territory,

destroy equipment.

If taken prisoner, give no information.

Name, rank, and serial number.

That's all.

♪

♪

These are the passengers with one-way tickets,

and this is the crew of the Memphis Belle,

324th Squadron, 91st Heavy Bombardment Group.

Just one plane and one crew

in one squadron, in one group of one wing

of one air force

out of 15 United States Army Air Forces.

♪

Well, fellas, we've never had an easy ride over there yet

and today won't be any different.

No escort except unfriendly, so keep your eyes peeled.

Don't get excited and yell

when you're talking on the intercom.

Save your ammunition and make your shots count.

Let me know what goes on back there, Quinlan.

Yes, sir.

Stay on the ball, gang, and she'll bring us back

like she's always done, okay?

Let's go.

♪

They have completed 24 missions

in this, the toughest theater of air war.

The big league of sky fighting.

Their experience is priceless.

And so, if the Memphis Belle comes back this afternoon,

they will be sent to bring the vital lessons

they have learned to thousands of air crewmen

in training at home.

Home is America.

♪

(engines starting)

(planes droning)

This is a battlefront like no other

in this or any war.

No monster armies, no booming cannon.

Only the roaring engine sound of the bombers

pounding through the quiet English countryside.

This is an air front.

(thrum of propellers)

(plane droning)

(plane engine roaring)

(whirring)

The wheels of the Memphis Belle leave the soil of England

for the 25th time.

The friendly soil of England,

with its ordered farms and rural hamlets,

its country estates surrounded by formal gardens

and well-kept parks.

The England these Americans knew

only from the classics they had to read in school.

The England of the towns and cities,

whose people have defended their island's freedom

for over a thousand years.

But today, their countryside has changed.

Today, their island has been converted

into a gigantic bomber field.

A super aircraft carrier anchored off the shores

of Fortress Europe,

with hangars and machine shops,

with hundreds of dispersal points,

perimeter tracks, and concrete runways.

This is England in its fifth year of war.

And this is the new battlefront, the air front,

from which we seek out the enemy.

Not his infantry or his artillery,

not his Panzer divisions, but the greater menace:

the industrial heart of his nation.

The foundation on which the Nazi Empire

and its army stand.

The power behind the German lust for conquest.

The steel mills and refineries,

shipyards and submarine pens,

factories and munitions plants.

Pinpoints on the map of Europe

which mean rubber, guns, ball bearing, shells,

engines, planes, tanks, targets,

targets to be destroyed.

And these are the destroyers,

each with a belly full of bombs

and ten men like the crew of the Memphis Belle.

Pilot, Captain Robert Morgan,

industrial engineer from Asheville, North Carolina.

He's flown this ship across the Atlantic.

The other pilot, Captain Jim Verinis,

business administration student

at the University of Connecticut.

Radio operator and gunner, Sergeant Bob Hanson,

construction worker from Spokane, Washington.

Navigator, Captain Chuck Leighton,

chemistry student at Ohio Wesleyan.

Engineer and top turret gunner, Sergeant Harold Loch

from Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Used to be a stevedore.

Besides keeping the Belle in order,

he covers the sky above.

Tail gunner, Sergeant John Quinlan

of Yonkers, New York,

clerked for a carpet company, but he quit

December 8th, 1941.

Ball turret gunner, Sergeant Cecil Scott,

pressman for a rubber company in Rahway, New Jersey.

Pilot to crew:

Ten thousand, put on oxygen.

They're climbing higher now, 300 feet a minute.

The strain on the planes and on the men is mounting.

The rest of the crew:

Bombardier, Captain Vincent Evans,

operated a fleet of trucks in Fort Worth, Texas.

Waist gunners, on the right, Sergeant Bill Winchell,

chemist for a paint company in Chicago,

and on the left, Sergeant Tony Nastal,

used to repair washing machines in Detroit

when he was a kid.

Now he's 19 and has two Nazi fighters confirmed.

It takes all of a pilot's strength

to keep a 30-ton fortress in tight formation,

but the formation is the bomber's best defense

against enemy fighters.

The planes are deployed to uncover every gun.

Stepped up and down.

Echelon to the right and left.

Arranged to overcome the danger of gunners

firing into friendly ships.

Arranged so concentrated combs of fire

from the caliber 50 machine guns cover the sky

for a thousand yards in every direction.

(planes droning)

The friendly coast of England slips by below.

It doesn't look like much now, but in a few hours

when you come back, if you come back,

this will be the most beautiful view in the world.

Higher and higher, climbing to reach

your best operational altitude, 25,000 feet.

Five miles straight up.

So high you can't be seen from the ground

with the naked eye.

So high that after one minute without oxygen,

you lose consciousness.

After 20 minutes, you're dead.

From now to the target,

you go about your routine duties,

plot your course, check your equipment,

and wait, and think.

Higher and colder.

Temperature: 40 degrees below zero.

Take off your glove and you lose some fingers.

You look out at the strange world beyond,

reflections in Plexiglas

like nothing you ever saw before

outside of a dream.

(planes droning)

Higher and higher into the lifeless stratosphere

until the exhaust of the engines

mixing with the cold, thin air condenses

and streams the heavens with paper trails.

To the men in the ships, they're far from beautiful,

for they point like beckoning fingers

to the formation,

signposts in the sky for the enemy to spot us.

For these bombers to accomplish their mission,

a plan is needed.

Carefully worked out, timed to the minute.

The job is to bomb Wilhelmshaven

effectively and economically.

The enemy is strong, skillful, determined to stop us.

Here are his defenses.

Airdromes, well-dispersed.

Each plane indicates a Staffel or squadron of fighters.

Heavy anti-aircraft, highly-trained and accurate,

all along the coast

and defending his vital installations.

Radar to warn him of our coming.

Here is our plan to divide his defenses

and weaken his opposition:

At 1330 hours, shortly after takeoff,

six groups of planes will be heading toward

the enemy coast from six directions.

The blue force: 100 B-24 Liberator four-engine bombers.

The white force: 300 B-17 Flying Fortresses.

The green force: 300 B-17s

with an escort of six squadrons

of P-47 Thunderbolts,

a force of B-26 Marauders, twin-engine medium bombers

with six squadrons of RAF Spitfires escorting.

Almost a thousand planes and over 8,000 men in the air.

The enemy alerts all his airdromes,

but which is our main force?

What are our targets?

Where should the Nazi controllers

send their fighters?

It's our job to make them guess and guess wrong.

A half hour later at 1400 hours,

the blue force will be heading east across the North Sea

with the white force following.

These enemy fighters are tied down,

waiting to meet them,

and will not be able to attack the green force.

These fighters must come up to attack the green force

and thus will be no threat to the blue and white forces.

The B-26s and Spitfires will bomb and strafe

a key rail junction,

diverting these six Staffeln

and preventing the enemy from concentrating

too many fighters on the green force

which is scheduled to bomb an aircraft factory at Hanover.

At 1430 hours, the blue force will threaten

this entire coastal area of northwestern Germany.

Which target will it be?

Flensburg, the Kiel Canal,

or will it turn suddenly and bomb Hamburg,

Vegasack, or Emden?

Actually, it carries no bombs at all.

It's a decoy and keeps the fighters

from the northern area busy

while the white force, the main effort,

heads for the submarine pens of Wilhelmshaven.

At 1500 hours, while the white force

is over its target, only a fraction

of the available German fighter strength of the area

can intercept it

because of the blue force diversion

and the simultaneous bombing of Hanover

by the green force.

This is the plan of battle for today,

drawn up by the Combined Operations Planning Committee

and approved by the commanding general.

The white force, lead group, low squadron.

We've crossed the invisible line of enemy radar.

The Hun is expecting us.

Steel helmets go on.

Watchful eyes strain.

Tight formations are held tighter still.

Tense gunners more alert because here it comes.

The enemy coast.

From up here, it looks the same as any other:

houses, roads, green fields, factories, waterways.

But they are the houses and fields of those

who invade and oppress.

They are the factories and roads of the people

who twice in one generation

have flooded the world with suffering,

suffering in such quantity as the history

of the human race has never known.

Brought torment and anguish into countless American homes,

gold stars, and telegrams from the War Department.

The first flak.

Just harmless-looking silent puffs of smoke,

only each puff is a shell exploding,

throwing shrapnel around the sky.

Exactly the range,

accurate flak by radio prediction.

Five miles down, Nazi anti-aircraft batteries

have calculated the altitude, speed, and course.

Where will the next one hit?

You try not to be there.

(explosion)

The docks and submarine pens of Wilhelmshaven.

Approach to the target starts.

No smokescreen can protect it.

Now the enemy knows the path of your approach

and walls that path with a flak barrage,

but you fly right through it.

Flak so thick you can get out and walk on it.

(explosions)

Morgan changes course every 15 seconds,

evasive action to confuse the flak batteries.

Bombsight set for correct altitude and speed.

Bomb bay doors open.

The bombing run begins.

Pilot to bombardier:

Okay, Vin, you've got it.

Now Evans flies the Memphis Belle,

controlling it through the bombsight.

And now, we are most vulnerable.

Committed to our bombing run,

we can't dodge flak or fighters.

Here's the first.

(gunfire)

(plane whizzing)

Top turret fires at him.

Evans must ignore the battle.

Crosshairs lined up on target.

Adjustments for wind drift made.

Two more fighters diving from nine o'clock.

(gunfire)

Flak now has the range too.

(explosion)

They've hit this fort,

but he keeps on his bombing run.

(explosions continue)

As lead bombardier, Evans's aim must be good.

Every other ship in the group will drop its bombs

when he drops his.

Now, one pointer on the bombsight

moves toward another stationary pointer.

The instant they touch, bombs will release.

(explosions)

They touch.

Bombs away.

(explosions)

(explosions continue)

(explosions)

(explosions)

(explosions)

The first half of the mission is over.

The easy half.

Now to get home.

(explosions)

The flak stops.

That means fighters out there somewhere.

A Staffel lurking behind that cloud

or hiding up in the sun where the glare blinds you

and you can't see them waiting to dive down on you.

Fighters at six o'clock.

This is what a gunner sees.

A speck in the sky, that's a fighter.

And then a blink, that means he's firing at you

2,300 rounds a minute.

(gunfire)

(plane engine roaring)

In a running battle, one of the most important instruments

is the interphone.

(plane engine roaring)

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

They're coming around.

(gunfire)

Two fighters, six o'clock up, coming in...

B-17 in trouble on two o'clock, watch it.

Got an engine on fire.

(gunfire continues)

There's two more down there further...

Three planes, nine o'clock, coming around.

Keep your eye on 'em, boys.

- Around to ten. - Watch them, son,

keep your eyes open.

There's a break at 11, break at 11.

Two at two o'clock.

- Watch 'em, Scotty. - I got my sights on him.

Check out B-17, Chuck, three o'clock.

Motor smoking, fire at 10:30, coming around.

10:30 upper or lower?

(gunfire)

(exploding)

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

Come on, you guys, get out of that plane.

Bail out.

There's one, he come out of the bomb bay.

Yeah, I see him.

There's a tail gunner coming out.

Watch out for fighters.

See any parachutes, Quinlan?

Light at nine o'clock.

Eight men still in that B-17.

Come on, the rest of you guys, get out of there.

Three more chutes.

Flak, 11 o'clock.

109 at three o'clock.

(gunfire)

Come on, you son of a b...

(gunfire)

He got him, chief, look he's bailing out!

Dammit, don't yell on that intercom.

Fighters at ten o'clock.

Watch those two, they're coming in.

They're coming in, Scotty.

Get that ball turret out.

(gunfire, whirring)

Save the ammunition as much as possible.

(gunfire)

Watch that fighter coming in at three o'clock.

(plane engine roaring)

He's coming in on a half roll.

Pull her up, chief, pull her up, hurry.

(gunfire)

This fortress is hurt.

Engine on fire, losing airspeed and altitude.

Drifting into the flak, alone and helpless.

A straggler.

In a minute, Nazi fighters will swarm in like buzzards

for the kill.

You can watch, but you can't go down to help.

You keep your formation.

(plane droning)

♪

Here, too, the mission is being flown,

none the less real for being in the minds and hearts

of these men behind.

Ask anybody who's been to a field in England

or anywhere else our bombers are based,

and he'll tell you there's drama here, too,

waiting to see who is coming back.

To watch them, you might not realize

how tense these ground crews are,

but they are tense and plenty worried.

♪

In Air Force talk, this waiting is known as

"sweating out the mission.”

These men know the flight plan.

Their watches told them when the bombers were running

into enemy flak,

when they were over the target,

when they left the enemy coast.

And now their watches tell them

the bombers should be nearing the field.

Every ear strains for the first sign of the engines.

And then, somebody hears them.

And somebody sees the first faint specks

in the distant sky.

♪

Every face turns to see

and count.

♪

The watches try to read the numbers on the ships.

♪

These planes have priority to land first.

The colored flares mean wounded aboard.

In the hospital window,

these watching men know what that means.

They know what it feels like

to lie on a bouncing fortress floor

for hundreds of miles through the frozen stratosphere

in great pain with the other men in your crew

fighting to keep you alive until they hit the field.

♪

The field.

Home.

It'll be okay then

because there will be medical care, the best,

as soon as the wheels of your plane stop rolling.

(plane droning)

♪

Head wound.

Concussion.

♪

Twenty-millimeter cannon shell exploded

in his radio compartment.

Shock.

Internal injuries.

He'll be all right, though.

♪

Flak bursts scattered flying shrapnel.

He's full of steel splinters.

This pilot's leg is not a pretty sight.

Neither are the docks at Wilhelmshaven.

♪

These men will all get the Purple Heart...

♪

...and this man, too, posthumously.

♪

A transfusion right in the plane.

♪

This gunner is too weak to be moved.

The new life-giving blood flowing into his veins

might be the blood of a high school girl

in Des Moines, a miner in Alabama,

a movie star in Hollywood, or it might be your blood.

Whose ever it is, thanks.

Thirty-six planes left this field this morning.

Now, six more arrive.

That makes twenty home.

And this one is 21.

More wounded aboard.

Twenty-two coming in with his left inboard engine dead.

(plane droning)

Twenty-three with a feathered prop

on his left outboard engine.

Twenty-four, Southern Comfort,

with a chunk of tail gone.

Twenty-five, they flew home on their luck.

Twenty-six.

Not a scratch.

The control tower learns that two more landed

at a British field to the south.

One, a crash landing.

Crew safe.

That makes 28.

Twenty-nine.

A rough landing, but her pilot is badly hurt.

It's a wonder he brought her back at all.

Twenty-nine planes back so far.

Twenty-nine out of 36.

Our losses were heavy,

but the enemy's were far heavier.

We destroyed a German aircraft factory,

a rail junction, submarine pens, docks,

and harbor installations.

That's specific known damage.

But who can tell the number of German torpedoes

that will not be fired,

the number of our convoys that will get through now,

the soldiers' and seamen's lives that will be saved,

or the battles that would be won instead of lost

because of what these bombers and airmen did today.

♪

Pilot and tail gunner.

They can laugh now.

Fire on the inboard engine did this.

Flames streaked back and burned the stabilizer, too.

♪

Another crew luck brought back.

♪

Here's Old Bill.

A pretty good airplane when it took off.

Lost its nose.

Lost its navigator.

Bombardier wounded.

Top turret gunner and pilot hit.

Hydraulic system shot out.

No brakes, no flaps.

But Old Bill came back.

♪

Now, among the returned crewmembers

talk flows like a river.

Talking out every detail of the mission.

These are the faces of combat.

Faces of Americans who have watched their comrades die.

Faces that can never forget the enemy.

And they are in no mood to have their picture taken.

In the control tower, Colonel Wray, group CO,

is still watching and waiting.

Then he spots the last flight.

Three more planes

and one of them is the ship everyone has been pulling for.

♪

The Memphis Belle.

♪

The last few miles of this trip

have been a joyride.

The strain is over.

They can leave their guns now.

Now they know they're going to go home

to Spokane, Green Bay, Asheville, Detroit,

Chicago, Fort Worth, and Yonkers.

♪

(plane droning)

♪

The Belle comes in for a landing,

but first, Morgan buzzes the field,

cuts the grass with the giant fortress.

It's against the rules,

but this is a special occasion.

(whirring)

♪

♪

(squeaking, screeching)

♪

The wheels of the Memphis Belle

come back to the soil of England

for the 25th time.

♪

♪

This is a day they will never forget.

♪

Another great day soon after,

Brigadier General Hansell visited the field

and presented the Distinguished Flying Cross

to every member of the crew.

And then, there was another day.

♪

♪

Their Majesties, the King and Queen of England.

♪

♪

Johnny Quinlan never thought

anything like this would happen to him

when he left Yonkers.

♪

The ground crew were a little self-conscious

about being dressed in fatigues,

but the Queen thought they were very nice.

♪

Finally, two more visitors came:

General Eaker, commanding the Eighth Air Force,

and General Devers,

U.S. Commander of the European theater.

The Belle crew received them in flying clothes

as General Eaker read the order

for what he called their 26th and most important mission:

Return to America to train new crews

and to tell the people what we're doing here,

to thank them for their help and support,

and tell them to keep it up SO we can keep it up,

so we can bomb the enemy again and again and again

until he has had enough,

and then we can all come home.

♪

♪

(plane engine roaring)

♪

To the men of the Eighth Air Force

who are now flying deep into Germany,

bringing destruction to targets

almost a thousand miles from their bases,

destruction like this,

and who have never once been turned back by the enemy,

to those men, this film is gratefully dedicated.

♪

♪

♪