Original subtitles

[pensive music]

- 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 25,000 feet and 300 miles per hour

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.

[suspenseful music]

- 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.

[suspenseful music]

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.

[dramatic music]

- 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.

[dramatic music]

- 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.

[dramatic music]

[explosion booming]

[siren blaring]

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] 1942, the Third Reich

is building elaborate coastal defenses 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.

[dramatic music]

- 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.

[pensive music]

- [Tom] 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 '30s, 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.

- [Robert] 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.

[pensive music]

- East Anglia is the England of little churches,

hedges, fields, medieval buildings,

and it's turned into one gigantic

aircraft carrier.

- [Tom] 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.

[dramatic music]

- [Dan S.] It's flat, it's perfect for airfields.

[propeller whirring] [dramatic music]

So you get this massive, massive influx of American bombers

carrying the most destructive weapons ever produced,

and just as strikingly, young American airmen.

[suspenseful music]

- They all had grown up dreaming of flying above the clouds

at over 300 miles per hour,

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.

[dramatic music]

[plane engine rumbling]

- [Tom] The Royal Air Force

has been striking the German homeland for two years.

- Take off, off you go, off you go, over.

[bomber rumbling]

- [Tom] Prime Minister Winston Churchill

understands how important such raids are for British morale.

But the RAF pays a grievous cost.

- 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.

[pensive music]

[suspenseful music]

- [Dan S.] 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.

[explosions banging]

- [Robert] 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.

[dramatic music]

- [Dan S.] There's a lot of retribution

in this British strategy.

The Blitz had smashed British cities and factories

in the winter of 1940-41.

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.

[pensive music]

- [Tom] Meeting in Casablanca, President Roosevelt,

Prime Minister Churchill, and their staffs

strategize how to continue the Allied assault

on the Third Reich.

- [Robert] 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.

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] 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.

- [Robert] 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.

[dramatic music]

- 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."

- [Tom] The American plan rests on a cutting-edge device,

the Norden bombsight.

[pensive music]

- The Norden bombsight is an analog 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 18,000 feet.

- [Tom] Americans claimed the Norden bombsight,

which requires daylight and clear weather,

promises greater precision

and therefore fewer civilian casualties.

- [A.J.] 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.

- [Col. Douds] 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.

[dramatic music] [plane rumbling]

- [Tom] Attacking an enemy from 25,000 feet

presents unique challenges.

[bomber rumbling]

Temperatures dip below -50 degrees Fahrenheit.

If an airman's supply of oxygen

is cut off for more than 60 seconds,

he will die.

[suspenseful music]

- [Robert] You look out the window as a crewman on a B-17

and you begin to see black puffs.

[suspenseful music]

And they might not look too dangerous.

[explosion banging]

Until one actually makes contact.

- [Martin] The most infamous German weapon of them all

was the Flak 88 millimeter gun.

[anti-aircraft gun firing]

It's capable of sending 29-pound explosive projectiles

to altitudes approaching 30,000 feet.

[suspenseful music]

[anti-aircraft gun firing]

- [Col. Douds] The dilemma with flak is

you can't maneuver to avoid it,

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

[suspenseful music]

- Once the flak stops, there's silence.

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

- [Pilot] There's four of 'em, one o'clock high.

- [Gunner] They're coming around.

[suspenseful music]

- [John] German fighter pilots are seasoned combat veterans.

Many of them have hundreds of kills

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

- [Col. Douds] 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.

[suspenseful music]

- [Robert] So the B-17 is bristling with machine guns

around the fuselage of the aircraft.

[bomber rumbling]

- [Pilot] Three planes, nine o'clock, coming around.

[machine gun firing] [suspenseful music]

- [Pilot] Too fast, six o'clock up, coming in.

[machine gun firing]

- [John] It really is a flying fortress.

[machine gun firing]

- [A.J.] 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.

- [Pilot] Breaking 11, breaking 11.

- [Gunner] I got him.

[machine gun firing] [suspenseful music]

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

C'mon, you guys, get out that plane, bail out.

Come on, get out of there.

[suspenseful music] [bombers rumbling]

- [John] 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.

'Cause if you don't hit the target,

you gotta come back again.

[machine gun firing]

[fighter planes roaring]

[machine gun firing]

- [Robert] War sometimes breaks down to

individual moments of terror.

[suspenseful music] [fighter plane roaring]

[machine gun firing]

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.

- [Bombardier] Bombs away!

[bombs whistling]

[explosions booming] [bombers rumbling]

[pensive music]

- [Tom] 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.

[pensive music]

[plane rumbling]

- 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.

[dramatic music]

- [Dan S.] 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 man are guinea pigs.

[dramatic music]

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] 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.

- [Martin] 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.

[pensive music]

- [Tom] 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 Göring.

[pensive music]

- [Robert] Göring is hearing from his local

and regional Luftwaffe commanders

that they really need more fighter aircraft.

But in a sense, Göring's trapped.

If he detaches air power from the Eastern Front,

a situation that is already critical

is soon going to turn mortal.

[dramatic music]

- [John] 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.

- [Robert] With German fighter production on the upswing,

the Allied government is 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.

[dramatic music]

- [Tom] In May, Churchill and Roosevelt meet

to finalize plans in the Mediterranean.

They also commit to a

cross-channel invasion of France.

- [Robert] 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.

- [Tom] Code named 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.

- [Col. Douds] At this point,

everybody recognizes 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.

- [Dan S.] And that means the bomber force is given the job

of smashing the infrastructure

of the Luftwaffe on the ground,

so that when the Allies land on D-Day

and in the ground fighting that follows,

there'll be no German aircraft interfering.

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] 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.

[suspenseful music]

- [Dan S.] Hamburg is a real center 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 neighborhoods.

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

- [Tom] It's codenamed Operation Gomorrah,

after the Old Testament city

that was destroyed by fire from above.

- [Col. Douds] This is gonna be eight days and seven nights

of pounding the city of Hamburg.

- [Robert] 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,

and these little incendiaries will land in those roofs

and just set fires.

- [Robert] 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.

[pensive music]

- [Tom] In the summer of 1943,

Allied air forces launched Blitz Week,

the largest series of raids on Germany to date.

- [Robert] 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.

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] The Allies' first joint target

is the city of Hamburg.

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

[suspenseful music]

The RAF drops incendiary bombs.

[explosions banging]

But in the following days,

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

[dreary music]

- [Robert] The Americans intended to bomb

aircraft factories,

but the use of incendiaries created so much smoke

that the Norden bombsights were essentially blinded.

- [Col. Douds] They can't actually see their targets.

So they're almost reduced to doing area bombing,

not unlike the British.

[bomber roaring]

- [Tom] On July 27th, a heat wave sends temperatures soaring

as the RAF returns for a fourth night of strikes.

[suspenseful music]

- [John] It's very hot,

it's very dry, and the meteorological conditions

are ripe for firestorm.

[fire blaring]

This time the fires burn so hot

the oxygen that these fires demand causes a windstorm.

- Winds are over 150 miles an hour.

- [Dan S.] The firestorm works a little bit like a blast furnace.

It's a localized weather system

that will see that fire spread

at the speed of a galloping horse.

[suspenseful music]

- [Robert] A gigantic updraft results

that robs people cowering in their shelters of oxygen

and leads to death by asphyxiation.

[suspenseful music]

- [Dr. Grant] Temperatures go up to a thousand degrees Celsius.

[fire blaring]

It's the most devastating firestorm

that's ever been created.

- [Dan C.] 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.

- [Dan S.] The city of Hamburg

is devastated.

[pensive music]

- [Tom] Operation Gomorrah kills over 40,000 civilians.

Almost 2/3 of the city's houses are burned to the ground,

leaving a million residents homeless.

- [Dan S.] Churchill is worried about

the human cost of what they're doing.

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

- [Dan C.] 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.

- [Tom] The destruction stuns Nazi high command.

[pensive music]

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.

Göring has told Hitler repeatedly

that he had this bomber problem under control,

and now here lies the second largest city in Germany

in ashes.

- [Tom] 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.

[planes rumbling]

[pensive music]

- [Robert] In addition, the Germans ring their major cities

with these gigantic monumental flak towers,

150-feet tall, 11-foot 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.

[anti-aircraft gun firing]

[fighter plane roaring]

[pensive music]

- [Dan S.] 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.

- [Robert] 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.

[pensive music]

- [Col. Douds] Henry Arnold thinks

strategic bombing can work.

We just need to do it harder.

[dramatic music]

- [Tom] 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.

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] Arnold now demands maximum effort

from the Eighth Air Force.

[plane roaring]

[planes rumbling]

- 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.

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

but that number will soon double and triple.

[dramatic music]

- 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.

- [Dr. Grant] These are called bottleneck industries,

industries where just a few plants and locations

control all the production.

- [Robert] 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.

- [Col. Douds] Probably the most consequential

bottleneck industry with regards to the Luftwaffe

is ball bearings.

[pensive music]

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.

[dramatic music]

- [Tom] 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.

- [Robert] The Allies are always surprised at how rapidly

the Germans rebuild their cities and factories.

[dramatic music]

But they do so with this almost inexhaustible supply

of slave labor,

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.

- [Tom] Forced laborers from occupied countries

are ordered by the Nazis to reconstruct German factories.

- [Col. Douds] They also dispersed

the German aircraft industry

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

'cause it's not all in one place.

And they put it underground.

They used old salt mines.

They used old quarries.

- [Martin] 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.

- [Col. Douds] This ultimately means German aircraft production

will continue to increase.

- [Tom] By the fall of 1943, the Eighth Air Force

is bombing targets deep inside the Reich

and returning to ones they've already hit.

[bombers rumbling]

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.

[pensive music]

- [Robert] There is a limit

to how much the human psyche can take.

And on many occasions, bomber crews reach that limit.

[suspenseful music]

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

[explosion booming]

Fighters, flak, fighters, flak.

[explosion booming]

An adrenaline rush overloading your nervous system.

[machine gun firing]

[explosion booming]

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'd do it again tomorrow.

[suspenseful music] [bombers rumbling]

More fighters, more flak.

[explosion booming]

You think you were gonna die

10 times in the course of this bomb raid.

[bomber rumbling] [explosion booming]

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.

[pensive music]

- [Tom] By the end of the month,

the Eighth Air Force has endured horrific losses.

The men call it Black October.

- [Robert] 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.

- [Col. Douds] They start to see the losses around them and go,

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

[bomber rumbling]

[explosion booming]

[machine gun firing] [explosion booming]

[dramatic music]

- [Tom] A series of American raids in Black October

shows the cost of daytime precision bombing.

- [John] The loss rates,

the limitations of the Norden bombsight,

the weather, all these things play in the factor

in how ineffective the bombing campaign is in 1943.

You could easily say that the Luftwaffe

still owned the skies over Germany.

- [Tom] In the late fall,

bad weather forces the Eighth Air Force to suspend missions,

giving ground crews the winter to patch battered planes.

[pensive music]

[bombers rumbling]

But the RAF launches its largest campaign yet,

a sustained assault on Berlin.

- [Col. Douds] These are gonna be massive raids,

16 of them in the heart of Germany.

[plane engine rumbling]

- [Robert] 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 4 to 500 bombers,

but they'll cost Germany the war.

[suspenseful music]

[explosions booming]

- [Tom] The RAF winter raids to Berlin

push the limit and stamina of British air crews,

with modest results.

[gun firing]

[explosions cracking]

[gun firing]

[explosion booming]

[ominous music]

- [Col. Douds] Harris is presciently accurate.

They lose 400 to 500 aircraft and almost 5,000 airmen.

- [Robert] 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 plane shot down

and more of their crewmen killed or captured.

[dramatic music]

- [Tom] After months of heavy losses,

the Eighth Air Force is at a crossroads.

- [Dr. Grant] Arnold realizes 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.

[bomber rumbling]

- [Martin] The Allied air forces have the P-38 Lightning

and the P-47 Thunderbolt,

two absolutely excellent fighter aircraft

capable of dog fighting

just about as well as anything else in the sky.

[fighter planes rumbling]

They only had one limitation, and that was range.

[dramatic music]

[fighter planes rumbling]

- [John] At the time, aeronautical engineers

believed having an aircraft that could fly

almost a thousand miles into Germany and back,

with enough firepower,

enough maneuverability,

enough engine power,

is an engineering impossibility.

[dramatic music]

- [Tom] But a new fighter is already being produced

by the United States for the British,

the P-51 Mustang.

- [John] And the Brits test fly it, and they go,

"Thanks, it's okay."

[fighter plane rumbling]

Below 15,000 feet, it's fine,

but we're looking for something higher altitude.

[fighter plane rumbling]

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.

[fighter plane rumbling]

- [Col. Douds] That's when it turns into this magical machine.

[fighter plane rumbling]

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.

[suspenseful music]

- [Robert] 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's the embodiment

of the Anglo-American coalition in World War II.

[fighter plane rumbling]

- [Anand] The P-51 is a game-changer,

but it requires, mind you,

an entire rethink of American aerial doctrine.

[suspenseful music]

- [Dan S.] Allied planners realized

that if they threaten targets

that are essential to the German war efforts

and they force the Germans

to send up fighters to protect those targets,

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

[machine gun firing]

[explosion booming]

- [Dr. Grant] The Allies have started out thinking B-17s

will destroy the German air force on the ground.

By early 1944, they realized the P-51

is going to destroy the German Air Force

in the air.

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] 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.

[dramatic music]

[bombers rumbling]

- [Dr. Grant] This is the critical hour

for the Combined Bomber Offensive

because the Allies now know

that they're approaching the time for the D-Day landings.

[fighter planes rumbling]

They need to draw up the Luftwaffe

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

[fighter planes rumbling]

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.

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] Fitted with extra fuel tanks, the P-51 Mustangs

are capable of penetrating deep into Germany.

[fighter planes roaring]

Their primary mission has been protecting the bombers.

Now they're ordered to actively pursue German fighters,

even if it leaves the formations vulnerable.

[fighter planes rumbling]

- [John] 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.

[machine gun firing]

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] Operation Argument, known as Big Week,

begins a battle of attrition

between the Allied air forces and the Luftwaffe.

[machine gun firing]

[explosion booming]

[machine gun firing]

[explosion booming]

The success of the upcoming invasion

hangs in the balance.

[explosion booming] [pensive music]

- [John] 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.

[suspenseful music]

- [Robert] 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.

[suspenseful music] [machine gun firing]

[explosion booming]

- [Tom] In the month after Big Week,

American fighters down more German planes over Europe

than in the previous two years.

[suspenseful music]

The Luftwaffe is being destroyed in the air

and on the ground.

- [Col. Douds] 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.

[explosions booming]

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

[machine gun firing]

[explosion booming]

- [Tom] By June, 1944,

there are few experienced Luftwaffe pilots left alive.

- [John] 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.

[bombers rumbling]

[pensive music]

- [Tom] Control of the air is decisively established.

The Luftwaffe will be incapable

of opposing the upcoming Allied invasion.

But again, the cost is high.

[somber music]

Fewer than a quarter of British and American bomber crews

survive the campaign.

- [Robert] The tragedy of the air war is that the bomber crews

were essentially testing out an unproven theory.

- [Dan C.] Anytime 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.

- [Robert] 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.

[dramatic music]

- 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 accomplished,

the destruction of the German Luftwaffe,

will make possible

the greatest land and sea invasion in history.