Original subtitles

Downloaded from YTS.MX

(dramatic music)

- Shall we go and do it?

- Yeah, let's do it.

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

- 2018 marks the centenary of the Royal Air Force.

In a hundred years, it's evolved from primitive planes

of wood and string

to flying at twice the speed of sound.

My name's Ewan McGregor and this is my brother, Colin,

and, since we were kids, we've been fascinated

by the Royal Air Force.

- I went on to become one of its pilots

and now I train the next generation of the RAF's top guns.

- We've always had a passion for the role

of the RAF in World War II.

Whoa!

But now, we're going to tell the whole story

of the Royal Air Force's first 100 years

by actually flying in some of its greatest aeroplanes

and recreating some of its most iconic missions.

We'll explore how planes became fighting machines

in World War I.

It's right on our tail!

Oh, my God!

And the classic dogfight from the Battle of Britain

between the Spitfire and the Messerschmitt 109.

We'll meet the people who made the RAF,

from the ground crew to the fighter pilots,

the few who saved the country in 1940.

- I had to fight for self-control

because their cockpits were full of ghosts.

- We'll explore how the Royal Air Force waged secret wars.

Oh, my God!

- Can you see it? - Yeah.

And how it became a vehicle for social change.

- And I said, I am the pilot!

- [Ewan] We'll meet the Cold War flyers prepared to launch

nuclear Armageddon.

- We all knew there'd be nothing to come back to.

- And finally, I'll dogfight at supersonic speeds

in one of the RAF's latest and most advanced jets.

It's going to be quite an adventure.

(plane engine roaring)

This is RAF Lossiemouth in the north of Scotland.

It's where Colin was based

for much of his 20 years in the RAF.

He saw active service in Iraq

and is now a civilian instructor here,

using simulators to train the RAF's front-line pilots.

- [Colin] The RAF is giving Ewan the chance to go up

in one of their latest supersonic jets, the Typhoon.

So, first, I want to introduce him

to this incredible machine.

Built with European partners,

it's the RAF's front-line combat aircraft.

It intercepts planes encroaching UK airspace

and is currently in action over Iraq and Syria.

- [Ewan] Oh, my God, look at that.

- [Colin] So, obviously, this is a two-seat version

of the Typhoon.

- It costs a tidy 60 million pounds, flies at almost twice

the speed of sound, and uses 200 state-of-the-art

onboard computers to make it a fearsome killing machine.

They're weapons, they're flying weapons,

and there's something a bit sobering

about that I suppose.

Also, there's black and yellow levers and buttons

that you're not meant to touch

and there's that sort of feeling, you know,

when people talk about standing on the edge

of a great height and they feel like they want to jump,

there is a sort of feeling like that.

You know, don't pull that handle

and then you think, what if I pull it, what if I pull it?

That's the button that you don't want to press

and they're just quite close together.

I just feel a bit serious about it

and I feel responsible about it and I feel very lucky

to be given the opportunity to do it

and I don't want to barf.

That's a summary of my feelings.

(plane engine roaring)

But before I get my hands on the Typhoon,

we're going back to the very beginning,

to when the Royal Flying Corps was the newest branch

of the Army and there's not a computer in sight.

Wow!

(dramatic music)

The Great War of 1914 to 1918

was the most destructive conflict the world had ever seen.

It claimed 30 million lives and became infamous

for industrial slaughter in the trenches.

It also marked the birth of flying as a weapon of war.

But just six years before the start of the conflict,

no-one in Britain had experienced powered flight.

This is Army Aeroplane No 1,

the first plane ever to fly in Britain.

In October 1908, it remained airborne for 400 meters.

Few saw the military potential of flying.

French General Ferdinand Foch said,

aeroplanes are interesting toys, but of no military value.

To explore how the Air Force proved him wrong,

Colin and I are meeting former RAF pilot Dave Linney

of the Great War Display Team.

He's showing us a replica

of one of Britain's first warplanes.

The BE2 was designed purely for reconnaissance,

to help the Army see beyond the horizon.

It was unarmed and flown from the back seat

with an observer in the front.

- [Colin] Just don't put your foot through there.

- No, I'm trying not to put my foot through anything.

Oh.

- [Colin] Stand on the seat, probably, first.

- Oh, yeah, okay. - Sit yourself down.

If you jump in the back. - Right, okay.

- And then just swing your leg over.

- [Ewan] Reconnaissance was soon improved

by aerial photography.

- [Dave] I'll show you a very early camera.

- Oh, my God.

Look at the size of it though.

It's the first generation

GoPro, that is.

You'd have to take the slides out.

- [Dave] Take the plates out, change the plates.

- It's so clumsy. - They got good results.

- Right.

- And later in the war the photographic results

were phenomenal.

Most of the major battles were planned

using the trench pictures that they got with these things.

- But it is extraordinary to think that it's like a matter

of six to eight years since flying started

that they were using aeroplanes in warfare.

It's crazy, isn't it?

But it wasn't long before these unarmed sitting ducks

were forced to protect themselves.

- [Dave] The initial weapon was that.

- [Ewan] Oh, yeah?

- [Dave] I mean, trying to shoot another aeroplane

with that, when you're passing--

- I'd take out a strut or a wire or something.

The engine.

- I mean, thoroughly impractical.

But they tried.

But of course now, with this, they can...

If you just slot that into that there.

Now, you've got a pretty good field of fire

and you've got a machine gun.

- Right. - So, you're starting

to become more effective.

- Yeah.

Flying offered an escape from the horror of the trenches.

Watch your head.

But pilots soon confronted a new reality.

Slaughter in the skies.

- If you made the first two weeks on a squad

and you survived the first two weeks,

then you stood a chance of surviving longer,

but up until then, it could be days,

it could be your first mission.

It was very, very poor.

- Yeah.

Pilots faced the enemy's lethal firepower

but they also froze in open cockpits

and flew without parachutes.

- There's a big chance of fire in the air

and that was probably the biggest fear for these guys

and I notice you've still got the revolver in there.

- I have, yeah.

- A surprising number of pilots would carry a revolver

in the aeroplane, not to shoot at other aircraft,

but to finish it if they were going down in flames.

- Oh, my God. - Horrific.

- [Ewan] It's now time to get a sense

of what it was like to fight

in those rickety machines.

I'll be in the observer seat

in the front of the primitive BE2.

Colin will do his observing from a Tiger Moth.

Our adversaries are German Fokker triplanes.

Agile and fast, the Fokker changed aerial warfare forever.

Dave will be in an SE5, the Spitfire of World War I.

The one thing these planes had in common

was that they were incredibly hard to fly.

More pilots died in training than in combat.

It's 1916.

With each side vying for air supremacy,

fighter aces dueled with the enemy above the trenches.

Whoo-hoo!

This was the dawn of the dogfight.

(dramatic music)

- Oh, it's great, so good to be airborne again.

Brilliant.

- Ah, so beautiful, the view is amazing!

- [Colin] Great, isn't it?

- Yeah, it's got good visibility everywhere.

Except directly ahead, of course.

In the BE2, we've reached its maximum speed

of 70 miles an hour and it's clear to me

how vulnerable and unprotected the pilots and observers

must have felt.

And then, we spot the Fokkers.

Here they come.

They close in at a 110 miles an hour.

We've fallen victim to one of the classic tactics

of dog-fighting, a surprise attack from behind.

Oh, my God!

I can see them coming in from behind, it's amazing.

The Fokker had the new weapon that revolutionized

aerial warfare, the synchronized gun.

It fired 500 rounds a minute through the propeller

without hitting it.

All the pilot had to do was get the enemy

in the cross hairs and fire.

He's right on our tail.

Oh, my God!

In 1916, German dominance of the air was so great

that the BE2 was withdrawn after 60 were shot down

in one month.

But the Fokkers didn't rule the skies for long.

In 1917, a new British plane,

the SE5, changed the game again.

At a 140 miles an hour, it was faster, more maneuverable

and it also had a synchronized gun.

This one is in the colors

of British flying ace Mick Mannock.

Mannock went on to become the archetypal fighter ace,

shooting down 61 enemy planes.

But he also broke the mold.

Most recruits were rich cavalrymen

who could afford to buy a pilot's license.

He was working-class and Irish,

with Republican sympathies.

His diaries also revealed the strain on this new breed

of warrior, the fighter pilot.

Over the lines today, engine cut out three times.

Wind up.

Now I can understand what a tremendous strain

to the nervous system flying is.

This one's from the 20th of July 1917.

I had the good fortune to bring a Hun two-seater down

in our lines a few days ago.

Luckily, my first few shots killed the pilot

and wounded the observer, a captain,

besides breaking his gun.

I hurried out at the first opportunity

and I found the observer being tended by the local MO.

The journey to the trenches was rather nauseating.

Bits of bones and skulls with the hair peeling off

and tons of equipment and clothes lying about.

This sort of thing, together with the strong

graveyard stench and the dead and mangled body

of the pilot and NCO, combined to upset me for a few days.

- I think that's the thing about it,

it was so close up as well and personal,

you know, so he actually saw that he killed the pilot

and injured the observer so you're not detached from it.

You're totally eyeball to eyeball

almost as if you're on the battlefield.

My experience is, I suppose, in modern sort of warfare,

certainly in the RAF, you're so detached

from what you're doing and you certainly don't land

and go and have a look at the results of what you've done.

- No.

It combined to upset me for a few days.

I bet it upset him for a lot longer than that.

- [Colin] Yeah.

- Like many Great War pilots, Mannock paid a terrible price.

He was suffering from what we now recognize as combat stress

and was haunted by nightmares of his aircraft in flames.

In July 1918, he went down with his burning plane.

Pilots could soar through the skies,

but they couldn't escape the horrors of warfare.

One in four of them did not survive.

We walked off the playing fields into the lines.

We lived supremely in the moment.

Our preoccupation was the next patrol,

Our horizon, the next leave.

We were trained in one subject, to kill.

We had one hope, to live.

And when it was all over, we had to start again.

(footsteps echoing)

The Royal Air Force was born in April 1918.

By the end of the war, it had grown

from just 60 aeroplanes to 22,000.

From the beginning, the RAF was at the forefront

of innovations in aviation.

(marching band music)

But in peacetime, the Army and Navy wanted to kill off

the new upstart rival service.

One man was to save the infant RAF

and shape it into a modern, forward-thinking force.

- [Colin] Hugh Trenchard, known as Boom

because of his loud voice, founded the air academy

I attended at Cranwell.

It became the RAF equivalent of Sandhurst,

the home of Army officer training.

But Trenchard also realized the pyramid of technical support

needed to get a pilot in the air

deserved the best training too.

I've come to RAF Halton to explore this legacy.

In 1920, Trenchard introduced an apprentice scheme here

that encouraged ground crew cadets

to rise to the top of the service on merit alone.

Ground crew are still trained here today.

I'm meeting an old friend, Air Marshal Cliff Spink,

who trained me to fly the Spitfire.

He was apprenticed here in 1963, aged 16,

and benefited from the systems set up by Trenchard.

- Being, in my case, a farmer's boy

and suddenly being thrust in amongst young lads

from all parts of the country,

from all sorts of backgrounds

and so, yes, I can remember suddenly the enormity of it all

and almost saying to myself, my goodness, what have I done?

But it happened to be the best thing I ever did.

- Yeah. - Partner!

Last bit's a sprint!

Let's go!

Find your partner!

- [Cliff] Something that the Air Force always did,

it really brought you into the fold.

Sometimes it had to knock you down before it built you up.

And we weren't all of the same mold,

but they brought you into a corporate entity

and teamwork and leadership.

They seem like cliches but they're not.

They were real building blocks

and Halton did it really well.

- [Colin] Thousands who passed through Halton

owe a debt to Trenchard.

Cliff himself went on to rise to the top of the RAF.

- Having a vision for an Air Force in the first place,

an independent Air Force, was fundamental

but he saw the building blocks associated with that,

yes, the officers associated with Cranwell,

but Trenchard could see the need for that core

who were so well technically trained to be able to take

the Air Force forward.

- In the class-ridden society

of the 1920s, Halton was unique.

Any apprentice who did well enough could then go on

to train as a pilot.

It was a sort of meritocracy,

I guess, wasn't it?

- I think that's something that the Air Force

has prided itself on,

that you come from any walk of life

and if you've got the skill and the dedication

you can make a success of it,

at whatever level you want to go to.

And I think that meritocracy has been the lifeblood

of the Royal Air Force.

(marching band music)

- [Colin] Trenchard's innovations in the 1920s

helped the RAF survive.

But just a few years later,

they would be tested to the limit

when Britain went to war once again with Germany.

(dramatic music)

When the Second World War began,

the RAF faced, in the German Luftwaffe,

the largest and most technologically advanced air force

the world had ever seen.

In 1940, with the British Army routed

and the Germans now only 20 miles away across the Channel,

Adolf Hitler launched an all-out aerial assault

to prepare the way for invasion.

Only the RAF stood in his way.

Whoa!

When the Battle of Britain started in June,

just 640 RAF fighters faced 2,600 German planes.

But even though it was outnumbered,

this was a battle the RAF had been built to fight.

Its revolutionary air defense system

used radar to detect incoming enemy planes.

It was then down to its new fighter planes,

the Hurricane and Spitfire,

to scramble and intercept the enemy.

On the 13th of August, the Luftwaffe launched

its main offensive to smash the RAF on the ground

and in the air.

As the Germans crossed the coastline,

dogfights on a scale never seen before

raged above southern England.

There are just a handful of pilots alive today

who fought in the battle and I'm privileged to meet

the youngest of them all.

Geoffrey Wellum was just 18 at the time.

- I suppose the first time I flew a Spitfire,

the thing flew me more or less.

It seemed to flow around the sky.

It slipped through the air.

The mere thought that you wanted to do something

conveyed thought to your hands and feet

and the Spitfire seemed to do it.

And it's just a wonderful feeling of,

this is what I've always wanted to do,

this is where I want to be.

- Up, up the long, delirious burning blue.

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace.

Where never lark or even eagle flew.

And while with silent lifting mind I've trod,

the high untrespassed sanctity of space,

put out my hand and touched the face of God.

In the summer of 1940, there was little time

for playing with the clouds.

By the end of August, the RAF was in big trouble.

On the 31st, they suffered their worst day.

41 planes were lost.

At this low point, Geoffrey found himself

thrown into the battle.

On his first sortie, he ran into a force

of 150 enemy planes.

- I'd never seen so many aeroplanes.

It was a mass coming towards us.

And I remember thinking,

good God, where do you start in on this lot?

I was spraying bullets all over Kent.

We went straight through the middle of them,

one passed straight over the top of my head about...

Well, I don't know, but I imagined I heard his engines

and I thought, this is dangerous,

and I broke away and I thought,

well, now go back and have another go.

- [Ewan] The deadliest enemy of all

was the Messerschmitt 109.

It's impossible to know how frightening it must've been

to fight for one's life in the skies.

But today, I'm going up in a two-seat Spitfire

to try and get a sense of what it was like

to take on an ME109.

What a feeling, taking off with two

of the most iconic fighter planes of all time.

The 109 had superior firepower

and its battle-hardened pilots

used surprise to deadly effect.

- And in comes Jerry and he just comes straight

slashing past us, firing his guns about there,

about 50 to 100 yards.

We wouldn't even have known he was there.

- Whoo!

Already I'm getting a real sense

of just how different this is from World War I.

The planes are so much faster.

The reaction time just has to be so much quicker.

Both planes had a maximum speed of 350 miles an hour,

but the Spitfire had one great advantage,

in a dogfight it could turn tighter than the Messerschmitt

to shake it off or get on its tail to shoot it down.

- [Pilot] We're gaining on him.

He's not getting away.

- Flying up to five sorties a day,

pilots like Geoffrey had to learn quickly

how to outwit this formidable foe.

- Never, ever fly straight and level

for more than 20 seconds in the combat area

because it was always the 109,

the German that you did not see that shot you down.

Because I always felt that, rightly or wrongly,

if I could see my antagonist,

I always felt that I had the ability

to outfly him in a Spitfire.

- [Ewan] In the air, the Germans were losing two planes

to every one of the RAF's but constant attacks

on British airfields had put RAF crews

under intense pressure.

- The worst part was sitting in dispersal, waiting.

The phone went, scramble base, 12 thou.

From there on, you ran like mad for your aeroplane

and you're supposed to be airborne within four minutes.

The ground crew had already started the engine,

your parachute was on the wing, waiting for you.

You put it on, they helped you into the cockpit.

You were too busy and dashing around too much

to be all that apprehensive.

- Did you recognize how fatiguing, how tiring it was?

- Not at the time.

You just carried on.

You became an automaton.

You managed to get into the mess

or wherever you were after a heavy day

and feel totally exhausted, drained,

but then, you know, you had a couple of pints

and you had to snap out of it.

- [Ewan] But just when it looked like the RAF might buckle,

the Germans switched to bombing cities.

It was a tactical blunder that allowed the RAF to rearm.

So, when the Germans launched a massive attack

on September the 15th to finally break the RAF,

they suffered some of their heaviest losses.

(guns firing)

German high command had failed to gain air supremacy.

Attacks continued into October,

but invasion was now no longer possible.

Geoffrey's squadron suffered some of the highest losses.

- You were always aware of absent friends

but you put it behind you.

You'd go to the White Hart and have a few pints and think,

well, last night John was here.

He's not now.

- Yeah.

- And I can see it now, clearly.

In the evening, all the boys there in their best blue,

smoke rising to the ceiling, pints knocking back.

A fighter squadron.

Survivors trying to relax.

And the boys enjoying and very much aware

of one another's company.

- Yeah.

- It was almost a love affair, really.

A love affair with one's fellow man.

You know.

And I think it took more out of us

than we realized at the time.

And, of course, at the end of my second tour

I had a bit of a breakdown in health

and was invalided home, as it were.

- [Ewan] Recently, Geoffrey was invited to witness

a Spitfire display.

- Watching those Spits getting airborne and forming up

into a battle formation, a lump came into my throat

and I had to fight for self-control

because their cockpits are full of ghosts.

(somber music)

- [Ewan] The Royal Air Force had won the Battle of Britain,

the country's first real victory of the war.

It supercharged morale and turned the atmosphere of defeat

into the potential for ultimate victory.

But the cost was high.

Of the 3,000 RAF pilots who fought in the battle,

544 lost their lives.

The young pilots' heroism was immortalized

by Winston Churchill when he stated that never in the field

of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

(energetic music)

Without the help of one little-known organization,

the battle might never have been won.

Pilots were in such short supply

that the Air Transport Auxiliary was created

to deliver combat aircraft to front-line bases.

We've tracked down two of the first women pilots

to fly in World War II.

Mary Ellis and Joy Lofthouse.

When filming took place, Mary was 100 years old,

and Joy, 94.

The ATA's air taxi was the de Havilland Rapide.

- Art Deco.

Yeah, the '30s.

Everything looked beautiful in the '30s.

There's the crosswind again.

Oh.

Their organization was made up of a thousand pilots.

In a remarkable breakthrough for equality,

born of necessity, 166 of them were women.

Hello, ladies!

- [Woman] I'm dying to go to the loo.

- [Ewan] Okay.

Look at you.

You'd get in there in a flash, wouldn't you?

- [Mary] I'd better not get in.

- [Ewan] You'd love it, though, if you could.

- I would not like to get in that,

even with a pair of steps.

- Oh.

- [Joy] I'd rather hang onto my toy boy.

- You said you didn't like toy boys.

- [Ewan] Well, he's quite a mature toy boy, let's be honest.

- [Joy] Who is my favorite toy boy?

- Oh, Martin. - Martin.

- [Joy] Martin Shaw.

- Shaw. - Oh, yeah.

- He's a very, very good actor as well.

- [Ewan] He wasn't available today, sadly.

Anyway.

- [Joy] He wasn't available.

- He wasn't available today, no.

Martin Shaw.

Sadly.

- [Joy] So, you're his stand-in.

- [Colin] I'm his stand-in, yeah.

I'm the stand-in.

Exactly.

Mary and joy share my passion for flying.

- It's so wonderful.

It's freedom, and you can more or less

do what you want.

- It's the next best thing

to having wings yourself, you know?

You might just as well have wings.

You're up there, nobody can tell you

what to do or where to go.

- [Colin] Yeah.

- [Ewan] Joy had never flown before.

Mary was an experienced pilot.

She'd learned before the war when flying was largely

the glamorous hobby of wealthy men.

- I flew 76 different types and I flew a Meteor

without any instructions at all.

- [Ewan] Throughout the war, the ATA delivered a total

of 309,000 planes.

Mary alone delivered 1,000 of them.

Summary for July 1945.

Argus, Spitfire, Corsair, Barracuda, Sea Otter,

Vengeance, Tempest, Firefly, Wildcat, Anson, Wellington,

Ventura and Mitchell.

- [Colin] And that's in one month?

- That's in, yeah, one month.

Flying planes straight from the factory

that had yet to be fitted with navigational aids

made this one of the most dangerous jobs in the war.

One in 10 of the ATA pilots were killed.

One of their colleagues, Joan Hughes,

was just five feet tall.

She had to wear wooden platforms to reach the pedals.

And what reaction would you get when you landed,

as a female pilot stepping out

of a Wellington bomber on your own?

- I opened the door, you know,

put down the steps and got out

and I waited at the bottom for the crowd of RAF people

with a car to take me to the control

and I stood there for some time and I said,

can we go to control, please?

And they said, we're waiting for the pilot.

And I said, I am the pilot!

(Ewan laughs)

They wouldn't believe me and two of them were ordered

to go up in the Wellington and search it.

So, finally, they came out and said, no,

there's nobody else there.

- [Ewan] The ATA girls were the first women in Britain

to gain equal pay.

They led the way for female pilots.

They became known as the glamour girls of World War II.

- We were never without an escort.

- [Colin] Really?

- Some girls used to have racy parties with Naval officers.

- Boyfriends.

- [Joy] Yes.

- [Ewan] Ah, really?

That sounds interesting.

- I was taken to it once and she said,

I think you'd better go home now, Joy,

whoever took me to the party.

She thought I was too young to get too involved in it

by the time they started chucking the keys on the table.

- [Ewan] I found the courage of these woman very inspiring.

75 years on, I'm about to take my first flight

in the Typhoon and I'm really nervous.

It's so maneuverable and exerts such huge stresses

on the body that I have to pass a strict medical

to prove that I'm fit to fly.

- Have you been up before?

- I was up in a Tornado once with my brother.

- Okay. - But some years ago.

So, that's my only similar experience.

- [Iona] Yup.

- And I was sick.

- Yeah, you'll definitely be sick, then, in a Typhoon.

- Oh, do you think?

- Yeah!

- [Ewan] Corporal Iona McDonald is checking

that I can get out of the plane intact

if I'm forced to eject.

- This one here is buttock to knee,

so if you just keep your bum right up against the wall again

and put your knees together.

- So, if I can just get you to lift up your T-shirt

at the front for me.

- [Ewan] Next, a thorough checkup

from Wing Commander Joanne Collins.

- Just literally just going to have

a listen to your heart sounds.

When you're ready.

- [Ewan] Because of the rapid pressure changes

in the Typhoon, my sinuses and ears have to be clear.

- And relax.

Did you feel that pop?

- Yeah.

I'm also given help on how to combat

the G-forces I'll experience.

- [Joanne] Breathe in for one second.

And then.

And out.

- [Ewan] The Typhoon can exert a force

the equivalent of nine times normal gravity.

- [Joanne] And that in itself will make sure

that you get enough blood and oxygen to the brain

and will reduce any chances of you

losing consciousness up there.

- Okay.

- [Joanne] This one here you'll need to just hand

to the pilot that's going to be flying you

just to confirm that we've done the medical

and that you're fit to fly.

- Okay.

So, you're letting me go?

- Gonna let you fly.

- Great.

Damn.

In World War II, after the Battle of Britain,

thousands of new recruits were undergoing

slightly less rigorous medicals.

If the few had saved the country in 1940,

it was the many who would now take the war to Germany

and bomb it into submission.

The man behind this campaign was the head of Bomber Command.

Arthur Harris was ruthless, relentless,

and convinced he was right.

He believed that under the weight of high explosive

and incendiary bombs, German morale would collapse.

- There are a lot of people who say that bombing

can never win a war.

Well, my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet,

and we shall see.

- [Ewan] In 1942, Harris put together the first

of the thousand-bomber raids.

Its target was the industrial city of Cologne.

For the next three years, RAF crews would wage

a new and terrible form of warfare.

Night after night, raids targeted German cities.

The seven-man crews in the new four-engined bombers,

like the Lancaster, faced formidable German defenses.

- We were caught in searchlights,

and they had us for 35 minutes.

Now, you can guarantee, basically,

that if you were caught in searchlights,

you could say, goodnight, nurse.

That was your lot.

(plane engines roaring)

(explosion booming)

- You can view the target on flames

and surrounded by millions of shell bursts.

It looks like hell.

And you really think that this is going to be it.

- [Ewan] To cope with the strain,

many nurtured a live-for-the-day attitude.

It led to an unexpected medical problem

that almost derailed the bomber campaign.

- [Colin] I'm meeting author Patrick Bishop,

who's just uncovered this secret story.

- I came across this extraordinary file

in the National Archives.

In amongst this bundle of papers,

someone's written on the margin of one document,

this is an extraordinary story!

And it really is.

It's about this outbreak of VD in the RAF,

towards the end of 1942.

And it's particularly marked in Bomber Command.

The Bomber Command incidence,

I think, it's four times higher than it is in the other

branches of the RAF.

- [Colin] Veterans of Bomber Command

told us about the warnings they'd received on the dangers

of sexually transmitted diseases.

The late Squadron Leader Tony Iveson

relished recounting a dirty ditty.

- If she's easy, she's got it.

If she's got it, you'll get it.

And remember, a blob on the knob slows demob.

(men laughing)

- I haven't heard that one before.

- [Colin] Arthur Harris offered

a typically blunt response to the problem.

- Normally, Harris was quite indulgent about hijinks

and, you know, booze-ups and all the rest of it.

But in this case, he was far from indulgent

and his response is quite chilling.

He issues this instruction that anyone who is discovered

to have contracted VD will be made to start

their whole tour of operations over again

no matter what point they've actually reached.

As you know, a tour is 30 ops, so what he's saying is,

even if you're on your 29th op,

and you've caught a dose of the clap,

you have to go back to square one.

- Back to square one.

- At this time, you've got a one-in-five chance

of surviving your tour of 30 ops,

so what this amounts to really,

if you're in this situation, at the end of your tour,

and you have to start all over again,

it's more or less a sentence of death.

- Wow, that's pretty horrendous.

- [Ewan] The grueling tours of 30 operations

in highly vulnerable bombers meant the campaign

produced the highest British casualty rates of the war.

Out of a force of 125,000 men, 55,000 never came home.

- No, I had never flown before.

Hadn't even driven a motor car before.

- Never ever, ever was I ever comfortable.

No.

No.

Frightened to death.

And anybody who says he wasn't, well, he's a bloody liar.

- [Man] Fire!

- [Man] He's right in there, isn't he?

- [Man] He's very quick, isn't he?

- [Ewan] For us, no-one better represented the courage

of this band of brothers in the air

than tailgunner Dave Fellows.

When we met him a few years ago, he even showed us

how a gunner got target practice,

clay pigeon shooting.

- We winged it. - You winged it.

You definitely winged the last one there.

He was once asked to bail out of his Lancaster

after a mid-air collision.

- The skipper said to me, David,

you can bail out if you wish.

But we could have still been attacked by enemy aircraft.

My turret was still operational.

So, why should I jump out?

What, leave my mates?

- [Ewan] We'd been looking forward

to catching up with Dave.

But, sadly, he passed away

a few days before we began filming.

The plane Dave flew, and the most potent symbol

of the bomber campaign, is the Lancaster.

Britain's last flying Lancaster

has just undergone a major service.

We're being shown round the plane

by its present-day guardian,

Squadron Leader Andrew Millican.

- Wow. - Wow, wow.

- Look at that.

So, this is painted up in the colors of 460 Squadron,

which was a Royal Australian Air Force squadron aeroplane.

- [Colin] Okay, all right.

- And the reason we wanted to paint it up in 460

was to commemorate not only what the Australians did,

'cause of course young men from all round

the dominions came to join Bomber Command,

but also it was Dave Fellows' squadron,

who sadly passed away just a couple of weeks ago.

- Yeah, yeah.

We loved hanging out with David.

- He was a lovely, lovely man.

But he got a chance to see it before he passed away?

- He did, yeah.

He did see the aeroplane before he passed away,

so he saw it in his colours, which is absolutely brilliant.

Yeah.

- [Ewan] The bomber campaign and the Battle of Britain

are defining episodes in the history of the RAF.

But one largely unsung effort made perhaps just as great

a contribution to the defeat of Hitler.

To uncover how the humble aerial photograph,

first used in World War I,

became a formidable secret weapon,

I'm meeting Wing Commander Mike Mockford.

So, Mike, what are we looking at here?

- Well, have a look at that, because that is a typical

three-dimensional image, which was absolutely vital

to the gathering of intelligence

during the Second World War,

and all the way up to today, actually.

- [Ewan] Oh, my God!

- Can you see it?

- Yeah! - Yeah, well, if you say,

oh, my God, I know you can.

- Yeah. - Because that means--

- [Ewan] The two flat images?

- Yeah, you're seeing...

You're merging the images and you're seeing buildings

have height, hills and valleys have height and holes,

as they say.

'Cause you improve your intelligence collection

from 3-D photography by probably 17% or 20%.

- [Ewan] The photographs were taken

by specially adapted Spitfires like this one.

Unarmed, and carrying extra fuel,

they could conduct seven-hour sorties at heights and speeds

that outstripped any enemy plane.

They carried two cameras that took photos

that were slightly offset from each other.

Combining the two made the 3-D image.

- [Mike] That's what you've got there.

- [Ewan] And then?

- [Mike] You're looking at Colditz.

- Oh, is that right? - Colditz Castle.

- [Ewan] The HQ for this top secret operation

was a country house on the Thames, RAF Medmenham.

The highly-skilled photographic interpreters

identified some of the greatest threats

to the Allied war effort.

- There is an interesting story of a professor

at RAF Medmenham, who'd been working all night,

and he came running down the stairs

at breakfast time in the morning, and said, I've done it!

I've done it, I know what it is,

in his underpants.

He'd forgotten to dress.

- Fantastic. - And then they said to him,

you'd better get back and get dressed

before you go and tell everyone.

- Such passion, it's great. - Absolutely, yeah.

I mean, they were...

I think that's a good word.

They were passionate about what they did.

- [Ewan] RAF Medmenham's greatest intelligence coup

was uncovering the secret V weapons that Hitler

hoped would turn the tide of war back in Germany's favor.

The most dangerous was the V1, the doodlebug,

a pilotless drone that started to rain down

on London in 1944.

The first of the V1s was spotted in this photograph.

A tiny cross on a launch ramp.

Their launch sites were notoriously difficult to find.

Mike is putting me to the test by getting me to find one.

- This is a Dutch sugar factory on the Dutch coast.

You're looking for a ramp.

- A ramp, like a ski-shaped thing?

Yeah, slope ramp.

Yeah, because they were launched from a ramp.

- [Ewan] For the photo interpreters, it was like looking

for a deadly needle in a haystack.

They became masters at spotting the clues

that were as small as a millimeter

across on the photographic prints.

- Telltale signs.

In the open ground here is ground scarring.

- [Ewan] Yes.

- Now, that is where the V1, when it was launched,

carried a booster motor, which was a small rocket.

When it got airborne, the booster motor dropped off.

And that ground scarring is where they fell to the ground.

- I see. - Follow that back,

on the roof of that building,

is some light toned damage where bits have hit the roof.

The ramp is just alongside the building, there.

See that dark shape alongside of it?

Have a look.

- The dark shape here?

- It's a dark line alongside the building.

Yes, just there.

- Oh, I see it. - Yeah, see it?

And they had 238 sites, I think it was.

Had they ever launched 2,000 V1s in every 24-hour period,

they would probably have destroyed London.

- [Ewan] Yeah, yeah.

Once the target was identified,

the RAF was able to put their bombing skills into action.

- [Announcer] Day and night, many targets are being hit.

In the occupied countries, in the Nazi Reich itself.

- [Ewan] Throughout the war,

more than 30 million photographs were taken.

3-D photography provided as much as 80%

of British intelligence.

- The general intelligence gathered by Medmenham

was, beyond question, a huge contribution to our victory

at the end of the war.

- Yeah, yeah.

The RAF's role had now grown beyond fighters, bombers

and secret intelligence gathering.

It was also crucial to the clandestine work

of the Special Operations Executive,

working behind enemy lines,

and they had the perfect tool for the job.

The Westland Lysander is one of my favorite planes.

It's slow and unarmed, but an ideal covert air taxi.

It could land in a rough field just 150 yards long.

It's the 16th of April, 1943.

I'm playing the agent Nick Boddington,

waiting to be picked up from occupied France.

My first job is to lay a flare path,

three torches in a prearranged pattern,

so the Lysander can find our temporary runway in the dark.

- [Colin] Up in the Lysander,

I'm playing Ewan's replacement.

It's giving me a sense of just how brave they were.

Flights could last seven hours and penetrate 600 miles

into the heart of occupied France.

I'm in good hands.

The pilot that night was Hugh Verity,

who flew 30 clandestine missions behind enemy lines.

- [Ewan] Okay, I think I hear them, now.

The golden rule was just three minutes on the ground,

because, at any moment, this field could be full of Germans,

so every second counted.

- [Ewan] I've got to Morse code a letter that's prearranged,

and the plane sees that Morse code letter,

and if it's the right Morse code letter, he replies one.

- [Man] Right.

- [Ewan] And if those letters are not the right letters,

the game's off.

He buggers off and we bugger off.

There, look, the red light.

Yep.

Quite a brilliant sight, isn't it?

Look at that.

Boddington wasn't just any old agent, he was an SOE chief,

returning with valuable intelligence

about compromised agent networks.

He was relieved to be rescued, as the Gestapo were onto him.

Three hours later, Boddington was safely back in Britain

with his invaluable intelligence.

The Lysander didn't just ferry hundreds of agents

in and out of enemy territory in Europe.

It also played a vital role in the war in Southeast Asia.

Fred Bailey, now aged 96, was a wireless operator.

In 1945, he was dropped behind enemy lines

in the Burmese jungle, to harass the Japanese army.

Fred's job was to call in air strikes

and to get the local tribes people

to revolt against their Japanese oppressors.

- We had to carry all the food we needed,

and explosives and ammunition.

And, in fact, we got fed up carrying it around in the jungle

and we bought an elephant.

- Oh, really? - Yes.

And we loaded all the gear onto the elephant.

But what we didn't know was that elephants

needed a day's rest after about three days' walk.

- I'm a bit like that.

- Yeah.

Well, there was no way we could rest.

We had to keep on the move

because the Japs were after us, and in the end

the elephant got fed up and pushed off.

- Yeah? - Yeah.

- [Ewan] Fred looks friendly enough now,

but back in the day, he was trained to kill.

Is that what your were?

- Yeah, a fighting knife, yeah.

- [Ewan] That's from the front

of the Commando magazine, isn't it?

- Yes, that's right, yeah.

Yes, I had one of those.

- Were you quite tasty with one of these?

- Yes, yes.

Do you want a demonstration?

- Yes, go on.

Yes.

- Well.

- [Ewan] Not a real one.

With the Japanese closing in, Fred and his team needed

to be rescued fast so they called in a Lysander.

- Very relieved to see it. - I'll bet, yeah.

- There were five of us crammed in it, with the pilot.

- [Colin] Five?

- We had a Burmese agent with us.

And he was a little fella.

He sat in the front with the pilot.

And we three crammed ourselves in the rear cockpit.

I was on the floor.

I didn't see much.

But it was quite a tight, tight fix.

- [Colin] But I guess you didn't really care?

- No, no.

- [Colin] You were desperate to get out.

- No, we had to get out, yeah.

And I always think it's an amazing credit to the pilot

that, in the middle of the jungle, in this tiny airstrip,

he could find it from just a map reference.

But find it, he did.

And he came down and in about 10 minutes

we were airborne again.

(dramatic music)

- [Ewan] By the time of the Allied invasion

of mainland Europe on D-Day

the RAF with the US Air Force had achieved dominance

of the skies of Western Europe.

With 1.2 million personnel on the ground and in the air,

it was proving a highly effective organization.

It was capable of carrying out precision attacks,

like the legendary bouncing bomb

used in the Dam Busters raid.

But the vast majority of bomber crews

were still relentlessly attacking German cities

night after night.

And final victory left the RAF

facing its greatest controversy.

Throughout the bombing campaign,

it dropped more than a million tons of bombs on Germany.

But the firestorms created by the carpet bombing

of cities like Hamburg and Cologne

killed thousands of civilians.

Even Churchill described the bombing of Dresden

in February 1945 as a step too far.

Questions about the morality of bombing whole cities

still echo today and have overshadowed

the sacrifice of the bomber crews.

It took 75 years for the bomber boys to receive a memorial.

But for many, the RAF made an extraordinary contribution

to victory over the enemy.

Historian Patrick Bishop has been weighing up

its achievements.

- I think it's fair to say that the RAF was the pre-eminent

of the three services during the Second World War.

It saved Britain in 1940,

it took the war to the Germans

when we had no other means of doing it

and you can see that in the respect

it's held in by our allies, particularly by the Americans.

They're the people you really had to impress,

and they were more impressed by the RAF

than they were by the Army and the Navy.

They made the best use of technology.

They were modern minded.

They were forward-looking.

The ethos of the thing was meritocratic and egalitarian.

So, it was very much a reflection of Britain

as it was going to be or how it wanted to be

rather than Britain as it had been.

So, I think that the RAF and its achievements during the war

did quite a lot to shape the attitudes

and, indeed, the politics of post-war Britain.

(dramatic music)

- [Ewan] Post-war peace meant facing an unfamiliar world

and unfamiliar roles.

In 1948, the RAF took on a massive and unexpected mission

that arose from the new world order, the Cold War.

After the war, the four victorious powers divided up Germany

and its former capital, Berlin.

With the Russians determined to dominate Eastern Europe,

Berlin found itself surrounded by hostile

Soviet-controlled territory.

In 1948, the Russians cut off all land access to Berlin.

The only option left was to fly in supplies

along three air corridors.

- [Announcer] As the red noose is drawn closer

about the western sector of the capital,

switches are pulled on generators

and the fuel famine forces drastic power cuts.

Berlin becomes a city of darkness.

- [Ewan] This is the Dakota,

one of the workhorses of the airlift.

Two million West Berliners had to be kept alive.

Supplies ranging from powdered milk to coal

had to be flown in.

At the height of the mission,

planes were landing every 90 seconds.

- To get a sense of what RAF ground crews

were up against, we're going to unload a Dakota.

So, we're going to have three and a half tons of supplies

we're going to have to move.

- Three and half tons?

- Three and half tons in 10 minutes.

- All right, cool. - So, we're up for it?

- Yeah. Excellent, let's give it a go.

- [Ewan] Good luck.

Over the 12 months of the airlift, the RAF delivered

a total of 394,000 tons of cargo in 66,000 sorties.

That's us.

- [Colin] Geoff Smith worked

at Gatow Airfield during the airlift.

It backed onto a Russian base

and they weren't overly friendly.

- Used to come on the airfield at night initially

and start putting rocks on the runway and things like that.

- Really, really? - Yeah.

They used to try and flash searchlights in the pilots' eyes

as they were coming in.

All sorts of tricks like that.

- [Colin] I'll get the next one.

10 minutes to empty a full Dakota

shouldn't be too tricky for Ewan.

He used to have a proper job in a potato packing shed.

- It's good, there's lots more, isn't there?

Oh, my God, there's ties all the way up.

Four minutes.

Six minutes left, lads.

So, we were trying to do our exercise,

unloading the Dakota in 10 minutes.

Is that a sort of accurate?

- That was the sort of target that we aimed for, yes.

- Right, 10 minutes to unload.

- [Geoff] And then we would back load

if there was a load going back down into the British zone.

- [Colin] And then you'd be straight onto the next aircraft

after that, would you?

- Well, there'd be a queue.

- A queue. - A queue of aircraft.

- [Colin] Are you proud of the part you played?

- Absolutely.

We've always considered that we did help a lot of people,

people who were in desperate need as well.

- Oh, shit.

That's going everywhere.

Well done.

Okay, that's it.

Oh, yes, nine minutes!

Whoo!

I had nine minutes on my watch.

I don't know what the official timekeepers say,

but I had nine.

- Good job.

You're absolutely dripping.

- I tell you what, 'cause you're stooped over,

everything's right in the small of your back.

I lifted all of those bags badly, you know?

- Should have gone back to your days in the tattie shed.

- I know.

I know but we had a hydraulic lift

that put them on your shoulder.

I think this is 'cause everything's like that

so all the weight's there.

That's really sore.

- We've got another aircraft coming in in a minute, though,

that's the other thing.

- Yeah.

Look at all the spuds under the plane.

Spuds everywhere.

(explosion booming)

The Cold War was made all the more chilling

by the advent of the atomic bomb.

By 1949, both the US and Russia possessed weaponry

capable of wiping humanity from the planet.

When the RAF tested hydrogen bombs

on Christmas Island in 1956,

it announced Britain's membership of the nuclear club.

- [Announcer] Like a man-made sun, the fireball glows high

above the Pacific Ocean.

- [Ewan] The RAF was now primed to drop nuclear weapons

on the Eastern Bloc, a role that continued until the 1980s.

- [Colin] This is the Avro Vulcan,

made by the same company that built the Lancaster.

It entered service just 14 years

after its iconic predecessor and became the linchpin

of Britain's nuclear bomber force.

I'm really excited to meet two veteran Vulcan pilots,

Jonny Tye and Martin Withers.

Jonny joined in 1962 and Martin in 1971.

The Vulcan was a bomber but had something

of the Spitfire about it.

- It certainly could outmaneuver any fighter of its era.

The early missiles, heat-seeking missiles,

all they had to slow down and turn and it would lose its...

It really was superb.

So, yeah, and it's a joy to fly.

- [Colin] The Vulcan was armed with a nuclear missile

60 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

It was called Blue Steel.

- They were not pleasant times then.

- Mm-hm. - Yeah.

- And the Blue Steel was a pretty nasty

bit of kit, wasn't it?

- Oh, it was a horrid thing. - To be sitting on top of?

- [Colin] Yeah, yeah.

Deterrence relied on letting the Russians know

that if they launched a nuclear strike,

the RAF was immediately ready to hit back.

- We'd go from 15-minute readiness to five-minutes readiness

and then, on occasions, we'd go to three minutes' readiness

and we'd start the engines and actually taxi these things

and in the middle of the night in the winter,

when we taxied them, you know, you began to wonder

whether it was for real or whether it was an exercise.

- All right, so you didn't know

it was going to be an exercise?

You were scrambled, in effect?

- [Jonny] They were the nervous times,

when you actually fired the old bomber up and taxied it.

- [Colin] Each crew had two secret targets,

usually airfields and towns within the Soviet bloc.

- I did meet a girl from one of those towns on holiday

and that did shake me.

- Really? - Yeah, it really shook me.

I couldn't continue to talk to her.

- Wow.

Were you fully expecting it to be a one-way mission?

- Well, I think we knew that.

We hadn't the fuel to get back.

We had alternate airfields proposed in Norway

but they probably wouldn't have been there.

But it was just one of those things,

you had to accept it.

- But we all knew there'd be nothing to come back to.

We never wanted it to happen, obviously,

but there was no doubt that we would have carried out

this mission in the knowledge

that there was going to be nothing to come home to.

- I always felt that the UK would never go to war

on its own without...

It would only be a retaliation, if you like.

So, I had to put that in my mind

and just think that way and that way I was able

to cope with the stress.

- [Colin] Yeah, yeah.

- [Ewan] It was a grim business.

Pilots were issued with an eye patch

so even though they might be blinded by the nuclear flash,

they would still have one good eye.

The moment when the Cold War got closest to boiling over

was the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.

The US demanded that Russia remove newly installed

nuclear missiles from Cuba.

The Soviets refused.

When the crisis reached its peak on the 27th of October,

the threat of nuclear Armageddon

put the bombers on a three-minute warning.

- I think there was something like 160 warheads

at that sort of time in the early '60s.

So, there could've been 160 V bombers, Victors and Vulcans,

taking off, carrying this huge hydrogen bomb.

- Yeah, they were ready to go.

- [Colin] Both sides eventually backed down

from the nuclear endgame.

For the V-force pilots, it justified nuclear deterrence.

- It was very important.

Certainly, I'm proud to have been part of that,

even though I might not have been terribly keen on it

at the time.

But, in retrospect, I'm extremely proud

of what the aircraft and what the RAF did

to keep the country safe.

- [Colin] Throughout its history, the RAF has adapted

to changing roles and technologies.

Today, the Chinook helicopter

is its most versatile workhorse,

ferrying troops and heavy loads, of course,

but also dropping special forces behind enemy lines.

I'm going on a training flight with

Squadron Leader Iain MacFarlane,

the most decorated of all post-war RAF pilots.

What is it actually like to fly?

- [Iain] It's like a sports car.

It looks big and cumbersome

but actually it is like a sports car.

- [Colin] So, Iain, we're dropping into low level now.

This is a skill you guys obviously had to practice a lot.

It was your bread and butter, wasn't it?

- [Iain] This was where we felt safest.

We regularly would train down to 50 feet

and that's what kept us safe

throughout a number of campaigns, really.

- [Colin] Iain undertook special operations

in the Gulf War and Afghanistan.

But perhaps his most dangerous mission

was in Sierra Leone in West Africa.

In 2000, special forces were tasked with rescuing

six British soldiers held by a rebel group,

the West Side Boys.

The RAF was called in to help.

Surprise was essential, as the rebels had threatened

to kill the hostages if they heard approaching helicopters.

- The preferred option was a silent approach

by the SAS on foot and the most definite bottom of the pile

was an all-out helicopter assault

to the front door of the enemy.

But because of the terrain involved

and the difficulties that the reconnaissance patrols

had getting into position, that's exactly how it turned out.

We expected to lose my aircraft

and that went to ministerial level

for permission to mount the assault,

based on that assumption,

and I selected my crew based on people that were not married

or didn't have any children, with the exception of myself.

- Wow, that's some decision to make.

Yeah.

The Chinook's 100 mile an hour down draught

is normally seen as a disadvantage,

but not in this operation.

- We decided to use down draught as a weapon.

I sat in as steady a hover as I could manage

under the circumstances and watched the roof of the building

peel off from front to back.

- And that was due to your downwash that you'd planned?

- Exactly, exactly that.

And watched one chap get out of bed,

pick up his AK-47 assault rifle,

run out into the corridor, run down the corridor,

run out of his front door and raise the weapon,

point it straight at me.

And at that point, the decision to remove the windows

on the side of the aircraft was vindicated

'cause a small hole appeared in the middle of his forehead

and he went down like a sack of potatoes.

- So, he was shot from the Chinook itself?

- [Iain] Yeah.

- Before the guy's had a chance...

Wow, that's amazing.

Iain had a lucky escape,

but one SAS soldier lost his life.

- And within 19 seconds of the first troop

hitting the ground, all but one of the hostages were safe.

- 19 seconds?

- [Iain] Yeah.

So, they didn't waste any time.

- Wow.

The Chinook has already been in service with the RAF

for 50 years and will probably serve another 50.

- If ever you have to go to war in a flying machine,

this is the flying machine that I'd want to go to war in.

It's just so capable and looks after its crew so well.

- [Ewan] It's the morning I've been waiting for.

Today is my Typhoon flight and I'm incredibly nervous.

Having breakfast at Colin's house with our mum and dad,

I can't help but feel disappointed Colin's not coming too.

Well, I won't be flying with Colin, so that's a shame.

But the other two were...

He made me barf on both of them.

- [Colin] Ewan thinks he's leaving me behind,

but I've got a surprise for him.

- Sort of talking myself into it, almost.

- [Mrs McGregor] Oh you'll be fine.

- The truth is it's the most extraordinary opportunity.

- [Mrs McGregor] Of course.

Yeah, quite amazing.

Oh, oh!

- [Ewan] What are you up to?

- You know you said it was a bit of a shame

that we weren't going to be flying together

in this program?

- [Ewan] Yeah.

- Well, we are, 'cause I'm going to be up

in another Typhoon next to you.

- Are you going to be up as well?

- Yeah. - Oh, fantastic!

- Two such different professions

and you're both top of each profession,

I think, to be able to work together, to me, is amazing.

- You are, obviously, going to be that.

That's your call sign today.

- [Mrs McGregor] Oh!

Oh, that's very funny.

- [Colin] And I'm going to be your wingman.

- [Ewan] Like any other RAF mission,

the next step is the briefing.

Colin's pilot, Wing Commander Chris Hoyle of 1 Squadron,

takes us through the sortie.

- Some of the quick reaction alert.

- [Ewan] His squadron is about to be deployed

in the Middle East.

- I want to give you a sense of the performance of Typhoon

'cause that's the bedrock of its capability.

On most sorties, we would look, where possible,

to use a tanker just to extend our ability to train.

- [Colin] My pilot is Group Captain Paul Godfrey,

the station commander.

Even the boss needs to keep up his flying hours.

- We might get a little bit more.

- [Ewan] We'll refuel, simulate a dogfight

and experience some pretty uncomfortable G-forces.

- It's not a particularly pleasant environment often

and it's quite claustrophobic.

- Then it's time to put on our survival equipment.

The most important part are the hi-tech suits

that combat the dreaded G-forces.

So, now what I'm doing is I'm putting a set of G trousers on

and they'll be connected to the aircraft.

So, air supply.

And whenever we pull any G, they'll inflate around

all my major muscle groups

and force the blood up into my head.

Without the hi-tech suits,

our brains would be starved of oxygen and we'd pass out.

- [Ewan] Relationship, mum.

- [Man] And then there's just two signatures.

So, the first one is.

You've already had your medical anyway,

but you haven't got a cold, I can hear that.

So, if you sign there and then.

- [Ewan] I'm not sure who's more nervous, me or my mum.

Thank you very much.

- [Man] Right, won't prolong the pain any more.

- [Ewan] Yeah, let's do it.

- [Man] How are you feeling, Ewan?

- Good.

Yeah, I'm excited, sort of excited about it.

I'm glad it's, like, we're doing it now

and, you know, we're almost about to get going,

which is good.

The hanging around is less comfortable

than the just about to do it bit.

- Ready? - Yeah.

Okay.

See you later.

- I think we to come out as well

- [Ewan] I'm just saying goodbye.

- It is my day job but, hey.

All right?

(dramatic music)

Although I train a lot of Typhoon pilots in the simulator,

this amazing plane was introduced after I left the RAF

so I've never flown in one.

I can't wait to get up there.

- Ready in the back, Colin? - Yeah, I'm ready

for this, mate.

Here we go.

I'm first to experience

the Typhoon's near-vertical take-off.

10 seconds.

- [Ewan] It looks like such a steep climb.

Even on take-off, the G-forces are immense.

- Happy in the back, Ewan? - Yes.

Let's hope my trousers work.

(dramatic music)

- [Pilot] Head up, head down, 135.

- [Ewan] The reality is astonishing,

like nothing I have ever felt before.

It's so smooth.

(Ewan laughing)

(chattering on radio)

- All good in the back? - Yes.

- [Computer] Bingo one.

- [Man] Bingo.

- [Man] Bingo one.

- [Ewan] That was just so smooth!

(chattering on radio)

And before we know it, we've broken the sound barrier.

We're travelling at 1,000 miles an hour

and it feels like I'm in a bubble.

- [Colin] Our first rendezvous

is with a tanker over the North Sea.

- [Ewan] At 20,000 feet, we have to connect with the tanker

to refuel at a speed of 500 miles an hour.

For Typhoon pilots, this has to become second nature.

First up is Colin's plane.

- [Colin] Once we've attached ourselves to the fuel hose,

taking on 1,200 litres of fuel a minute, it's Ewan's turn.

- [Ewan] The Typhoon has a maximum range of 3,300 miles

but, with refueling, that can be extended.

(chattering on radio)

- [Man] Are you able to take them to Delta 613 Alpha?

- [Man] We can head down that way, yeah.

The weather's okay.

As you head further south, it starts to build.

- [Colin] And now the moment I've been waiting for,

I'm handed the controls of a military jet

for the first time since I left the RAF 10 years ago.

It's good.

The planes I flew were from a completely

different generation.

They did the job, but they were heavy and cumbersome.

This is just so light and agile.

- [Ewan] Then it's my turn to take over the controls

of this awesome, cutting-edge aeroplane.

- [Man] Now you have control.

- Okay.

- [Man] Just confirm you've got control, Ewan.

- I do have control. - Excellent.

- [Ewan] I know 200 computers and Paul

can take over at any moment, but this is astonishing.

(dramatic music)

And what I can't believe is it's all happening

at supersonic speed.

Can I tell my mates I flew a Typhoon, then?

- [Man] Of course you can.

It's not me.

- [Ewan] Now, we're ready to practice air-to-air combat.

These days the enemy is usually over the horizon

but the RAF still has to train for close-up dogfights.

(dramatic music)

Who'd have thought it?

My brother and I taking each other on at 20,000 feet.

The technology may have changed,

but the techniques would be familiar

to Mick Mannock in World War I

and Geoffrey Wellum in World War II.

That was pretty good.

The last time an RAF pilot took part in a dogfight

was during the Falklands conflict.

In 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands,

a British territory in the South Atlantic.

The British sent a force to recapture the islands

and when the troops from the task force

landed to reclaim the territory,

they found themselves under attack

from the Argentinian Air Force.

RAF pilot David Morgan was patrolling in a Sea Harrier

when he saw Skyhawks attacking a landing craft.

- I saw the first Skyhawk hit the back

of the landing craft with a bomb.

A large explosion, and I knew that some of the guys there

had died and that made me more angry

than I've ever been in my life

and I decided, at that stage, that guy was going to die.

I wasn't shooting down aeroplanes.

You know, people say it's just shooting down bits of metal.

It wasn't on this occasion.

I was going to kill the guy in the cockpit.

As I was converting onto him, out of the corner of my eye

I saw another aircraft to the south of me

by a couple of hundred yards.

So, I locked my missile onto him

and fired it right in at minimum range,

300-400 yards with a lot of overtake,

and the missile came off the port wing

and went straight up his jet pipe.

I can remember seeing it actually disappear up the jet pipe

before the thing vaporized,

the whole aircraft just vaporized.

- [Colin] David's speed of 700 miles an hour

and the force of the missile flipped his Harrier on its back

at 50 feet above the ground.

- Wrenched the aircraft back up again

and found myself pointing at the guy

I'd seen actually hit the landing craft.

Locked the second Sidewinder onto him.

The missile came off the starboard wing,

took a big lead to the left across my nose

and took him out at 90 degrees,

went bang just behind the cockpit

and the whole of the back-end of the aircraft disappeared,

just left the cockpit and about two foot of wing stub,

I suppose, and that was it,

when, all of a sudden, a parachute opened

right in front of my face and it was the second guy

who'd actually managed to eject

before the cockpit hit the water.

And I went underneath him so close

that I actually instinctively ducked.

And my hatred then flipped completely to,

this is another pilot.

- Yeah.

- Huge empathy with him.

And then flipped right back again

to engaging the next guy with guns.

- [Colin] When he returned to his aircraft carrier,

David wrote out a poem by a pilot from the Second World War.

- Did Michelangelo aspire painting the laughing cumulus

to ride the majesty of air?

He was a trier, I'll give this Jerry that.

I let him have a sharp four-second squirt,

closing to 50 yards, he went on fire.

Your deadly petals painted.

You exist, a simple stature.

Man high without pride.

You pick your way through the heaven and the dirt

He burnt out in the air.

That's how the poor sod died.

I thought that was particularly apt.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

- And it screwed me up for a long time.

I had classic symptoms of PTSD

and I'm sure I can pin it down to those couple of minutes

of incredibly, incredibly intense emotions

switching 180 degrees two or three times.

(somber music)

- [Ewan] David's story has so many echoes of the dogfights

of World War I and II.

The immense bravery and the terrible personal cost.

- [Man] Yeah, we'll probably go out to the West Coast,

then pull up and do some of that G8.

- [Ewan] Okay.

Wow.

Bonnie Scotland.

On the way back, we're going on a high-speed trip

down memory lane through the Highlands.

My parents used to live in Ullapool.

Colin was conceived in Ullapool!

- Oh, my good God! - Yeah!

- [Colin] Bit too much information.

- [Ewan] Flying in the Typhoon has been such a privilege.

It's brought together all we've learnt about the RAF.

- [Colin] That was astonishing.

That was just really, really beautiful.

- [Ewan] The Typhoon and its pilots

feel like worthy successors to the Spitfire,

the Lancaster and their crews.

There he goes.

Oh-ho-ho!

Oh, my God!

- The Royal Air Force has always been

at the cutting edge of technology and innovation,

but you've always got to come back to the people

'cause that's what the RAF's all about, really.

It's about the people.

And you find a commonality between all of them

that ties everybody together.

You know, it's that ethos and spirit of the RAF

that lasted throughout its 100-year history

and everybody's got a chunk of that in them that's served.

- Cheers. - Yeah, cheers, cheers.

- Couple of weeks have been, yeah,

a real journey of understanding

about this incredible organization,

starting at the very beginning

with those amazingly beautiful and iconic

paper airplanes.

They look like, don't they?

Little, rickety little machines.

Right through to flying the Typhoon

and meeting all the people we've met along the way

who've been involved in this Royal Air Force.

It's a special organization and, you know, ultimately

saved our lives from invasion in the Second World War

and still protect us to this day.

(dramatic music)