Original subtitles

.

NARRATOR: For over a hundred years,

battles have raged in the air for command of the skies.

If you don't have air supremacy, you're in trouble.

Since its earliest beginnings in World War I,

the airplane is the supreme weapon of the armed forces.

This was a real battle for civilisation, for humanity.

It revolutionised battle,

and changed the ways war was fought and won.

The F-117 has obviously changed

how we design aircraft and air campaigns.

War drove innovation in the skies.

What we hear from the Air Force is when

the F-35 wasn't there, a lot of others died.

When F-35 was there, they reigned supreme.

Aircraft bred a new kind of hero.

The fate of entire nations depended on the bravery of a handful of men.

An appreciation of the extent

to which young men were willing to put their lives on the line

for an ideal is something we need to remember more often than we do.

In this episode...

..a new kind of warfare is unleashed,

Blitzkrieg, that pulverises entire cities in hours.

They bombed and cleared the way for the ground units.

Britain takes the fight to Germany's towns and factories

in a raid on its dams.

It was a remarkable technical achievement.

The Americans' B-17 Flying Fortress helps turn the tide of war

against formidable odds.

As romantic as that period might be,

it was a very dangerous, treacherous mission.

And finally, at the height of the Cold War

between the superpowers, the B-52 Stratofortress,

with its massive payload, goes toe-to-toe in a global face-off.

We're talking tens of thousands of pounds of bombs dropping in an area.

Today, in any battle, bombers like the iconic B-52

are typically in the vanguard of every major military operation,

and critical to any war-fighting strategy.

The most famous story of all time involving bombers

revolves around a daring mission into the heart of Germany:

Operation Chastise, also known as the Dambusters Raid.

Operation Chastise was an operation

to attack the water supply for Ruhr industry in Germany.

The intention was to breach the dams, the water would all disappear,

and German industry would be brought to a halt for a number of months.

Leading the British charge, the Avro Lancaster.

Capable of carrying 22,000lbs of munitions,

it had the largest payload of any World War II bomber.

Powered by four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, the Lancaster could fly

for nearly 2,000 miles without refuelling.

More than enough range to strike at the heart of Germany

with devastating force.

Over 7,000 Lancasters were built.

They and their brave crews distinguished themselves,

flying over 150,000 sorties

during the course of the Second World War.

German cities were being bombed night after night by the RAF,

sending very large numbers of bombers, and a long bomber stream

hitting the city centre with incendiaries, intending to do

a very wide amount of damage to the central residential areas.

A fleet of 19 Lancaster bombers were selected,

and a new squadron was formed to carry out the Dambusters Raid.

A series of three dams were identified as the primary targets.

Mohne, Eder, and Sorpe.

The plan for Operation Chastise was clearly a risky one.

A very small number of aircraft

attacking well-defended targets at night.

The chief obstacle was the famous Kammhuber Line.

This was a line of anti-aircraft guns,

searchlights, night-fighter stations,

and radar which had been set up right across northern Germany

and the northern coast of Belgium and France.

The dams were also heavily defended.

German anti-aircraft batteries were stationed all around.

If they did make it to the dams, in order to complete their mission,

the bombs they dropped somehow needed to circumvent

the torpedo nets under water.

The construction of the dams themselves

made them virtually impregnable.

The first dam, Mohne, was 850 yards long,

120ft tall...

..100ft thick at the base, and 25ft at the top.

And just for good measure, made of granite masonry.

There's no doubt that if they had attacked the dams with regular bombs,

from a great height, the chances of hitting them were slight.

They needed a bomb they could guide and drop at the base of the wall.

It would then sink, blow up at depth under water,

and spark a pressure wave that would breach the wall.

What they needed, in short, was a smart bomb.

And that didn't exist in 1943.

The Allies answer? The bouncing bomb.

This ingenious invention was the brainchild of British engineer

and explosives expert Barnes Wallis.

Barnes Wallis' bouncing bomb really was an extraordinary invention.

It was like playing ducks and drakes,

where you throw a stone in the waves and hope you can see it bounce once,

twice, three times. That's what the bouncing bomb did.

Wallis developed the idea experimenting by bouncing marbles

across a water tub in his back garden.

He found that spinning a marble, or bomb backwards as it was released

was the best way to make it skim or bounce over water.

The British now had a bomb that could bounce.

But that was just half the battle.

To hit the retaining walls and blow the dam wide open,

the Lancasters' approach run had to be spot on.

The bouncing bomb had to be dropped with extraordinary accuracy.

You had to fly in over the water at just the right level

and release the bomb at exactly the right moment,

so that it would bounce the number of times

it needed to bounce before it reached a dam.

They had practised this again and again and again.

For the bomb to bounce, strike,

and explode at exactly the right spot,

the pilot has to first fly level at precisely 60ft.

No more, no less.

To get the exact height,

they fixed two spotlights to the undercarriage.

One on the nose, and one at the rear.

When the two beams aligned and touched the water,

they knew they were exactly 60ft high.

The new bomb also required its own aiming device

that used triangulation to target the dam.

As the plane approaches the twin towers of the dam,

the bombardier waits until they're in the crosshairs' sights.

Then the bouncing bomb is released.

So, all they had to do was keep the beams aligned,

fly straight at precisely 232 miles per hour,

aim, drop the bouncing bomb,

and hope for the best.

In late March 1943, the new squadron was ready for the raid.

It was led by 24-year-old Wing Commander Guy Gibson.

Guy Gibson had a fine reputation as a bomber pilot.

He was not altogether popular with his men.

He could be quite tough with them,

but everybody realised he had a great deal of experience,

and if anybody was going to be chosen,

he was almost certainly the right one.

On May the 16th, 1943, Operation Chastise was launched.

At 9:28pm, the squadron of 19 Lancaster bombers

and 133 airmen

took off in full moonlight to fulfil their mission.

They crossed the coast into Holland

and headed towards the Rhine River and Germany's Ruhr Valley.

Guy Gibson was flying in the first wave.

As Gibson and his young crew approached the dams,

they came under fierce fire.

The difficult thing for a small unit

was it had to get through without being shot down,

get to its target, and make its way back.

Of the 19 Lancasters that had left England,

only 11 were in position to attack the dams.

The chances of a successful mission were now dwindling.

With the dam looming large and under withering flank,

Gibson commits to the bomb run.

May the 16th, 1943.

The squadron of Lancaster bombers

sent to destroy the German dams in the Ruhr Valley

was under heavy anti-aircraft fire.

At 12:28am,

Gibson commits his crew to the final bomb run on Mohne Dam.

The remaining aircrafts, still to drop their bombs,

then attacks the Eder Dam, which finally collapsed at 1:52am.

Meanwhile, aircraft from the other two waves bombed the Sorpe.

It remained intact, but the damage was done.

Two out of three dams had been breached,

and 330 million tonnes of water was unleashed...

..causing flooding for about 50 miles across the Ruhr Valley.

Well, 19 Lancasters set off.

In the end, only 11 aircraft attacked the dams.

The others crashed or turned back or were shot down,

and those 11 aircraft were able to achieve a remarkable amount.

They breached two dams despite all the difficulties.

Of the 133 air crew that took part,

three became prisoners of war, and 53 men were killed.

Considering the many odds that 617 Squadron faced,

actually getting there, dropping the bomb in the right place,

breaching those two dams was a remarkable technical achievement.

With the dams breached,

German industry ground to a halt in the Ruhr Valley,

and almost 1,300 were killed in the resulting flooding.

But the attack on the dams didn't slow Germany down for long.

For a nation under siege, the Dambusters Raid was a tonic.

It proved that bombing your enemy

with strategic precision could have huge impact in battle.

But it wasn't a new idea.

The concept of dropping munitions on your enemy from above

took hold in World War I.

However, at the outbreak of the Great War in 1914,

aircraft were not considered suitable for the military.

There were substantial numbers of generals, in fact,

later Allied Commander-In-Chief General Ferdinand Foch,

when asked just before the war what was the worth of aviation,

he said, "C'est zero." It's zero.

In other words, he didn't even take it seriously.

At the beginning of any conflict,

commanders fight using the tactics from the last war.

And that was especially true in World War I.

Then, both sides were still using horse and cavalry.

Some of the more enlightened commanders

realise that once the war settled into trenches,

cavalry were useless for reconnaissance.

The airplane was the one vehicle they had left

to be able to do reconnaissance and artillery observation.

Once they were up there and they could see these targets,

it was only a matter of time before it was decided that,

well, they might as well arm them with bombs

and bomb the targets directly.

As the war continues, what you see is that both sides

begin to develop airplanes that are specifically designed

for aerial fighting and for bombing.

Necessity being the mother of invention,

both sides of the conflict adapted existing aircraft

to create their own fleet of bombers.

The French developed a very high-altitude bomber version.

It was the Breguet 14.

Breguet's design first flew in November 1916.

The first mass-produced aircraft to have a metal frame,

it was much lighter than wood-framed aircraft.

Relatively fast and agile,

the Breguet 14 was able to outrun many of the fighters of the day.

The Breguet 14 was eagerly taken up by the French

and United States Army Air Service.

The airplane is now truly a weapon of war.

By 1918, strategic bombing entered the lexicon of aerial warfare,

and the bomber was here to stay.

They had a massive influence on the way wars were fought.

Tactically, on the battlefield,

it meant that you could switch aircraft

from one front to another sector very quickly,

if it was under threat. It also extended the range of artillery.

They could bomb targets beyond the range of artillery.

In World War I, the Germans had dropped over 300 tonnes of bombs,

and killed nearly 1,500 civilians.

The British, in comparison, dropped 600 tonnes,

twice as much as the enemy.

Signed in 1919,

the Treaty of Versailles ended World War I,

and was meant to ensure peace in Europe.

But the terms were seen as unjust by Hitler.

In 1935, Germany broke its edict and rapidly rearmed its military.

The way wars were fought was about to change dramatically

with the invention of a new type of bomber

that allowed Germany to create new battle tactics to match,

the Junkers JU-87, also known as the Stuka.

"Stuka," translated in English, it means "dive bomber,"

and the German word is Sturzkampffbomber,

and the short word is Stuka.

A dive bomber is an aircraft

that is not flying straight and then dropping a bomb.

This is a kind of bomber that carries a bomb

and it dives with the bomb to allow the pilot

to hit a target very exactly.

(AIRPLANE ENGINE SCREAMS)

It was its extraordinary dive capabilities

that made the Stuka a unique threat in the combat zone.

At its optimum cruising altitude of 15,000ft,

the pilot located his target

through a bomb-side window on the cockpit floor.

Then the pilot moved a lever to the rear

that activated the dive brakes.

The plane rolled 180 degrees,

automatically sending it into a nosedive

at a 60- to 90-degree angle.

The pilot kept the Stuka at a constant speed

between 310 and 375 miles per hour.

Then, at the right moment, the bomb was released.

Stukas were not only deadly,

hard to shoot down, and laden with bombs,

they trumpeted their presence with a spine-chilling scream.

(AIRPLANE ENGINE SCREAMING)

This aircraft was equipped with the siren

called the Jericho Trumpet.

This equipment had absolutely no military use,

it was only made for terror reasons.

Before the onset of World War II,

Germany had about 300 of these planes built,

and they needed to test them out.

General Francisco Franco was fighting for fascist rule in Spain,

and the German National Socialist Party

was taking control with the help of the German Fuhrer.

When the Spanish Civil War erupted in 1936,

Hitler almost immediately sent his Luftwaffe

to help Franco in Spain.

On April the 26th, 1937, the Luftwaffe went into action

in the skies above the small town of Guernica

in the Basque region of Spain.

They just bombed small houses just to look if it is working or not.

Spearheaded by German bombers, the relentless campaign

over the small Spanish town of Guernica lasted three hours.

By some estimates, as many as 300 civilians were killed.

The Luftwaffe left nothing in their wake.

The town was reduced to rubble.

For the man in charge of the air force,

German World War I flying ace, Hermann Goering,

Spain was proof, at the dawn of World War II,

that the Luftwaffe was ready to rule the battlefield.

The air force was just built for one purpose only.

This was a huge attack force.

So, the idea was you built a huge air force,

and the most part of this air force was made of bomber forces.

With a fully armed and retooled German air force at his back,

Hitler takes the world to war.

Emboldened by their success bombing small towns

in the Spanish Civil War, on September 1st, 1939,

the Germans invade Poland.

The Second World War had begun.

Adding to the lessons learnt in the Spanish Civil War,

the Germans employ a deadly new tactic

that has the air force and the ground troops acting in unison -

the Blitzkrieg.

The idea of Blitzkrieg is that it is a strategy

of overrunning a nation and its army in a very short time,

with very manoeuvrable moving ground troops

and a very agile air force supporting the ground troops.

It was very much a case of bombers punching a hole

in the enemy's defences,

saturation bombing past the enemy's lines.

Blitzkrieg, which means "lightning war" in German,

featured a large concentration of offensive weapons

along a narrow front.

The forces would then drive a breach in the enemy's defences,

causing shock, panic and chaos.

The Stuka was part of the Blitzkrieg. It was a symbol for it,

and it's destroying targets which are just hard

to fight for the ground troops.

My father was a 15-year-old lorry driver

for a company called Wilson's out of Liverpool,

and was delivering flour in Poland on the day the Germans invaded.

A Stuka dive bomber blew the back of his truck off.

Between 1939 and 1941,

the Germans swept through Europe, taking Poland, Norway, and France.

In the face of the Stuka's relentless bombing,

country after country fell to German control.

The Germans were very, very happy

and they were also very proud, and they thought

"Nobody can hit us, and nobody can fight against us.

Nobody can win against us".

By 1940, the Germans had chased the Allies

all the way to the French coast.

On the 24th of May, 1940,

Adolf Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to stop

the escape of the British at Dunkirk, at all costs.

The British and French troops were in a desperate position.

The strip of territory they were holding was very narrow.

It was only six miles deep.

They were coming under constant bombardment from the Luftwaffe.

With the Stukas leading the Nazi charge,

some 240 Allied ships,

and 84 RAF fighters were lost at Dunkirk.

But in the end, 338,000 troops were liberated from Dunkirk

in the greatest evacuation in military history.

The miraculous rescue would prove to be a turning point

in the war against Germany.

But why Hitler ordered his troops to halt, when he had a chance

to wipe out almost the entire British Army, is a mystery.

Among historians, we came to the conclusion

that Hitler never really wanted a great war with Great Britain.

Hitler's main enemy, right at 1940, was not Great Britain

and it was not America, it was the Soviet Union.

And he wanted to get into a war with the Soviet Union.

But you couldn't fight against the Soviet Union

and Great Britain at the same time.

Hitler's hesitation would cost him dearly.

In the wake of Dunkirk, Great Britain's ally,

the United States, rapidly mobilised

and brought to the fronts a new bomber,

the B-17 Flying Fortress.

Top speed, 287 miles per hour.

And a range of 2,000 miles.

The primary purpose of the B-17 was to serve as a strategic bomber.

It was a heavy bomber, it could carry loads

of around four to six thousand pounds of bombs,

which was typically its usual load.

The B-17 was the mainstay

in the heavy bombardment campaign over Europe,

and it carried more bombs,

more missions and all that.

Just a tremendous weapon.

The first American-flown B-17s land on English soil in May 1942,

ready to defy the odds and take the fight to the enemy.

It's just amazing how well built it is.

It is such a strong, tough, durable airplane.

Just look at battle-damaged pictures of B-17s that made it home,

and you see the airplane, not just shot up, but missing pieces,

and the airplane still came home.

The B-17 flies at 26,000ft,

and carries out bombing missions during daylight hours.

Although faster than much of the German Air Force,

the B-17s aren't totally impervious to attack.

In addition to enemy fighters attacking them in the air,

the B-17 crews are also prey to ground attack

from anti-aircraft guns.

(EXPLOSIONS)

As romantic as that period might be

with the flyboys and everything else, all the aviators and flying,

going off to combat in the airplanes,

I think all the romance of it left when the gear came up after take-off

because it was a very dangerous, treacherous mission.

(MACHIN GUN FIRE)

(SIREN WAILING)

After studying the wreck of a downed B-17,

the Germans discovered that the best way

to bring the bomber down is to hit the rear of the plane

with about 20 shots.

The lighter and faster German fighters

were able to outmanoeuvre the bigger B-17s,

and that made the Americans easy targets.

(MACHINE GUN FIRE)

(EXPLOSION)

Having to maintain a constant height and stay in a straight line,

the B-17s were at their most exposed on a bomb run.

When the P-47s and P-38s

and the other fighter aircraft escorts had to turn back,

things got really hard for the bomber crews,

due to the German fighters, the flak and everything else.

Not having fighters take them all the way to the target in the back

made the loss rates very high.

It was almost up to 30%.

To increase the B-17's survival rate, the Allies decide to change tactics.

The US Air Force came up with the box formation.

You'd have anywhere from 18 to 54 airplanes

that would fly in a box formation with a high group,

a medium group and a lower group, kind of in a stacked formation,

and that would help concentrate more bombs on target,

but also the defensive firepower with 13 machine guns on each plane.

The most famous B-17 of all, the Memphis Belle,

flew all of its 25 missions over Europe

between November 1942 and May 1943.

At a time when the average B-17 crewman

had a one-in-four chance of survival,

the Memphis Belle's achievements was worth celebrating.

They did that early in the war, so that was a big deal.

It wasn't just that the crew survived 25 missions,

but none of the crew were killed during these 25 missions.

In fact, not one of the crew was even seriously wounded

during those 25 missions. Now, this was almost unheard of.

And this is probably why the Memphis Belle

had a particular place in the hearts of the American public.

With the B-17s striking Germany by day,

and the British bombing at night,

the enemy was finally on the back foot,

and their air force, the Luftwaffe, had been found wanting.

The main problem of the Luftwaffe in the Second World War was

that it was built as a tactical weapon. It was built to support

the ground troops in attacking a nation like Poland and France.

But it was never built for a strategical air war.

For a strategical air war, you have to have big bombers,

four-engined bombers, with thousands of kilometres they could fly,

and the Luftwaffe didn't have these bombers.

With the B-17 heavy bomber,

the Allies pressed home their new-found advantage.

In October 1943, Operation Pointblank is launched,

a mission to strike deep into the heart of Germany.

They were going after a lot of the manufacturing targets

in Schweinfurt with the ball-bearing plants,

and the other material manufacturing plants that they had in that area.

It was a mission fairly deep into German territory.

By targeting Germany's critical infrastructure,

the Allies and their bombers aimed to drive the enemy further

and further away from British shores, and ultimately win the war.

This was a real battle for civilisation, for humanity.

And it wasn't just against an enemy, it was to save the world.

(EXPLOSION)

With Allied bombers strategically striking

the German heartland in Operation Pointblank,

with seeming impunity in 1943,

Hitler came up with a last desperate attempt

to win the war called "The America plan".

It required the construction of a German long-range bomber

capable of striking mainland USA.

The contract went to Junkers for the 390.

Now, this was a big six-engine aircraft

that can carry four, five thousand pounds of bombs

to New York, and come back again.

By 1944,

before the JU-390 could go into full-scale production,

the tide of war had turned decisively against Germany,

and Hitler's America plan was dead in the water.

MAN ON PA: This is a red alert. Repeat. This is a red alert.

As World War II gave way to the Cold War,

the East squared up to the West in a nuclear face-off

that would redefine the role of the bomber for the atomic age.

To deter the Soviet Union from attacking the West,

a new super-sized, long-range strategic bomber was built

by the United States, the B-52 Stratofortress.

It's an awesome weapon and an awesome airplane.

Capable of carrying a massive payload of nuclear,

as well as conventional weapons,

the huge new plane would be a formidable addition

to America's aerial arsenal.

As well as a massive payload, the jet-powered B-52

could fly further than any bomber had gone before.

The B-52's initial range was 8,800 miles.

It could reach the Soviet Union very quickly without refuelling.

The new bomber would be the cornerstone

of a bold, new military strategy.

The plane's conception in 1946 coincided with the creation

of the Strategic Air Command in 1946,

and the Strategic Air Command was created

as a deterrent to the Soviet Union.

The man championing the new long-range bomber

and how it would be deployed was Lieutenant General Curtis E LeMay.

General Curtis LeMay was a visionary,

and he really came up with the concept of a nuclear bomber fleet,

keeping it airborne 24/7 throughout the period of the Cold War.

By 1955, the B-52 was ready for action.

It weighed 185,000lb.

It measured 159ft long, and had a wingspan of 185ft.

The Stratofortress was as wide as a football pitch, and almost as long.

Capable of carrying 70,000lb of bombs,

the B-52 is a beast of a plane.

Flying the enormous bomber tested seasoned pilots to their limits.

I'll never forget, my instructor said,

"You're gonna have to stop flying this thing like an airplane.

It's not an airplane. It's a B-52".

You'd pull out on the runway, and as the airplane accelerated,

and you pull back on the yoke, but nothing really happens

until you reach this magic speed called unstick,

and then, literally, the tail would fly first

and the nose would go down.

Most airplanes, when you take off, the nose goes up.

And now the airplane's nose is down when you're climbing.

By 1960, Cold War tensions between the West

and the Soviet Union had reached fever pitch.

In response, the US sent its B-52s into action.

Called alert patrols, the bombers, fully-loaded

with nuclear weapons, would fly between 30 and 40,000ft,

and maintain a constant presence on the borders of the Soviet Union

for almost a decade.

The B-52 becomes a strategic instrument of warfare,

constantly on patrol, ready to carry out

horrendous missions, they would have been,

erm, if they'd had to have actually carried out

nuclear bombing missions over the Soviet Union.

The ground-breaking strategic bomber

contributed to a new military reality.

Both sides knew that if they attacked first, the retaliatory strike

would be devastating on the population of both countries,

so it was called mutually assured destruction,

which, really, it was mutually assured that they wouldn't do it.

Loaded with nuclear weapons, and able to travel thousands of miles,

it seemed there was no threat too great for the B-52.

All that was about to change, though.

A new type of warfare was on the horizon.

Guerrilla warfare.

As the tactics of war changed in the Vietnam theatre,

so, too, did the role of the B-52.

We were doing low-level bomb runs at 500ft.

So, you're taking an airplane whose guys fly high,

and you're flying it very low and very fast in turbulent air,

and thermals, and it would beat you up severely

while you're that low.

In June 1965, 30 B-52 bombers

headed for a communist stronghold

near the Ben Cat districts of South Vietnam.

Instead of exclusively carrying nuclear weapons

as a Cold War deterrent,

B-52s were now deployed with conventional weapons,

and tasked with providing close air support to ground troops.

Operation Arc Light was underway.

Vietnam, that was really the first large-scale use of the B-52.

They were used in strategic bombing.

They would attack enemy troop concentrations

and also suppliers of the enemy.

But they really supported the ground troops

of the United States to give them more manoeuvrability.

During the Vietnam War, it was almost harking back

to the kind of strategic carpet bombing of the Second World War,

in that we weren't talking about any kind of notion

of striking precise targets,

but actually really instilling shock and awe on the ground,

and just pulverising the landscape, really.

Flying low meant that the B-52s were vulnerable to enemy missiles.

Tropical humidity and turbulent airstreams at low altitudes

could also seriously undermine

the structural integrity of the big aircraft,

as Tim and his crew discovered.

One morning, we took off and we're climbing out,

and I think that we were at 28,000ft,

and the airplane started shaking violently.

I could not read the instruments

because the vibration was so intense.

Everything was blurring. I thought the airplane was coming apart.

We roll the airplane, and we broke formation,

and we told the flight that we were having a flight patrol problem,

and we were returning to base.

What Tim Plunkett and his crew didn't know

was that a small connecting rod between two trim tabs

on one of the wings had rusted and broken away.

It was enough to cause the entire wing to vibrate,

and in turn, destabilise the whole plane.

Fully loaded with fuel, landing was not an option.

We didn't know if we would be able to land.

We didn't know what was going to happen.

Tim circles the Indian Ocean, desperately trying to burn off fuel.

Throughout this whole time, we were just waiting

for the airplane to flip over or fall out of the sky.

Having burned off enough fuel,

Tim decides he's light enough to attempt a landing.

Even though the B-52 has shed almost all its fuel,

the heavy bomber lives up to its name.

It still weighs over 80 tonnes.

What's more, Tim doesn't yet know what damage his plane has sustained,

and that means, he can't be certain that he can land it safely.

Finally, Tim Plunkett successfully puts the damaged plane down.

Everyone was safe, and the B-52 was still in one piece.

We made it back alive,

and we all went to the bar and had a lot of beer.

But that was pretty scary.

The B-52 continued to fly Arc Light missions,

providing close air support to ground operations

throughout the Vietnam War.

But their low-level bombing role came at a price.

We had a lot of losses in B-52s.

During Arc Light, many of the airplanes took missiles

through the wings and blew holes through the wings.

In all, some 31 B-52s were lost in Vietnam,

18 from hostile fire and 13 from technical malfunctions.

But their sacrifice was not in vain.

Really, the credit goes to the air force and the B-52

for providing that air superiority to support the ground troops.

It saved a lot of lives.

The Vietnam War, perhaps more than any other conflict,

really exposed the limitations

of trying to conduct a war predominantly from the air,

in that, without occupying the territory

and simply bombing from the air,

the objectives simply aren't going to be met

when you're fighting a guerrilla force.

In January 1973,

President Richard M Nixon called for a cessation of all hostilities

that eventually led to the end of the Vietnam conflict.

(EXPLOSION)

Today, the B-52 fleet has been massively overhauled,

so it can still play a part in modern combat.

It has been an extremely successful design,

and the proof of the pudding is it's still here.

For nearly a century,

bombers have determined the way wars are waged.

From the early aircraft of World War I,

to the heroes of World War II, including the Dambusters,

and the iconic B-17s to the B-52 Stratofortress

that held the line in the Cold War,

bombers have evolved to play a vital role

in all the major conflicts of the 20th century.

subtitles by Deluxe