All language subtitles for Wings.Of.War.S01E01.Bombers.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-RAWR_track4_[eng]

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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.

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