Weapons of WWII with Stephen Ambrose: Bombers and Fighters

On this episode of Our American Stories, Stephen Ambrose was one of America’s leading biographers and historians. Ambrose passed away in 2002 but his epic storytelling accounts can now be heard here at Our American Stories thanks to those who run his estate. Our next story is the story of weapons used in WWII.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American Stories. Stephen Ambrose was
one of America's leading biographers and historians. Ambrose passed in
two thousand and two, but his epic storytelling accounts can
now be heard here at our American Stories, thanks to
those who run as estate. Our next story is about
the fundamental importance of air superiority in World War Two.

(00:34):
Here's Stephen Ambrose.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
The bombers in the Second World War were very much
bigger than anything that the First World War has seen.
Going up to the really big ones like the B seventeen,
the B seventeen, the most famous of all, a four
engine bomber called the Flying Fortress, they all had in common,
these things. They carried a lot of armament so that

(00:57):
they could self defend. That is, there'd be a gunner
in the nose, a gunner and the tail, a gunner
in the belly, a gunner in the turret above. These
were all there. These men were all there for defensive purposes,
to drive off enemy fighters, and at the expense of
speed and maneuverability, because they were all very heavy. The

(01:17):
men themselves, and then the machine guns, and then of
course the ammunition that had to be carried. People in
the Air Ministry in Britain worked it out in nineteen
forty three. Statistically, your chances in a bomber were going
to be very much higher over Berlin or Bremen or
Hamburg or wherever the tiet was. Your chances are going

(01:37):
to be a lot higher if you got rid of
all those gunners, got rid of all of their guns,
lightened your plane up so it could fly higher and faster.
And to a man, the aircrew said, and they said, so,
our advice to you is to get them out of there.
And to a man the air crews, including the pilots
and the bombardier and the navigator, said no way. We

(01:59):
want to be shoot and back. And the experts would say,
but your cancers of survival are going to be so
much better if you're up, higher, flying faster. We want
to be shooting back, was the reply always. The American
B seventeen was called the flying Fortress. The idea when
it was designed and in its the initial deployments was that,

(02:24):
and this was an idea that air theorist to develop
between the wars, was that it could defend itself against
any fighter airplane. And obviously they could carry an awful
lot more fuel in those great big planes, and so
they had a lot more range than a fighter aircraft
and they could set out from England. Was the idea
over targets inside Germany without fighter escort, and could beat

(02:49):
off any German attack from fighter aircraft on the ground
and inside Germany coming up to meet him. They found
out pretty early on that that really it wasn't so
that the fighters would get through, even if the B
seventeens did everything right according to three kept their formations. Nevertheless,
those German fighters were going to get through, and they

(03:12):
were imposing very heavy losses an RAF Bomber Clan and
US Army eight Air Force, the Strategic Air Forces. The
British response to this was night attacks so that they
could avoid those German fighters. Now, of course, the price

(03:33):
you pay for it carrying out a bombing rate at
night in order to avoid enemy fighters and be safe
is you can't see the target. So they went to well, well,
bomb cities. You can hardly miss a city as big
as Berlin right now. The Americans didn't accept that proposition
that first of all, we've got to give up daylight

(03:55):
raids was to them a confession of failure in the
air war, and and and to some extent, and said
that the British were just immoral and this bombing of cities,
and certainly said well in the in the more open way,
that the Birdier method wasn't gonna end the war speed

(04:15):
up the end of the war in any way at all.
I mean, just bombing sitav're gonna be any good. The
Birdie replied that we keep the workers awake at night.
You know, there's a bombing rate in the night. They
gotta hear the sirens. They're up at eleven, they gotta
get into the subways. They don't get out until they're
all clear at three am. They gotta go to work
at six am. And so they're not gonna be very
efficient at work. Well, well, I'll tell you they've putting

(04:36):
a lot of effort in the scene to it that
a few German workers lost some sleep at night, paying
a very large price for it. But the American use
of the weapon also has to be criticized. The Americans thought,
there there has got to be a key somewhere. There's
gotta be a target somewhere. If you find that target,
you knock it out. Germany can't make war anymore. One point,

(05:01):
they had a terrific idea ball bearings. Everything in the
world moves on ball bearings. No wheel can turn without
ball bearings. There's not a car in Germany. There's not
a tank, there's not a truck. There's nothing in Germany
you can move without ball bearings. They only make ball
bearings in one place at Reagan'sburg. Will knock that out,
and Germany, I'll speech to a halt and Hill have
to surrender. His armies immobilized. So they went after the

(05:22):
ball bearing plant and had a pretty good raid on it, actually,
and then nothing happened because they'd forgotten some basic principles
of economics. One thing, there were ball bearings already in
storage that the various plants that were making the trucks
and tanks and airplanes for Germany. For another, there were
ball bearings in transit. And for a third, ball bearings

(05:44):
aren't all that hard to make. And for a fourth
has very often happened in all of these factory busting raids.
It looked very impressive from the air, a lot of smoke,
a lot of fire, aerial recond buildings destroyed, so they
were out of business right. Well, the machine tools hadn't

(06:07):
been damaged at all. You'd blown off some roofs, maybe
you'd blown up the canteen in the factory, but the
machine tools had all survived, and so German production was
hardly interrupted. Now, it would be wrong to dismiss Operation
point blank. The strategic bombing of Germany that quickly, point
blank did accomplish a lot of things. One was it

(06:28):
forced the Germans back into much smaller factories, and many
of them underground, almost to a cottage industry kind of
a situation. German aircraft production, for example, went underground into
very small plants, but it continued. In fact, Germany reached
the peak of her production in the Second World War
in the fall of nineteen forty four, after a year

(06:50):
and a half of Point Blank being in operation. One
point the idea was, will knock out hydro electric plants.
They're not so easy to knock out. A turn, then
it was going to be oil refineries, and that was
the most productive target. If they'd come to that earlier
and stayed added harder, they might well have brought Germany
to a halt. As far as the gis. The infantry

(07:14):
stationed in England during the build up for Overlord. We're concerned.
These airmen had the softest, cushiest life imaginable. They were
in barracks, they had warm beds, they had hot foods,
they got passes to London all the time. When the
weather was bad over Europe, they just sat around and
played cards and went in and got drunken night and
it was just a marvelous life. To the men leading

(07:34):
the life, it was the worst possible life. They had
nothing to do in England, so they just were killing time.
They were there for the purpose of carrying out raids
over Germany, and when the weather was appropriate and they
carried out these raids, it meant hours of boredom, just
droning on in a four engine plane from England all

(07:56):
the way over to Berlin, then anywhere from fifteen minutes
to an hour of pure stark terror. If you were
over the target, you're being attacked by aircraft, being attacked
by eighty eight shells bursting all around you. Statistically, you
could not survive. In the Eighth Air Force, they were

(08:17):
promised after thirty five missions you get to go home.
K twenty two is exactly right about this. They just
kept raising the number of missions. I know guys that
flew as many as one hundred missions. Statistically. You couldn't
do that statistically in twenty five missions. You were sure
to be shot down. Your chances then were poor to
survive your plane crashing. If you did survive, you were

(08:39):
going to be picked up as a pow Your chances
of being successfully put into a pow cage were pretty
slim because the German civilians, if they got to you
before the Luftwaffa did, they'd run you through the pitchfork. Now,
of course, the German military authorities wanted to capture pilots
and crews, not to kill them out in the field,
because they want to interrogate. If you finally got into

(09:02):
a powk then your chances of surviving the war were
pretty good, although it was going to be a rough war.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
And a terrific job on the production and editing by
our own Greg Hengler and his special thanks to the
folks who run the Stephen Ambrose Estate and for use
of these terrific stories about World War Two, particularly the
part that had to do with our industrial capacity and moreover,
the strategic and tactical efforts on our nation's behalf, and

(09:29):
we learn a lot about well the life of some
of these guys, specifically the Eighth Air Force, where by
twenty five missions you were sure to be shot down,
and as Ambrose pointed out some of the men he
interviewed and talked to, they performed as many as a
hundred missions. The story of our mighty Plains and the

(09:50):
men who flew them, and the men who defended them.
Here on our American stories