The Cold Blue - HBO doc on 8th Air Force

[oSuJeff97 3438]

Did anyone else watch this last night?  Pretty incredible documentary on the 8th Air Force.  The director used restored film footage culled from hundreds of hours of film that was shot to celebrate the Memphis Belle on finishing its 25 missions.

The footage is absolutely incredible.  The doc itself is pretty good, but nothing new for those who have read about WWII. One thing it really drove home was how dangerous the B-17 daylight bombing raids were in 1942-44.  At one point during 1943, B-17 crews had about a 75% chance of getting killed.  Another crazy fact: more Eight Air Force airmen died than all Marines in WWII.

 

[Carl Spackler 3611]

I'll have to watch that.  An underappreciated element of WWII

[BabaYaga 15532]

59 minutes ago, oSuJeff97 said:

At one point during 1943, B-17 crews had about a 75% chance of getting killed.  Another crazy fact: more Eight Air Force airmen died than all Marines in WWII.

Yet they kept flying.  Statistically, they knew they stood a significant chance of not making it home.  Yet they kept flying.  Daylight raids, in tight formation.  Day after day until they hit their 25th.  Just an unimaginable amount of courage and determination.  

[MAROON 446]

Quote

One thing it really drove home was how dangerous the B-17 daylight bombing raids were in 1942-44.  At one point during 1943, B-17 crews had about a 75% chance of getting killed.  

Yep.  Amazing those guys got back up and did it over and over again.  I know most have seen it, but just in case, the movie Twelve O'Clock High is a classic about this very era of daylight bombing.

[Pato del Muerto 53331]

Was it the 17 that would limp home in all manner of disrepair?  Missing wing, fuselage ripped all up?  Or was that another like the 25?  Or could more than one take that kind of battle damage?

[Pato del Muerto 53331]

Does anyone remember a show or movie in which there’s a bomber coming home with damage that was preventing the landing gear to deploy, and the bellygunner from getting out?

most of it was them trying to get him out or get the gear down, then when it looks like they will have to land on the belly with him still down there, he takes out a sketch pad and draws the plane with a cartoonish wheel deployed, and then on the real plane a cartoon wheel comes down and they land safely?

something I remember seeing as a kid in the 80s, no idea how old or new it would have been. Black and white but that may have been a choice. 

[Pato del Muerto 53331]

This is from the solomons but still incredible 

 

[WithoutAClue 15992]

34 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Does anyone remember a show or movie in which there’s a bomber coming home with damage that was preventing the landing gear to deploy, and the bellygunner from getting out?

most of it was them trying to get him out or get the gear down, then when it looks like they will have to land on the belly with him still down there, he takes out a sketch pad and draws the plane with a cartoonish wheel deployed, and then on the real plane a cartoon wheel comes down and they land safely?

something I remember seeing as a kid in the 80s, no idea how old or new it would have been. Black and white but that may have been a choice. 

that was an episode of Spielberg's Amazing Stories (1985)

[Pato del Muerto 53331]

Just now, WithoutAClue said:

that was an episode of Spielberg's Amazing Stories (1985)

Thank you

[oSuJeff97 3438]

1 hour ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Was it the 17 that would limp home in all manner of disrepair?  Missing wing, fuselage ripped all up?  Or was that another like the 25?  Or could more than one take that kind of battle damage?

Both. Pretty much all of the U.S. aircraft in WWII were built to sustain massive damage and keep going.  They sacrificed some performance for durability and survivability of air crew. It's smart because the U.S. realized (unlike, say, Japan) that highly trained human flying the plane was the most integral part of the weapon itself.  So when you lose a plane in combat, that's not good, but the bigger loss is losing the experienced pilot.

Japan made their aircraft super light and thus super high performance, but you could shoot them down with a peashooter.  It doesn't do much good to have the highest performing aircraft if you don't have any trained pilots to fly them.

But on your first note, yeah there are several scenes in The Cold Blue showing B-17s returning and safely landing with huge chunks of the tail or wings missing, missing the front nose cone, missing the top turret or otherwise having huge hole blown through them.

The unsung heroes were the mechanics/ground crews.  There was a thing in the doc where one of the pilots talked about how the B-17s would just get all shot to hell, but then the ground crews would work on them around the clock for like 2 days and they'd be almost as good as new ready to go again.

Edited June 7, 2019 by oSuJeff97

[BabaYaga 15532]

59 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Was it the 17 that would limp home in all manner of disrepair?  Missing wing, fuselage ripped all up?  Or was that another like the 25?  Or could more than one take that kind of battle damage?

B17 crews loved the 17 and the Liberator crews love their 24.  It's subjective, as both were stout planes and brought their crews home.  The design of the larger wing on the 17 did allow a more stable platform - do I get the choice to cluster them over important European targets.  It also allowed for more control with the loss of an engine.

The primary difference was the 17 was allocated to the Western front, and the 24 to N. Africa & Asia (longer range, better over open water).  So media coverage (Stars & Stripes every other day) played a lot into the perceptions of each.  The 24 had a longer range, was faster, and could carry a heavier payload.  Both carried the uber-secretive Norden bomb sights (more highly guarded than the Manhattan project at the time).

[Pato del Muerto 53331]

Not sure why this isn’t showing up on demand. Only the trailer is there. 

[oSuJeff97 3438]

Something else that was amazing to me.... most of the crews of the B-17s were all in their early 20s. 

It's funny... it doesn't seem weird that all of the infantry/regular soldiers were in their late teens/early 20s... it just seems so crazy that these flight crews were also that age.

One guy was talking about how the guy in their crew who they called "the old man" was 27.

[wood 11747]

3 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Was it the 17 that would limp home in all manner of disrepair?  Missing wing, fuselage ripped all up?  Or was that another like the 25?  Or could more than one take that kind of battle damage?

Missing a wing? No. But yeah, some planes are (were) built in a way that they could take a lot of hits without anything important getting hit. In a nutshell, they were very simple aircraft that weren't packed full of electronics, etc that could get hit & disable or cripple them. There was less critical stuff to hit, so there was less chance of hitting it. IIRC the B-17 was like that. The F-4 Phantom was also well known for coming back shot all to hell but still flying perfectly and landing on carrier decks.

Edited June 7, 2019 by wood

[wood 11747]

2 hours ago, oSuJeff97 said:

Something else that was amazing to me.... most of the crews of the B-17s were all in their early 20s. 

It's funny... it doesn't seem weird that all of the infantry/regular soldiers were in their late teens/early 20s... it just seems so crazy that these flight crews were also that age.

One guy was talking about how the guy in their crew who they called "the old man" was 27.

Capt. Yossarian: He was very old.
Luciana: But he was a boy.
Capt. Yossarian: Well, he died. You don't get any older than that.
 

[RPM 26560]

I posted about this in the War Movies thread. Great documentary. The 8th vs Marines death toll shocked me. 

 

[atomheartbevo 90546]

4 hours ago, oSuJeff97 said:

Something else that was amazing to me.... most of the crews of the B-17s were all in their early 20s. 

It's funny... it doesn't seem weird that all of the infantry/regular soldiers were in their late teens/early 20s... it just seems so crazy that these flight crews were also that age.

One guy was talking about how the guy in their crew who they called "the old man" was 27.

You graduated high school?  You have perfect vision?  You have a few college credits?  You're mechanically oriented?  Let's see about making you a pilot.

My grandpa served in the 8th (and 5th).  He was I think 20 when he went in, and originally they put him into pilot training with a lot of other young guys.  They were needing pilots bad, because B-17 and B-24 production ramping up, as were the losses.  Two months into his training, they abruptly changed everything and decided they had enough pilots, and they took his class, and those with two or more years of college, or who were mathematically "gifted" were shuffled over to bombardier/navigator training, those with electrical experience were shuffled into radio operator school, and the rest were put into aerial gunnery school.    After he graduates and actually made it to his unit, and flew a few easy missions, some officer in the unit found out that he was extremely mechanically-oriented (he grew up on a farm, and was studying mechanical engineering before he got drafted), they reassigned him to be a mechanic.

He said he was initially very bitter about losing his chance at becoming a pilot, because it was going to be a decent amount of money for he and his family (he had just married my grandma), and he thought it might be something he could use after the war to get off the farm.  Plus, he had told all of his friends and family (and I still have some of the postcards and letters he sent to his parents talking about flight training here in Texas).

He changed his mind when they got into Italy, and B-17s and B-24s were coming back all shot to hell.  He said the thought of flying scared the shit out of him after the losses started piling up.  He said they were not allowed to discuss anything about the losses with those back home.

Crazily enough, late. in late 44 or early 45, he got orders to go to the 5th AF (a B-24 squadron) and was supposed ship out to them since the European theater was wrapping up, but thankfully things kept getting delayed (and/or they were sending new crews and mechanics straight from the States to the Pacific), and by the time he made his way to the Pacific, it was only a month or two before The Bombs were dropped.

Edited June 8, 2019 by atomheartbevo

[atomheartbevo 90546]

1 hour ago, RPM said:

I posted about this in the War Movies thread. Great documentary. The 8th vs Marines death toll shocked me. 

I've always been curious how many made it to 25 missions (although my grandpa said some were required to fly a lot more), when they were taking 10% losses on even the "easy" raids.

It's staggering to think about a bombing run of 800 bombers losing 10% or 15%, and when you translate that into men, that was losing almost a thousand men at a time, in the span of a few hours.

[TwiceHorn 31987]

An interesting factoid is that the RAF dropped more bombs than the 8th AF every year (42-45), plus they did it for 2-3 years longer, with much worse planes in the early years.

[RPM 26560]

6 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

An interesting factoid is that the RAF dropped more bombs than the 8th AF every year (42-45), plus they did it for 2-3 years longer, with much worse planes in the early years.

At night when the German couldn't see them very well. US bombers went on daylight missions.

[Gil Bang 26176]

Just watched because of this thread.  Thanks to OP.

[RPM 26560]

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

I've always been curious how many made it to 25 missions (although my grandpa said some were required to fly a lot more), when they were taking 10% losses on even the "easy" raids.

It's staggering to think about a bombing run of 800 bombers losing 10% or 15%, and when you translate that into men, that was losing almost a thousand men at a time, in the span of a few hours.

I heard one of the survivors say they upped it to 35 after Memphis Belle, but after they had a dozen or so under their belt they dgaf. If they weren't dead by then, they probably would survive.

[Not a cat 5804]

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

I've always been curious how many made it to 25 missions (although my grandpa said some were required to fly a lot more), when they were taking 10% losses on even the "easy" raids.

It's staggering to think about a bombing run of 800 bombers losing 10% or 15%, and when you translate that into men, that was losing almost a thousand men at a time, in the span of a few hours.

If you have only 5% losses (ie a 95% chance of coming back alive in a single mission) then your chances of surviving 25 missions is just under 28%. Whoever came up with that 25 number was a sadist.

[atomheartbevo 90546]

20 minutes ago, RPM said:

I heard one of the survivors say they upped it to 35 after Memphis Belle, but after they had a dozen or so under their belt they dgaf. If they weren't dead by then, they probably would survive.

Maybe they were sticking the replacement crews on the fringes of the formations....

[wood 11747]

1 hour ago, RPM said:

At night when the German couldn't see them very well. US bombers went on daylight missions.

I was wondering about this earlier ... why did we opt for daytime runs? Better accuracy/effectiveness?

[atomheartbevo 90546]

2 minutes ago, wood said:

I was wondering about this earlier ... why did we opt for daytime runs? Better accuracy/effectiveness?

Norden bombsight could be used from high altitudes during the day.

Also, the plan was for the RAF and USAAF to keep round-the-clock pressure on the Luftwaffe, as well as the psychological impact on the German civilian population.

[Not a cat 5804]

Just finished it.  That 92 year old guy at the very end was incredible.  He's going to outlive my gen x ass.

[Radical Larry 28814]

9 hours ago, oSuJeff97 said:

Something else that was amazing to me.... most of the crews of the B-17s were all in their early 20s. 

It's funny... it doesn't seem weird that all of the infantry/regular soldiers were in their late teens/early 20s... it just seems so crazy that these flight crews were also that age.

One guy was talking about how the guy in their crew who they called "the old man" was 27.

Yeah, that was amazing. At that age, I was a college kid drinking beer and chasing ass. They were flying B-17s on bombing runs into Germany with a high chance of not making it back.

[kevwun 16269]

This was excellent.  It started out at 25 missions, then 30 and finally 35.  I can't imagine what those who were close to being done felt when it got bumped up on them.

[CoTex 1177]

I think I would have a lifelong hatred for the Germans and Japanese if I had fought through this war.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

9 minutes ago, CoTex said:

I think I would have a lifelong hatred for the Germans and Japanese if I had fought through this war.

Growing up with the men who fought that war, I can say they did. My grandfather and great uncle were both in the Pacific on the Yorktown and Lexington.  They had pretty bad animosity towards any Asians. My brothers wife is Amerasian, we had to sit grandpa down and tell him to cool it on the comments.  

I knew men who fought in Europe and the Pacific. The guys in the Pacific were much more strident in their hatred. Mostly because of the barbaric tactics by the Japanese' torture, death marches, and the kamikazes. My grandfather talked about that a couple times, and the hatred was as fresh as the day it started. 

[Pato del Muerto 53331]

It’s also easier to know an Asian by sight than a German. 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

1 minute ago, Pato del Muerto said:

It’s also easier to know an Asian by sight than a German. 

Yeah, but it was more than just the sight thing. It was the way they treated enemies.  Most accounts you read make it pretty clear that the brutality of the Japanese really got to the men fighting that war.  I don't think you can remove racism from that equation either though.

[Mojo Hand 4580]

My grandfather was a bombardier and navigator on several B17s and flew around 30 missions in Western Europe, including on D-Day.   He was given a handgun specifically so that he could destroy that bombsight if they went down with the plane surviving a crash; it was the most important thing for sure.   He had to make a bunch of calculations during each mission, all of which he did using a slide rule.  I think he also had to manually arm the bombs as they were approaching the target, which meant walking across a cat walk in the open air.  Or maybe that was just in specific situations, I don't remember.  It was difficult to get details, because he almost never would talk about it. 

Even though he had satisfied his mission requirement, he reupped and was training as a pilot to fight in the Pacific when the war ended.   He was probably around 22 years old at that point.  Needless to say, that's more than I'll live up to in a lifetime (before even considering that he helped build the Apollo LM that landed on the moon). 

In the late 50s or 60s, he had business in Germany.   As he was flying in (commercial), he recognized landmarks from his bombing runs and could see places he had blown up during the War.

Spielberg and Hanks are making a "Band of Brothers" style miniseries about the 8th Air Force called "The Mighty Eighth."  It's been in the works for years, can't wait for it to finally come out.

Edited June 8, 2019 by Mojo Hand

[atomheartbevo 90546]

2 hours ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

I knew men who fought in Europe and the Pacific. The guys in the Pacific were much more strident in their hatred. Mostly because of the barbaric tactics by the Japanese' torture, death marches, and the kamikazes. My grandfather talked about that a couple times, and the hatred was as fresh as the day it started. 

You should talk to somebody who liberated or helped the survivors at a concentration camp - I had a relative who did, and he had a hatred of all things that even vaguely sounded German.   He was adamant that the Germans were the spawn of Satan until the day he died.  

[atomheartbevo 90546]

42 minutes ago, Mojo Hand said:

Spielberg and Hanks are making a "Band of Brothers" style miniseries about the 8th Air Force called "The Mighty Eighth."  It's been in the works for years, can't wait for it to finally come out.

I’ve been waiting about 8-10 years for this.  Every few years, you hear about some screenwriters being assigned to it, and scouting locations, etc.

 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

7 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

You should talk to somebody who liberated or helped the survivors at a concentration camp - I had a relative who did, and he had a hatred of all things that even vaguely sounded German.   He was adamant that the Germans were the spawn of Satan until the day he died.  

Oh yeah,  Individual results varied.  The concentration camps being about as bad as it could get to experience I'm sure. 

[wood 11747]

4 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

I’ve been waiting about 8-10 years for this.  Every few years, you hear about some screenwriters being assigned to it, and scouting locations, etc.

 

+ rep for letting me look at Rachel McAdams...

[kevwun 16269]

10 hours ago, Mojo Hand said:

My grandfather was a bombardier and navigator on several B17s and flew around 30 missions in Western Europe, including on D-Day.   He was given a handgun specifically so that he could destroy that bombsight if they went down with the plane surviving a crash; it was the most important thing for sure.   He had to make a bunch of calculations during each mission, all of which he did using a slide rule.  I think he also had to manually arm the bombs as they were approaching the target, which meant walking across a cat walk in the open air.  Or maybe that was just in specific situations, I don't remember.  It was difficult to get details, because he almost never would talk about it. 

Even though he had satisfied his mission requirement, he reupped and was training as a pilot to fight in the Pacific when the war ended.   He was probably around 22 years old at that point.  Needless to say, that's more than I'll live up to in a lifetime (before even considering that he helped build the Apollo LM that landed on the moon). 

In the late 50s or 60s, he had business in Germany.   As he was flying in (commercial), he recognized landmarks from his bombing runs and could see places he had blown up during the War.

Spielberg and Hanks are making a "Band of Brothers" style miniseries about the 8th Air Force called "The Mighty Eighth."  It's been in the works for years, can't wait for it to finally come out.

The bombs were usually armed before takeoff. If they had to land without dropping their load, someone had to go and put the pins back in all the bombs so they wouldn't go off on landing.

[oSuJeff97 3438]

On 6/8/2019 at 10:02 AM, Onboard 2.0 said:

Growing up with the men who fought that war, I can say they did. My grandfather and great uncle were both in the Pacific on the Yorktown and Lexington.  They had pretty bad animosity towards any Asians. My brothers wife is Amerasian, we had to sit grandpa down and tell him to cool it on the comments.  

I knew men who fought in Europe and the Pacific. The guys in the Pacific were much more strident in their hatred. Mostly because of the barbaric tactics by the Japanese' torture, death marches, and the kamikazes. My grandfather talked about that a couple times, and the hatred was as fresh as the day it started. 

Yeah I went through a phase several years ago of reading just about every WWII book I could get my hands on.  Of course the Ambrose books were a must. I remember there was a section in Citizen Soldiers where he was talking about how much animosity there was on the various sides.

Seems that the most hatred, by far, was between the Americans and the Japaneese and also the Germans and the Russians.

[Gil Bang 26176]

I think I would have a lifelong hatred for the Germans and Japanese if I had fought through this war.

I know a guy who’s FIL fought in the Pacific theatre. His daughter became a marine biologist. Went to U of Hawaii for grad school. While there she’s met and fell in love with a Japanese guy.

When she told her dad, his response was “but Honey...I used to shoot at them”.

[1978horn 904]

On 6/8/2019 at 8:19 AM, kevwun said:

This was excellent.  It started out at 25 missions, then 30 and finally 35.  I can't imagine what those who were close to being done felt when it got bumped up on them.

My grandfather was a co-pilot on the B-24 and finished all 35 missions.  I have a scan somewhere of all the missions he flew.  Most of them were over Germany, Austria and Italy.  I believe all 35 were flown in ~6 months.

[Guest Lobo]

On 6/8/2019 at 12:24 PM, Onboard 2.0 said:

Oh yeah,  Individual results varied.  The concentration camps being about as bad as it could get to experience I'm sure. 

Because we didn’t liberate much east of The Rhine, only a tiny percentage of American military personnel saw the camps or the towns decimated by nazis. 

But if you served in the Pacific island hopping shitshow, all you saw was Japanese inhumanity day in and day out.  

[kevwun 16269]

Japanese troops were also much less likely to surrender and the combat on small Pacific Islands was concentrated in to smaller areas.  The fighting was often more brutal as a result.

[BabaYaga 15532]

27 minutes ago, Lobo said:

Because we didn’t liberate much east of The Rhine, only a tiny percentage of American military personnel saw the camps or the towns decimated by nazis. 

But if you served in the Pacific island hopping shitshow, all you saw was Japanese inhumanity day in and day out.  

Which (the Japanese atrocities) paled in comparison on the islands to what was happening on mainland China.  If the estimates are correct, the Japanese were responsible for as much as 20+ million Chinese deaths.  Read the Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang.  Utterly gruesome.  Or look up the "Asian Holocaust" - which intimates they had almost twice the body count as the Nazi SS.  

[BabaYaga 15532]

On 6/7/2019 at 7:50 PM, atomheartbevo said:

You graduated high school?  You have perfect vision?  You have a few college credits?  You're mechanically oriented?  Let's see about making you a pilot.

And the gunners?  The irony was many of them were rural farm boys.  Who grew up hunting.  Why they were so successful - they understood the complicated process known as 'deflection shooting'.  Something fighter pilots also understand keenly.  Something any upland bird or small game hunter understands as well.  You don't shoot 'at' the target.  You shoot where the target will be.  

And mechanized skills?  How many of these rural kids grew up driving, fixing, and operating tractors and other farm implements.  America won the war based in part by the proficiency and determination of their fighting men/woman - but more so by our logistics, manufacturing, and supply capabilities.  I'd argue that the deuce-and-a-half, willys jeep, liberty ship, and DC-3 did more to win the war than the Sherman tank or P-51.  

[Johnny Sack 8397]

What were the odds of surviving in a shot down B-17 in Europe?  In other words, what percentage survived by crash landing or by parachuting?

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

1 hour ago, Lobo said:

Because we didn’t liberate much east of The Rhine, only a tiny percentage of American military personnel saw the camps or the towns decimated by nazis. 

But if you served in the Pacific island hopping shitshow, all you saw was Japanese inhumanity day in and day out.  

Yep, and the brutal treatment of allied POW's by the Japanese was known and wide spread.  The fighting was vastly more brutal, as a rule in the island hopping campaigns. 

[MAROON 446]

1 hour ago, Gil Bang said:

 

I know a guy who’s FIL fought in the Pacific theatre. His daughter became a marine biologist. Went to U of Hawaii for grad school. While there she’s met and fell in love with a Japanese guy.

When she told her dad, his response was “but Honey...I used to shoot at them”.

 

my Grandfather was at Pearl Harbor - he hated the Japanese.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

9 minutes ago, MAROON said:

my Grandfather was at Pearl Harbor - he hated the Japanese.

And then there's Pearl Harbor.