Series. And keybattlefields events, american artifacts, touring museums and historic sites. Discover what artifacts reveal about americas past. Thepresidency, looking at policies and legacies of americas commanders in chief. And our new series, real america, featuring educational films from the 1930s through the 1970s. Cspan3, created by the cable tv industry and funded by your local satellite provider. Each week, American History reel america ring your photos. Bringing home the lesson of pearl harbor. From hardwon open our, from the plains of the third and fifth fleets, japan came under the inevitable rain of ruin. Ally c forces moving up to the japanese home islands shall the mainland almost without opposition. Hammering the enemy to its knees, but the worse to come. The destructive atomic bomb, the First Mission the Industrial City of hiroshima. Second mission, the port of nagasaki. Japan had its choice, complete surrender complete ruin. At potts dam, even as they laid the foundation for a stable andpean bees, harry Truman Joseph stalin had decided on common action against japan. As agreed at yalta, russia joined the allies in war on the last remaining active enemy. Make sure it was attacked. Manchuria was attacked. The war was lost, japan sued for peace. Warashington, secretary of and secretary of state hurried to the white house with the secretary of the navy. The u. S. Cabinet meeting with president truman study japans surrender messages, in full ordination with the government of britain, china, russia, and other allies. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was remember. Years of grave responsibility to their toll. Oh grateful world honors him today. Douglas macarthur, now named supreme allied commander in japan. Nimitz,ishek, chester commander of the mighty pacific fleet. Truman, four months after taking oath as president , leads his country finally to victory and peace. Mr. Truman and his cabinet meet an emergency session. The president breaks the momentous news of japans surrender. That have received this afternoon a message from the japanese government in reply to the message for rita that government by the secretary of state on august 11. I deem this reply of full acceptance of the pot stem declaration, which specifies the Unconditional Surrender of japan. In the reply, there is no qualification. Arrangements are now being made for the formal signing of the surrender terms at the earliest possible moment. General Douglas Macarthur has been appointed the supreme allied commander to receive the japanese surrender. Great britain, russia, and china will be represented by highranking officers. Allies allied armed forces have been ordered to suspend offensive action. Mustroclamation of vj day await the formal signing of the surrender terms by japan. Rush the president s report to a waiting world and through the early evening, tuesday, august 14, the news is life. In new york city and throughout a rejoicing nation in word, happy people celebrate the end of fighting the dawn of peace. 2 million new yorkers jammed times square. Its official, its all over, its total victory. All night long the rejoicing continued. Never in history has there been greater reason to be thankful for peace. The worlds free people are united in their determination that the worlds peace shall never be endangered again. Maderst lady, helen taft several notable changes at the white house. The most obvious is replacing the white male ushers with africanamerican staff. She also raised funds to create immemorial for victims of the titanic. Her greatest legacy was bringing thousands of cherry japanese Cherry Blossoms to the capital. This sunday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspans original ladys first influence and image. Influence on the presidency. From Martha Washington to michelle obama. Sundays at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. American history tv on cspan3. This sunday night on q and a, institute for policy studies fellow and antiwar activist, Phyllis Dennis on u. S. Foreignpolicy since 9 11. The recent negotiations with iran and the war on terrorism. Who is isis . What are their origins . These questions are important and i address them in the book. Is whatmore important is the u. S. Policy regarding isis . Why isnt it working . Are we doing the war wrong or is it wrong to say there should be a war against terrorism at all . Those are the questions that are in some ways are the most important and the most useful. Sunday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern and pacific. Each week, American History tv sits in on a lecture. You can watch classes here at 8 00 and midnight eastern. Next, Donald Miller talks about what daily life was like for british and american airmen during world war ii and how their experiences differed from infantrymen. He also describes how the strategy of using air power changed over the course of the war. This class is two hours. Prof. Miller im going to show you some slides. It is not a pro forma lecture. We will keep the lights on. If you have questions, observations, let me know. Where we are at in 1943. We have invaded sicily, we have invaded italy. We are beginning to win the battle of the atlantic. An enormous russian victory at stalingrad. Now, the war is beginning to reverse itself. We are going to turn back a little bit to the beginning of the american participation in the war and take that right dday. The day the next time we will do the dday invasion. There is the basis, in east anglia. Bases in easthe anglia. It is only about 60 miles from london but it might as well be six centuries away. As i say in the book, it is shaped like a giant hachette aimed at nazi, germany. Thiscross from here is the closest in england that you can run a bomber operation. The fighter boys were down here. The british raf pilots and Bomber Command was north near york. I have this map in your book. It is pretty good although it is not in color. You have the ranges of the fighter aircraft. How far they could get roundtrip from england. That tells you the course of the year were. Only eginning, we can the americans could only do shallow penetration missions. If youre trying to knock out , and that is featured in the great film, 12 00 high. Mostly british spitfires. As you get further in the war, fighters with longerrange including thunderbolts and lightnings. They can take the german bombers all the way to the order. Near the hanover area. This is the Industrial Area of germany. Boys these boards these are on their own. They are going down a corridor, a bloody shoot all the way from here to the target and back. Go all the way down the spine of the pyrenees and land in north africa. Later, when you get the mustangs in december or january of 1943, the mustangs have long legs and they can go deep in germany. It can go all the way into nearand near product prague. That is a game changer. Mustangs,ance of the no one expected it. The germans did not expect it. Mistake beforee the war by not getting it into production. They got it into production late but it did show up just in the nick of time. It the the dday dday invasion to occur. Student with the initial bomb runnings with the limited fighters, when the bombers would be turned with the flight that carried them out, would they be waiting for them . Prof. Miller not necessarily. They went in waves. Even when they had the mustang. A lot of times they fly out with thunderbolt coverage to hanover and then the mustang would take off from england. They would overtake them. The thunderbolts would turn back in the mustangs would go all the way to the target. Then there will be another Fighter Group waiting for them while they returned. Once they got to the target they were on their own and they start back. They are picked up. It just determines, if it is a mustang it is going to pick them up. Right out of berlin. The thunderbolt is not going to pick them up until you get to the german border. They depend on those guys all the way. Student for they have counted in for the missions they ran, like the fighters shooting at ground targets . Prof. Miller as part of the mission . Student when they cant have with a leave and asked her prof. O run the mission . Miller the mustang are ready has tremendous fuel efficiency. It is a nimble plane. Hurts you inght some ways if you run into opposition on the way back. Lets say the luftwaffe needs you on the way back and wants to engage in the air. You have to drop those tanks. The guys go out on the reserve tanks. Then they can drop them. Then the plane is nimble and can fight a dogfight. That is how they planned the operation. Once doolittle takes over, he says the bomber should come back unescorted. Most Important Mission is to dive down and kill as many planes on the ground as you can. Youre killing them on the ground in the best on the ground and in the air. On the ground and in the air. Fighter boys love that stuff. That is not the best film footage. They had those cameras on the guns. You get that kind of footage. Anybody else . Ok. So, here you get a better sense of the targets. They are going to be initially right here. We just took a trip to normandy. To the dday museum and the world war ii museum. We stopped here. Immense submarine fortification. Then you see some of the other key spots. When they finally put an air force in italy through the south here, that is the 15th air force. They will fly over the outs and outs and hit targets right here including dresden. This will be a air force territory here. Germany, by 1944 is getting it from both sides here and here. You get daylight bombing and the raf at night. There is 24hour bombing of germany by three air forces. Also from italy, they would mount to missions across here into romania because germany gets most of its natural oil from romania. It is important to knock out spots there. That is the job of the 15th. They are closer. This is where the africanamerican pilots flew. The Tuskegee Airmen. They flew out of italy and they escorted bombers on missions over eastern europe. Student did the russians, were they able to mount the aerial campaign . Prof. Miller good point. No. There is only two countries in the world that have these four engined bombers, britain and the united states. Germany tried to put one into production and ran into problems even with their crack engineers. In the late the russians 1930s. They never got one off. Concentrated entirely on Strategic Air force. Covering ground operations so they had two engined bombers. The germans had two engined bombers. That is how they bombed britain. That is how they bond stalingrad. They dont have these babies that can go long distances. We are the only countries that have this sort of thing. That is the general strategic picture. There is the instrument of destruction. The b17. It looks big. It looks big on the ground. When you get inside, it is very claustrophobic. It is like the cabin of a submarine. You have a 10 or 11 person crew in here. You have a plexiglas nose. It is not bulletproof. Missions,the first you may have read this. A copilotasualty was pigeon pidgin hit a hit the plexiglass and not some splinters into their heads. That First Mission was a cake run. You have a navigator who is sitting at a desk here. He has to get you to the target. A lot of these guys are kids. Was atd to a guy that university and he is a history major. He is about to go into his junior year. He has not even taken advanced andetry that he is drafted six months later, he is navigating a bomber from maine to scotland with a crew of five. Guys are not well trained. They are rushed into this war. That explains a lot of the early casualties that take place. A lot of responsibility on the navigator. You have to get to the target to bomb the target. Then there is the bombardier who has a highly sophisticated system. A small computer. You aim at the target. Itd just to wind drift and whether and the height that you are at. Supposedly, on a clean, clear into au could drop bombs circle about as big as this room. They exaggerated and called it pickled bombing. The idea was that this would be the great secret weapon of the war. When the aircrews landed, there were two guards who went out. They escorted the bombardier who carried the bomb site with him and it was put under lock and key at night. It did not matter that much at the time because the germans there were enough crashes and mistakes that the germans knew what was going on but they never implemented them during the war. That is the front of the plane. Then you step up in here into the cabin. Here are the pilots and copilots. Behind them, standing behind them is a guy called the engineer. Knows all the instruments in the plane. Anything goes wrong, he is watching all of the dials. Isyou are under attack, that his gun right there. He just exists head into that thing. He stands up on a stoop. It rotates. Millimeterll 50 browning machine guns. The best we have. There are 10 of them on the plane. That is the front of the plane. They are all officers. Captains and kernels. And you walk across a very precariously narrow catwalk. Doorsmes, the bombay would open up after you drop your ordinance and then they could not get them closed. You have to go up on that catwalk with the wind blowing like hell, dr. Miles high, and somehow cranked down on this thing and close the bomb doors by hand or sometimes a bomb would stick. Likeombs were in racks this. Maybe the top one would not go down. You had to go up and unleash the bomb and drop it through. There are cases where the guys fell through the hatch to the ground. Then you move back into the back. This is where my father was trained originally as a radio operator. There is a thing called an interphone on the plane. Everyone is wired up. It is symbolic of the kind of organic bonds connecting these guys. They are all on the same wire. They are connected technologically and personally. Comrades in arms. They have an interphone. Everyone can hear the pilot. When they talk to one another on the plane, no one else can hear that. Hooks up a general radio signal back here and he can talk to other planes or based. Generally, they are on silence. All the way to the target. There is not much direction from the home base in general. These kids are entirely on their own. I dont think there was a case in warfare that guys this young, the average age of a bomber group is about 22 years old. The old man on the plane is 26 years old. He would generally be the pilot. It is a lot of responsibility. You are entirely in the hands of your own navigator. Whether you destroy the target or not, whether you live or die, it is up to you. A terrific amount of pressure on these kids. Further back on the plane on each side there is a machine gun. A browning machine gun. The plane is so narrow that when one guy is operating, and another behind him, their backs touch. These things are open to the weather. The plane is not heated. There is a little bit of heat coming from the engine but the compartment is not heated. , incould be over germany january, it is 55 below zero inside at 26,000 feet. That explains the predominant frostbite. The guys who are injured early on in the war, it is generally connected to frostbite. It can be a killer. Later on, they will close these and stick the guns through a whole. Hole. Ough a i dont know if you have ever heard the expression the whole nine yards. That is the length of the machine gun. The ammunition boxes were here. Nine yards from here to the guns. Here is the entrance door where the crew got in. You could also get in underneath here. Back here, sitting on a bicycle seat, all by current vendor. And finally, there is this guy. Who is sitting in a plexiglas bubble. Not bulletproof. Hes been surround. He spins around. He tracks the plane. A tough position to be in. That is the b17. How often do the guns jam . Miller they generally jammed for two reasons. Cold weather. Everything breaks down in cold weather. The other thing is overheating. The barrel can blow up in your face. You have to be careful of that as well. That happened. If there was a Prolonged Air battle, generally an air battle would not last more than 30 minutes. Unless you are going all the way to stuttgart. Then they keep coming at you from different airbases. The germans are flying over their homeland. They come up and get you, go back and refuel. Might land four times trying to nail a fleet of bombers going in and coming out. Guns clog up on you with conditions like that with constant, persistent fire. Student it said in the movie yesterday it was so cold, their hands would freeze to the gun. Was it difficult to on jam them . Miller you were to do below sets of gloves. A light racetrack driver style silk gloves. They were not weather resistant. Then you wore larger gloves over that. You took off the larger gloves and then put the silk glove on and hope that that did not stick. Sometimes guys, in the chaos of combat, your gun jams and you are in danger, you pull both gloves off accidentally to try to clear the jam. Youre not been told this before. Your hand could stick. It could happen if you are i skating somewhere at zero degrees. That is what is going on here. Big thing is that no one they are fighting at four miles high. No one had even flown before this at four miles high. Everything is new. You get new kinds of problems. Everything. These guys are lab rats and guinea pigs. Everything is experimental. Student how quick were air commands to adapt . Prof. Miller very quick. I will tell you where they were slow. Preparing. Into thehinking went technology of the plane. It is done, boeing makes it. They start producing these things in 1935. They get into production of prototypes. We start to massproduce them. The sophistication of the machine. No one thought about the guys. Your problems. Ear problems. These guys are under tremendous pressure in unpressurized cabin. In her ear problems are a regular problem in addition to frostbite and no one had thought of that. No one had thought of giving these guys armor. The museum, the mets in new york city, which has all of these old medieval armor. Artists come over to design armor for these guys. When they went on the bomber, they put on helmets with holes in the ears because they had microphones. They on a vast, and st and it came down right below their crotch and that provided protection. If you got a flat burst flak burst. That is how thin the aluminum is. They took a lot of punishment but they had a good superstructure, good struts here and here. Thecould literally blow out sides. Sometimes planes would fly sidebyside and this whole area of the plane would be exposed. They could see the gunners in there. Smith tried to put out a fire inside a plane. They are adapting all the time later on. Gun operated by the bombardier. That was not on the original b17. They start to put radar. If formal Guidance System on the plane. They are making modifications as they go along. Medically also. Student were any of the members on the plane trained as a medic . Prof. Miller no. You are a marine, your buddy goes down, you scream medic. The guy is right there to put some sulfur on the wound. Penicillins ve penicillin in abundance until 1944. All you can do is try to stop an infection. Nouy goes down here there is medic. Everyone was given a medical kit. Vile vial of morphine. As soon as a guy went down, you could give him a shot of morphine. A couple of blankets. You hope he survives. I described one incident where a guy went down in the front of the plane and he was in this section here. It was in the middle of a chaotic air battle. Is usually checking everyone. Sometimes, he passes on that responsibility to the navigator. Ask if everything is ok back there. He checks on stuff. The guy doing the checking goes down. He is on the floor of the plane for a full hour on the freezing floor. When they got him back to ears. D, they cut off his they fell off with frostbite. So did his nose. His lips were gone. His eyeballs were frozen in his head and had to be removed. Frostbite. A killer. Most of these times, they would use the rushing cure. The doctor would simply wait until everything turned purple or black, and then fingers, digits, would start falling off and then you could treat the guy. Rough stuff. All of that was done on the basis where there is a doctor. There is a little hospital on every base and a general deeptal if you needed surgery, amputation, Something Like that. All the smaller stuff is done at the base. Else . Student was there any prior Scientific Research over weather conditions or was it all trial and error . Prof. Miller trial and error. Now we had a lot of research on mountain climbers. People go up here. I was in colorado when the book came out. I saw the airport they have these books about mountain climbing in the himalayas and places like that. These guys are going up only 45 miles. They have to pay 400,000 to mount the major climb. These guys are getting three dollars a day and they are getting shot at. There is not a lot of thought about this. The crazy thing is when they are developing this plane they thought it was impervious. You had to be really strong to control a bomber. They were flying so close together that they could hear the wings bumping into the wing of another plane. A giganticdriving truck in the sky, rocking and rolling in the sky. A lot of wind currents in the sky as well. It is tremendously difficult to keep his instrument under control. Student how would dropping the bomb after that affect the handling . Prof. Miller a lot. 5000 pounds. The atomic bomb was 9000 pounds. He described as dropping the bomb, the plane just jumped because you lose that weight. You were jarred like that. That often happens. These things would spin sometimes upside down. I talked to a guy in savannah, he was telling me anything special happened to you . Nothing . He threw he flew 30 missions. It was a little guy at about 90 years old. He said well there was one mission where the plane flipped, the pilot and copilot was killed, and the navigator was killed, and i was the radio gunner. We flipped upside down and i started to float in the air. I said Nothing Happened . He did get back. Of course, the commander. The eighth air force, there is a lot of pressure on him early in the air war. A guy named carl spotts was head of the air force. Inwas sent to north africa october 1942. Baker takes over. His mission is to prepare the eighth to fly and gain supremacy over northwestern europe and the channel in order to make the dday invasion possible. Spotts who later comes back to england. Africabeen sent to north and he is brought back. He is responsible for all of the American Air Forces in the european theater. Then there is jimmy doolittle. He will change the nature of the air war. The war is is new to these guys as the common soldier. Doolittle was talking about arnold. It is not the american air force, it is the American Air Forces. In the eighth air force. He is in charge of all operations. He is under tremendous pressure throughout the war from roosevelt who is under pressure from churchill. Churchill said you guys cannot fly in daylight. Even with your combat boxes because you do not have escorts. You are getting hammered. You are getting hammered so hard, you cannot have your navigators get you to the target properly. Why dont you fold up the eighth and commit to british bombers, learn to fly at night and fly with us. It is safer at night. We do not try to him specifically at this target or that target. We wipe out the whole city. Nighttime, not being able to see, does not matter. Ist matters to the pilot that the luftwaffe cannot see either at night. Their casualties were also pretty staggering. These are just some of the characters i gave a talk earlier this month in savannah on the film we are making. These are our major characters. This is rosie rosenthal, a major character. 51 missions. A jewish kid from brooklyn. Allamerican athlete. A small, football, and a lawyer. Firm job with a big law aftery before the day pearl harbor. He volunteers. He reupped for a couple of missions and went down three times. Interesting character. He comes back at the end of the war and he is transferred out. The war is over in may. In 1944. He signs up to go to the pacific. Fly the b29s but the war is over before he gets his action. What he does as a lawyer is read about the nuremberg trials. He volunteers and they sent him to germany to prosecute german civilians who committed atrocities against downed airmen. Them,g them, shooting throwing them into burning buildings. He went after a lot of these guys. On the way over, he met a girl he liked named phyllis. They fell in love. She is a trial lawyer. Both begin trials at nuremberg. He helped prosecute all of the big ones. German german generals. A really interesting character. What a lot of people do not talk about, because veterans do not even like to talk about it when i bring it up. Segregation. This is a relentlessly segregated area. There are no africanamericans ever in the bombers. Nor are there any africanamericans flying fighter planes out of england. The only africanamericans are the Tuskegee Airmen flying out of italy. Arnold insisted it was impossible to maintain crew discipline if you have blacks and whites together. Especially southern whites with blacks in the same cabin in close proximity. It is one of the great marks against the eighth air force that they remained segregated. Although 10 of the air force personnel in england are black. Even though that country had thanthan 1 of less half of 1 of people of color 1954. They are building airbases. Evenings,ernoons and other guys are on tracking detail and they take the bombs to the air base. The tragic thing is that they would show up to deliver the bombs and ask to have a meal there and they were not even allowed in the mess hall. They would have to go eat a rations and sleep in their trucks. There were a number of racial riots in england during the war because english women would date black eyes. Racialere a number of incidents. Eisenhower suggested that there would be a colored night and a white night. The white kids like that until they wondered what their girlfriend was doing in town on a black night. Strangest warfront in history. , cows, countryside sheeps in the meadows. Sheep in the meadows. Crumbled churches in the background. That was the b 24 liberator that we talked about. There were more of those than the b17. It is a crazy battlefront. In a sense, it is like you go to work, you go to work in a machine full of gas. And youreck fighting for your life over berlin, you come back to base with clean sheets and good meals. You can get psychiatric or medical care. There are women. There is london. You can get 18 two day pass to go to london. You can be over berlin at 12 00 and be with a girl of your dreams in london at 10 00 p. M. At night. It is a very different war then was fought either the guy on the ground in combat. That has its disadvantages. Psychologically. Student that might not be there may not be a shock when they are flying. Professor miller the weather in england is capricious. If you were drunk the night before, you flew drunk. The easy way to get over a hangover is oxygen. I should not have said that. Student for the infantrymen, they become callous. They are on the front for a certain number of days. For the guys in the air, they can come home and relax. To face the problem of getting back in the plane and doing it over and over again. The stress of being relaxed and then throwing yourself back into a terrible situation which leads to combat fatigue. Miller there is an electric chair. You walk there. Or they give you an injection. You have seen it not work a couple of times. You go back to yourself. And you wait three days to die again. This is what these guys are doing. The pressure builds up your it is enough, inside the plane. But then to come back and start thinking about it all of the time. There were 12 other guys in the hut. In the there were empty bunks. It was so intermittent. It was horrible. Incessant combat like the marines fought in okinawa. Student it would be very psychologically taxing to be in a plane, similar situations and for people who are fighting by c because you are stuck. You dont have a backup or an escape route. Prof. Miller thats right. Then the bicycle effect. You fall off your bike and your dad says to get back up again. If you sit for two weeks and dont ride the bike again, it is like trauma. Or if you have to make an emergency landing. If you are flying from abe to atlanta. And the plane experiences problems. Youre not going to want to fly again right away. If you have to make a play six weeks later, it is all youre thinking about. That is the phobia. Student it is kind of incredible, people have a fear of flying, fear of going into planes. Something like that today will stop people from flying. This is a more high stress situation. Prof. Miller it is. The air force did careful tests on these guys. Almost half of these guys had never been in a plane before. A lot of them did fear heights. They did not like to be up there. A lot of them got airsick, all of the time. We have a character we will feature in our hbo series named crosby who died just a couple of years ago. Every time he went up, he would throw up. If you throw up in the oxygen mask, 55 degrees below the zero, it freezes. And you do not know it sometimes. You do not know if you are pulling oxygen. You dont feel it filling up your lungs. Then three minutes later, you have oxygen deprivation. You blank out. No one picks it up. You worry about all of this sort of stuff. Student [indiscernible] that they are used to it now. They are worried because they might make it out. Prof. Miller the guys i talked to say, they will tell you the last missions were hell. I made it to 23, im going to get it on 25. So many guys did. There was a guy who had his girlfriend waiting for him. They were going to get married the next day. He was on his 25th mission. A shell came through the window and blew his head off. He had the land. To land. [inaudible] student i just imagined one of the other big problems, there was a certain amount of monotony. Prof. Miller thats right. The sound of the engine. You would fall asleep. The plane is filled with cigarette smoke. They are not smoking while they are fighting but they are smoking until the time they reach 12,000 feet. Then they put the oxygen on. The plane smelled of smoke and dried blood. Of the smoke in the air they could listen to the radio for example before they got to germany. Popular songs. The bbc. Everything else will happen quickly. Just like that. When you meet the luftwaffe on the other side of the channel. Student what were the reactions of the men who have to stand there and watch their friends die . Prof. Miller they had to go to a flak farm, a country estate, it was volunteered to the government by and rural or a duke. The family may be moved to london. You had to abandon your estate. You had badminton or tennis. You are away from the war for about a week. Sometimes it didnt do much , good. All you thought about, you would try to get your mind off it. You are still thinking you have got to go back. That is the thing. That scene we watched last night with john houston, i kept thinking about what a difficult job being a combat surgeon was. Let us say you come to me and i am the combat surgeon. And you say that you cannot fly. If you are crazy, then you should be crazy because no one could fly if you are saying. That is the catch. Suppose you say you have shakes at night. Not traumatic night dreams but tossing and turning. Edgy all of the time. Tell you that youre are going to go under treatment. I want to cure you. I am successful if i do so. I send you right back to the situation that got you to me in the first place if i am successful. Send people back to the state but you could not because your job as the air surgeon was to get people into combat. A lot of people did not go to see the combat surgeon. They know that the cure will get them back into the war. They think i will just punch through and try to get to 25. People would make sure that youre not doing something that would injure the whole crew. I only need three more missions and your comrades would stick up for you. That means youre flying with nine fully able to technically clear to guys and that is dangerous. Guys would do it to help each other out. Student i was wondering when you said the surgeon would treat them and then send them back, how long would they usually have between being cured . Professor miller there is a drug that is a truth serum. That is why the guys were willing to talk. It puts you in a semi conscious state so you can walk and urinate if you have to and sometimes you can speak haltingly. What they usually do is they would lay you down in a dark room and go through the whole mission. Trauma, trauma. To release the trauma. It made some guys more crazy. That was the general, socalled cure. The ordinary cure was rest, shower, change of close, sodium penta fall, like therapy for two days. Relax you and then we would send you back unless you had a deep psychosis. They would send you to a medical establishment in england that would handle psychic cases. For the guys that had really gone off of the edge. Those guys were there longterm. If they were considered incapable of returning to combat, they were sent back to the states and put in a medical hospital in the states. Spoke to callat i chairman small. He went on some tough missions. I wondered how he had gone through. He said i pretended i was not chairman small. I was in a movie. The luftwaffe were actors. They were fake planes, it was hollywood. I am a character. It got me through the war. I asked him what happened with the movie stopped. He said he went nuts. He was there in a hospital for three years. The thing is that commanders on the base never recognized, never wanted to recognize these things the cut that is just taking men away from them. A lot of them distrusted psychoanalysis or psychiatry of any sort. These doctors are trying to cure these guys. All they need, the commanders are saying, is rest. They are ok. They will muscle through. Britishd before, the were really tough on it. They called it absence of moral fortitude. You just did not have it. No moral fiber. That was a mistake we made in training by letting you through. Who got through and did not have any mental fiber. Student when they were flying, are these bombers on a Skeleton Crew . How vital was it to have a full complement . Everyone . Prof. Miller you had to. If one of their guys was sick, but that he had asthma and he couldnt fly, and you put a replacement in, that broke up the karma. That is bad luck. These guys are superstitious. Special jacket here, rabbits foot in here, we are going to take off in five minutes, no we always go at six minutes after 10, not five minutes. All of these superstitions. The biggest was, because you did not work with the guy. It is putting a new infielder in your infield. Ok. That was a problem with replacement crews. It happened a lot. Individual guys are killed on these planes. There are a few cruise made it through intact. Where all 10 guys survived the war. You came back with a partial crew. Student what role in the plane did reporters play. What role do they plan aircraft . Prof. Miller cronkite and rooney flew with two other reporters. One was shot down and killed. A New York Times reporter. They had to go through Gunner School and they had to be trained as gunners and get certified to be allowed on the plane. They had to perform some sort of function in the plane. On rooneys mission, if they had been attacked by the luftwaffe, if they were attacked he had to operate a machine gun inside the plane. That is what reporters generally did. Edward r. Murrow he flew with , the raf. So did Ernest Hemingway when he went over. In 1944. He flew a couple of raf missions. Those were the guys that came back and reported what it was like inside the plane. One report i read in the Stars Stripes magazine, the reporter said that it is in the refeeling when they closed the door. The propellers go. There is no way out. It is like if you do not want to go on the roller coaster and you are in and off. You are off to war. There is no stopping it. Anyone else . We not getting very far in this. This is good stuff. , ok,g from their intermittent flying. Bucolic. These are the boys youre up against, the german air force. Some crack outfits. Y flew with no missions with no limits on their missions. They flew until they died. They were hit pretty heavily. Gallant lph golland. He went toe to toe with hitler who accused them of an absence of bravery. That would drive adolph nuts. One time, he pulled off his nights cross and threw it on the desk of the furor. Hitler did not do anything. Here, curtis lemay, he is a guy who arrives in october of 1943 and he teaches the air force how to fly. He has a bombardment wing and then a whole or division. A whole air division. Was in go on and fly, he charge of the raids against tokyo. He was in charge of the Strategic Air command in the 1950s. He was still around during the cuban missile crisis. He wanted to a atomic bomb cuba. He is satirized in dr. Strangelove. Cigar chomping. He is that guy. Wing, middleeft politically, he was an ardent conservative. Or what you were, the guys loved him during the war because he cared about his men, he flew with his group. He taught them how to fly. They did not want to execute the strategy but he said look if you see flack in front of you, you cannot avoid it. Why not . You are in such a tight box. If you stretched out a little else with this evasive action that is the big thing. The invasion would cause you to miss your target. Target,if you miss the you have to go back again. You do not want to go back again so us do it the right let us do it right the first time. You see all of this flack in front of you. You have a plexiglas bubble in front of you protecting you. To keep a steady platform so that you can bomb like that. The other thing he figured out remember the navigator . There were a lot of bombardiers like that coming right out of college and rushed into training and into war. He said that he cannot train enough skilled bombardiers. Here is what im going to do. Lets say you had 60 people and the room and you are all navigators and bombardiers. We are going to have a lead bombardier and a lead navigator. That is just one of you guys. Adam, you are the lead guy. I am going to really train you. Youre the smartest guy in the group. When you drop your bomb, their bomb at the same time. And it is smoke bomb, called dropping on the leader. You put a highly skilled and youer and navigator are likely to get a lot less mishaps on missions with trained crews. Strategies, the bombing starts to get a little more effective against the uboats. What was the problem . Student they were bulletproof. Prof. Miller bulletproof. Bombproof. They are bunkers. They are not actually underground. Take a shoebox, turn the shoebox over, put a little entranceway on there. The submarines float in like that into the protection of the bunker. Reinforced concrete this thick. It is as big as me. Six feet tall made of concrete. Germans must go here and think how could we lose the war if we built bunkers like this. The bombs bounced off like pingpong balls. The problem is that the submarine is under protection. You know you cannot hit it. Have you send men out on missions like that . That is why that movie 12 00 high deals with that. You dotrainings not go through this course because trainers say, here are situations. How do we keep morale up in this situation where everything is a we are getting a traded attritted. It never worked. That operation never worked. Uboats were finally killed at sea. They would send longrange bombers out there. Liberators. They had a lot of legs on them. You go out to see, they had big lights. Submarines had to be on the surface a lot of the time to recharge your battery. And yould spot them ,ould call into the Task Force Said the planes against it and machine gun it and try to catch the equipment and the codebook and the personnel if you could. These guys are flying as guinea pigs and against targets they cannot see well or hit. When they hit them by accident, they cannot hurt them. Complete futility. Is sayingat churchill at casablanca in early 1943 at holger air force
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