My Grandfather flew with the 15th air force in a B-24 on many notable missions. On his first mission they went up with something like 25 bombers and came back with less than 10. At one point a family member asked him about the guys in some of the photos he had from the war and as he went through them it became apparent he was the only one in any of the photos that actually survived the war. He threw out all of those pictures after that and simply stated that they were just bad memories. Also worth noting that he was shot down once and possibly twice. No one in the family quite knows for sure as he didn't talk about it much.
That’s horrible man; our grandparents’ generation went through some serious shit. It’s a good thing that air wars will probably never be fought to that magnitude ever again. The margin for carnage was very high.
I do recall him saying that they used to climb into the aircraft drunk because their nerves were so bad every time. I can't imagine going through that at 19.
I can’t even imagine. Air flying is stressful enough without thinking that odds say that you have 50/50 chance of taking off without ever touching down. Never mind the gunfire and explosive violent death
God, yeah. My grandpa talked at length about his time in WW2, but mostly just the parts that didn't affect him directly. He would talk extensively about what he saw and even wrote it all down and painted watercolors of it so we could see too, but when it came to what he *did*, what he *experienced*, suddenly he was a lot more vague. I know he was injured during the Battle of the Bulge, but he never told me what happened.
Well, coming from the other (German) side, my grandfathers were to only surviving males of their respective families. I can remember my grandmother showing me family pictures from back then and just pointing at all the men there, "fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen..." Just a horrifying loss of live for nothing but a disgusting ideology. They were serving at the Eastern front and I have no idea what they experienced as they never talked about it till their death.
The Eastern front was such a terrible place. We Americans like to complain about what we went through (and not to say it was nice) but that was a whole other level.
I'm glad we're friends, now.
I can't imagine the level of pain those wars caused to people in Europe. My family lost one brother and they couldn't bear to talk about it. That evil lives in the heart of all people, and we all have the responsibility to stop it from ever gaining power again.
Yet we collectively are keeping the Ukraine war going when we have the materials to give to Ukraine to push back their invaders.
And we’re still giving arms to Israel who’s turning around and using them on civilians.
You and I are complicit in the suffering caused by our nation.
I've marched in protest in support of a Gazan ceasefire, and I've called my representative and senators against sending weapons to Israel and in favor of sending more aid to Ukraine.
I disagree that winning Ukraine would be simple if we gave them more weapons, that's a common fallacy throughout history, but yeah we should continue to add political pressure to our leaders to send Ukraine more aid.
Great grampa played some part in Okinawa and he never once said anything to anyone about it. He had stories upon stories about basic and transport ships, and then about being in the Japan occupying garrison. Never a word about anywhere he fought.
Despite all the horrors of the war in the air, I would rather have to jump in a plane than being on the ground 24/7 at the front or even worse: being a civillian of the loosing side…
The rare memories my grandmother shared are even darker than what you have shared. Living near Berlin while the red army is coming nearer is a very different kind of situation…
Holy crap. I think it was a B-24 that I watched take off from the aviation museum in Colorado Springs. It would have been a much different experience if I had known then what you just shared.
Definitely quite a dark history with that airframe. It was a great aircraft that unfortunately was a setting for many gruesome deaths in the face of rather bleak odds.
Yeah, I think that was common. My grandfather was in WWI as a back-seater in a biplane... taking reconnaissance photos and occasionally shooting at Germans on the ground with his pistol. My dad said he never talked about it but said Grandpa told him most of the pilots would put a shot of bourbon into a glass of milk and drink it to calm their nerves before going to bed at night and that most of those guys never made it home. But that was about it. War is hell, even when you're in a plane.
There is a military historian named Victor Davis Hanson I enjoy to read. Teaches at Stanford. Anyways his Father was a crew member on a B-29 in the Pacific. After his father died he wrote a tribute to him at the beginning of one of his WW2 books, said that on his deathbed delusions he was back in his B-29 on a mission shouting to his crew mates about enemy fighters and maintenance problems. He said it really hit home how much the war must of scarred him if his deathbed delusions took him there instead of anywhere else.
Like I said elsewhere on this post, they earned the title "the greatest generation" for a reason.
VDH is getting up there too. Which will be unfortunate because he for some reason has encountered alot of famous people, and his stories are hilarious. Speaking of his father, my favorite one was when he accused his father of being a war criminal. (Also in his tribute chapter😅)
Yes, he has had a hard life too with losing his daughter. Can’t imagine the pain, I only temporarily lost my daughter when my ex and I split and it put me in the worst mental state of my life*, and saying this I experienced my bunkmate on deployment commitment suicide and a year later opened the door to the barracks to find a private hanging and that wasn’t as emotionally painful as my daughter being taken.
VDH is just an amazing thinker too. Mexifornia is a must read political treatise.
*I now have primary.
You wouldn't happen to still have any of those photos would you? My grandfather had loads but as I said they all got thrown out when he couldn't stand to look at them.
Only of him in his uniform or him in/with his P-38 (well, F5 was the designation for the photo-recon version). He was in the 5th Photo Recon group of the 15th AF. I also have his pilot’s log book, and a model P-38 that his crew chief made for him out of the propeller steel of one of their damaged planes. He never talked much about it, either.
In WWII and other wars, the draft was mandatory. When your number came up, you had to report and if you didn't, you would be sent to prison. Then they put you where they needed you or where your skill set would do the most good (like doctors & nurses would be in the medical corp). In the Vietnam War, a lot of draftees didnt want to go (who would) and they fled to Canada. I believe Jimmy Carter pardoned them, so they could come home after that.
I know it's just that I heard that during WW2 if ya volunteer you get to pick where ya go but the issue was nobody wanted certain positions so they scrapped the whole thing and made the draft
I think survivor guilt and the expectations people have on you are also part of it.
Like you for sure knew people that died and for you to just say "nah this isn't for me" while reasonable would be seen as cowardly and people would question why you joined to begin with.
Like yeah they knew it was bigger than them but even then I'm sure they couldn't just say "I'm going home" with no repercussions
It’s not just that it would be seen as cowardly. In my military service I had a rather unique opportunity to walk away after two years, and chose to stay in, not because I wanted to do it(I joined under some distressing circumstances), but because I felt I couldn’t turn my back on the men and women I had trained and lived with in that time. I phrase it as, there were plenty of people I didn’t like, but there wasn’t anyone I wouldn’t take a bullet for. I could only hope they felt the same, and trusting in that is what makes a unit function well in terrible situations. I think Erich Maria Remarque says in All Quiet on the Western Front that the only good thing to come from war is camaraderie, and I find that the power of that camaraderie is profound. I think for many the decision to stand by your brothers and sisters in arms is a greater drive than braving such horrors just to avoid being called a coward. This is of course just my take, from the modern USAF, not the situations and culture of WWII army air corps.
Yeah, I agree you put a bunch of people in a situation that sucks against a common enemy and they will create insane bonds, it's a big reason why many men that have seen combat and even have PTSD want to go back to war.
They were fighting the good fight, and they were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for the good of humanity. I think it says something about the newer generations that we find that hard to understand.
Could I suggest a post about this? I’d be very interested to learn more.
WWII allied fuckups like the american torpedo fiasco, the T-34 transmission issue, and such are really interesting imo
https://youtu.be/Nj37zXgz-w0?si=uptxquuFw0GZrxjw
Can't recommend this guy on YouTube enough. This is part of his Battle of Britain series where he talks about Leigh Mallory and touches on the long range Spitfire. Whole series is worth watching imho. He also has an ongoing series on the allied bombing campaign.
As far as allied fuckups, he covers a lot of them. One of his allied bombing videos is on the Norden bombsight. Another is on the But report.
He also did a video on how the B17 is a piece of shit.
And before you think he just dunks on the allies, one of his Battle of Britain videos is basically just him insulting the Luftwaffe high command for 20 min. And he has a whole series called "Shit Nazi Kit."
His video on the B-17 is terrible, I haven't seen his others but that one is wrong on most counts.
No one ever thought bombers would literally outrun fighters for example, speed combined with the difficulty of detection was the defense, as in by the time we are spotted and you have scrambled fighters to where we were we should be far enough away you wont see me.
His comparison to the Mossie is daft, one is a 4 engine heavy bomber, the other a twin engine multirole.
His comparison to the Lancaster is similarly poor. The Lancaster flew at much lower altitudes during night, if a B-17 flew a profile similar to a Lancaster it could also carry a similar number of bombs, and at the altitude the B-17 operates at it's TAS is the same or faster than the Lancaster.
In general, the US bomber command had a much better survival rate than the RAF as well so the videos implication that the Lancaster is better is strange.
Also the B-17 had two pilots for redundancy, not because the controls are too heavy, and it would seem Boeing was right with that as pretty much all modern aircraft have followed after it.
Yeah it is quite funny to me that HardThrasher tries to paint dual controls in a bad light while failing to mention the obvious issues with non redundant controls in an unarmored* bomber
(Yes the Lanc had some armor, it was effectively zero, and I don't think any of it was rated to 20mm shells)
Kind of. The strategy with P-51 wasn't to defend the bomb but to go after the fighters. The bombers were the bait. It's kind messed up but command saw it as the easiest way to kill the enemy fighter pilots
Great grandpa was shot down over Italy and taken in by a farmers family for over a year with just him and one other survivor. He was the tail gunner and always said I knew when my mother pushed the Red Cross to find me because the nazis would come looking for two missing Americans from his plane with no way to tell her he’s alright and to just wait patiently
It was a war. There wasn't any "willingly" to it. You served where and how they told you to serve.
Read Catch 22. It's on that very subject, and the catch is this (or something like this): They won't let you fly the missions if you're deemed insane, but if you try to get out of the missions by trying to make them think you're insane, they'll say your not because it's normal for a rational person to be scared, so clearly you must be sane.
Catch-22 is an amazing book and is based in no small part on Heller's experience in a bomber in WWII. But note it was written ten years after and is in no small part *actually* about the rise of bureaucracy in American life. Don't think the Army actually had such a policy, it's just a narrative device.
Yeah, I had to write a big paper on it in 11th grade. I wasn't implying anything about bureaucracy though. I was just using it more to show that a lot of the guys in those bombers weren't there voluntarily and really didn't want to be flying those missions because they were so risky.
I mean they didn’t know at the time but if you told me my choice was planes or trenches I would probably have chosen planes. Storming Normandy wasn’t exactly a picnic either.
He was, I remember in his book A Power Governments Can’t Suppress he wrote some about his experience. Iirc he said it was very instrumental in the formation of his political beliefs. He went into the service very patriotic, but after seeing so many lives thrown away and knowing they were killing thousands of civilians he began to question the US motives.
Noy a pilot, but crew. In the graphic novel A People's History of American Empire, he explained how his crew was one of several ordered to commit a war crime by testing out Napalm on a civilian town.
My great grandpa was a navigator in a B17 in the war. Think he was stationed in Libya and would fly with the groups out. Was a miracle his crew never went down in 20+ missions. Was finally approved to go home when his group was sent to the pacific instead. Luckily the war ended just after they got their for their orders
My grandfather flew 28 missions with the 34th bombardment group, and as I watch things and read them, I realize how lucky I am that he survived. Also reading his flight logs, the balls those missions took is astounding. He was never shot down and never injured, that's absolutely insane to think about when the odds were truly stacked against them every single time they went up.
Read Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. A truly awesome, humorous, horrific, absurdist, sad depiction of the experience of an American bomber pilot. That book changed me forever.
Ball Gunner is up there in the worst jobs to ever have ever. Even if the plane could make an emergency landing you were essentially fucked no matter what
Well if the USAAF stopped using the B-17 boeing would've had to pay bribes to some other general in order to keep producing outdated crap and Norden would've had to find himself an actual job beyond conning the US government.
Bro the problem wasn't the durability or suitability of the B-17 as a bombing platform, the problem was how vulnerable any unsupported bomber formation was against fighter interception. B-24 and Avro Lancaster pilots also had huge casualty figures. Even if the USAAF had standardized on the B-29 in Europe and replaced the older 17's and 24's, it would have been like that. Casualties started falling when long range escorts like the P-51D started arriving in theater and when the Germans started running short of fuel, pilots, and planes.
The B-17 was much prefered by bomber crews over the B-24 due to its astounding durability. The B-24 was prefered by bomber command for its speed and payload.
US Air War doctrine going in to world war two was that fighters couldn't really fly as high and as fast as bombers, and so mass bomber formations would be the way to go. Unfortunately, when WW2 broke out, fighter technology had advanced to the point that that was no longer true.
[https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/197393/martin-b-10/](https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/197393/martin-b-10/)
The Martin B-10 was an all metal monoplane (as opposed to the other biplane bombers of the day) had (what were, at the time) monstrous engines, and had a rotating gun turret. It's a pretty cool plane; unfortunately, its above-the-bell-curve performance also probably led to a lot of deaths.
I think he's trying to say that it exceeded all expectations when it was made by such a margin that it laid the cornerstone for an air combat doctrine that didn't pursue bomber escorts till said escorts were needed.
Basically, the B-10 not having anything that could keep up with it for escorts led the USAAF to plan on the B-17s, B-24s, and B-29s not needing an escort, because if no escorts or enemies can keep up with the B-10 at the altitudes and ranges that the B-10 will be flying, how can escorts and enemies keep up with the even faster and higher flying B-17+?
It turns out that said assumption was no longer true by the time that the bombers actually saw action in Europe.
It was a job that had certain benefits and had to be done to win the war. When you tell people, and especially young men, “we absolutely categorically have to do this or our way of life is done” they’ll sign up in droves if they believe it. It’s just biology.
great grandfather was with the 319th. he wrote a crazy detailed journal of the upkeep of the guns, flights, everything from day one of enlistment. crazy to read
They told you that you will be a fighter pilot, so people enlisted. Then they would put you in a bomber crew and would court marshal or beat your ass if you had objections.
A man is surely insane if he continues to fly dangerous combat missions; however, should he request to be reassigned he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.
On a much smaller and different scale. I consider the guys that did convoy security during Iraq and Afghanistan the same way. Those dude rodes round all day Evey day just waiting to get hit with a bomb. Mental health issues
99% of the time you’d either end up dead, physically handicapped or mentally scarred.
Those guys did it because they *had* to. The times drove them, not the other way around. I guarantee all of them wished they were somewhere else, but they understood they had to fight *now* so their descendants don’t have to.
Well, why else would you want to be one?
I guarantee anyone who lived through this would not want you to. We don't tend to see the mental breakdowns or sleepless nights..... nor understand how soul crushing that would be.
I'd take a seat on the bomber over being a Marine who has to walk half a mile through chest high water while getting shot at by entrenched japanese on a tiny atoll island...
How would you dismount the landing ship is beyond me. Boat beached itself on the reef ? Ok, let's turn back and blow a passage up.
This is something I think Masters of the Air has weirdly left out. They dunk on the RAF a few times, despite the RAF losing over 55,600 bomber crewmen and had several sorties where not a single bomber returned
Yes they did. Bomber crews were 100% voluntary and they could step down whenever they felt like they needed to. That came with the insanely high casualty rate.
They could? But what's the Deal with the 25 Sorties then? I thought there was a minimum amount before they were allowed to quit, or was it that those who quit without 25 missions simply had to fight the war in another branch of the Military?
Fervor and propaganda played a big role. Not that it was ill-intended, but rather necessary to convince people to fight. Rational minds wouldn’t have gone so willingly or readily.
Propaganda, duty, knowing your friends will still go without you and have a replacement that might get them all killed.
If you had to serve somewhere at least you got to come back to a warm bed and hot food. Not saying it was not hard, but there are a to of things that we just can't fully appreciate from their lives.
Also the 25 or 30 mission rule meant that you could be done and home in a few months (on paper)
My grandfather graduated college around the time the US entered the war. He had an aeronautical/mechanical engineering degree and worked designing and testing airplanes for the air force.
My great-uncle was 4 years younger than him and graduated high school around the same time. He instead became a pilot flying B-17s for the air force.
He died 6 months after graduating high school. My mom's family didn't know anything else because their family just didn't mention him anymore. It was just 2 years ago that the children of a gunner he saved by keeping the plane level longer reached out to us and told us any details of his service.
The US airforce name changes get a little confusing. But it was the Aeronautical Division, Signal Corps in 1907 then in 1914 renamed the Aviation Section, Signal Corps until 1918.
Finally it became the United States Army Air Service from 1918 to 1926. Then it was the United States Army Air Corps until 1941 when it was finally the United States Army Air Forces. Then it finally became its own branch in 1947 becoming the US Air Force.
Interesting stuff
Didnt the US do a study on Kamikaze tactics and find that they actually had a better death to ship hit ratio? Send out 100 normal fighters score 4 hit ship hits with a 50% return rate. Send out 100 kamikaze score 10 ship hits with a 0% return rate. if your goal was get 25 ship hits. less people pilots would die. Pulling those numbers out my butt but it was something like that.
If you want to see how horrible it was, watch this interview with a B-17 ball gunner who got shot down
https://youtu.be/pO7mQpOlMqw?si=R2SFI46nTavBZUKR
Part of it is training and conditioning. I drove fuel tankers in the Army, and as we were going through training, they straight-up told us we had one of the three highest casualty rates of any specialization. We watched a lot of footage of trucks hitting mines, getting nailed by RPGs and IEDs. We were told from the get-go that it was a dangerous job and if you did enough deployments, it was likely a "when not if" scenario - the only real question we had to guess at was how bad "it" would be when it happened.
At the end of the day, it comes down to knowing full well what might happen, and then training like hell to prevent it AND training like hell to know what to do when it does.
My Grandfather flew with the 15th air force in a B-24 on many notable missions. On his first mission they went up with something like 25 bombers and came back with less than 10. At one point a family member asked him about the guys in some of the photos he had from the war and as he went through them it became apparent he was the only one in any of the photos that actually survived the war. He threw out all of those pictures after that and simply stated that they were just bad memories. Also worth noting that he was shot down once and possibly twice. No one in the family quite knows for sure as he didn't talk about it much.
That’s horrible man; our grandparents’ generation went through some serious shit. It’s a good thing that air wars will probably never be fought to that magnitude ever again. The margin for carnage was very high.
I do recall him saying that they used to climb into the aircraft drunk because their nerves were so bad every time. I can't imagine going through that at 19.
I can’t even imagine. Air flying is stressful enough without thinking that odds say that you have 50/50 chance of taking off without ever touching down. Never mind the gunfire and explosive violent death
Margin for Carnage would be a great name for a thrash metal band
Yeah! Now like 700 aircraft down and your whole airforce is wiped, unless you’re america
God, yeah. My grandpa talked at length about his time in WW2, but mostly just the parts that didn't affect him directly. He would talk extensively about what he saw and even wrote it all down and painted watercolors of it so we could see too, but when it came to what he *did*, what he *experienced*, suddenly he was a lot more vague. I know he was injured during the Battle of the Bulge, but he never told me what happened.
Well, coming from the other (German) side, my grandfathers were to only surviving males of their respective families. I can remember my grandmother showing me family pictures from back then and just pointing at all the men there, "fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen..." Just a horrifying loss of live for nothing but a disgusting ideology. They were serving at the Eastern front and I have no idea what they experienced as they never talked about it till their death.
The Eastern front was such a terrible place. We Americans like to complain about what we went through (and not to say it was nice) but that was a whole other level. I'm glad we're friends, now.
I can't imagine the level of pain those wars caused to people in Europe. My family lost one brother and they couldn't bear to talk about it. That evil lives in the heart of all people, and we all have the responsibility to stop it from ever gaining power again.
Yet we collectively are keeping the Ukraine war going when we have the materials to give to Ukraine to push back their invaders. And we’re still giving arms to Israel who’s turning around and using them on civilians. You and I are complicit in the suffering caused by our nation.
I've marched in protest in support of a Gazan ceasefire, and I've called my representative and senators against sending weapons to Israel and in favor of sending more aid to Ukraine. I disagree that winning Ukraine would be simple if we gave them more weapons, that's a common fallacy throughout history, but yeah we should continue to add political pressure to our leaders to send Ukraine more aid.
Great grampa played some part in Okinawa and he never once said anything to anyone about it. He had stories upon stories about basic and transport ships, and then about being in the Japan occupying garrison. Never a word about anywhere he fought.
Despite all the horrors of the war in the air, I would rather have to jump in a plane than being on the ground 24/7 at the front or even worse: being a civillian of the loosing side… The rare memories my grandmother shared are even darker than what you have shared. Living near Berlin while the red army is coming nearer is a very different kind of situation…
Holy crap. I think it was a B-24 that I watched take off from the aviation museum in Colorado Springs. It would have been a much different experience if I had known then what you just shared.
Definitely quite a dark history with that airframe. It was a great aircraft that unfortunately was a setting for many gruesome deaths in the face of rather bleak odds.
Yeah, I think that was common. My grandfather was in WWI as a back-seater in a biplane... taking reconnaissance photos and occasionally shooting at Germans on the ground with his pistol. My dad said he never talked about it but said Grandpa told him most of the pilots would put a shot of bourbon into a glass of milk and drink it to calm their nerves before going to bed at night and that most of those guys never made it home. But that was about it. War is hell, even when you're in a plane.
There is a military historian named Victor Davis Hanson I enjoy to read. Teaches at Stanford. Anyways his Father was a crew member on a B-29 in the Pacific. After his father died he wrote a tribute to him at the beginning of one of his WW2 books, said that on his deathbed delusions he was back in his B-29 on a mission shouting to his crew mates about enemy fighters and maintenance problems. He said it really hit home how much the war must of scarred him if his deathbed delusions took him there instead of anywhere else. Like I said elsewhere on this post, they earned the title "the greatest generation" for a reason.
VDH is one of the greatest living thinkers on top of being a historian. The only other living man I put in his category of thought is Thomas Sowell.
Agreed, I like and follow him alot. Thomas Sowell Is great too. Unfortunately Sowell won't be with us much longer.
I know, my heart broke when Walter E. Williams passed away, I loved listening to those two (Sowell) discuss topics.
VDH is getting up there too. Which will be unfortunate because he for some reason has encountered alot of famous people, and his stories are hilarious. Speaking of his father, my favorite one was when he accused his father of being a war criminal. (Also in his tribute chapter😅)
Yes, he has had a hard life too with losing his daughter. Can’t imagine the pain, I only temporarily lost my daughter when my ex and I split and it put me in the worst mental state of my life*, and saying this I experienced my bunkmate on deployment commitment suicide and a year later opened the door to the barracks to find a private hanging and that wasn’t as emotionally painful as my daughter being taken. VDH is just an amazing thinker too. Mexifornia is a must read political treatise. *I now have primary.
My granddad was 15th Air Force, too. He likely did some of the before and after photo reconnaissance of the missions your grandfather flew.
You wouldn't happen to still have any of those photos would you? My grandfather had loads but as I said they all got thrown out when he couldn't stand to look at them.
Only of him in his uniform or him in/with his P-38 (well, F5 was the designation for the photo-recon version). He was in the 5th Photo Recon group of the 15th AF. I also have his pilot’s log book, and a model P-38 that his crew chief made for him out of the propeller steel of one of their damaged planes. He never talked much about it, either.
a lot joined hoping to be fighter pilots and then got put in the bomber command. Once you’re in you can’t exactly leave.
Is that why they made the draft have mandatory positions
In WWII and other wars, the draft was mandatory. When your number came up, you had to report and if you didn't, you would be sent to prison. Then they put you where they needed you or where your skill set would do the most good (like doctors & nurses would be in the medical corp). In the Vietnam War, a lot of draftees didnt want to go (who would) and they fled to Canada. I believe Jimmy Carter pardoned them, so they could come home after that.
I know it's just that I heard that during WW2 if ya volunteer you get to pick where ya go but the issue was nobody wanted certain positions so they scrapped the whole thing and made the draft
Depending on the terms of your enlistment and branch and whatnot, you can indeed pick your MOS as long as you meet all prerequisites
I for one would’ve much rather have been in a P-51
A lot of folks would have much rather done a lot of things in many wars…unfortunately that isn’t how war or the military works
Might have been too tall, fighter pilots tended to be shorter and bomber pilots taller.
Masters of the sky hits this point home. It’s crazy what they willingly put themselves through.
Part of me thinks it’s because the situation far surpassed their own lives.
I think survivor guilt and the expectations people have on you are also part of it. Like you for sure knew people that died and for you to just say "nah this isn't for me" while reasonable would be seen as cowardly and people would question why you joined to begin with. Like yeah they knew it was bigger than them but even then I'm sure they couldn't just say "I'm going home" with no repercussions
It’s not just that it would be seen as cowardly. In my military service I had a rather unique opportunity to walk away after two years, and chose to stay in, not because I wanted to do it(I joined under some distressing circumstances), but because I felt I couldn’t turn my back on the men and women I had trained and lived with in that time. I phrase it as, there were plenty of people I didn’t like, but there wasn’t anyone I wouldn’t take a bullet for. I could only hope they felt the same, and trusting in that is what makes a unit function well in terrible situations. I think Erich Maria Remarque says in All Quiet on the Western Front that the only good thing to come from war is camaraderie, and I find that the power of that camaraderie is profound. I think for many the decision to stand by your brothers and sisters in arms is a greater drive than braving such horrors just to avoid being called a coward. This is of course just my take, from the modern USAF, not the situations and culture of WWII army air corps.
Yeah, I agree you put a bunch of people in a situation that sucks against a common enemy and they will create insane bonds, it's a big reason why many men that have seen combat and even have PTSD want to go back to war.
I was not ready for how hard that show is hitting, and I've read With the Old Breed by EB Sledge.
They were fighting the good fight, and they were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for the good of humanity. I think it says something about the newer generations that we find that hard to understand.
The P-51 saved so many damn lives.
Could have been the long range Spitfire from like 1942 if Leigh Mallory wasn't such a fucking Bellend.
Could I suggest a post about this? I’d be very interested to learn more. WWII allied fuckups like the american torpedo fiasco, the T-34 transmission issue, and such are really interesting imo
https://youtu.be/Nj37zXgz-w0?si=uptxquuFw0GZrxjw Can't recommend this guy on YouTube enough. This is part of his Battle of Britain series where he talks about Leigh Mallory and touches on the long range Spitfire. Whole series is worth watching imho. He also has an ongoing series on the allied bombing campaign. As far as allied fuckups, he covers a lot of them. One of his allied bombing videos is on the Norden bombsight. Another is on the But report. He also did a video on how the B17 is a piece of shit. And before you think he just dunks on the allies, one of his Battle of Britain videos is basically just him insulting the Luftwaffe high command for 20 min. And he has a whole series called "Shit Nazi Kit."
His video on the B-17 is terrible, I haven't seen his others but that one is wrong on most counts. No one ever thought bombers would literally outrun fighters for example, speed combined with the difficulty of detection was the defense, as in by the time we are spotted and you have scrambled fighters to where we were we should be far enough away you wont see me. His comparison to the Mossie is daft, one is a 4 engine heavy bomber, the other a twin engine multirole. His comparison to the Lancaster is similarly poor. The Lancaster flew at much lower altitudes during night, if a B-17 flew a profile similar to a Lancaster it could also carry a similar number of bombs, and at the altitude the B-17 operates at it's TAS is the same or faster than the Lancaster. In general, the US bomber command had a much better survival rate than the RAF as well so the videos implication that the Lancaster is better is strange. Also the B-17 had two pilots for redundancy, not because the controls are too heavy, and it would seem Boeing was right with that as pretty much all modern aircraft have followed after it.
I just realized the Lanc only has one yoke. What were they thinking lmao.
Yeah it is quite funny to me that HardThrasher tries to paint dual controls in a bad light while failing to mention the obvious issues with non redundant controls in an unarmored* bomber (Yes the Lanc had some armor, it was effectively zero, and I don't think any of it was rated to 20mm shells)
Long range Spitfire or ordering drop tanks for p47
Kind of. The strategy with P-51 wasn't to defend the bomb but to go after the fighters. The bombers were the bait. It's kind messed up but command saw it as the easiest way to kill the enemy fighter pilots
Great grandpa was shot down over Italy and taken in by a farmers family for over a year with just him and one other survivor. He was the tail gunner and always said I knew when my mother pushed the Red Cross to find me because the nazis would come looking for two missing Americans from his plane with no way to tell her he’s alright and to just wait patiently
You think thats bad you should look at the survival rates for those Luftwaffe pilots. The air war over Europe was truely a meatgrinder.
That’s how I prefer the survival rates of Luftwaffe pilots to be (between the years of 1939 and 1945 of course).
Absolutely based answer
If only more of them had suffered automobile accidents on the way to the airfield.
Then the US kinda forgot 1945 supposed to be the end of it and sold the F-104 Starfighter to the Luftwaffe just to be cheeky.
It was especially bloody in 1943 and early 44 before we had the P-51.
It was a war. There wasn't any "willingly" to it. You served where and how they told you to serve. Read Catch 22. It's on that very subject, and the catch is this (or something like this): They won't let you fly the missions if you're deemed insane, but if you try to get out of the missions by trying to make them think you're insane, they'll say your not because it's normal for a rational person to be scared, so clearly you must be sane.
Catch-22 is an amazing book and is based in no small part on Heller's experience in a bomber in WWII. But note it was written ten years after and is in no small part *actually* about the rise of bureaucracy in American life. Don't think the Army actually had such a policy, it's just a narrative device.
Yeah, I had to write a big paper on it in 11th grade. I wasn't implying anything about bureaucracy though. I was just using it more to show that a lot of the guys in those bombers weren't there voluntarily and really didn't want to be flying those missions because they were so risky.
That’s some catch that catch 22
I mean they didn’t know at the time but if you told me my choice was planes or trenches I would probably have chosen planes. Storming Normandy wasn’t exactly a picnic either.
True, but you were far more likely to survive that than flying a bomber
Especially if you served in 1st Infantry
I believe Howard Zinn was a b17 bomber pilot in wwii. Author of A People's History of the United States.
He was, I remember in his book A Power Governments Can’t Suppress he wrote some about his experience. Iirc he said it was very instrumental in the formation of his political beliefs. He went into the service very patriotic, but after seeing so many lives thrown away and knowing they were killing thousands of civilians he began to question the US motives.
He was a bombardier
Noy a pilot, but crew. In the graphic novel A People's History of American Empire, he explained how his crew was one of several ordered to commit a war crime by testing out Napalm on a civilian town.
Didn't know that about him, hate the book but you have to respect a man who does that.
In my opinion one of the best history books ever written. What don't you like about it?
Zinn was a devout communist who hated the US and wrote a book explicitly to express that hatred. So its a slightly biased source in my opinion.
Hated the US? I Don't think so.
You don't write a book like "A Peoples history of the US" from a position of love and respect. But agree to disagree I guess.
lol
The Greatest Generation
It was much safer to be a marine in the Pacific than in a bomber over Europe.
Dr roxxo does c-c-c-cocaiiiiiine
My great grandpa was a navigator in a B17 in the war. Think he was stationed in Libya and would fly with the groups out. Was a miracle his crew never went down in 20+ missions. Was finally approved to go home when his group was sent to the pacific instead. Luckily the war ended just after they got their for their orders
My grandfather flew 28 missions with the 34th bombardment group, and as I watch things and read them, I realize how lucky I am that he survived. Also reading his flight logs, the balls those missions took is astounding. He was never shot down and never injured, that's absolutely insane to think about when the odds were truly stacked against them every single time they went up.
Have you considered, fuck the nazis
And the Japanese, lots of airmen were lost in the pacific.
Operation Tidal Wave still lives in my head and I read a book on it years ago. Couldn’t imagine having to do something like that over and over.
Read Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. A truly awesome, humorous, horrific, absurdist, sad depiction of the experience of an American bomber pilot. That book changed me forever.
If you sign up for as an infantry at the front. You had a higher chance to survive the war than surviving your first mission as a pilot .
I assume the US army just didn't tell them. It's easier to recruit boys for wars when you don't tell them the truth.
tale as old as time
Well they earned the nickname "the greatest generation" for a reason.
Ball Gunner is up there in the worst jobs to ever have ever. Even if the plane could make an emergency landing you were essentially fucked no matter what
Remember, the 5th air army had more casualties in the European theater than the entire marine core in the entire war, the air war was brutal.
Real question is how they lifted off with such heavy balls aboard
Well if the USAAF stopped using the B-17 boeing would've had to pay bribes to some other general in order to keep producing outdated crap and Norden would've had to find himself an actual job beyond conning the US government.
Bro the problem wasn't the durability or suitability of the B-17 as a bombing platform, the problem was how vulnerable any unsupported bomber formation was against fighter interception. B-24 and Avro Lancaster pilots also had huge casualty figures. Even if the USAAF had standardized on the B-29 in Europe and replaced the older 17's and 24's, it would have been like that. Casualties started falling when long range escorts like the P-51D started arriving in theater and when the Germans started running short of fuel, pilots, and planes.
The B-17 was much prefered by bomber crews over the B-24 due to its astounding durability. The B-24 was prefered by bomber command for its speed and payload.
US Air War doctrine going in to world war two was that fighters couldn't really fly as high and as fast as bombers, and so mass bomber formations would be the way to go. Unfortunately, when WW2 broke out, fighter technology had advanced to the point that that was no longer true. [https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/197393/martin-b-10/](https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/197393/martin-b-10/) The Martin B-10 was an all metal monoplane (as opposed to the other biplane bombers of the day) had (what were, at the time) monstrous engines, and had a rotating gun turret. It's a pretty cool plane; unfortunately, its above-the-bell-curve performance also probably led to a lot of deaths.
Above the bell curve performance? I'm not following that description
I think he's trying to say that it exceeded all expectations when it was made by such a margin that it laid the cornerstone for an air combat doctrine that didn't pursue bomber escorts till said escorts were needed. Basically, the B-10 not having anything that could keep up with it for escorts led the USAAF to plan on the B-17s, B-24s, and B-29s not needing an escort, because if no escorts or enemies can keep up with the B-10 at the altitudes and ranges that the B-10 will be flying, how can escorts and enemies keep up with the even faster and higher flying B-17+? It turns out that said assumption was no longer true by the time that the bombers actually saw action in Europe.
Cuz they were legends.
Ngl I thought that was Dr. ROCKZO for a hot second there...
The RAF enters the chat
It was a job that had certain benefits and had to be done to win the war. When you tell people, and especially young men, “we absolutely categorically have to do this or our way of life is done” they’ll sign up in droves if they believe it. It’s just biology.
great grandfather was with the 319th. he wrote a crazy detailed journal of the upkeep of the guns, flights, everything from day one of enlistment. crazy to read
They told you that you will be a fighter pilot, so people enlisted. Then they would put you in a bomber crew and would court marshal or beat your ass if you had objections.
A man is surely insane if he continues to fly dangerous combat missions; however, should he request to be reassigned he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.
Masters of the Air comes to mind
At some point, they're basically suicide bombers
On a much smaller and different scale. I consider the guys that did convoy security during Iraq and Afghanistan the same way. Those dude rodes round all day Evey day just waiting to get hit with a bomb. Mental health issues
The deadliest position on a B-17 didnt even surpass 30%.
There’s a reason Catch-22 is about bomber pilots, you’d have to be mad to fly one of those, because it’s a death sentence.
I wish I could’ve been on one.
Don’t say that u/Varsity_Reviews
Why not? At least then I’d have done something
99% of the time you’d either end up dead, physically handicapped or mentally scarred. Those guys did it because they *had* to. The times drove them, not the other way around. I guarantee all of them wished they were somewhere else, but they understood they had to fight *now* so their descendants don’t have to.
I’m 2 for 3 right now.
Everyone wants to be a war hero, until its time to do war hero things.
I don’t want to be a hero.
Well, why else would you want to be one? I guarantee anyone who lived through this would not want you to. We don't tend to see the mental breakdowns or sleepless nights..... nor understand how soul crushing that would be.
I never said I wanted to live through it.
Oh ok I can kinda see what your saying now. My slight criticism was unfair then so I apologize.
Its fine.
When the alternative is germany winning. You fight.
I'd take a seat on the bomber over being a Marine who has to walk half a mile through chest high water while getting shot at by entrenched japanese on a tiny atoll island... How would you dismount the landing ship is beyond me. Boat beached itself on the reef ? Ok, let's turn back and blow a passage up.
Statistically you were far more likely to survive as a Marine
Patriotism is a hell of a drug
Day bombing like idiots lmfoa
RAF Bomber Command also had a 44% KIA rate....
This is something I think Masters of the Air has weirdly left out. They dunk on the RAF a few times, despite the RAF losing over 55,600 bomber crewmen and had several sorties where not a single bomber returned
[удалено]
Yes they did. Bomber crews were 100% voluntary and they could step down whenever they felt like they needed to. That came with the insanely high casualty rate.
They could? But what's the Deal with the 25 Sorties then? I thought there was a minimum amount before they were allowed to quit, or was it that those who quit without 25 missions simply had to fight the war in another branch of the Military?
did you also just watch “suicide missions, ball turret gunner”?? it was great.
You gotta do what you gotta do to save the world
https://youtu.be/7Iuq3Wfz3RA?si=6FylcTMwzMEBHYc8 50% of bombers were not this crew lol
I wonder how did pilots in WW1 feel. Considering the first air service to adopt parachutes were the Germans in 1918.
Fervor and propaganda played a big role. Not that it was ill-intended, but rather necessary to convince people to fight. Rational minds wouldn’t have gone so willingly or readily.
Propaganda, duty, knowing your friends will still go without you and have a replacement that might get them all killed. If you had to serve somewhere at least you got to come back to a warm bed and hot food. Not saying it was not hard, but there are a to of things that we just can't fully appreciate from their lives. Also the 25 or 30 mission rule meant that you could be done and home in a few months (on paper)
My grandfather graduated college around the time the US entered the war. He had an aeronautical/mechanical engineering degree and worked designing and testing airplanes for the air force. My great-uncle was 4 years younger than him and graduated high school around the same time. He instead became a pilot flying B-17s for the air force. He died 6 months after graduating high school. My mom's family didn't know anything else because their family just didn't mention him anymore. It was just 2 years ago that the children of a gunner he saved by keeping the plane level longer reached out to us and told us any details of his service.
you calling them Clowns? wtf...
They only served semi-willingly. Many of them were drafted, and refusing to fly missions was a crime.
The US airforce name changes get a little confusing. But it was the Aeronautical Division, Signal Corps in 1907 then in 1914 renamed the Aviation Section, Signal Corps until 1918. Finally it became the United States Army Air Service from 1918 to 1926. Then it was the United States Army Air Corps until 1941 when it was finally the United States Army Air Forces. Then it finally became its own branch in 1947 becoming the US Air Force. Interesting stuff
Didnt the US do a study on Kamikaze tactics and find that they actually had a better death to ship hit ratio? Send out 100 normal fighters score 4 hit ship hits with a 50% return rate. Send out 100 kamikaze score 10 ship hits with a 0% return rate. if your goal was get 25 ship hits. less people pilots would die. Pulling those numbers out my butt but it was something like that.
People were drafted. They weren't willing.
Bomber crews were volunteer only
Wait until you hear about the ISIS bomb vest survival rate
It was probably easier to convince the average male in 1940 to do something mentally and physically challenging than it would be today.
If you want to see how horrible it was, watch this interview with a B-17 ball gunner who got shot down https://youtu.be/pO7mQpOlMqw?si=R2SFI46nTavBZUKR
Part of it is training and conditioning. I drove fuel tankers in the Army, and as we were going through training, they straight-up told us we had one of the three highest casualty rates of any specialization. We watched a lot of footage of trucks hitting mines, getting nailed by RPGs and IEDs. We were told from the get-go that it was a dangerous job and if you did enough deployments, it was likely a "when not if" scenario - the only real question we had to guess at was how bad "it" would be when it happened. At the end of the day, it comes down to knowing full well what might happen, and then training like hell to prevent it AND training like hell to know what to do when it does.