(dramatic music) (narrator) In the deadly skies over war-torn Europe, one unit led America's fight with Hitler.

♪ (Robert) They lost over half of their aircraft and hundreds of their air crew members.

(guns shooting) (narrator) Daring aerial warriors, who sacrificed all to destroy the Nazi war machine... ♪ I also saw some of them going nose down, and I didn't know if the pilots were dead.

(plane droning) (Robert) Germany was ready for us, and they made it rough.

(narrator) ...relentlessly attacking, deep into the heart of the Reich no matter the odds or cost.

(man) Bombs away.

(Henry) Got an engine that's struggling, it's on fire, it exploded.

Nine men gone just that quick.

(narrator) They are the Eighth US Army Air Force, the Mighty Eight.

(metal clinking) ♪ (gun firing) ♪ An extraordinary war demanded extraordinary soldiers.

(man) Oh, we were good.

We were very good.

The best there was.

(guns firing) (narrator) Forged into elite bands of brothers... (man) You were fighting for your buddy.

You didn't wanna let them down.

(narrator) ...by facing the trials of war together.

(man) They attacked us up through the vapor trails and butchered us up pretty good.

(plane whirring) (narrator) These are the stories of the Second World War's most famous fighting formations and their journey through tragedy and triumph... (man) A German commander said, "I've never seen any people as brave as yours."

(narrator) ...to earn their battle honors.

(gun firing) ♪ By late 1943, the tide of war had begun to turn in the Allies' favor, except in the air over Europe.

For months, hundreds of B-17s battled to penetrate Hitler's defenses during the daytime, paying a terrible price in men and machines.

(Robert) The losses were terrific.

In the first raids, they lost over half of their aircraft and hundreds of their air crew members.

♪ So, you can imagine how bad it was.

(narrator) Not protected by fighter escorts... (man) Get that one at 3:00!

(narrator) ...and under relentless attack, they often failed to destroy key targets.

(plane zooming) We had two planes to collide in mid-air.

We lost two planes that morning.

(narrator) The Mighty Eighth would learn brutal lessons, until one week in February 1944, when everything changed, and the battle for air superiority took a decisive turn.

(plane whooshing) (engines rumbling) (intriguing music) ♪ The Eighth US Army Air Force was activated on the 28th of January, 1942 in Savannah, Georgia.

And as VII Bomber Command, they gradually deployed to Great Britain that spring.

The US Air Forces were still part of the American Army and not yet independent.

(planes rumbling) (Flint) When we talk about the Mighty Eighth, we're talking about the US Eighth Air Force, which really carried the heavy end of the stick in bombings of Nazi Germany and German-controlled territory in World War II, along with the Royal Air Force Bomber Command.

♪ (narrator) Hundreds, and then thousands of men quickly trained to master heavy bombers, such as the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.

♪ I guess there's no way they can prepare a young man for combat.

Hmph!

We didn't have the remotest idea of what we were headed into.

♪ One of the captains told us, he said, "Well, we can teach you everything here, except the extreme cold at altitude."

(courageous music) ♪ Clear.

(narrator) Air power would revolutionize warfare during the Second World War.

And the Mighty Eighth would eventually take things to an epic new scale of destruction.

♪ (Flint) It was something that took a while of trial and error to determine that the aircraft could actually be an instrument of war and be a very powerful one.

(narrator) In less than four decades, aircraft had gone from a glorified kite to fragile fighters... (dramatic music) ...and then, a weapon of mass destruction.

They brought the full devastating power of modern warfare to ordinary people's front doors.

(plane zooming) (indistinct singing) ♪ (explosions) Hitler's bombers first terrorized continental Europe... (bombs whistling and exploding) ...and then, from 1940 into 1941, blitzed British cities, killing more than 43,000 civilians.

(grim music) (crashing) (Jon) The evolution of aerial warfare had given war another dimension.

It meant that you could hit the enemy far, far behind the frontline, the factories that made the tanks, that made the planes, that made the bullets.

And if you could choke that off, you could, hopefully, end the war early.

(swing music) (narrator) From mid-1942, the Eighth started to arrive in Britain, and a trickle became a flood as RAF stations joined the Union with Uncle Sam.

♪ (man) This is the new battlefront, the air front, from which we seek out the enemy, the power behind the German lust for conquest, the steel mills and refineries, shipyards and submarine pens, factories and munitions plants, pinpoints on the map of Europe which mean rubber, guns, ball bearings, shells, engines, planes, tanks, targets, targets to be destroyed.

(planes whirring) (curious music) (narrator) One air base became scores by 1944, spreading from the English midlands to East Anglia.

And a handful of squadrons eventually became three bombardment divisions.

(Flint) The 1st and the 3rd divisions were B-17, the Flying Fortress, and the 2nd division was primarily B-24s.

The two bombers were different, yet similar.

Each bomber had a crew of ten.

The B-24 could carry more bombs and fly a little bit farther than the B-17.

♪ The 17s could fly higher and could take a lot more damage in the air than the B-24 could.

(man) We'll be hitting the legal area and the lowland.

(narrator) But eight months after Pearl Harbor, the Eighth's B-17s had still not dropped a single bomb in anger.

(indistinct speaking) On the 17th of August, 1942, that would change with a planned attack on Rouen's railway marshalling yards in northern France.

(tense music) The Eighth's bomber commander, Brigadier General Ira Eaker, flew in one of the dozen B-17s.

♪ But this initial mission was not about destruction.

It was the first test of the American strategic doctrine, daylight precision bombing.

(engine rumbling) (Ira) Our theory that day bombardment is feasible is about to be tested with men's lives put at stake.

♪ We made landfall at precisely the point indicated in our flight plan.

Our planes were in excellent formation, but perhaps not quite as tight as would have been ideal for protection against enemy attacks.

(Flint) The conditions on a B-17 on a mission were, at best, terrible.

Once you get up into altitude, you have no oxygen, so everybody's on an oxygen bottle, they have a mask on.

It's very cold, 40, 50 degrees below 0 Fahrenheit.

Everybody is wearing, in the early stages of the war, a leather jacket that's fleece-lined, and it's very heavy.

And they've got heavy fleece-lined gloves and heavy fleece-lined boots.

There were no bathrooms on the planes, so the crews were furnished with a relief tube.

You can stand next to somebody and shout in their ear, and you will not hear them.

So, all the crew were hooked into headphones and microphones.

♪ (bombs whistling and exploding) ♪ (narrator) The most vulnerable aircraft was always tail-end Charlie.

And the worst job in the air was being its rear gunner.

(gun firing) Sergeant Adam Jenkins watched as his nightmare approached.

(plane whirring) (Adam) There were eight of them in V formation.

The leader waggled his wings and came for us.

When they were about 300 yards away, I pulled the trigger, and it looked like the end of his wings came off!

(narrator) Major Paul Tibbets piloted one of the pioneering aircraft.

He would later pilot another to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima.

(explosion) (Paul) Our aim was reasonably good, but you couldn't describe it as pinpoint bombing.

We were no longer novices at this terrible game of war.

♪ We had braved the enemy in his own skies and were alive to tell about it.

(bombs exploding) (narrator) They all returned safely, partly because four squadrons of RAF Spitfires provided a close escort.

(relieved music) But this American plan horrified the British, who had already rejected daylight bombing because of the terrible losses.

♪ The RAF had been bombing the Reich for well over two years, but largely at night.

With the advent of the US Eighth Air Force, the bombing campaign became more of an around-the-clock campaign.

The British RAF would bomb at night.

And in the daytime, the Eighth Air Force would come over.

(Jon) Churchill, as the prime minister, was looking at, "How can I assuage public opinion in the UK and hit back at Germany?

How can I do that fighting in North Africa, so far away from Germany?"

The only way is by dropping bombs on German soil.

(tense music) (narrator) The British Bomber Boys, led by Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris, aimed to destroy industry and morale, but their night ops forced the inaccurate area bombing of cities.

♪ However, the Americans advocated the precision targeting of factories, which required daylight.

They argued that the heavily-armed B-17 could defend itself.

It was, after all, named the Flying Fortress.

(engines rumbling) (whooshing) The B-17s bristled with up to 13 Browning machine guns, below, above, at the sides, and to the rear.

But the huge weight of all that firepower often limited their practical payload to two tons, far less than the regular drop of RAF Lancasters.

(engine whirring) Over 12,000 were built in another production miracle.

(intriguing music) (Jon) The whole idea was that the B-17 could fly unescorted by fighters, and that it would get, relatively quickly, to any target within Europe, be able to protect itself, drop its payload, and then get back home.

(bombs whistling) (narrator) But theory met brutal reality as the Flying Fortresses confronted the most terrifying air force ever seen, the Luftwaffe.

(planes zooming) In '42, the Luftwaffe still was a very powerful force.

They pretty much ruled the skies over Europe.

And the Germans were very skilled in their tactics in the air.

They knew the best places to attack the bombers.

(foreboding music) (narrator) Then, in late November 1942, the Luftwaffe unleashed a terrifying new tactic.

(explosion) Their fighters flew straight and level, directly into the front of the B-17s, targeting the vulnerable Perspex nose cone.

The German Focke-Wulf fighter pilot is firing his 20 mm cannon at the aircraft trying to knock out the cockpit and kill the pilot and co-pilot.

(narrator) These in-air strikes further reduced their very limited impact on one key target, the fortified U-boat pens... (engine rumbling) ...while the worsening winter weather now cancelled many of the planned ops.

(relaxed jazz music) Stuck on the ground, the American aviators turned to the little bit of home they had brought with them, the base PX shop.

Trevor Hewitt runs the New Farm Aviation Heritage Group, and is particularly proud of one of their museum's exhibits.

(Trevor) Behind me on the wall here, we have the post exchange sign, or the PX shop sign.

The sign itself has the Eighth Air Force winged eight sign in it.

Post exchange was a very important place on the base because it's where they got together.

The PX shop was well-stocked, cigarettes, and candy, and various tins of peaches, and other things, mainly American brands of stuff.

So, it was comforts from home for them in the PX shop.

A vital piece of the infrastructure of the airfield.

♪ We are of the great belief that this was actually produced and painted by a local civilian, W. Cook.

♪ (narrator) This PX sign is evidence of the bonds forming between these amiable invaders and the locals.

♪ (man) The friendly soil of England, whose people have defended their island's freedom for over a thousand years.

But today, their countryside has changed.

Today, their island has been converted into a gigantic bomber field, a super aircraft carrier anchored off the shores of fortress Europe, with hangars and machine shops.

(birds chirping) (narrator) One of the most romanticized views of the war is the perception of the flyers enjoying a bucolic lifestyle surrounded by charming farms, picture-perfect villages, cute churches, and flights of passing young women.

For some, perhaps many, of the American airmen, the reality was somewhat different.

(Nicholas) The living conditions, when we got in there, they were poor, you know.

And not much transportation, a few bicycles around for some people.

No way to get around.

We lived in Nissen huts.

There was no heat in there to speak of.

(Flint) One of the amusing things about the arrival of the Americans was the phrase, "Overpaid, oversexed, and over here."

There was, I think, a lot of resentment.

(narrator) They remained two nations divided by a common language and different currencies.

Remember, one pound is not $1, but $4, and that equals 20 shillings.

(jazzy music) (Bernard) I had nice times there, to tell you the truth.

You know, I used to go to the pub, and we'd play cribbage, and we'd play darts.

We'd bring 'em eggs and butter, and we'd trade that, they'd do our laundry for us.

They were lovely.

The people were just lovely people.

(Flint) Of course, the Americans had more money than the British soldiers were being paid.

They were seen as kind of the glamorous group that had come in, and they were stealing the English girls away from their boyfriends.

But when the English people saw the casualties that the Eight Air Force was taking, I think the attitudes changed.

(somber music) (narrator) During their first ten months, the Eighth lost 188 bombers and 1,900 men.

♪ Any crews that survived 25 missions could return to America.

Later, this was raised to 35.

In 1943, they had less than a one in four chance.

One of the first to qualify were the crew of the Memphis Belle, praised by Hollywood, the top brass... ♪ ...and the crown.

♪ But the pressure still piled on to hit the Nazis harder and far more often.

(driving music) ♪ In January 1943, Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt met in Casablanca and eventually confirmed round-the-clock bombing.

♪ (man) The progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial, and economic system, and the undermining of the morale of the German people.

(narrator) The later Pointblank directive prioritized aircraft production and Luftwaffe fighters, which meant bombing Germany.

(bombs exploding) (sober music) But this created a huge problem for the Eighth, as their chubby P-47 Thunderbolt escorts could only fly as far as the German border.

(engine whirring) (tense music) Exactly one year after their very first raid on Rouen, the Eighth faced their greatest challenge on the 17th of August, 1943.

Now, with over 30 times as many planes in action, 376 B-17s... ♪ ...massed to attack two key industrial areas deep inside Germany.

♪ But this huge force faced a mountain of obstacles, an exhausting flight duration, layers of anti-aircraft guns, and numerous squadrons of interceptors.

♪ To try and even up the odds, the Americans made an elaborate plan using two bombardment wings.

♪ Targeting Regensburg and Schweinfurt, the B group would closely shadow the A group for mutual protection.

Once A bombed Regensburg, they would unexpectedly escape south to Allied bases in north Africa.

But after B had hit Schweinfurt, they would have to battle their way back to Britain.

♪ (melancholic music) ♪ (man) All right, you dodos, let's go, this is it!

(narrator) The crews awoke at 1:30 in the morning to be briefed on the bad news, a massive mission through Hitler's heart of darkness... (man) After takeoff and assembly, proceed up this line to this point.

This will be your combat wing assembly line.

(narrator) ...confirming the route, rendezvous points, and the weather.

(man) The temperature at bombing altitude, -26 degrees centigrade.

Some looked for divine protection, others put their faith in flak aprons and their manganese steel plates.

♪ As the many Forts taxied into position, their names, mottos, and good luck symbols were proudly displayed and freshly repainted.

The pressure was on to prove American strategic bombing capabilities and deliver a knock-out blow to Hitler.

(engine rumbling) ♪ (James) This would be the beginning of the end of the German war machine, or so we were informed by our S2 intelligence officer.

Each man was pondering the odds of returning from a raid so deep into the Third Reich.

(plane zooming) ♪ (narrator) Heavy mist delayed departure before the 4th Bombardment Wing broke through to find blue skies.

But the flights of P-47 escorts quickly peeled away over Belgium.

Regensburg was still 480 km ahead.

They were on their own... (guns firing) ♪ ...but only briefly... (man) Enemy at 2:00.

(narrator) ...as the skies now filled with a hailstorm of diving and spinning Luftwaffe fighters.

(man) Watch that fire coming in at 3:00.

(man) He's coming in in a half-roll.

Pull her up, chief, pull her up.

(gun firing) (Beirne) The sight was fantastic and surpassed fiction.

(man) Here's one right now-- (Beirne) I fought an impulse to close my eyes and overcame it.

(indistinct radio chatter) I knew that I was going to die and so were a lot of others.

-Keep after 'em, Winchell.

-I see 'em.

I'm on 'em.

(gun firing) ♪ I got 'em.

I was very lucky, as you can see.

We went on a lot of tough missions.

There was a plane right next to me that just blew up!

It was gone!

It was scary!

And the only time you would stop to think is when you see the plane going down, and then you were counting the parachutes and hoping that they would get out.

-Keep your eye on 'em, Bill.

-See any parachutes, Clenlon?

(Bernard) I also saw some of them going nose-down, and I didn't know if the pilots were dead.

And it was an ugly-looking thing.

(man) Watch those two at 12:00, they're coming in.

(man) They're comin' in, Scotty.

(man) Get that ball turret on 'em.

(Jon) You might even be shot by one of the neighboring B-17s, their belly gunner that might be tracking a German fighter, miss, and put a few rounds into you.

And all of this while being tens of thousands of feet in the air.

It must have been a truly horrifying experience.

(tense music) (narrator) They tried to keep a rigid formation for mutual protection, but it was broken up by the mounting losses.

(man) Four F-Ws, 8:00, 9:00.

(narrator) After 90 minutes under constant attack, they reached Regensburg.

(man) Well, it's about time.

(man) All right, Steve, we're on the IP, she's yours.

(Steve) I got it, bomb bay doors open.

(man) Make a good run now, Steve.

(Steve) I'm on it.

(Beirne) I knew that our bombardiers were grim as death while they synchronized their sights on the great Messerschmitt shops laying below us.

(man) Bombs away!

(Beirne) Our bombs were away.

(indistinct radio chatter) (bombs exploding) ♪ (narrator) On the regular raids, the anxious ground crews could only sweat out the mission in Britain.

Flares would signal the return of damaged planes and those carrying casualties.

(Bernard) We were over Germany, and the pilot says, "We have to abort the mission.

I'm having trouble with the engines."

We had to get rid of our bombs, so we dropped 'em.

We didn't know we were gonna get home till we got over the channel.

And we were flying very low, and we were being shot at quite often.

(engine starting) (narrator) But on the 17th of August, the bad weather further delayed takeoff for the 1st Bombardment Wing.

(melancholic music) ♪ (plane zooming) Their target was Schweinfurt.

But rather than entering German airspace with the Regensburg strike force as planned, they were hours behind... ♪ ...allowing the Luftwaffe's best to land, re-arm, and intercept them, now with about 300 fighters.

(man) Jerry's been hit on the number four.

Cover him all you can, everybody.

There's another one working Shorty over.

(indistinct radio chatter) Enemy at 2:00, he's yours, kid.

-I got him!

-I'll say you did.

♪ (narrator) On any mission, they also faced and equally dangerous threat, anti-aircraft fire, or flak.

(Robert) We were in the lead ship of the 60-airplane group, and they had me flying in the waist.

And the flak was so heavy, I told on the intercom, I said, "We're gonna catch it this time," and we did.

I looked out before we got to our target, and you could see the flak was so heavy up there, it looked like a big thunderhead, that was flak.

I stowed my gun, and just as I turned, I heard a pop.

I had been lookin' out the window right above it, and right where by head was was a hole about four inches in diameter.

It would have taken my head off.

♪ (narrator) On the 17th, the 1st Bombardment Wing lost 36 B-17s before starting their bomb run on the crucial Schweinfurt plants.

(bomb exploding) These factories produced about half of the Nazi's ball bearing supply, vital parts for Panzers and the Luftwaffe.

(Flint) When you're getting close to your target, you really can't take any evasive action.

Your bombardier, using the Norden bombsight, is now controlling the airplane, he's flying it, and he has to fly it pretty much on a straight course.

So, there's about 30 seconds there, where the gunners on the ground have a chance to zero in on you because you can take no evasive action.

(sorrowful music) ♪ (narrator) The Schweinfurt survivors limped home, often struggling to stay airborne, arriving randomly at the nearest base as the ground crews scrambled their ambulances to treat the wounded and recover the dead.

♪ The crews heard that both targets had been hit hard.

Production at Schweinfurt fell by over a third for several weeks.

(engine rumbling) ♪ Most of the B-17s bore scars, bullet holes, broken engines, and busted tails.

♪ It was a miracle some of them returned.

Many would never fly again.

Scores were damaged, 60 were lost, along with about 660 men, nearly one in five.

♪ They had shot down 47 Nazi fighters that day.

♪ (William) Suffering all those casualties was the major turning point.

The Air Force had it proved to them that their idea of sending B-17s unescorted on a deep penetration just was not valid.

♪ (engine rumbling) (narrator) More unsustainable losses came with a second huge raid on Schweinfurt in October 1943.

Another 60 planes were lost and over 120 damaged.

Unescorted raids deep into Germany were largely cancelled for months.

When they used radar for blind bombing, only about three percent of bombs fell within 300 meters of their targets.

At Schweinfurt, around seven percent hit using an optical bombsight.

(bombs whistling) (Flint) When the bombsight was developed and put into American bombers, the claim was that it could drop a bomb in a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet.

And maybe that's true if the pickle barrel was maybe five miles in diameter.

(man) Bombardiers and crew, bomb bay doors open.

(narrator) The complex gyroscopic M4 Norden bombsight could not see through clouds or deal with bombers dodging flak or fighters.

Straight bomb runs with targeting by veteran crews only made some limited improvements.

(man) Bombs away.

(bombs whistling) (tense music) ♪ (bombs exploding) Throughout the war, the Americans insisted on the efficacy of precision daylight bombing, even though the evidence for it really wasn't there.

(sorrowful music) (narrator) Loses of one in five were not sustainable and took a huge psychological toll on those who did return to base.

(Flint) Many of the air crew were very pessimistic about their chances of seeing the end of the war or making their 25 missions.

If they made five missions, they were feeling that their luck was about to run out.

(narrator) Levels of alcoholism, nervous shakes, and undiagnosed trauma escalated.

♪ (Laurence) It was the pills that got a lot of the guys through.

Pills to put them to sleep, pills to keep them awake, pills to kill the depression.

♪ (bright music) ♪ (narrator) As a result of these immense combat strains, pilots and air crew traditionally get all the glory, but they were useless without their mechanics and armorers.

This airplane's gotta fly in the morning.

Is it gonna be ready?

Well, major, I don't know, sir.

Let's get the fans turning.

(narrator) Similarly, the B-17 steals all the glory from the many B-24 Liberators that also flew with the Eighth, as epitomized by one notable aircraft.

(Trevor) Witchcraft was a B-24H Liberator, which was the very, very finest B-24 of the Eighth Air Force in such the fact that it flew 130 missions.

It suffered quite a bit of battle damage.

The ground crew was one of the best ground crews in the Eighth Air Force.

There was a Chinese, there was a Dutchman, and an American.

They actually called them the League of Nations because there were so many nationalities in that ground crew.

But they were very diligent, and took great pride in looking after Witchcraft.

And it was their aircraft, they only lent it to the air crews.

It was their aeroplane.

(intriguing music) (narrator) But, it would take a new aircraft to win air superiority, a sleek, new fighter.

♪ (serious music) As 1944 dawned, the Western Allies had one key priority, D-Day, the liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe.

But success depended upon the eradication of the Luftwaffe.

(vehicles rumbling) (Henry) This is a must!

Destroy the enemy air force wherever you find them in the air, on the ground, and in factories.

♪ (narrator) And the key to success was the disposable drop tank.

(intriguing music) Its extra fuel allowed new Little Friends to accompany the bombers deep into Germany.

The P-51 Mustang had arrived.

(whooshing) It proved to be the holy grail.

A long-range fighter that could still beat Hitler's best at any altitude.

♪ And the miracle ingredient was adding the Spitfire's Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, which transformed an emu into an eagle.

Over 15,000 Mustangs would eventually prove decisive.

(Flint) The P-51 Mustang was a game-changer in World War II aerial warfare.

As far as escorting the bombers to and from their targets, the P-51 was unbeatable.

(tense music) (narrator) In late February 1944, the Allies planned a sustained all-out attack, Big Week.

♪ Its aim, to end the Luftwaffe's ability to defend Nazi airspace and win air superiority for D-Day.

The Eighth assembled over 800 heavy bombers and as many fighters, initially targeting the Messerschmitt plant near Leipzig.

(man) ...on the way out, and escort you all the way home.

This was gonna be a combined bomber offensive by both the American Eighth Air Force and the RAF Bomber Command, and the primary objective of this was to degrade as much as possible the German aircraft manufacturing industry.

(narrator) The heavy flight suits now came with electrical heating and a thermos of coffee.

(dramatic music) Four signal flares coordinated the launch of this massive air armada across Europe.

(William) Your bomb is 5,000 pounds.

Gas load, naturally, maximum.

Don't start your engines before you have to.

You'll need all the gas you have.

♪ (narrator) The Eighth's offensive firepower grew with new generations of fighters.

But sometimes old tech was the best way to keep things handy.

The increasing flood of P-51 Mustangs joined the sleek, twin-engine P-38 Lightnings, but the majority remained updated P-47s, all with the vital long-range drop tanks.

They realized if they could target where the Germans were actually producing their fighters, their bombers, their ground-attack aircraft, they could deal a real killer blow to the Luftwaffe.

And they could do this in particular by forcing them to face them in the sky.

(formidable music) ♪ (narrator) In one key innovation, the US fighters were now unleashed, no longer just tied to the close protection of the bombers, ordered to hunt and kill, turning the tables on the Luftwaffe interceptors.

(dramatic music) ♪ (man) 109s at 10:00.

♪ (gun firing) (man) Green leader here, here comes another at 9:00.

(guns firing) ♪ (Francis) We really hit hard.

He exploded when I was about 50 yards behind him with his tail and wings separating from the rest of the plane, and went down spinning.

♪ (Bob) We hit the first bunch in true Thunderbolt fashion.

Ripped through their scattering ranks and began to chop up the second echelon.

♪ (Clarence) I was determined I would go wherever he went, do whatever he did.

I wanted a victory.

♪ (narrator) Tactics and technology combined as they now bounced the unsuspecting Luftwaffe, nailing 61, for the loss of just four on the first day.

(Lowell) Hundreds of American bodies would lie scattered across the continent, but hundreds upon hundreds of Jerry fighters would drop from the flaming skies to rest in ruin, as complete as that of many of the factories from which they came.

(explosion) (bombs whistling) (narrator) Numerous industrial areas were hammered that week, forcing Hitler to divert more resources to defend them.

(Jon) Whereas the Americans could replace those losses, both in machine and men, the Germans simply couldn't.

(narrator) In total, the Nazis lost over 250 fighters in the air that week.

But the Eighth paid in blood, as about 20 percent of their heavies still fell from the skies.

(plane exploding) In the run-up to D-Day, these new tactics began to devastate the Luftwaffe, as the prowling American fighters embraced more missions outlined by the Eighth's new commander, Major General Jimmy Doolittle.

(man) Desirable that we peel off as many fighters as possible.

Then, come down, and straffe ground targets.

(melancholic music) (narrator) Waves of strike fighters sought out targets of opportunity, particularly airfields packed with war planes... (guns firing) ...but also key pieces of infrastructure, roads and rail lines, loaded trains, and bustling marshalling yards... ♪ ...canal barges, oil tanks, and flak towers... ♪ ...all vital to Nazi troop, tank, and munitions movements, and now weakening Hitler's iron grip on occupied Europe.

(explosion) The introduction of the long-range P-51 Mustang fighter was essential to victory.

The presence of the P-51s was really the thing that broke the Germans' back, in terms of being able to defend itself from the air.

(truck whirring) (narrator) This was further proven in March 1944, when the Eighth also started to raid Hitler's capital, Berlin.

But somehow, the more the Americans bombed, the more the Nazi's produced.

♪ By mid-1944, the Mighty Eighth numbered 200,000 people, with over 1,000 fighters and more than 2,000 heavy bombers.

But death stalked them as soon as their engines started.

It had the nickname of the Belle of Boston.

It was a bit of a war-weary old warhorse.

They lost an engine on takeoff, just shortly leaving the end of the runway.

The pilot, Lieutenant Kingsley, couldn't climb, and he mushed along for about a mile and a half till he hit one big old English oak tree which ripped the wing off, where it exploded and disintegrated.

And of the ten young men onboard, six lives were taken, and four survived.

They were rescued from the crash site by my late father and my late grandfather with a neighbor.

We have a burnt golf ball, the top of it is burnt.

I actually found that on the crash site in amongst the bits and pieces of wreckage.

And it was quite an unusual item to find.

When they were waiting for mission takeoff, they had time to pass.

Lieutenant Arthur Doyle's little thing he used to do was he had a bag of golf balls, and he would drive golf balls down the perimeter track to pass the time.

And, obviously, one of two were left in the aircraft, and this was one of Lieutenant Doyle's golf balls.

(engines rumbling) (narrator) Most operations now focused on preparations for D-Day in June.

(engine rumbling) The Eighth had to hit vast areas of France to help disguised the true location of the landings and destroy the Nazi's infrastructure.

(Robert) We were flying almost every day, dropping bombs in there, trying to eliminate opposition for the landing.

(tense music) We flew up the coast of France to our target.

That was the greatest sight I've ever seen.

The air was full of aircraft of all descriptions.

Every boat that would move was in that channel taking troops across.

(engines rumbling) (narrator) On D-Day itself, they failed to destroy the Normandy Beach defenses but had achieved a great victory.

The Luftwaffe hardly appeared.

The Allies had finally won air superiority over the battlefield.

♪ Their record against the Nazi economy is far more mixed, as aircraft production actually grew until September 1944.

But without the bombing, it would have increased far more and freed up the Luftwaffe and anti-aircraft artillery for the frontlines.

The bombing campaign was quite effective against industrial targets.

The Germans were forced to disperse their manufacturing facilities.

A lot of the German armaments production went underground.

(bombs whistling) (narrator) And they also destroyed another vital part of the Nazi war machine, oil production, now artificially squeezed from coal in huge refineries.

♪ (Jon) Its ability to drive a modern mechanized war machine was reliant on the supply of the black stuff.

And when the Eighth Air Force hit these refineries, in a very short period of time, the shortages of fuel for the German war machine were crippling.

(bombs exploding) (pensive music) ♪ (narrator) The Mighty Eighth has been criticized for causing civilian casualties as they increasingly bombed German cities, often with incendiaries.

♪ But they did make a decisive contribution to the Allied victory, destroying the Luftwaffe and much Nazi infrastructure, ♪ and paid an appalling price with 26,000 dead, an extraordinary loss of air crew, over 1,000 more fatalities than the far bigger US Marine Corps suffered in the whole Pacific campaign.

♪ (Jon) Which is incredible if you think about the ferocity of the fighting in the Pacific at Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa.

And yet, here were air crews in a supposedly safer sphere of fighting in the air war suffering more.

(narrator) In the end, air power had proven to be Hitler's critical weakness and the Allies' greatest strength... (plane zooming) ...where technology, industry, and sacrifice combined to ensure victory over the Nazis.

(dramatic music) ♪ (Flint) The life that the air crews had to go through and endure was some of the most harrowing of any combat soldier in World War II.

(engine rumbling) ♪ (energetic music)