The intent of this post is to introduce WWII US Bombers

November 14, 2023 4:04 PM

Masters of the Air Trailer Teaser, Combat Clip Historical Accuracy review and Explanation [8:25]

WWII US Bombers is a YouTube channel with a singular focus and a breathless delivery. The material is presented by Keith M., a retired Boeing engineer and volunteer at ‘a local aviation museum.’

Keith owns or has access to a wide variety of bomber artifacts—often filmed in or just outside of his garage—as seen in B-17 Bomber's Drift Meter Instrument, a Simple Clever Solution [6:02]. As with most of his videos, it includes a link to a PDF of images/documents shown.

Keith’s channel is also notable for its reliance on primary sources, usually documents (WWII Battlefield Combat Lessons Learned Experiences Document Availability [1:38]), but sometimes including audio (WWII Depth Charge Sounds [11:58]) and video (Rare Declassified Footage from post WWII Super-bomb tests – The Project Harkin Story [9:35]).

All the information referenced in this post has been declassified.

posted by ChurchHatesTucker (16 comments total)

I suspect the ‘local aviation museum’ is The Museum of Flight in Seattle.

If you're wondering how depth charges relate to bombers, planes dropped them too. The focus is singular, but exhaustive.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:07 PM on November 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

The focus is singular, but exhaustive.
oh this is definitely my jam.
posted by ZaphodB at 5:31 PM on November 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

MetaFilter: the focus is singular, but exhaustive.
posted by ZaphodB at 5:36 PM on November 14, 2023 [9 favorites]

He certainly seems to know his subject.  That was a nice breakdown on that first clip.  Never heard that Roosevelt quip about failing to put a roof on Fortress Europe, but it sounds like something he'd say.  I can hear his voice saying it in my head.

"…museum’ is The Museum of Flight in Seattle"
I take the Sounder south each morning and one of the pleasing bits is getting to catch sight of the Lockheed Constellation they have have parked outside. Such a beautiful plane.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 7:03 PM on November 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

Clarification: Masters of the Air is in upcoming historical drama series from Apple, not a video game as I assumed.

In the first link, there's a segment where he notes the failure of the crew to wear their oxygen masks and then proceeds to explain in detail (with references) how toxic that behavior would have been. Of course the show creators left the masks off so that their actors' faces could be seen. To me that moment in the video was striking because it hinted at how ASD-affected people have difficulty processing human faces -- and may not understand why the general population needs to see them.
posted by intermod at 7:06 PM on November 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

Going to have to give this a watch because it's in my wheelhouse.

And I don't think you can walk away from reading "Masters of the Air" without being furious at the waste of young men by the Army air tacticians being married to their bomber box theories in the face of the reality of war.
posted by drewbage1847 at 7:45 PM on November 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

And I don't think you can walk away from reading "Masters of the Air" without being furious at the waste of young men by the Army air tacticians being married to their bomber box theories in the face of the reality of war.

I would like to know a little more about this. Was there an alternative on the table for the B-17? Or was it about making faster bombers with less crew and armor?
posted by Brian B. at 6:56 AM on November 15, 2023

Combat box
The USAAF had significant losses during the war. At one point reducing B-17 crews from 10 to 9 man crews. Also, advancement in radar and more accurate flak increased losses in box formations in the latter half of the war.
posted by clavdivs at 8:21 AM on November 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

The gist is basically this: Much of the senior leadership of the Army Air Corps and Bomber Command were nearly religiously devoted to the concept that bombers and a relentless bombing campaign alone could win a war and that daylight precision bombing was the key. (The US was in possession of the truly cutting edge Norton Bomb Sight that made it not out of the realm of possibility)

They repeatedly rejected the idea of a long range escort fighter because they felt that the combat box was sufficient protection for the bombers. Theory was that by having a tight box formation of b-17s that were bristling with machine guns they'd be able to provide interlocking fields of fire and total protection from the fighters of the Luftwaffe.

Turns out that fighters are pretty damn nimble and the pilots kept changing tactics to take advantage of blind spots in their formations.

That and the daylight flights over factories that were heavily protected by AA defenses meant that bombers and their crews got chewed up and ravaged. It really wasn't until the AAC started sending P-47s and P-51s with extended ranges that bomber survivability started to be a thing.

And then there was the whole issue of targeting choices. The one good thing is that Air Command absolutely was firmly against city bombing campaigns as an evil practice, but that didn't stop them from hitting rail yards in the middle of residential areas. The real turn in campaign effectiveness came when they stopped trying to strategically bombing railyards and ball bearing factories and switched to hitting the synthetic oil facilities.
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:36 AM on November 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

The brass knew the accuracy was low, both had and refused to use escort fighters, chose the wrong targets. They spent an immense amount of money, many thousands of GIs, 100,000s of innocents, all to no benefit. During and after the war they cooked the books to cover their asses. This led to the horrible Lemay and his bomber mafia dominating the Air Force until the end of SAC.

Their punishment for this was cushy retirements and lots of hero worship .
posted by pdoege at 1:05 PM on November 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Lemay, Hap Arnold, Eaker, Doolittle and their ilk definitely played politics and ass covering like nobody's business. To give folks an idea of how bad the losses were, in the latter half of '43, the Eighth Air Force under Eaker lost something like 60-65% of it's aircrews. (At least Eaker had the good sense to start extending the range of the P-47, which the Germans hated because of how much damage it could deal and take)

The only front line occupation deadlier, in terms of service, was to be a submariner.

I unabashedly love the B-17 as a beautiful and terrible piece of machinery. My flights in them are highlights of my life, but the amount of waste and bloodshed that occurred because of command decisions (and really.. war.) is awesome in the biblical sense.

Studying that part of the way really drives home that we didn't win because of things like training and technical skill. The Allied forces flat out drowned the Germans with industry, logistics and the unfailing ability to cover our losses and reconstitute our forces, no matter how steep the cost.
posted by drewbage1847 at 1:44 PM on November 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

I just noticed Kieth has a Masters of the Air primer playlist with all the videos (22!) he thinks will be informative.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:37 PM on November 15, 2023

The Norden bombsight kinda sucked; which was part of the reason for the cult of secrecy around it. Its reputation was its own value. But one of the things it did do was transfer flight control to the mechanism. So: no evasive action during the bombing run.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:56 AM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Was there an alternative on the table for the B-17? Or was it about making faster bombers with less crew and armor?

The latter; specifically, dive bombing.

But then nukes and the jet age came around. SAC's mission wasn't to conduct WWII style 'daylight level bombing' in large formations even if airbrushing WWII history lent its figureheads (and the newly independent USAF) credibility.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:29 PM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Outside the scope of the show, but it's interesting to compare the bombing of Japan, which started off very much like the European campaign (high altitude daylight "precision" bombing), but was even less successful, in part because of the jet stream.

Then Lemay took over and quickly implemented radical changes, resulting in low altitude nighttime firebombing by dispersed bombers with most of the guns removed.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:35 PM on November 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

New MotA trailer, and Keith has a new commentary.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:01 PM on December 9, 2023