INSIDE A WWII BOMBING RAID: A Real B-17 and B-24 Mission From 1944. The Air War In Color
Video from the channel DroneScapes about Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 1:35:42. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.
What it shows
The video is a restored and colourised version of 'Target for Today', a United States Army Air Forces film that follows from start to finish a daylight attack by the 8th Air Force against the German aircraft industry. The main target is the plant at Marienburg, in East Prussia, which assembled almost half of the Focke-Wulf FW 190 fighters. The film first lays out the German 'industrial front': assembly plants, components, propellers, bearings at Schweinfurt, synthetic rubber at Hüls, and aluminium and magnesium at Herøya. It then covers the chain of command, weather forecasting with RAF support, the planning of a 'maximum effort' against Marienburg, Anklam (the Arado plant making FW 190 wings and tails, hit an hour earlier as a diversion), Danzig and Gdynia, and the briefings of the 303rd, 379th and 94th groups, with loads, altitudes, temperatures of −26 °C and neutral Sweden as a refuge.
The second half shows the take-off of more than 400 B-17s and B-24s with around 4,000 crew members from some twenty bases, the build-up of the staggered formation into elements, squadrons, groups and combat wings, fighter attacks over Denmark, the bombing of Anklam at around 11:42 from 12,000 feet, the return with lost and wounded aircraft, a B-17 that ditched with ten men rescued, the debriefing of the crews and photographs of the damage.
When and where it was filmed
It is a 1944 production directed by William Keighley and filmed with real servicemen, without actors, at the bases and units of the 8th Air Force, from the commanders who plan the mission to the crews and ground personnel.
Context
The film was also screened in civilian cinemas to encourage the purchase of war bonds. According to its narration, the attacks cut German single-engine fighter production by an estimated 37.5% in September 1943, while the proportion of fighters deployed in the west rose from 42% to 69%. The final photographs show severe damage at Anklam, Danzig, Gdynia and Marienburg, and General Arnold described the operation as the greatest example of precision bombing. An epilogue, with the invasion already under way, presents the Mustang, Thunderbolt and Lightning escorts.