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00:31Until 1942, the war had been an almost uninterrupted series of disasters for the Allies.
00:37There had been endless defeats, retreats, evacuations, sinkings and surprises
00:42in both the European and the Asian theaters.
00:45Out of the depths of sorrow and of...
00:48As depressed as Allied leaders were, they knew full well that harder times were still to come.
00:55And yet, incredibly, Germany had already twice lost chances for victory.
01:04The first time was their failure to gain the air superiority over England
01:08necessary to permit an invasion.
01:12The second was in front of Moscow, where Hitler had failed to press his advantage.
01:18The two essential qualities of combat
01:21are endless periods of boredom punctuated by life-threatening terror.
01:25They were magnified a thousandfold in the war at sea.
01:29U-boats would cruise the wild, dark surface of the seas at night
01:33or they would loiter for days in the chill depths, waiting for word of a convoy.
01:48Patrol aircraft would drone on for endless hours
01:51above a monotonous glassy surface sea.
01:54Observers would peer into nothingness
01:56to try and pick up the white spray from a periscope.
02:03When battle came, it was sudden, sharp and terror-filled.
02:17The aircraft tried to straddle the submarine with depth charges.
02:21The U-boat attempted to dive or fight back
02:24with a withering barrage of anti-aircraft fire.
03:18The sailors feared drowning in their sardine can.
03:21The airmen dreaded a long, violent plunge into a cold and hostile sea.
03:28Then, if the moment passed with good fortune,
03:31it was back to hours of uncomfortable boredom.
03:34In the Maritime War, the U-boats sank 2,840 merchant ships.
03:39More than one-third of the British merchant fleet was sunk.
03:43More than 30,000 seamen were drowned.
03:46The U-boats were the last of their kind.
03:49They were the last of their kind.
03:52They were the last of their kind.
03:55They were the last of their kind.
03:58They were the last of their kind.
04:01More than 30,000 seamen were drowned.
04:18It was as costly for the Germans.
04:21Out of 1,126 U-boats, 784 were sunk.
04:2727,000 of the 40,000 men who served on them were killed.
04:38Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz made himself unpopular in the pre-war German navy.
04:43He lobbied against the construction of capital ships
04:47like the Bismarck and the Tirpitz.
04:50He contended that Germany could never build a surface navy
04:54to contest the dominance of the Anglo-Saxon powers.
04:58Dönitz maintained that he knew the secret
05:01to winning the war against Great Britain,
05:04the creation of a fleet of 300 operational seagoing submarines.
05:12With 300 submarines, he promised to strangle the British Empire,
05:17starving England into submission.
05:24I, the Fuehrer and Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht,
05:29call you by the name Tirpitz.
05:39But big gun advocates ruled the German navy.
05:43They assumed that submarines had been made obsolete
05:46by the development of the acoustic detection system known as ASDIC.
05:54ASDIC consisted of a noise emitter and a receiver.
05:58The pinging noise would echo off a submarine.
06:01The receiver allowed the submarine's direction and distance away to be computed.
06:09When the submarine was close enough,
06:11death charges could be launched to destroy it.
06:24BEEPING
06:40Dönitz set out to prove the experts wrong.
06:44He contended that his weapon, the submarine, could win the war by itself.
06:49He developed a new system of control and new tactics.
06:56Dönitz was the beneficiary
06:58of the greatest German intelligence crew of the war.
07:02In the most crucial period of the Battle of the Atlantic,
07:05his naval radio intelligence service could read English naval codes.
07:10He could track the progress of convoys from their assembly in port
07:14to the unloading of ships that survived the journey.
07:19Dönitz maintained close personal contact with each member of his fleet.
07:24He attended the departure and arrival of every U-boat.
07:27He awarded decorations himself.
07:30Dönitz had charisma.
07:34He used an elaborate radio network and the Enigma code machines.
07:39He personally controlled the movements of his fleet.
07:43As soon as he knew a convoy's location,
07:45he would assign one or two submarines to shadow it and maintain contact.
07:50Next, Dönitz would direct his other U-boats to an ambush site.
07:54He created aggressive wolf packs of submarines.
07:58As many as a dozen would stalk convoys and attack together.
08:02He revolutionized tactics by insisting that they attack at night on the surface.
08:08This effectively negated the ASDIC detection system.
08:16In the course of World War II, Dönitz would achieve near victory
08:20with a fleet only one-fifth the size he considered necessary.
08:25He began the war with 59 submarines instead of 300.
08:29Of these, only 36 were seagoing types.
08:33At the high point of his strength, he only had 100 U-boats at sea.
08:39But even with these inferior numbers,
08:42he almost reached his goal of sinking 800,000 tons of shipping a month.
08:47That was more than the Allies could build.
08:50It was enough to strangle Britain.
08:53If Dönitz had started the war with 300 U-boats,
08:56he would have unquestionably won the Battle of the Atlantic.
09:00Hitler would have almost certainly won the war.
09:13BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC
09:26The British began with too few destroyers and an inadequate convoy system.
09:31Neither side had what it would soon find it needed most,
09:35a long-range aircraft for bombing and reconnaissance.
09:39Neither side understood the implications of radar for maritime war.
09:44At sea, aircraft were more valuable in helping control submarine attacks
09:49rather than making attacks themselves.
09:58As a long-range aircraft,
10:00the Germans had to rely on the Focke-Wulf Fw. 200 Condor.
10:04It was another in a long series of Luftwaffe improvisations.
10:08The Condor started life as an extremely advanced 26-passenger airliner
10:13for use by Lufthansa.
10:15The prototype made headlines in June 1938
10:18with a non-stop flight from Berlin to New York.
10:23CONDOR
10:32The Condor was hastily modified for combat use
10:35in spite of the fact that its structure was far too light for military work.
10:46The crews could expect a long patrol and a dangerous one.
10:51They had only patchwork armament,
10:54four machine guns and a cannon in the nose,
10:57bombs under the nacelles and wings.
11:00The rigors of combat were hard on the Condors.
11:03Sometimes they broke in half behind the wings on landing.
11:07Serviceability was low.
11:10Less than 10 were available at any one time.
11:13They were especially susceptible to anti-aircraft fire.
11:17All their fuel lines were routed on the underside of the aircraft.
11:22In spite of its shortcomings,
11:24the Condor was a lethal partner of the submarine.
11:28Between August 1940 and April 1941,
11:31Condors sank 85 vessels.
11:34They also supplied the U-boat fleet with accurate information on convoys.
11:41Winston Churchill later spoke of the Condor
11:44as the scourge of the Atlantic.
12:00If Germany's leaders had provided the resources necessary,
12:03the Luftwaffe might have scored a tremendous victory
12:06in the Battle of the Atlantic.
12:08England might have been starved into submission.
12:11During the earliest period of the struggle,
12:13when the greatest rewards could have been reaped at the least cost,
12:16Germany instead chose to send its bombers against English cities.
12:22If only 50% of the effort devoted to the Battle of Britain and the Blitz
12:26had been given up to the Battle of the Atlantic,
12:29Germany might have won the war against Britain
12:31before the invasion of Russia.
12:35The slow growth of German maritime aviation and submarine forces
12:39was more than matched by the British.
12:42They steadily increased anti-aircraft armament
12:44on British merchant shipping.
12:46They developed more effective convoy protection.
12:49In 1940, England lacked patrol aircraft with sufficient range
12:53to cover enormous distances over open ocean.
12:56It relied for a long period on the short-sum of air
13:01The Sunderland was a slow, four-engine flying boat
13:04with excellent flying characteristics.
13:07The Germans called it the flying porcupine
13:10because of its heavy armament.
13:12Later models had as many as 18 machine guns.
13:19The Sunderland was the first of its kind.
13:22It was the first of its kind.
13:25It was the first of its kind.
13:28The Sunderland was the first of its kind.
13:31In many cases, it was the first of its kind.
13:34It had a long history of battles and battleships.
13:47It had an endurance of 13 1â2 hours.
13:50That meant it could lumber out to sea for 600 miles,
13:53cruise for two hours and return.
13:58The firepower radius was not enough.
14:00A very long-range bomber was needed.
14:03None was available at the beginning of the battle.
14:14British Coastal Command was formed in 1936.
14:18From then until the darkest days of 1942,
14:20it received short shrift in equipment,
14:22aircraft, and personnel.
14:28Fighter Command received first priority,
14:31which was essential.
14:33Bomber Command received second priority.
14:36That was a mistake, just as the German decision
14:39to bomb cities rather than concentrate
14:41on merchant shipping was a mistake.
14:44Aircraft employed by Coastal Command
14:46could have had an effect on the war.
14:49Bomber Command aircraft were, until 1942,
14:52almost useless to the war effort.
14:55The attacks on the German capital ships
14:57Gneisenau and Scharnhorst show this clearly.
15:01Over 60 days when the two ships
15:03were in Brest Harbor in France,
15:04Bomber Command aircraft dropped
15:06almost 800 tons of bombs on them.
15:09They scored only four hits.
15:11Later, the Gneisenau was put out of action
15:13for eight months by one torpedo
15:16from a Coastal Command Bristol Beaufort.
15:18The Royal Navy proved conclusively
15:21that even a relic of the past, like the Fairey Swordfish,
15:23would have a major impact on the war at sea.
15:32The Swordfish was a slow, clumsy biplane,
15:36affectionately called the Stringbag.
15:39But it had many major torpedo successes.
15:42In 1940, a Swordfish torpedo attack
15:44badly damaged the Italian Navy in Taranto Harbor.
15:48A torpedo from a Swordfish disabled the steering
15:50of the German capital ship Bismarck,
15:52allowing the guns of the Royal Navy to sink it.
16:10But in spite of such lessons,
16:12Coastal Command's potential contribution to the war
16:15was realized only with time.
16:18Its territory of responsibility was vast.
16:22It stretched from Murmansk in the northeast
16:25to Cape Town in the southeast.
16:29From Rio de Janeiro in the southwest
16:31to New Brunswick in the northwest.
16:35The maritime war even extended into the Mediterranean Sea
16:39and the Indian Ocean.
16:43Where there were raw materials, there were ports.
16:46Where there were ports, there were often U-boats.
16:53At the start of the war,
16:54Coastal Command was pitifully weak.
16:57It had only three squadrons of Sunderlands.
17:04Its primary strength was 10 squadrons of Avro Ansons.
17:08They were useless for anything
17:09except fair weather coastal surveillance.
17:12Help came from America
17:14in the form of the twin engine Lockheed Hudson.
17:18The Hudson never received the popular acclaim it deserved.
17:24It was an all-metal monoplane,
17:26a descendant of the type that Amelia Earhart
17:28flew on her ill-fated world flight.
17:32It was the first of its kind in the history of the world.
17:35It was the first of its kind in the history of the world.
17:38It was the first of its kind in the history of the world.
17:42It only carried 70,000 bits of steel
17:45and was used to revive the first successfully
17:47manufactured world flight.
17:53Lockheed turned out Hudsons in large numbers.
17:562,941 would be produced in the course of the war.
18:03It led on to two equally good successes,
18:06the Ventura and the Harpoon.
18:08It was not without its limitations.
18:10It had a high wing loading and was demanding to fly,
18:13especially out of short fields.
18:16The Hudson's range of 1,960 miles
18:19meant that it could be on station for two hours
18:21up to a distance of 500 miles from its home base.
18:30It was better than the Avro Anson by far,
18:32but still not the answer to the submarine menace.
18:38A Hudson from No. 226 Squadron scored the RAF's first aerial victory.
18:51It shot down a Dornier Do-18 flying boat on October 8, 1939.
18:56Coastal Command also acquired consolidated PBY Catalina flying boats.
19:09They proved to be very successful.
19:11They were able to patrol at a range 200 miles greater than the Sunderland.
19:16They had remarkable observation ability, thanks to extensive glazing.
19:21Even with the Catalinas, there were still large gaps in coverage,
19:26especially south of Greenland.
19:29In that gap, the German submarines gathered.
19:33Shipping losses continued at a high rate.
19:36They would do so until Allied airpower caught up.
19:40At the same time, the Coastal Command's operational research unit
19:43gathered information from all sources to fight the U-boats.
19:47The Germans were renowned worldwide for the quality of their scientists,
19:51but they never matched the British in what would later be called the Wizard War.
19:56The sheer quantity of U-boat successes is difficult to comprehend.
20:16In 1941, the Germans sank 445 ships, a total of over two million tons.
20:23They lost only 38 U-boats.
20:27In 1942, they sank 1,094 ships, almost six million tons.
20:34They lost 82 U-boats.
20:41Admiral Dönitz had achieved his principal aim,
20:45to sink Allied ships faster than they could be built.
20:53The Admiral knew that if that rate could be sustained, England would have to surrender.
21:01Dönitz succeeded in driving down imports into Britain from 61 million tons in 1940
21:07to 33 million tons in 1942.
21:10A similar drop in 1943 would alter the course of the war.
21:17Submarine successes continued to build through March 1943.
21:21At that point, Dönitz felt that his submarines had an incontestable advantage.
21:27He felt that despite his lack of resources, he had reached a war-winning position.
21:37In stark contrast, by that same spring, the Germans faced defeat in both Russia and Africa.
21:45And the full weight of American war potential was only just beginning to be felt.
21:51The Maritime War was the only one Germany was winning.
21:55And it was obvious now that it was the only one it could win.
22:03But just as Dönitz's euphoria soared with his sinkings,
22:07almost four years of work by the Allies suddenly paid off.
22:11The U-boat fleet was first made vulnerable and then obsolete.
22:15This is how it happened.
22:21At the Casablanca Conference in 1943,
22:24Churchill made it known that the Allies would only accept unconditional surrender by Germany.
22:30Churchill and Roosevelt also agreed that the defeat of the U-boat
22:33should have priority on resources.
22:36The announcement coincided with the increasing availability of weapons
22:39that would win the Battle of the Atlantic.
22:42One of the first and most radical was the Catapult Aircraft Carrier.
22:47Another of the first and most radical was the Catapult Aircraft Merchantmanship,
22:52known as the CAM.
22:54The ship carried a sea hurricane with a solid rocket booster in the bow.
22:58The sea hurricane would be catapulted off like a space shuttle
23:01to drive off a marauding Focke-Wulf condor.
23:17By 1942, six condors had fallen to the sea hurricanes.
23:33After the attack, the hurricane pilot would ditch in front of the convoy,
23:38hoping to survive long enough in the sea to be able to return to the dock.
23:41After the attack, the hurricane pilot would ditch in front of the convoy,
23:45hoping to survive long enough in the frigid ocean to be picked up.
23:50It was not called a suicide mission, but it was close enough.
23:55The MAC ships came in 1941.
23:59These were merchantmen, scalped to permit a tiny flight deck.
24:04They were too small to have elevators and below-deck storage space,
24:07but they were just large enough to land on.
24:10They were vastly appreciated by the pilots.
24:14The most important aircraft to be introduced against the U-boat menace
24:18was the consolidated liberator, the B-24 bomber.
24:25It had been built to complement the Boeing B-17.
24:29Its long range would at last close the gaps in surveillance allowed by the smaller planes.
24:36The B-24 was a remarkable aircraft.
24:39Its design was not begun until 1939, but it was in service by 1941.
24:44It was produced in greater quantities than any other American warplane.
24:4918,432 were built.
24:58As a VLR, very long-range patrol plane, it could carry as many as 24 depth charges.
25:05It was able to persist in an attack long after a Hudson
25:08or a Sunderland would have exhausted its munitions.
25:15With the combined efforts of the British Coastal Command
25:18and the air forces of the United States and Canada,
25:21the gaps in coverage in the North Atlantic had been closed by early 1943.
25:31It was not an easy process.
25:34The anglophobic commander-in-chief of the U.S. Navy,
25:37Admiral Ernest J. King, cooperated only grudgingly.
25:42He pursued his own politics, seeking an independent long-range bombing arm
25:47and stockpiling equipment for the war in the Pacific.
25:50Eventually, the teaming production lines were able to overcome even inter-service rivalries.
25:56There began to be enough planes to go around.
26:00It had been very close.
26:01Some British historians felt that the difference between victory and defeat
26:05was two squadrons of very long-range B-24s.
26:13But aircraft alone were only part of the answer.
26:17Keeping the enemy below the surface was not enough.
26:21The U-boats had to be found and sunk.
26:24That required advanced technology.
26:32RADAR
26:39Radar was a crucial element in the U-boat hunt.
26:42In Britain, priority was given before the war to the chain home defence system,
26:47which was the key to victory in the Battle of Britain.
26:49But AI, Airborne Interception Radar, was also under development.
26:55So was ASV, Air-to-Surface Vessel Radar.
26:58All these types used the same basic equipment modified for specialised needs.
27:04The ASV Mark I used a long wavelength of 1.5 metres,
27:09but it demonstrated only potential, not genuine warfighting capability.
27:14The British took a great gamble.
27:16They committed to the production of 4,000 Mark II sets.
27:19They had no certainty at all
27:21that they would be more successful than the very marginal Mark I.
27:25They embarked on a technology that the Germans already believed would not work.
27:31German radar detectors had worked against the ASV Mark I,
27:35but they could not detect the shorter wavelength transmissions of the Mark II.
27:40German scientists considered the development of such short-wave radars to be impossible.
27:46So they wrongly concluded that the British could track their submarines
27:50by detecting the frequencies the submarines themselves produced.
27:56BATTLE FOR ROTTERDAM
28:01In 1943, a British bomber was shot down over Rotterdam.
28:06The secret of the anti-submarine warfare campaign's success was revealed.
28:11The bomber carried one of the H2S airborne radars used for bombing.
28:17It was a 10 centimetre wavelength type.
28:21The news was devastating to the German scientists.
28:24They could not believe that the British were so far in advance of their own efforts.
28:29They knew that even duplicating the British technology would be almost beyond their means.
28:36One of the first uses of the ASV Mark II was in an intermediate approach.
28:41A 24-inch naval searchlight, the Lee light,
28:44was installed in the belly of a Wellington bomber.
28:47In its first combat test in January 1941,
28:50the Wellington used its ASV Mark II radar to detect a submarine on the surface.
28:55At the last moment, the Lee light was switched on.
28:59It illuminated the submarine for a direct hit with a depth charge.
29:05Until then, the U-boats had used the crash dive to escape attack.
29:09They only needed 25 seconds to submerge.
29:12They could change course and depth without detection.
29:16But the Lee light robbed the submarines of that precious 25 seconds.
29:23Lunitz's first reaction was typical.
29:26He insisted that the U-boats be given extra anti-aircraft guns
29:29so they could stay on the surface and fight back against their attackers.
29:34Modifications were made to existing boats and added to new ones in production.
29:39Machine guns and heavy anti-aircraft guns were installed.
29:42The anti-aircraft fire could be deadly,
29:45but a rolling submarine was a poor gun platform and an easy target.
29:50The gunboats were not a real match against an aircraft.
29:54They became almost helpless when two or more planes joined an attack.
30:02After March 1943, Allied merchant ship sinkings rapidly declined
30:07while U-boat sinkings skyrocketed.
30:10An unprecedented 42 were lost in May.
30:13Allied intelligence experts listened with satisfaction
30:16as call after call went out to U-boats that would never report in again.
30:27Dönitz could not understand what was happening.
30:30He sent blistering messages to his submarine captains.
30:33He virtually accused them of cowardice in the face of the enemy.
30:37But as the figures came in, Dönitz admitted defeat.
30:41Formerly, 100,000 tons of shipping had been sunk for every U-boat lost.
30:47Now, the ratio declined to a mere 10,000 tons.
30:51This was intolerable to Dönitz.
30:55He was forced to move his U-boats to areas
30:57where the air surveillance was not so complete.
31:01Unfortunately for Dönitz' strategy,
31:03these were also areas where there were few ships to sink.
31:08By 1943, Germany had muffed its third chance to win the war.
31:13Dönitz had lost the Battle of the Atlantic to Allied air power and technology.
31:19By April 1943, Coastal Command was running a combat operation
31:24to secure the coast of the Atlantic.
31:26By April 1943,
31:29Coastal Command was running a continuous surveillance of the Bay of Biscay.
31:33These aggressive tactics temporarily resulted in a high loss rate for the Germans.
31:38But the Germans revised their tactics to travel in packs.
31:42They spent as much time as possible submerged, which made their patrols shorter.
31:48The combination of very long-range aircraft and effective airborne radar
31:52won the Battle of the Atlantic.
31:56The German air force was not completely dependent on the U-boats to disrupt Allied shipping.
32:07The Luftwaffe also conducted anti-shipping offensive operations.
32:11They ranged over vast areas from France far out into the Atlantic.
32:16Great operational arcs emanated from Germany and Norway.
32:21In the Mediterranean, operations were undertaken from Italy,
32:24Sicily, Sardinia, Greece, and Crete.
32:33The Luftwaffe operated in conjunction with U-boats.
32:36They attacked the convoys that supplied England, Russia, and the North African theatre.
32:49The Germans neglected a target of opportunity
32:52that would have paid a high return for relatively low investment.
32:57The Luftwaffe devoted only meagre resources to the Battle of the Atlantic
33:01compared to the massive Allied effort.
33:04The German effort, like that of its enemies, was harmed by inter-service rivalry.
33:09Göring resented diverting any of his Luftwaffe assets to help the German Navy.
33:15But while assisting submarines was not attractive to the Luftwaffe, attacking shipping was.
33:21In 1939, two Luftwaffe bomber units were selected to undertake that mission.
33:27From this small beginning, eventually grew the famous Fliegerkorps X.
33:33Fliegerkorps X shuttled from Norway to Sicily to attack Allied convoys.
33:38Colonel Martin Hallinghusen was named Commissioner for Torpedoes.
33:43He was able to use the knowledge of maritime tactics
33:47he had begun to gather during the Spanish Civil War.
33:51He targeted convoys picking their way around the Arctic Circle to Murmansk.
33:58The Luftwaffe soon developed a new type of air defense system.
34:02The Luftwaffe was equipped with a new type of air defense system.
34:06The Luftwaffe soon developed a deadly proficiency in low-level attacks on shipping.
34:11Its aircraft used both bombs and torpedoes.
34:24The RAF's local air superiority around England made attacks on shipping there too hazardous.
34:30But a new target was available in the north.
34:35Germany
34:40When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, Winston Churchill reacted instantly.
34:47He offered aid out of all proportion to his resources
34:49to a country he once considered a mortal enemy.
34:58Much to the distress of the British Admiralty,
35:00he promised to have convoys with all the materials of war arriving in Russia every 10 days.
35:07The Admiralty had neither the merchant ships nor the naval vessels to fulfill its promise.
35:13England did not yet have the materials to fill the convoys.
35:17But they began anyway on August 21st, 1941,
35:21only 60 days after Hitler's Barbarossa invasion.
35:24At first, they did not sail so often or so heavily laden as Churchill had promised.
35:29But ultimately, more than 800 ships made the Arctic run.
35:40The Arctic route was dangerous.
35:43It passed west of Iceland, through the Denmark Strait,
35:46and then skirted as far north of Norway as the ice would allow.
35:49Then it turned south to Archangel or Murmansk.
35:53For more than 1,500 miles, the ships sailed through seas hazardous enough in peacetime.
35:59But now they contained the menace of U-boats, surface raiders, and aircraft.
36:05Almost the entire route to the Russian ports
36:07was in range of Luftwaffe units stationed in Norway.
36:10And during the summer, the long daylight hours gave the Germans plenty of time to find,
36:14fix, and repair the ship.
36:17The hazard was reflected in the statistics.
36:20Of Atlantic convoys, less than 1% of the cargo was sunk.
36:24Of the Arctic convoys, more than 7% was lost.
36:29More than 100 ships were sunk. Almost 3,000 sailors died.
36:34The most notorious German success came with Convoy PQ-17.
36:38It had 35 merchantmen and a crew of 1,000.
36:41The most notorious German success came with Convoy PQ-17.
36:45It had 35 merchantmen and one tanker with the usual escort vessels.
36:52The Luftwaffe had developed potent anti-shipping tactics.
36:56Both the Heinkel He 111 and the Junkers Ju 88
37:00had proven to be excellent torpedo planes.
37:04Experience had shown that a combined attack of high-level bombing,
37:08glide bombing, and torpedoes split the convoy's defenders
37:12and lowered the risk to the attackers.
37:16The torpedo planes used the golden comb attack.
37:20They came in low, in line abreast formation.
37:23The convoy's ships were silhouetted against the skyline.
37:27The planes fanned out their torpedoes to get the maximum number of hits.
37:32The British Admiralty was panicked by a report
37:34that the German super battleship Tirpitz had put out to sea.
37:39Orders were given for the convoy to scatter.
37:42That allowed the Luftwaffe to pick off single ships one by one.
37:58The Germans claimed that the entire convoy was sunk.
38:02A British account shows that 23 out of 34 were lost.
38:08This was the first time in the history of World War II
38:10that a single ship had been lost.
38:32Britain was eventually able to eradicate the threat
38:35of the super battleship Tirpitz.
38:36But it was not the end of its sheltering.
38:52The Lancasters used the 12,000-pound light-cased bomb in their attack.
39:02At first, the battleship's smoke screens protected it from the Lancasters.
39:06But eventually, the huge bombs closed in on the target.
39:37The Tirpitz would no longer threaten the northern convoys.
39:53The Avro Lancaster, the star of Britain's area bombing campaign
39:56against the heart of Germany,
39:58had made his contribution to the Battle of the Atlantic.
40:06The British twin-engine fighter-bombers, Bristol Beaufighters and de Havilland Mosquitoes
40:12also took part in the Atlantic conflict.
40:36One of their jobs was to strike against German shipping in the Norwegian fjords.
40:52Some versions of the Beaufighter flying for Coastal Command carried torpedoes.
40:58Coastal Command Mosquitoes were called the Tsetseflers.
41:02They carried a 57mm 6-pounder Mollins gun,
41:06four Browning machine guns, and bombs or rockets.
41:22All of this armament was put to deadly use against the German ships.
41:26All of this armament was put to deadly use against the German ships.
41:56They were hazardous missions, not only because of the German defences.
42:00The cold was extreme.
42:16This film is unusually high quality for the Norway mission.
42:20Much of the British gun camera film from the fjords
42:22is badly marked by the effect of very low temperatures.
42:25But here, the intensity of the British firepower,
42:28the precision of the attacks, and their results are quite clear.
42:50This is a test flight of the Beaufighter.
42:54This is a test flight of the Beaufighter.
43:20In November 1942, the Allied invasion of Norway began.
43:24In November 1942, the Allied invasion of Norway began.
43:28...
43:47In November 1942, the Allied invasion of North Africa
43:51offered the Luftwaffe the most lucrative target ever presented.
43:55There were already almost 1,000 German and Italian aircraft in Sardinia and Sicily.
44:04These were reinforced by another 500.
44:07They included heavy bomber units from the Russian front and anti-shipping units from
44:12Norway.
44:14It was a splendid demonstration of Luftwaffe mobility.
44:17One unit relocated to the new theater in less than 48 hours.
44:22In the Mediterranean, anti-shipping strikes continued, but the operational emphasis shifted
44:28to attacks on Allied ports.
44:31The Luftwaffe achieved some successes, but the German air force was now overextended
44:36in all theaters.
44:38It was unable to cope with the growing number of Allied aircraft.
44:43The Luftwaffe failed in its anti-shipping efforts because it lacked a long-term policy.
44:50German crews, trained in specialized anti-shipping techniques, were often lost when called to
44:55perform routine bombing duties over England, in the Mediterranean or in Russia.
45:01An effective anti-shipping strike, made on September 9, 1943, symbolized all that was
45:07right and all that was wrong with the German war effort.
45:13The Italian battleships Roma and Italia were sailing from Spezia to surrender to the Allies.
45:25Dornier Do 217s, operating from the south of France, were sent to attack them.
45:32The lead Dornier was equipped with the new Fritz X guided missile.
45:39The Fritz X was a smart bomb, before the term was coined.
45:43It was based on a standard armour-piercing bomb, but it was equipped with four wings
45:48in an axe arrangement and a radio control unit.
45:53The Fritz X was dropped from about 18,000 feet.
45:56The bombardier guided it with a small joystick.
46:00He used a flare in the rear of the missile to assist in sighting.
46:05The first Fritz X was put right down the Roma's funnel.
46:09It was the first and probably the only time that a battleship was sunk with a missile.
46:16The Italia was damaged by an attack from another bomber.
46:20It was a stunning technical accomplishment, one that the Allies would not have been able
46:25to duplicate.
46:27Yet the sinking of the Roma and the fate of other German missiles like the Henschel HS
46:3393 provides an insight into the extreme contrast between England and Germany.
46:39In England, scientists worked hand-in-hand with the military and received support from
46:44Churchill.
46:45In Germany, Hitler's tendency to interfere was so great that the military did everything
46:50to avoid it.
46:52Hitler was told that the Roma had been sunk by conventional bombs.
46:56It was feared that, if he had learned of the missile's success, he would deem it another
47:01miracle weapon and give it priority over fighter production.
47:06Early successes and natural hubris kept German leaders from realizing that the Maritime War
47:12was the one arena where time, strategy, geography and the balance of forces combined in their
47:19favor.
47:20Germany was preoccupied with land battles.
47:23It was confident that it had as large an air force as it needed, equipped with the right
47:28types of planes.
47:30Germany treated the air component of the Maritime War as less important than bombing civilian
47:35targets or cooperating with the Panzer forces.
47:39If someone at the highest level had insisted that first priority be given to cooperation
47:45with the submarine forces, the war might have ended favorably for the Axis in 1941.
47:54Allied leaders were no more foreseeing, but they were more sensitive to their problem
47:58than the Germans were to their opportunity.
48:02As a result of intense effort, the Allies were able to alter the odds so completely
48:07in their favor that the Luftwaffe was forced to withdraw from the Maritime War.
48:11The pattern would be repeated again in the Pacific by the Allies, but with far more difficulty.