- 7/6/2025
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00:00It was one of the most feared combat aircraft of World War II.
00:29Yet throughout its dramatic history, it was plagued by an early reputation as being far too dangerous to fly.
00:37The B-26, Martin Marauder.
00:41I was just petrified when I realized here I was on an airbase full of those creatures.
00:46And I was going to have to be a pilot in one of them.
00:50Now, for the first time, the true story of its journey from death trap to fearsome adversary can be told.
01:07We knocked it down to rubble. We went twice a day until we finally knocked it down and killed every German big enough to die.
01:17Using unique archive film and detailed calorie enactments, Battle Stations enters the controversial and unpredictable world of the Martin B-26 Marauder.
01:30After the end of the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles, America was determined to stay out of international disputes.
01:45It adopted a policy of go it alone and retreated into a long period of isolation.
01:53For almost 20 years, the U.S. armed forces fell way behind those of modernizing Europe.
02:02In Europe, air superiority was recognized as the key to successful modern warfare.
02:08It was a time of major technical developments with new theories and tactics for the new generation of fighter bombers.
02:21But by 1933, with Hitler's appointment as Chancellor, Germany had embarked on a rearmament program of epic proportions.
02:29The Nazi machine began to replace all its old war planes and produce a new generation of bombers.
02:39Yet across the Atlantic, American aviation remained very much the world of the small town barnstormers.
02:45Latest American aeronautical innovation was geared towards luxurious commercial use with new stylish all-metal aircraft like the Boeing 247 and the DC-3.
03:02America's air power was simply not up to modern air combat standards.
03:06America pays too little attention to the rise of Nazism in Europe and too late does it identify the danger of Japanese expansionism.
03:16Now, one of the consequences of all this isolationism is that America had fallen behind in several key military areas and aircraft was one of these.
03:25And on the eve of war, the Americans knew that they had to catch up and fast.
03:29So in March 1939, a competition was urgently held for a new high speed and heavily armed aircraft.
03:39The history on it is that the brass and the air force wanted a medium bomber with speed that could more or less depend itself without body escort and was fast enough to evade fighters.
03:59Most importantly of all, the new bomber had to be able to go into production immediately.
04:04After just four months, the results of the competition were announced.
04:11The winner was a revolutionary twin-engine medium bomber designed by the Glenn L. Martin Company.
04:19The new aircraft have been designed by a young team led by a 26-year-old aeronautical engineer, Peyton M. McGrawda.
04:28McGrawda's radical new design was a sleek, heavily armed aircraft incorporating the latest aeronautical technology with short wings for high speed performance.
04:43The aircraft had a top speed of 300 miles per hour.
04:47With developments in Europe causing increasing alarm, the US Army Air Corps was now under pressure to rearm and needed immediate delivery.
05:04Taking an unprecedented step, Martin's design was ordered to go straight from the drawing board into production.
05:09There would be no prototype for testing. This unique, off-the-shelf purchase was to sow seeds of disaster in the years to come.
05:20Just weeks after the contract was awarded, the expected war in Europe erupted.
05:30In a rush, the Army Air Corps ordered additional modifications of extra armour plating, torpedo racks and a top gun turret.
05:39All of which substantially increased the weight of the aircraft.
05:41the weight of the aircraft.
05:52But there was no time for any evaluation or testing.
05:55The very first of this new generation of warplanes were delivered straight to the US Army Air Corps.
06:00My first impression going out to the flight line and joining with the first pilot, the instructor pilot, was that I was getting into something that would be the most modern that I had envisioned of anything flying up to that point.
06:25And so, I knew that I was in something different when I first climbed into that cockpit area.
06:36My first impression that compared to what we'd been flying, it was a large aircraft.
06:42And I had had no experience in an airplane that size.
06:46Also, it looked somewhat formidable with its four-bladed props and its guns in the tail and the guns around the body of the fuselage and a little gun in the navigator's compartment.
07:02So, it was a forbidding looking airplane.
07:07Towel flaps open.
07:09Open.
07:10Magroda was an innovator and incorporated many new advanced design features, which included tricycle landing gear, an old plexiglass nose, and the latest electrical bombsite.
07:22Crews, stand by for take off.
07:24All right, here we go.
07:25Here we go.
07:33But the additional weight of the Army's modifications had also turned Magroda's streamlined aircraft into a potential killer.
07:43The twin-engined bomber now required extremely skilled handling from the new pilots, especially for takeoffs and landings.
07:49One of the first ones I flew was the 11th airplane off the line.
07:56And they were having quite a lot of problems with it.
08:00And if I recall, the second day I was there, one of them went in off the end of the runway and exploded.
08:08And let's say that got my attention.
08:11I had a feeling that I was trying to learn to fly something that was quite a bit more of an airplane than the trainers I had flown in flying school.
08:26And so, it was a thrill and also a hint of caution that I'd better handle it very carefully and still be aggressive enough to learn to fly it as well as my instructor.
08:38Due to the lack of testing, the new aircraft suffered from a series of problems.
08:43Nose wheel struts collapsed, hydraulic lines leaked, fuel lines clogged, and the yet untested four-bladed propellers regularly failed.
08:52To make matters worse, by the autumn of 1941, difficulties arose in material shortages in the defense industry.
08:59Aluminium and propellers were just not available.
09:02The airplanes were coming off the assembly line, but there were no props.
09:07So, we would fly an airplane from Baltimore to Barksdale and take the props off and get them back up to Baltimore and do this again and bring airplanes down.
09:18By the end of 1941, the Martin factory finally completed the first delivery of 261 aircraft to the U.S. Air Corps.
09:26The delivery was just in time to be deployed in the front line of American forces in the desperate days after Pearl Harbor.
09:41New pilots were now urgently needed for combat, but within months this aircraft was proving too hot to handle with an alarmingly high number of deadly accidents.
09:53The B-26 Marauder quickly gained the notorious reputation as the Widowmaker.
10:02I was just petrified when I realized here I was on an airbase full of those creatures.
10:08And I was going to have to be a pilot in one of them.
10:11In February 1942, the Martin B-26 Marauder had its baptism of fire in the Pacific War.
10:26This was the most advanced medium range bomber in the world, but early combat operations were marred by one disaster after another.
10:35For the new, hastily trained pilots, it soon ended a reputation as a death trap.
10:43Coming right out of flying school and going over to Barksdale Field from Arizona, I really didn't know very much about it except that it was new.
10:51But once I got there, I began to hear these stories, and then I kind of wondered what I was getting into.
10:56They called it the Widowmaker, which it made lots of widows.
11:03They called it the Baltimore Whore, which is a bad word, but they said it had no visible means of support.
11:11And the Flying Torpedo, they had a lot of bad names for it.
11:17Trainee pilots were finding the B-26 too hot to handle.
11:25With fast landing speeds of 125 miles per hour, trainees would bring it in too slow.
11:31It would then stall, spin, and crash.
11:36You had more of a fighter plane feel to that airplane.
11:41When you came in for a landing, you didn't just bring it in in a nice, controlled, sliding approach.
11:47You brought it in a very steep angle.
11:50And then at the very last minute, you would flare it out.
11:53And if your timing was right, you would kind of grease it on.
11:58If not, you'd splatter it pretty hard.
12:00Or if you did it too high, you would hit pretty hard.
12:04Pilots in training were having serious problems learning to fly the new bomber.
12:08I actually had ten of them walk in one morning and placed their wings on my desk.
12:15And they got the choice of being mess officers or going down to Trinidad and flying B-18s on Sub Patrol.
12:25We had five or six pilots that finally gave up flying.
12:31They just refused to fly any more combat.
12:33And I had unfortunately made a statement to another pilot that I was flying co-pilot for.
12:41He was a very ham-handed pilot.
12:43And he just frightened it.
12:44He really frightened the daylights out of me the way he flew.
12:48So when I got back on the ground after this one mission, I told him,
12:52I'm never going to fly combat again if I have to fly with you.
12:54Ground crews were also experiencing severe problems in maintaining and servicing the new aircraft.
13:04We had a lot of tyre problems.
13:09And if an airplane blew a tyre right at liftoff, it usually killed the crew.
13:12And sometimes if you came in and the tyre was shot up, one tyre was shot up and he landed, well, a lot of times it did kill the crew also.
13:21The results were a series of deadly accidents.
13:25By early 1942, in a period of just 30 days, 15 B-26s were written off in crashes.
13:31One a day in Tampa Bay, that was the motto.
13:37I lost a bunch of friends.
13:38They had seven of us graduate from cadet school at Luke Field.
13:44They had us firing fighters out there.
13:47And in six weeks, out of the seven, me and Pete Graves, only two left alive.
13:53The other five were out there swimming around.
13:56By now, the Committee on Military Affairs, headed by Senator Harry Truman, had begun to investigate the reasons behind so many fatalities.
14:08Were Martin's B-26 marauders a death trap for American airmen?
14:16After 165 accidents and dozens of trainee crew killed, the Truman Committee recommended that all production and flying should be halted.
14:26But the Air Force still had faith in the plane and gave the responsibility of salvaging his reputation to General James Doolittle, commander of the celebrated Tokyo Raid of April 1942.
14:41It would be a do-or-die operation.
14:43Jimmy Doolittle was probably the best pilot that we ever had.
14:49He had flown air races, and he was a B-26 advocate. He thought it was a good airplane.
14:56He was always someplace flying. He was not a guy that was a desk jockey.
15:02And as a result, he was a pilot's pilot.
15:04And he came down and actually landed it on one engine, and he flew around and rung it out over the top of the airport while all the young policemen were watching him.
15:17And they said, Jesus, if he can do that, we can too.
15:20You knew that there was a man that had flown a lot of airplanes and knew what he was doing.
15:27And he pushed the limits a little bit because he made tighter turns than the rest of us.
15:32And scared a little of, but we knew that we had a guy that knew what his limits were.
15:36The report revealed that the causes of the accidents were due mainly to the inexperience of the pilots and maintenance mechanics, along with the increased heavy weight of the airframe.
15:54To stop further problems with the dangerously overloaded planes, the engineers introduced a more powerful engine, and also extended the wings by three feet.
16:03This made the plane much easier to control, especially takeoffs and landings.
16:10Doolittle organized a new training program for both pilots and mechanics.
16:17Flying demonstrations were performed by the legendary test pilot Vincent Squeak Burnett to boost morale and renew faith in the Marauder.
16:33Here's the checklist, sir.
16:36Take a look, Jim.
16:38Since you're going to be a B-26 pilot, that's your Bible.
16:41Left landing gear and wheel well check.
16:44That U-lock the crew members removing is a safety precaution we have to prevent anyone from raising the landing gear while the ship's on the ground.
16:52You don't mean to tell me that's ever happened.
16:54That and worse. Now get on with that checklist and see that none of those other things ever happened to you.
16:57You fly her for a while, Jim. Get the feel of the controls. See how easily she handled them.
17:06Controls are easy, aren't they?
17:12Smooth as a GI haircut.
17:13Doolittle's training program had rescued the B-26 from Congressional action.
17:21But the stigma of the Widowmaker would not go away.
17:25The Marauder would have to prove its critics wrong where it mattered.
17:29In combat.
17:31And now the moment had come as the B-26 Marauder headed for war in the deserts of North Africa.
17:38In November 1942, the 319th B-26 bomb group joined American forces in support of Operation Torch, the amphibious landings in North Africa.
17:54But using the new medium bomber for low-level ground attack operations could be disastrous.
18:07Early missions were riddled with organizational chaos.
18:10What happened in Africa that we had no strategy whatsoever.
18:19There was no bombing strategy, there was no coordination, there was no photographs, maps of the target.
18:25They were hand-drawn maps.
18:27In fact, our first flight that went out with five planes, none of them come back.
18:31The crews of the B-26 Marauders were capable of delivering a devastating attack, dropping up to 4,000 pounds of high-explosive bombs.
18:42The Air Force tried and tested new tactics, with mass squadron formation flying at medium altitude and bombing a single target for maximum effectiveness.
18:51The accuracy of hitting the target was dependent on the combined skills of the pilot and the lead bombardier with his sophisticated Norden bombsite.
19:03The general routine was you had an initial point, they called it, a specific geographic point on the ground.
19:13You would turn then and go to what they call the AP, the aiming point.
19:18And as you went toward the aiming point, the bombardier would get his Norden bombsite, which was an early model of a computer.
19:28He would get it organized so that he'd say left, left, right, right, up, up, down, down, whatever, to get the pilot and that computer going together.
19:41The Norden bombsite was one of the US Air Force's most secret weapons.
19:46This early computer calculated exactly when and where to drop the bombs, allowing for altitude, airspeed and crosswinds.
19:55And so when you get to your point and you call the pilot and say, OK, I have it, and you go straight and level.
20:05And you look in front of you and it looks like thunderclouds. It's black, it's dirty.
20:13You feel like, and you almost could, that you could see the Germans at their gun positions.
20:18Then we would go on through, all we could do is just sit there, like this, because the airplane was being flown by that computer.
20:26It's a moment of truth, where everybody has to stop wiggling around, trying to evade the flack and wade through.
20:34You lean over and, when you do, you go to the eyepiece and you're watching the crosshairs that are moving.
20:44You stop them, and that means you've corrected to the ground speed.
20:48And when they get together, the bombs are gone.
20:51The minute he'd say bombs away, then, boy, we had our hands on the control.
21:03Sometimes both of us would be, you know, getting it into whatever direction we'd pre-planned for the breakaway.
21:09Time stands still. Trust me, it's a long, long run, when it really is probably three to four minutes, five minutes.
21:22But it seems a lot longer than that.
21:25The home run to the target for the crews of the Marauders was no easy ride.
21:31We had done our job, dropped the bombs. We counted some flack and some fighters, but my airplane didn't get hit.
21:37And, uh, we were all assembled and going back to our base.
21:42But on one mission, one of the Marauders was hit by flack and unable to rejoin the formation.
21:48We were supposed to all stay together, and if a guy got crippled, it was his tough luck.
21:52But I didn't dare. I didn't want to do that. This guy was out there by himself. He could have been picked off.
21:58But I got close enough to be tightened up for defensive purposes to take a look at him.
22:02Well, he was flying straight and level, trying to keep it going, but he had to fly slower because he was crippled.
22:09So I had a camera there that we all had that if something unusual occurred, you could use a camera if you weren't busy fighting off something.
22:16And while the other guy flew the airplane, I took this picture myself. I noticed what was wrong. Both engines were moving, but underneath there was a big gash in the left wing.
22:30There were holes all along the side of it facing me.
22:35This airplane flew all the way back. It must have been about 150 miles or so that he flew back with me on his wing.
22:43He couldn't make a normal landing. He made a belly landing. He got those gears, the wheels up, skidded in.
22:49Nobody was injured inside, but the airplane was really wrecked.
22:52The Marauder was not only capable of surviving severe punishment, but was also recognized as a valuable kit of spare parts.
23:01If it hadn't been for airplanes, belly and in, we would not have made it. That was our spare parts.
23:07Airplanes, belly and in, and as soon as we had a crew of people that went over and took parts off the airplane,
23:13we had them put back into storage so we could have them when we needed them.
23:17In terms of belly landings as being a source of a possible crash, nobody really worried about that.
23:25We could skid that doggone thing right in, whether it was on mud or on a paved runway or not.
23:30And if we had to do it, we'd do it.
23:32And in fact, most people would rather make a belly landing than get it up there and bail out and let the airplane fall.
23:38In the first three weeks of operation in North Africa alone, the B-26s of 319th Bomb Group had flown just 20 missions, losing 10 aircraft and 40 men.
23:52Now it was the B-26's combat losses that were called into question.
23:56Within weeks, the American forces in North Africa have joined the British 8th Army in defeating the feared German Africa Corps.
24:08The Air Force continued to experiment with the B-26, bombing at different altitudes, but soon realized that it was most effective between 10,000 and 12,000 feet, exactly the height it was originally designed for.
24:28The first three or four missions, we went from the deck up to about 3,000 to 4,000 to 5,000, still wasn't enough.
24:39But very soon we learned that you had to get up above 7,500 feet to be safe from the kind of light anti-aircraft flak that they threw up at you.
24:50You knew you were going to be attacked coming out of the target area, so you had to get back into tight formation quickly,
25:02so that your gunners would have the mass effect for the German planes who were coming trying to attack us.
25:09They'd like to have us scattered out and pick us off one at a time, and so we didn't want to have that happen.
25:15The B-26 Marauder had proved to be a tough and durable aircraft.
25:22We had them come back with half the tail shot away and engines shot out.
25:29A B-26 would absorb a lot of damage.
25:34It just seemed to me like that that engine was well built. It would take a lot of beating.
25:39We had occasions where engines were shot out.
25:44We've been beat up any number of times where you get damage to the plane.
25:50There are even occasions where the crew, parts of the crews were killed. The plane came back.
25:55The Marauder was fast earning a reputation as a deadly precision bomber, and at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943,
26:05Winston Churchill persuaded Roosevelt to continue with the Mediterranean campaign to force Italy out of the war,
26:12and draw German forces from the Russian front, preparing the ground for the invasion of France.
26:16In the Allied invasion of Italy, Martin's Marauders would add another deadly chapter to their history,
26:25by taking part in one of the most famous and controversial conflicts of the Second World War.
26:31The battle for Monte Cassino.
26:33By 1943, a change of tactics from low-level to medium-altitude bombing, and the combat experience of the Marauder crews,
26:48had finally brought a change of fortune.
26:55The Marauders were having increasing success on their bombing missions,
26:58but flying into enemy flak was always a terrifying experience.
27:04We could look ahead,
27:07and I remember saying to the pilot, I nudged him, I said,
27:11what in the hell is that?
27:13He looked at it and he said, you've seen flak before.
27:17I said, that's flak?
27:22Well, here was this solid black band,
27:25with red flashes all through it.
27:31Well, the Germans had already picked up our altitude, direction, and everything else,
27:36so they were just laying a barrage into our flight path.
27:39And I don't know how we got through that.
27:46I mean, you can almost walk on this stuff.
27:49It's big, black puffs.
27:51And when you have one where your airplane shudders,
27:55that means you done got to go on some of this stuff.
28:00When you could see flak, then it was reasonably close.
28:04When you could hear it, it was very close.
28:09When you could smell it, or feel it, it was terribly close.
28:14Within 40 feet of you.
28:15Well, that's what we felt all the way through that black cloud,
28:20was the aircraft just bouncing, and the smell of cordite, or whatever that powder is.
28:25We could feel this stuff, we could hear it, we could smell it.
28:29I was there as we were on the bomb run, before we got to the target,
28:34and we were getting an awful lot of flak.
28:36But pieces began to fly off of our lead ship.
28:41They were bouncing off of us.
28:43And it was a scary experience.
28:45I had to try to keep straight and level, while we were going, trying to get on our target.
28:49But in doing that, and worrying about the bursts of flak that were coming all around,
28:54all of a sudden, I found out there was a bump on my head, bang, like somebody hit me with a hammer,
29:04and knocked my goggles flying, and whatever else I had on my head, to protect my skull.
29:11But just, it was a sudden shock.
29:15And what had happened was that a piece of flak came right through plexiglass, right straight ahead of me.
29:20And of course, if I'd have been done like my grade school teachers used to say,
29:25sit up straight, Conlon, I'd have been dead, and I would have gone right through here.
29:29Fortunately, I was a little slumped.
29:32And it went right through here, grazed the top of my scalp, and it hit hard, drew a lot of blood.
29:38It was a shock, it was a surprise, and I didn't know how bad it was.
29:45But I was not unconscious, so I could still function.
29:48But I had to get this blood stopped, and so the next thing happened was someone was bandaging me,
29:54and the other guy was flying the airplane until we could get back out of this flak,
29:59and fighters were now coming in, too.
30:02I had a whopping headache for the next day, but other than that, I was okay.
30:06The Allied invasion of Italy was launched in September 1943.
30:09In an attempt to hold the threatened city of Rome, the Germans constructed a series of defensive lines.
30:25The last, and most formidable, the Gustav Line, was anchored on the heavily fortified garrison town of Cassino.
30:34Strategically, Monte Cassino is absolutely pivotal.
30:37It's a formidably strong mountainous area, right in the middle of the Gustav Line, which protects the direct route for the Allies to take Rome.
30:48Now, what had happened in early 1944 is that not only had a direct assault on the Gustav Line failed,
30:55but the Allies had tried to get round it by going to Anzio, and that also had stalled.
31:00So, one way or the other, they were going to have to solve the problem of Monte Cassino.
31:05Throughout the weeks of heavy fighting, the sacred monastery of Monte Cassino had been left untouched.
31:15This 5th century monastery, founded by St. Benedict, was internationally renowned as a place of holiness, culture, and art.
31:24But the Allies suspected that it was the base for the German defenders.
31:28In a highly controversial move, it was ordered to be destroyed.
31:32And, of course, all the Catholic people were all totally freaked out because you ain't supposed to do that.
31:41You know, it's a shrine.
31:43Well, it ain't no shrine if the Germans are in there with machine guns killing our boys.
31:48Gentlemen, we all know the purpose of this operation against Cassino.
31:53The timing works like this, sir.
31:55The attack will be opened by medium bombers, beginning with the B-25s, the Tactical Air Force.
32:01Then come the heavies in waves at 15-minute intervals.
32:05Following the heavies, the B-26s will complete the attack.
32:08And during the briefing there, as I say, we had a Catholic chaplain get up and asked if any Catholic present.
32:16And there were some, you know, in every group.
32:18And the next question was, do you want to go?
32:22And if you don't want to, you don't have to.
32:26But the Pope said, give them hell.
32:29So we did.
32:30The sky was full of every kind of aircraft that I knew of in the whole Southern European theater.
32:42The B-17s, B-24s, the P-47 dive bombers, the Spitfires that we had covering us, the P-51s that had just come in.
32:53Everything was in the air.
32:58The Germans were firmly dug in.
33:00And as the formations of marauders approached Monte Cassino, the skies were ablaze with flight from the German guns.
33:07We were getting shot up pretty good, but you see, the pilot, he don't see a lot.
33:18In other words, he goes up there on the lead ship.
33:22Now, he flies the airplane up to this bomb run.
33:25And at that point, the Norton bombsite takes over.
33:29Well, I remember seeing the casino.
33:33It was a white building sitting up there.
33:35And to me, it looked like a white picket fence, you know, around it.
33:38And we made our bomb run.
33:40And as we was making our bomb run, we came in and we dropped our bombs.
33:46And I could see them exploding from one end to the other of the casino.
33:51And nothing but dust underneath there.
33:59On February the 15th, 1944, to the shock of the world, the monastery was leveled.
34:09The accuracy of the B-26's bombing proved without a shadow of a doubt that if used properly, Martin's aircraft was a potent weapon.
34:18It was solid stone, you know.
34:22Them friars built a heck of a...
34:25Heck it was fried.
34:27The walls on that thing was six, eight foot thick.
34:30We knocked it down to rubble.
34:33We went twice a day.
34:35So we finally knocked it down and killed every German big enough to die.
34:40The Germans, after we bombed, they come out of the rubble and were still holding it.
34:45So the British and the Americans both had a hard time taking it, even after we blew it up.
34:53The bombing of Monte Cassidy was a tragedy.
34:56Ironically, the bombing itself worked reasonably well.
35:00The B-26's did a good job, the bombing was quite accurate, and the monastery itself was levelled.
35:06The Germans then occupied the ruins, and the Allies simply weren't able to get them out of the ruins.
35:12Thus, although the bombing worked in the short term, the Allied operation to smash a hole through the Gustav Line failed.
35:21It was, however, a turning point for the Marauder.
35:28The introduction of the new Norden bombsite, the quality of bombs it could deliver, and the speed and handling of the aircraft had all combined to make it a formidable machine.
35:38The Marauder could now literally deliver bombs on a button.
35:48Following the Mediterranean campaign and the fall of Rome, the B-26 Marauder and its crew's reputation was growing from one victory to the next.
35:56Despite its notorious birth as the Flying Coffin, the Marauder was proving to be an outstanding aeroplane and feared adversary.
36:05The improved bombing accuracy and switch to medium altitude tactics meant that the Marauders had now come into their own.
36:12D-Day would provide the Marauders with new challenges. The B-26s were called upon to soften up the enemy in an intense pre-landing bombardment.
36:25They played a key role attacking German troop movements, communications and defences.
36:30Marauders of the 9th Air Force fly over the invasion surface fleet past the beachhead to strike at enemy concentrations.
36:40And when the Allies invaded southern France, the B-26s helped to neutralize the heavily fortified southern French ports of Bordeaux and Toulon.
36:50Designated as a fortress by Hitler, the port of Toulon was dominated by hundreds of shore batteries and anti-aircraft guns.
36:58As the harbour was to be captured, the guns had to be destroyed.
37:10From 10 to 11 thousand feet, we could put 90% of the bombs in a 600 foot circle.
37:16We could hit the target, we could defend ourselves and hit it and get back.
37:23In 48 separate missions, losing just 8 aircraft, the Marauders dropped one of the most concentrated barrages of the war.
37:33Never before had the Marauders' ability as a precision bomber proved so effective.
37:37On August the 23rd, 1944, Toulon fell.
37:46The Allies' successful campaign continued across occupied France and by August 1944, Paris was liberated.
37:53Now, with Germany buckling under, the Marauders were deployed in bombing enemy defensive positions on the eastern side of the Rhine.
38:04The medium bombers were ideally suited to destroy the enemy's road and rail networks.
38:09In the final months of the war in Europe, the formidable B-26 crews were flying a record number of missions, often under heavy attack.
38:20The much maligned medium bomber now had a reputation for flying into battle and achieving pinpoint accuracy.
38:27The Marauder was also admired by its crews for its strength and ability to take intense punishment.
38:44Towards the end of the war, on a bombing mission across the Rhine, B-26 Bombardier Charles Mews had an experience he will never forget.
38:52We were just, ah, 20 miles or so from Strasburg, and we took a hit.
39:00Then the next hit, ah, we got, I think, was in the bomb bay.
39:06And at that point, we realized that we were hit. We were not gonna make it.
39:12It was chaotic. You know, neither, neither engine was doing what it was supposed to do.
39:17We had fire. I could see the fire. You know, there was no mystery about it.
39:22The co-pilot was, ah, sitting, trying to get out, ah, which he couldn't, ah, but, ah, his parachute strap had caught on the seat.
39:33Ah, the release to the co-pilot's seat was between the pedals.
39:37I could reach it. I did reach it.
39:40I pulled her sideways, and he went backwards.
39:45After successfully releasing the co-pilot, Mews was able to make his escape from the bombardier's position.
39:52So we got the co-pilot. He was the first one out. We got him through.
39:58The top turret gunner was dead. The tail gunner and radio gunner made their dramatic escape, bailing out past the landing gear, leaving just Mews and the pilot in the plane.
40:08We were trying to debate whether or not we would stay with the plane because we could see the Rhine River, and we could see his safety at home.
40:19We finally got to the point and said, no, no, no, we're going to take the way out, and out we went.
40:26I remember the tremendous quietness. You're hanging on a parachute, swinging gently in the breeze, you hold, and everybody's gone. Everybody's left you.
40:39Everybody's left you. I was not heroic. I knew when I was caught, and I stopped and promptly showed my hands and stood still, and so then they was taken prisoner.
40:53Mews was captured along with the rest of his crew. They spent the last few months of World War II as prisoners of war.
41:05In May 1945, victory over Nazi Germany was complete. By the end of the war, the record of the marauders was outstanding. Its bombing accuracy had made an important contribution to winning the war in Europe.
41:21The B-26 had made aviation history. With an enviable record for survival, its actual combat losses were fewer than any other Allied bomber in the war.
41:35Dogged by its reputation as a widow-maker from cradle to grave, this remarkable plane was tragically buried without the military honours it so richly deserved.
41:46With the war over in the late autumn of 1945, the 500 remaining B-26s were blown up for scrap in Germany.
41:56Ironically, the aluminium was collected to help rebuild the devastated German metal industry.
42:05I would say that, considering its birth, when it came out and how many people it killed, it was a bad airplane.
42:14Now, as we learned to fly it, and as the mechanics learned to maintain it, it became a good airplane.
42:22It had holes all over the airplane and still it was flying. Come home on one engine, fly almost the whole distance on it. And that was a pleasant surprise.
42:31So that, we kind of loved that airplane after seeing what it did for us in so many missions.
42:38That was probably one of the greatest aircraft we ever had in the military in those days, in terms of its ability to take a terrible, terrible beating.
42:50And that was one thing that made it tenable for us to fly that airplane and keep on flying because we knew that sucker would bring us back.
43:00You know, it might be hard getting back, but it would get us back.
43:04It might be hard to hold us back.
43:16President Martin and if you can take the bed for us, it will move us more than a whole of the world longer than the mountains.
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