Masters of the Air Accuracy Check - Tour of Duty Mission Requirement
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- čas přidán 4. 03. 2024
- In the Masters of the Air Episode 7, crew members are discussing the tour of duty policy increasing the number of missions for rotation from 25 to 30. The video will discuss the accuracy of the clip and provide historical context with regard to the policy change.
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"I will be correcting visitors about the tour of duty requirement for the rest of my days as a volunteer." Now, that's dedication to accuracy I can admire. 😆
I appreciated that quip a lot. I LOLed and it explains US Bomber's interest in bombers. I bet he's the best docent where he works barring any WWII veterans that might work there.
The dead pan delivery almost knocked me out of my chair. Oh man, gotta love Keith. LOL
My old man flew C-47s with the RCAF in Burma as part of the Combat Cargo Task Force supporting the British 18th Army drive on Mandalay, and flew 200+ sorties, trips of 100-250 miles, maybe a quarter of them combat air drops to DZs within small arms fire of Japanese lines. I have a pic he took of Ft Dufferin in Mandalay during a leaflet drop when it was Japanese held. Fortunately, the Japanese had very few combat aircraft in Burma and they only got bounced once by Oscars, with several Dakotas shot down at a DZ near a town called Schwebo. I asked him once why he didn't keep flying when he got home, and he said 700-ish hrs of operational flying (he finished his service with about 1000 hrs) around Burma in the space of 9 months (Dec '44 to Aug '45) killed his love of it. He didn't have the constant wild stress of bomber pilots, but it was more of a slow grind that wore you down.
'Fly until you die' was a fact of life for Luftwaffe pilots. There was no mission limit set as far as I know.
There was a saying, that apparently started out amongst German troops but migrated to the Allies:
"When the RAF is overhead, the Germans duck
When the Luftwaffe is overhead nobody ducks
When the Americans are overhead, everybody ducks."
Probably why Hans Ulrich Rudel, among others had such a ridiculous amount of sorties
Japanese, the same. Quality and experience dropped for both nations mid war.
And my heart just bleeds for them, I'll get my violin out tonight and play something lamenting while thinking about them.
Not.
Ya thats what the video said
When I joined the ANG in the 80’s, there were pilots with 100 mission over North Vietnam patches around the flightline.
My father was a b26 pilot in 12th AF in WW2. He flew 63 missions and was one of the few left of his original squadron pilots. He wrote a letter to his parents saying he probably would not be coming home after they upped the mission numbers.
As in Catch 22
The B-26 had possibly the lowest combat loss rate of any WW2 bomber. However, if you are flying 60+ missions your odds are still not great. I'm glad he was one of those that made it through but so sad that so many did not.
One of my wife's second cousins or similar was also B-26 crew but died in action over The Netherlands.
@@wbertie2604 He loved that airplane. He said people were scared of it, got timid, and crashed it in training. He crash landed twice after it got shot up. When I was a kid the jagged purple shrapnel scars on his legs frightened me. One of his friends told me that everyone wanted to fly with him because he was recognized as a great pilot and considered lucky. He was buried with German shrapnel in his legs.
They need YOU as the fact-checker!! This is a great channel!
I had thought I had read that eventually 55 missions became the tour by war's end. It is true that many bomber crews who flew missions late in the war flew their entire tour of duty and never saw a German fighter. I recall Tom Landry (later NFL player and Hall of Fame Coach) later said he saw a few fighters in his tour but was never attacked by any.
I do know that some voluntarily flew multiple tours.
It wasn't just the need to replace crewmembers lost due to attrition, but the need for additional crewmembers needed to man more and more bombers as the 8th Bomber Command continued to expand in size.
However many missions they flew. Brave men every one of them. We owe them for our tomorrows. Eternal thanks and God bless them all.
Whilst it's probably a production error, the narrative could be justified on the ground that it just represents the crews getting confused about the policy.
Makes it abit more realistic and easier to overlook if you think of it that way, especially when its mentioned these changes usually arrive to the men via hearsay before official announcement.
My thought as well.
And besides, the show's producers knew we would be coming to this channel to get the truth.
Yea, that's a good point... also I think trying to explain a fairly complicated sliding scale to a TV audience is probably not something worth the time. A shorthand makes a lotta sense.
Agreed. Having worked in a number of hierarchical organisations vital information being disseminated via rumours or people not going back to the orginal source is very common (even for things as important as tour length).
@@mhpjii next time they should know where to find a good technical expert to help get things correct...
If I ever come to the US i ll be visiting your museum! This is the interessting knowledge I want to hear about!
Your analytics add so much to your videos. I'm glad to see that the US made many decisions based on good data.😊
Quite often the really good data collection and/or analysis was after the war whereas sometimes during the war analysis of the facts was seemingly lined up to support pre-selected polices. I hasten to add I think it was more wishful thinking than subterfuge. Some of the assessments of the effect of the USAAF bomber effort in early 1943 when it was still quite small were very optimistic and the USBS said as much.
It seems that during 1944 when Doolittle arrived in Northern Europe data analysis became more realistic but that's more my gut feeling than an objective analysis. There certainly seemed to be quite a lot of data gathered and also accounting for things like survivorship bias. Where it seemed to fall flat was the attempt to model the effect of bombing on production and the RAF was similar in this respect.
I can agree with you on the possibility of "hopeful" data and/or data that may be used by senior management to pursue some personal goals. It happens in business all the time.
thanks for the great info, its incredibly pleasing to see your channel grow! well done sir.
Thank you again for attention to detail and diligence!!!!
very nice explanation of the policy change and thanks for covering details of the sliding scale. I can understand why the TV script kept it simple with "you now have to fly 8 more" Less words, a bit more impact, drives the justified emotional response. ❤
I find it important that channels like this exist. Very educational and informative. I personally think Masters of Air has done a great job so far and you can see the effort to be historically accurate. I do find it kind of silly to nitpick it. I think it is very easy to assume many of the pilots could have misinterpreted the new policy. They were under a great deal of stress and probably got extremely angry and frustrated with the new policy, when that happens many times people stop listening and later learn what the actual policy means.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Reel History’s videos really show just how deep the writers went for accuracy. It’s extremely impressive. Tables and charts, while showing what the general state of things was is great. We got to remember just how many crews and just how many missions were flown. These were kids basically. Nothing is going to always be 100% what someone wrote down or stated in an interview.
Milo Minderbinder approves of this message.
Catch 22
Great movie, there'll probably never be that many real bombers on screen like that again.
Everything you said I more or less already knew but the why, and the reasons for it I was not aware of but thank you for the information. I did think what they talked about on the show was true but after what you said and the explanation and examples you gave I can see not everything is completely correct. So I will simply wish will just enjoy the storyline and learn as I go with what they say and the explanations about each episode I will get of CZcams so I can understand things better.
Absolutely love it. Keep it up.
Great stuff, as always.
I would like to know to what extent USAAF personnel were able to ''go on leave'' during a tour.
RAF crews could get a pass and go home for a day or two. Were Americans able to take a break? By which I mean get away from flat old East Anglia and see some mountains! Or go to some sort of military retreat as we saw in Episode 6 when Rosenthal and his crew are sent to a country estate for ''relaxation and counseling''.
Thanks.
Colonel Cathcart at his finest.
Pfft. Catch 22 is just better.
Think of MotA's inaccuracies as providing job security for you.
The USA put 15 million men in uniform for WW2. Of these over 2/3 or 66% were drafted(in Vietnam 45% were drafted). Many of the men who voluntarily enlisted went into air corps as it was felt it would be "safer" than the infantry. . .The US 8th Air Force took over 80,000 casualties over Northern Europe.
UNNOTICED ERROR
Good eye and good comments, as usual, for most of your accuracy report.
However, I believe that one error that went by unnoticed in the episode involved the letter being written by a commanding officer to the family of a crewman that had been shot down. The letterhead on the letter being sent clearly shows the return address using the town that the 100th was based in. I think an APO would be used.
Joe H. My father as squadron leader in the 388th Bomb Group
I really appreciate these vids and the various confirmations and/or corrections! Although it doesn't bother me that they (the writers) were off calculating the numbers, I am sure there were a LOT of confused crews about who got what and when. I think if they had tried to explain the sliding scale on the show it would have broken the pace and frustration of the scene. Yet, if they had simply said "... has 27 missions left" that would have seemed wrong to anyone paying attention to the simple difference of missions already flown and the jump from 25 to 30 missions.
It's possible that in this case "Hollywood" can't be blamed - they could be reflecting that the crews sometimes didn't know how the policy applied to them. I've watched many videos of veteran interviews, and it's interesting how often the veterans repeat myths (like the ball gunners used to get hosed out of their turrets after a wheels up landing) so their source of information was probably mostly rumour and misinformation.
To show how bad it truly was up there at 25/30,000 feet is important...it helps people who have never experienced air bombing combat which is pretty much all of us here in chat that what the bomber crews went through was insane but had to be done to help break the enemy...
That's some catch, that catch 35...
So, I know the experiences my grandfather, a USAAF fighter pilot in North Africa (52nd Fighter Group, equipped with the Spitfire V and later IX), are entirely different from a bomber crew in the 8th, but I was curious how many sorties my grandfather flew. According to his flight log, during his 12 months overseas he flew 38 flights in the Northern Ireland and England. (The vast majority of these would have been some form of training flights. I know his unit did fly operationally during this time, but his flight log does not remark on any of these flights.) After arriving in North Africa, from November of 1942 to July of 1943, his flight log lists 11 Patrol Sorties, 6 Maritime Patrol Sorties, 11 Scrambles, 21 Escort Sorties, 10 Recon Sorties, 6 Sweep sorties. Also listed are 3 "Gun test" flights and 60 flights that list a "to" and "from" but do not otherwise remark upon their nature. So, 65 sorties that are described as (potentially) operational flights and about 100 other flights that are left undescribed in the flight log. His first flight in the UK to the last flight in North Africa is almost exactly a year - lining up with the initial year long tour of duty for pilots in the 8th during the same period.. In August of 1943 he returned to the states where he continued to fly until July of 1945 - eventually commanding a squadron in training.
From what I have read on a board, the advisors where not given much time to fully train the writers on some procedures and facts. Some re-writes apparently happened without advisors to give them more detail.
Poor old Harry Crosby completed his required missions after the Russia shuttle mission, but immediately following the mission was promoted to Major. Field rank. He stayed in theater with the 100th until the end of hostilities.
First in last out.
Thanks
My grandfather was a top turret gunner and flight engineer on a B-24 during ww2 with the 464th bg 779th bomb squad out of Italy with the 15th af
The real policy would have taken half the episode to explain.
This. The 28 mission thing got the point across more efficiently on screen.
The video does it in 10 minuten. En deam well
They did it in less than a minute. Look, I'd love it if we could do it 100% and go into all the details, hell, I could see 100 episodes full of information, drama, tragedy, and comedy for the efforts of the AAF in WWII. I just don't see anyone paying for it and only a select few watching it.
Wait till you see the natural metal G's...
I would like to hear my us cousins mention us... The brits. We flew until death as if we did not we were called cowards... Makes you think as we had fewer people waiting to go... Hats off to all those who went.
BOMBER (channel owner): I've heard the men had x-number of missions they were required to fly (I believe 35, in the case of a relative of mine), but that they could volunteer for more missions (he hit 50, I was told).
Could you take us through the heads of the men and the full crews who volunteered to keep fighting? What were they thinking?
Some of us have loved ones who did this, but who never mentioned it. I found out when an author began doing research on my loved one's crew. 😮 Bit of a shock, it was.
Many thanks!
Perhaps in another video you could cover the probability a bomber aircrew member would complete his tour and how this changed over the course of the war. How likely were you to get through 25, 30, 35 missions?
Note that medium bomber groups and fighter groups also had tour of duty requirements, but these were different from those used by the heavy bomber groups.
I don't know how the medium bombers did it but the fighter pilots went by hours, when they hit 200 hours they could either rotate home or extend their time and stay, how many additional hours they got on an extention I don't know, I think Robert Johnson mentioned it in his book but I can't remember.
Your dedication to accuracy is admirable, but I'm not sure how much you're taking into consideration some of the human elements.
I think the series captures well the disheartening effect on learning of the goal post change. I'm doubtful that change was communicated well in the early stages, the rumor-mill was probably going full rpm before accurate info could get passed down by the chain of command, assuming that info did get passed down, it could just as easily been "shut up and get on with it (as seen in Twelve O'Clock High)"
Oh wow I didn't know you were near Seattle. Wonder if I saw you when I was at the museum last year.
If you heard a guy say "The intention of this tour..." that was him.
I wonder what the escort pilot mission requirements were to attain relief?
At this rate, these clips might as well be amended to the end of each MOA episode.
To give the show the benefit of the doubt, like others here have indicated, it is completely believable that the characters might have misunderstood the first information they recieved on the matter. And they are, after all, not entirely sober at the instant depicted (for which no one should blame them, of course).
It's also a complicated bureaucracy and you could easily end up flying 1 extra mission before the hq staff figure out you met the tour of duty reqs.
I was more shocked by the claim that "downed pilots who returned via resistance were sent home" - why not give them missions in training / maritime / the Pacific theater?
Security! Information about resistance groups is absolutely sacrosanct. Returned aircrew in the hands of resistance groups can't be put in a position where they pass on minor details to other aircrews who are themselves captured by the enemy. One little detail can break a network. Changing their theatre is irrelevant of course since the Axis forces shared information to a degree.
@@nightjarflying That's only a problem if you fly over Europe - couldn't they fly anywhere else though? (eg Pacific)
@@dlifedt Read my comment again! All of it this time [Click Read more]
Why not do staff work or train crews over England / USA though?
(also Germany and Japan had quite poor coordination lol)
@@dlifedt I have already explained WHY they couldn't train aircrew, if the aircrew they train are captured the enemy will learn details about escape & evasion that they heard from their instructors. Returned Brit aircrew got desk jobs.
This is one of those things that I think makes a ton of sense for a TV show to abstract out, sure its not correct, but trying to explain a sliding scale like that to an audience of a TV show would take too long and add little value. Its worth saying both vets and new crews had to fly more missions, and the vets didn't have to fly quiet as many as new crews, thats what matters in this episode.
Interesting, didn't even know that, knew about the 25 missions but never that they increased it, or that some divisions had other requirements.
I also wonder, can bomber crews hear their bombs at their regular altitude? Does the sound reach that far?
They can hear & 'feel' a low level bass 'rumble' from 4 or 5 miles up - the details are masked by their own engines, electric motors & hydraulic systems, the engines of other bombers in their box, flak &/or machine guns plus the whistles of air moving over the fuselage [like a car with an open window]. Also aircrew have layers of clothing & a steel helmet & breathing equipment - their own breathing will seem very loud. It's like a fireworks display on the other side of town while your standing next to a busy street with a scarf wrapped around your head.
To be fair, it could have also been taken as the crew didn’t fully understand the sliding scale. As I am sure was a situation that happened. And in that case, it could be interpreted as realistic portrayal.
Givern the nature of military policy changes and the time required to impliment and distrubute them, the scene may be accurate at some level. Lots of time specuation and scullebutt get a bit ahead of the actual policy. I referance my 27 year military career
This kind of reminds me of "Catch 22"
Maybe the MoTA knew what the policy was, but wanted an example of the in theater crewmen themselves not understanding the details.
They were fortunate that the increased tour lengths tended to coincide with reductions in bomber loss rates. Was that considered in the planning?
Nothing accidental or fortunate here, simply fighter escort was added and suddenly bombers started returning home.
Once US aircrew had completed their tour, was that the war over for them? Were they expected to do another tour after a period of rest and reassignment?
Poor guys, their nerves must've been shredded. Thanks for the video, very interesting insights as always. I don't subscribe to any Apple products, just so you know.
Which museum do you volunteer at if you don't mind my asking?
The 1949 movie "Twelve O'Clock High" deals with the stresses crews felt as they dealt with mission after mission along with the resulting morale problems. Here is the movie: czcams.com/video/yyUgqk6z7rY/video.html
5:16 is that Clark Gable?
Please Mr Custer - I don't wanna go...
I've been told by some who have watched the series that the greatest inaccuracy they have noticed so far is the complete lack of anyone smoking. Is this true? The WWII generation were heavy smokers and drinkers (with good reason).
And the ground crews stayed there until the end of the war unless returned to the states to be instructors.
Can I ask which museum you provide tours of. Thanks.
The two aircraft he pictured are at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.
In Afghanistan this was called “stop loss” or US Army stands for “Uncle Sam Ain’t Released Me Yet”
Are those D-Day Landing stripes on those B-17's 8:56
I think the Japanese had the same policy as the Germans, in fact most armies did, trained people were not sent home unless severely wounded. The Americans were lucky, they could see a end to "their war" like a prison sentence, extending it mid Tour would really have damaged moral. Five more missions was five more rolls of the dice. They should have grandfathered that policy in.
No. WWII D-Day Invasion stripes are black & white - two black stripes on a white background - around the fuselage & on each wing. You are seeing a single dark stripe [black? red? navy? - I don't have time to check] on bare aluminium on each wing - it is the ID for the 2nd Bomb Group of the 15th AF operating out of Amendola air base in Italy in 1943 or early 1944.
Holy $hit! They brought it up to 35! Damn, they really were being dicks to those airmen. I thought 25 was nuts!
The losses dropped from 10% to 1%, the real life combat did not look like in the Apple show. In the moment they raised the limit to 35 the Luftwafe was sending 80 fighters manned by children against groups of 1000 bombers escorted by hundreds p51.
@@randomnickify Flak and Accidents were still taking their toll. Main issue was crews were burning though their required number of sorties in a few months as blind bombing with H2X, G-H and Micro-H wasn't leading to the aborted missions like in 1942/43.
Raf Halifax 'Friday 13th'.
Maybe the airman just did not understand the new rules well enough. They were angry and upset at the time, after all.
So a crew that survived their tour went back to the US. The first, or actually second did propaganda work, but the ones after that?
This museum you volunteer at, are you establish residency or squatter's rights? 🤔
Commonwealth crews did they fly until you die?
No. RAF bomber crews [UK & Commonwealth] did a tour of 40 completed operations. After that they are trained as instructors & sent to HCUs & OTUs for six months. Then they go back for another tour of 20 ops. If they survived this, they could volunteer for more but if they chose not to they remained as instructors unless promoted to higher non-ops positions.
@@nightjarflying Original tour was 200 operational flying hours before posting to a non operational post (Normally as an instructor). Bomber Command switched to a 30 sortie tour in 1942, followed by an instructional or staff tour for a minimum of 6 months., 20 sortie 2nd tour was then mandatory. You could do volunteer for another 20 sortie 3rd Tour after that. If you went to the Pathfinders, tour length was 45 Sorties. Crews in Fighter and Coastal Command, plus the overseas commands had tours measured in flying hours.
For shame, the producers only got it 98% correct!
Hello I’m back here again.
I belive a cool video topic would be a video about the evolution of bomber armourments. Specifically the b-17 how’s where’s and why the b-17 bomber has the armoremtns it did throughout its various series. For example the b-17G has a chin turret because the yb-40 showed that a turret in the front improved effective. Additionally I have seen you reference the b-17f have 11 guns in one video and 12 in another. Why is this the case.
I would like to point out that the Airman was wrong, and what he said was wrong. But in real life people are frequently wrong about things. But he was spouting was misinformation which is as we know these days very common
If it is your country you are defending you will continue the fight until death. If you are a mercenary then you will only want to fight as much as you think is fair. U.S. bomber crews were not defending their home country which is the reason for all of the whinging.
just show you how dumb it was to have daylight bombing missions without fighter escort. Imagine the pilot/crew lives we'd saved if the USA bombed with long range Fighters or at night. The German fighters would have been knocked out sooner and by late 1943, the US/RAF would have ruled the airways at least 3 - 6 months sooner.
Where would you get the quantity of fighters required? Bombers were escorted as best as possible. The issue was the short time possible for fighters to meet up with the bombers. It is a Hollywood fantasy you could fly the whole route with the bombers.
As you probably already know, Spitfires were scrambled to cover bombers as they formed up over the UK. Then Thunderbolts met up for initial escort as forming up often took 75 minutes, so the first escorting fighters started later.
Then in theater, P-38s or later mustangs would meet up at a designated map point at a certain time. This allowed for replacement fighters if the P-47s broke off to dogfight or just let them go wild over Germany.
A second group of P-38s or P-51s would meet up on the way back. This is due to the extreme zig zagging fighters performed to not outrun the bombers.
They needed a minimum of 6 groups of fighters to escort each group of bombers. What killed the bombers is not having enough fighters when they needed to. I read a third of the time the replacement fighters couldn't find the bombers they were sent to protect.
I disagree. The show was accurate because for all of military history, Joes have been misinterpreted or misunderstood stuff like this and spread incorrect rumors or exaggerated the truth to stir up trouble.
4:22 lmfao😂
F
They are not as good as your are. You can try to get in touch with a series or movie to get better pay for your work here on youtube. But time is running out for entertainment in our Country.
The USA put 15 million men in uniform for WW2. Of these over 2/3 or 66% were drafted(in Vietnam 45% were drafted). Many of the men who voluntarily enlisted went into air corps as it was felt it would be "safer" than the infantry. . .The US 8th Air Force took over 80,000 casualties over Northern Europe.
Odd that more were volunteering for Vietnam when by all accounts WWII was a more “just war.”
And my understanding of bomber gunners was that the positions on a given bomber were voluntary, not the overall tour in service.
@@orcstr8d Voluntary Enlisted had choice of branch on entering the Army, draftees did not. Once you were in the Army, some units could be volunteered for like the airborne paratroopers were all volunteers, the glider riders were not, they were assigned at random without a choice. Gliders were many times more hazardous for your health it turned out.