The Valour and the Horror

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BOMBER COMMAND SCRIPT:

This is the complete script of the television show.

THE VALOUR AND THE HORROR - HOST INTRO

Good evening. I'm Terence McKenna. The documentary you are about to see is the story of the many Canadians who served in the campaign to bomb Germany in the Second World War. In this account, actors will portray some of the participants in that campaign. The words they speak have been taken from letters and diaries, and interviews with those who lived through the ordeal, in the air and on the ground. Actors have also helped reconstruct in detail the story of one bomber crew… a crew that flew on the most deadly mission in the history of the Royal Canadian Air Force. This documentary series is dedicated to the 46,542 Canadians who gave their lives for their country in the Second World War.

B O M B E R

C O M M A N D

O U T L I N E

RUNWAY MUSIC CREDITS

NARRATION

00:02:32:10

At air bases all over England during the Second World War, there were 50,000 Canadians serving in the campaign to bomb Germany ... the odds facing the air crews were catastrophic ... only one in three would survive. 00:02:46:10

00:02:49:20

 

This base, at Tholthorpe in Yorkshire, was used by Canadians. Now an abandoned ruin, it's covered with the graffiti of visiting Canadian veterans.... Men stubbornly determined to leave at least some trace that their countrymen lived and died here.

00:03:05:12

PILOTS WALK IN TO TOWER

00:03:14:10

Canadian pilots remember thundering down these runways in bombers fully loaded with gasoline and explosives... 00:03:21:06

00:03:27:05 (CU) Doug Harvey of Toronto flew 33 missions over Germany as a bomber pilot.00:03:31:08

KEN BROWN

00:03:32:00 A lot of these trees of course were never here, during wartime. 00:03:35:15

DOUG HARVEY

00:03:35:15 No, no none of them were. 00:03:36:16

NARRATION

00:03:37:00(CU) Ken Brown of White Rock British Columbia was a pilot with the famous dambusters squadron...Both often came within inches of death, and yet coming back here to remember, they savour the recollection of small things.... 00:03:49:28

CLOSE UP OF ROSEHIPS

DOUG HARVEY

00:03:51:20 Hey, look at this. Rosehips. 00:03:53:18

KEN BROWN

00:03:53:20 There's quite a load of them there. Look at that. They weren't there during the wartime...

DOUG HARVEY

00:04:00:10 They weren't, no...

KEN BROWN

00:04:00:16 ...or we'd have used them...for sure... 00:04:01:02

DOUG HARVEY

00:04:01:04 ...vitamin C... 00:04:02:12

KEN BROWN

00:04:04:25 Anything that was edible, we ate... 00:04:06:16

DOUG HARVEY

00:04:06:20 Well, yeah. You know where the Vitamin C... where we got ours? Brussels sprouts old boy... 00:04:12:16

KEN BROWN

00:04:12:16 I say! That stuff what we used to call "bubble

and squeak" also. 00:04:15:26

NARRATION

00:04:18:00 Doug Harvey was 19 years old when he joined the Air Force. Ken Brown was 20. This was the crew of bomber W for Willy from air base Leeming. Its tail-gunner was Jim Moffat... 00:04:32:28

 

CUT TO: BROKEN WINDOWS

00:04:34:09

DISSOLVE TO MOON AND MUSIC

00:04:38:15

MOFFAT (drama) (V.O.)

00:04:43:00 I never thought I would survive... right from the start, I told myself I was gonna to die... after that ... it didn't bother me. 00:04:52:00

AIR FORCE MESS HALL

About 35 men in air force blue, mostly in their early twenties, are partying. There is a big group around the piano, singing, to the tune of the Quarter Master's Stores:

00:04:57:10 There was flak, flak bags of bloody flak, In the Ruhr, in the Ruhr,

There was flak, flak, bags of bloody flak, In the valley of the Ruhr.

NARRATION

00:05:05:20 Before he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, Jim Moffet was a gold miner

in Timmins Ontario. 00:05:10:18

MOFFAT (drama) (V.O.)

00:05:13:10 We were all so damn young. Most 18 or 19 years old. I was one of the old men in the squadron, I was 21..... You had lots of pals but very few really good friends.... guys just disappeared too fast. We'd sing and joke about the flak and the searchlights and things that scared the hell out of us when we were flying you know. But, for a lot of us too it was a game. - laughing at death - and dropping your bombs on one of the little bastards. 00:05:55:12

One of the mess regulars lapses into his Hitler imitation, drawing jeers and laughter from all. MOFFAT breaks in and changes the mood swiftly. He raises his glass in a toast.

MOFFAT

00:06:02:15 Ladies and Gentlemen!

To absent friends. 00:06:08:28

 

They toast, then the whole mess stands and sings:

MOFFAT

00:06:12:28 Fill your glasses full boys

ALL

00:06:15:18 Raise your glasses high/

Here's to the dead already/

And here's to the next to die. 00:06:22:08

CUT TO: LANC TAKE OFF SLO-MO

 

 

 

NARRATION

00:06:26:10 The British High Command knew how few bomber crews would survive - it deliberately hid the truth. That's not all that was concealed. The crews and the public were told that the bombing targets were German factories and military installations. In fact in 1942 a secret plan was adopted. Germany would be crushed through the deliberate annihilation of its citizens. Few airmen would ever learn of that plan. They had joined to save democracy, hearing the words of the Canadian Air Force poet:

"Oh I have slipped. the surly bonds of earth,

reached out and touched the face of God". 00:07:05:20

MUSIC AND PAINTINGS

00:07:13:18 Canada's war artists captured the idealism and determination of the young men who went off to war...and the horror they braved every night in the skies over Germany. Many Canadians were sustained by a powerful sense of honor and duty to their country... men like Joseph Favreau of Montreal. 00:07:32:25

FAVREAU (drama)

00:07:33:10 My family came to Canada in 1665 and we were soldiers. I wasn't too happy with what the Germans were doing in Europe. I joined and I was glad to defend my country. A lot of my friends said this wasn't our war. How could they say that when German submarines were sinking ships in the St. Lawrence river?

In a war it's the family and the land.You have to save those two. With a land you have a family, and with a family you have a country.00:08:10:20

STOX - NEWSREEL

NARRATION

00:08:24:28 Canada volunteered to be both an arsenal and a massive training depot for Bomber Command. It was called the aerodrome of democracy. Between 1940 and 1945, Canada would train 137,000 air crew, more than England and all the rest of the Commonwealth combined. Volunteers came from the farthest reaches of the British Empire, from all over Europe, and from the United States. The men arrived untrained but enthusiastic. 00:08:53:25

DOUG HARVEY

00:08:56:05 It was the first time we'd ever met all these new guys from the Yukon, guys from Newfoundland, guys from the West and the Prairie boys, and all the Americans that came up to join the Canadian Air Force, the Texans were there with their boots on and their big hats - oh, it was just a thrilling time to get thrown in with all these people. 00:09:13:28

(STOX PILOTS) And the Air Force of course is the elite, you know, the Brilcream boys. They're the guys with the white scarves, the Battle of Britain, that's the outfit we were joining - with the same spirit and the same dash.00:09:24:08

STOX OF BLITZ

NARRATION

00:09:28:00 The young men who signed up with Bomber Command saw themselves as avenging angels. In 1940, German bombers were laying waste to the City of London in the siege that became known as the Blitz". Forty thousand British civilians were killed.Churchill decided that responding with even more devastating attacks against German cities was his only way to win the war. To accomplish the task, he chose the ruthless Sir Arthur Harris as head of Bomber Command. 00:10:01:15

 

HARRIS (drama)

00:10:03:00 There are a lot of people who say that bombing cannot win the war. My response is: it has not been tried yet... We shall see... 00:10:13:08

PAINTING

NARRATION

00:10:14:28 This promised to be a new kind of warfare - no more wretched muddy trenches like the First World War. In the air force, you could drop your bombs on Germany and come right back to drink and be merry in British pubs. What's more, in the air force, women served on the same bases as men. There were 150,000 in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, mostly British. Mary Moore joined up in London. 00:10:44:05

MARY MOORE (drama)

00:10:44:26 I heard one of my father's friends say: "We shot down 20 today, and only lost six. " As if it was a cricket match. Just numbers , not men dying. I got so furious about that. So I joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. First I learned photographic interpretation for bombing and then I was posted to interrogate pilots after they came back. 425 Squadron. Canadians. As I got out of the car arriving, I got the most gorgeous wolf whistle from somebody, and I thought, ha, this is going to be all right. 00:11:25:15

PAINTING

NARRATION

00:11:30:00 The Canadians in Britain were boisterous and noisy and fun loving... qualities that did not endear them to their British superiors. Canadians had a reputation stemming from the First World War of being fiercely independent - sometimes to the point of insubordination. Some British commanding officers were determined to break that spirit from the moment the Canadians stepped off the boat. 00:11:56:20

DOUG HARVEY

00:11:57:20 We got a talk from C.O., a real Brit, RAF type, who said things like: "Now we know you're all like the red Indians, the savages, you Canadians. But we aren't going to have any of your antics over here. And I want you to know, the first guy who gets out of line, is for it.(?)" 00:12:20:25

HARRIS SET UP

NARRATION

00:12:21:11 The colonial attitude of British officers came from the top. 00:12:24:10

HARRIS (drama)

00:12:25:00 I have been amused to read in almost every history or novel about Empire war what magnificent horsemen and natural good shots the colonial troops were. I have ridden with colonial troops, and shot with colonial troops, and been shot at with colonial troops. And I have no hesitation in saying that colonial, and Dominion troops, are on the average, damned bad horsemen, and damned bad shots. 00:13:02:08

STILL - GROUPS OF AIRMEN

 

NARRATION

0000:13:05:10 Canadians were facing adversity and death together and being molded into fighting units. But true to the pattern of Canadian history, while many English Canadians resented the superior attitude of the British...the French Canadians were often angry about the poor treatment they received from their English speaking countrymen. 00:13:22:06

 

FAVREAU (drama)

00:13:23:00 At the beginning in the Air Force, English Canadians were giving us a hard time, you know, the pea soup thing. Anyway, once our squadron got invited to the Duke of Gloucester's castle...he liked Canadians. A banquet - with all the silver and the crystal... So we're starting to eat and my neighbors - English Canadians - don't know which knife to use, which spoon to take...Well, that was part of my education, so... they had to watch me...And then, after the dinner I saw this huge piano, probably the biggest piano I'd ever seen in my life. So I sat down -- and started to play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. (plays) You should have seen the expression on their faces. 00:14:40:16

 

BENINBOROUGH HALL

NARRATION

00:14:52:05 Some Canadian pilots were living near their base at a massive commandeered country estate called Beninborough hall. 00:14:59:22

KEN BROWN

00:15:02:05 This is Sergeant's Hall?

DOUG HARVEY

00:14:04:00 There was none of this here...

KEN BROWN

00:15:06:00 ...there wasn't a rug..

DOUG HARVEY

00:15:07:19 ...this was boarded up, those pictures weren't

here. My bed was just down here. 00:15:11:10

 

KEN BROWN

00:15:12:15 Gilded furniture?

DOUG HARVEY

00:15:14:10 No. We were all sergeants. Whole row of beds right here. But coming back in and looking, the vivid memory is in your cot, sleeping, maybe you're coming off an op, about 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock in the morning, and you're going to go the next night - you didn't know that when you went to bed - but here's, remember, that hand on your shoulder,

"Wakey, wakey sir", (both say) "You're on tonight". 00:15:38:00

B & W PAINTING

NARRATION

00:15:43:15 That's the way a normal day began for the air crews of bomber command... 00:15:47:09

STOX - FUELING AIRCRAFT

00:15:48:12 In the morning, their aircraft were fueled up and bombed up. More bombs usually meant a shorter flight ahead; fewer bombs meant the target was further away and the mission required more fuel. As the crews headed off to their afternoon briefing, they would try to guess what the target was.Tension built as they entered the Briefing Room. 00:16:08:18

KEN BROWN

00:16:09:25 Well in our squadron, as you came in the back of the room, there were two curtains, staggered, so that when you passed the first one, you could see the board, and you could see the target. It was named right across the top of the board. And usually, the person would see it and if it was the Ruhr, the first remark would be, "Not again, Berlin...Holy Christ."00:16:37:20

NARRATION

00:16:39:20 From the Canadian bomber bases in the North of England, it was a three hour flight to the Ruhr Valley of Germany, and three hours back. The Ruhr was the main target area because it was the heartland of German industrial might. It was also the most heavily defended, with anti-aircraft artillery, and fighters. 00:16:56:25

STOX - CREWS DRESSING

00:17:02:00 In the evening the crews got dressed and headed out to their aircraft - an average of 20 planes would fly from each of the British airfields. They all had to leave England at approximately the same time and return at the same time. 00:17:15:08

STOX - PLANES PREPARING TO TAKE OFF

00:17:22:10 The taxiing and takeoffs all had to be accomplished in strict radio silence so that the Germans would not detect the exact hour of departure. 00:17:30:08

DOUG HARVEY

00:17:34:09 You know I can remember, sitting here now, that first take-off, to a target run, turning on at the end of the runway, in the dark, in the rain, waiting for that green Aldus lamp to give you the signal, the crew are all ready, sitting there in their positions, and starting this thing; and you start building the speed, slowly, slowly, like a great lumbering truck, and then finally, with the stick forward as far as you can get it, you get the tail up, with the tail wheel, and you've gotta get the steering, and then finally, 60 miles an hour, 70, and you're watching the end of the runway, and the trees just off it, in the dark, straining forward, everything, watching that, but.. the clock, the airspeed, and then finally, 80, 85, 90, the engineer with his hands behind the throttle so they won't slip back, finally, a hundred, and you start easing, easing back, 'cause you don't want to jerk it off in case you stall, lose an engine, you're gone, and the engineer snapping the wheels up as soon as he can, when you give him the order, "Wheels up!", he gets them up for you.

And then finally, you've got flying speed and you start to climb, and you can turn. And the sweat's dripping down... 00:18:40:06

KEN BROWN

00:18:40:06 Yeah, right down off your brow... 00:18:41:28

NARRATION

00:18:44:15 For the fully loaded bombers it was a long slow climb to cruising altitude. The navigator would chart the course and soon the aircraft would rendezvous with the other bombers dispatched from other bases on the same mission. Sometimes 900 or 1,000 bombers would head out, at the same time, to the same target. It was called... the stream. In minutes came the dreaded call on the intercom, "Enemy coast ahead." The crew braced themselves. First came the flak...anti-aircraft artillery fire. The explosions shook the plane. 00:19:26:29

00:19:34:19 Then what was often the most feared obstacle... searchlights. The coast of Europe was lined with a thick band of searchlights and flak batteries...some of them radar controlled. When one light caught you dozens of other lights snapped over and trapped you in a cone. 00:19:52:23

FAVREAU (drama)

00:19:57:12 One of the beams would pick us up and the dark interior of the plane would burst into brightness like a star. It's more devastating than being shot at. You had the feeling that everyone was watching you - every gunner, every fighter has picked you out. To get out we dive. Once we dived so hard my nose was bleeding , my ears were bleeding from the pressure. 00:20:26:06

STOX - PILOT IN COCKPIT

00:20:28:09 The bombers that made it through the flak and searchlights would approach the target..The bomb-aimer would look down through a window in the bottom of the plane, searching for the aiming point. He had to be careful before releasing the bombs to avoid hitting any other planes below him. 00:20:46:25

PAINTING OF SEARCHLIGHT

NARRATION

00:21:01:18 As morning approached the bomber stream returned to England. The bombers were still vulnerable to attack by German fighter squadrons all the way home. Many planes were badly shot up and limping back. Many had dead or badly wounded air crew on board.On one such plane was Canadian Jim Moffat. 00:21:19:23

 

MOFFAT (drama)

00:21:20:20 We were hit by a fighter and the tail gunner and the wireless op were killed. The flight engineer, he was wounded bad, and our bomb load was hit. These bombs were made with phosphorous. It starts pouring out all over and it catches fire. Well this is like a big blow-torch. So the skipper he puts it into a steep dive and he puts it out, and we head home, but we can't open the bomb door to jettison the bombs out, and, we can't get our wheels down.So as we're coming into the base they say: "OK guys, head it out to sea, everybody bail out." Well the skip says, "We can't do that, we've got wounded on board. I mean, you know, if he bails out and nobody finds him,he's gonna bleed to death." So they say, "Ok, give us a half hour and we'll put everybody in the air raid shelters." So we're flying around, for, you know, God knows how long, and the siren's goin' and we're flying around and this whole time, the flight engineer, he's passed out. Well he comes to and he says,

`Hey, what's goin' on? And we tell him, you know, we're going in for a belly landing. And he says, "What, the wheels won't come down?" And we say,

"No, you know, we can't get the hydraulics to work." And he says, "It doesn't matter, all you gotta do is cut the hydraulic pipe and they'll come down on their own." So we drag him over to it, but he passes out when he gets there. He comes to, he passes out, he comes to... Finally he tells us which one to cut. So we cut it, the wheels come down, the green lights come on, we land. 00:22:43:05

STOX OF PLANE LANDING

00:22:53:20 The second we stop - Poof! - the whole things goes up in flames again. Well they douse us with the foam and they put it out. 00:22:59:05

PAINTING OF WOUNDED BEING TAKEN OFF PLANE

00:23:00:10 I guess nobody's ever come back with wounded in a really badly shot up plane before, because ah, well normally, when the plane gets hit, everybody bails out and the plane crashes. Well they said it was too demoralizing. So they put the plane in the hangar and they wouldn't let anyone see it. 00:23:17:08

PAINTING OF HANGAR

KEN BROWN

00:23:25:15 Another crash I remember is when a Lancaster piled in, the turret broke off. A Canadian gunner was in it... 00:23:32:00

DOUG HARVEY

00:23:32:05 This was on your airfield?.. 00:23:34:00

KEN BROWN

00:23:34:05 ...right on our airfield. The turret rolled right across the airfield - the rest of the aircraft broke up very badly. But this guy was still in the turret. We went over to it. We found that the guns were buried right in his body. We started to move things and he said, "Don't. " The guy said, "I've only got a few minutes." And when he spoke, even though it was sort of garbled, I realized it was a Canadian, and I said, "Can we help?", and he said, "No, if you move anything, I'll die." I said to him, "Where are you from?", and he said, "Ontario, but it's good to be with a Canadian when I go." 00:24:20:28

PAINTING OF BURNING PLANES ON GROUND, BURN VICTIMS AND REBUILDING FACES.

NARRATION

00:24:30:05 The airmen who were fortunate enough to survive such a crash were taken to a special burn unit at East Grinstead outside London, where horribly disfigured faces and bodies were rebuilt. These airmen were considered lucky because they at least survived their tour with bomber command. Most air crew...did not. 00:24:52:10

 

VISTA OVER BUMPER

*********************

C O M M E R C I A L

*********************

DUCK CROSSING, THOLTHORPE SIGN

NARRATION

00:25:38:00 In the village of Tholthorpe, in Yorkshire, a small monument in the town square commemorates the Canadian presence here during the war. On it you can just make out the motto of the Royal Canadian Airforce: Per Ardua ad Astra - Through Adversity to the Stars. The ruins of the nearby air base have been stubbornly preserved by residents like farmer and amateur historian, Jeff Wood. 00:26:04:15

HARVEY, BROWN AND WOOD ON ROAD

DOUG HARVEY

00:26:05:08 You were twelve years old? 00:26:06:02

JEFF WOOD

00:26:06:06 Twelve years old at the end yes; it's things like this that keep the memory living. We pass it each day, and always think of those times when you were here. 00:26:15:22

 

NARRATION

00:26:19:20 Some of the metal air force Nissan huts are still here. Today, this one is used to store farm equipment. During the war it was used to store dead airmen.

JEFF SCOTT

00:26:30:00 From the window to that end was mortuary couplet with its concrete slab and everything. 00:26:36:20

DOUG HARVEY

00:26:36:24 I didn't know there was a mortuary on the base... 00:26:39:08

JEFF SCOTT

00:26:39:10 How aware were you of the odds that were against you when you were flying?00:26:43:25

KEN BROWN

00:26:43:25 Actually, as we learned later, I don't think I knew it then, the average life of a bomber crew was six weeks. 00:26:51:05

 

DOUG HARVEY

00:26:51:12 Well, it was one in three...survival rate... 00:26:54:10

JEFF SCOTT

00:26:54:15 But did you know about it at the time? 00:26:56:01

DOUG HARVEY

00:26:56:00 No, hell no, we never worried about it. You wouldn't fly if you were worried about it. 00:27:00:20

JEFF SCOTT

00:27:00:20 Yeah, that's right. 00:27:01:12

 

NARRATION

00:27:02:25 Anyone who visited an air base like this during the war quickly found out that this kind of discussion on the topic of survival rates was closed down immediately and firmly. Freeman Dyson was a scientist working at Bomber Command headquarters and a brilliant analyst of the bombing campaign. 00:27:20:08

FREEMAN DYSON (drama)

00:27:22:22 I found the subject of survival rates taboo. The whole weight and authority of Air Force tradition was designed to discourage the individual airman from figuring out the odds. Stringent precautions were taken to ensure that any of our Command documents on survival rates should not reach the squadrons. 00:27:42:18

JIM MOFFAT (drama)

00:27:44:10 Hey Joe!

NARRATION

00:27:46:08 Jim Moffat remembers that most air crew were pretty cocky about their chances, but survival rates were a quiet preoccupation. 00:27:53:12

VOICES IN DRAMATIZATION

00:27:53:12 "Hey, I really miss those pink little knickers."

"Hey, in your dreams Smitty. If you had a girl back

home, you'd be writing to her too."

MOFFAT (drama) (V.O.)

00:28:00:04 I think each guy in each crew really had one objective - to survive for that one tour, 30 missions. After your magic 30, you were allowed to go home. 00:28:12:01

CHARACTER IN DRAMATIZATION

00:00:28:13:10 "We did it again. The last stop to Frankfurt, right on target. (All toast)00:28:18:02

MOFFAT (drama)

00:28:26:15 You'd count those missions very carefully. And of course the closer you got to 30 the tenser you got... some guys would be absolutely convinced they were going to buy it on number 28 or 29. Your head would just fill with crazy ideas. And you'd have to try and stay calm, keep it to yourself. Heading out on a mission you'd talk about anything else.00:28:52:18

VOICE IN DRAMATIZATION

00:28:54:25 "Boys, you should've been there the other day. Me and old Jim here, we made a killing at the race track."

"Fifteen hundred pounds."

"Fifteen hundred pounds, I couldn't believe it. 00:29:04:12

LANCASTER BOMBER ON TARMAC

MOFFAT (drama) (V.O.)

00:29:06:10 On the first year I was in the squadron I only remember 10 crews finishing. We used to think that experience counted for a lot, because most of the guys would be lost on number two or three.And then a bunch of guys would be lost between 25 and 30, and you wouldn't know what the hell to think. We had one squadron called Ghost Squadron cause during its first few months, only one crew survived the tour. Once I got close to 10 missions, I started to feel pretty lucky. 00:29:44:20

MOFFAT IN DRAMATIZATION

00:29:35:15 It's unbelievable - 1500 pounds. 19 to 1 odds...(dialogue becomes inaudible - continues at 29:44:26)So I don't know. I think, what did we take? Five out of seven rate? It's unbelievable. 00:29:50:28

MOFFAT (V.O.)

00:29:54:00 Not that I'd give up the regular safety routine - the standard ritual for tail gunners... (30:06:10) That was for luck... I would never, never forget to do that... 00:30:10:16

00:30:21:15 I only became a rear gunner after our first one got killed by a night fighter. I had a hard enough time getting into that turret - I was scared I'd never be able to get out of it if we were hit and going down. Mind you the guys up front would have no picnic getting out either... they had to crawl over these spars which was one thing when we weren't moving. Getting around the plane in the dark in a panic wearing a parachute would be almost impossible. We all just had to pray that it wouldn't happen to us. 00:30:51:12

TAIL GUNNER DRAWING

 

NARRATION

00:30:56:05 The tail gunner had the lowest survival rate of all crew positions. The tail gunner was the first line of defence against enemy fighters, and the first point of contact for their bullets. He was isolated from the rest of the crew and spent long cold hours alone searching the black sky. 00:31:15:08

MARY MOORE ON BICYCLE

00:31:22:05 Mary Moore fell in love with a French Canadian tail gunner. 00:31:24:24

MARY MOORE (BUBBLES) (drama)

00:31:26:12 He was a trapper with eyes like a cat at night. Pierre told me he'd never seen a train, or seen a car. But he'd seen an airplane flying over and he wanted to fly. He trekked over miles to join up. We went swimming once and he taught me how to paddle like a beaver with my nose sticking up out of the water. Pierre loved the wild. He knew how to cure thongs for snowshoes for long winter trips. For him being a tail gunner was like fighting off a pack of wolves from an overloaded sledge, with the huskies tiring. He was infinitely tragic. He figured the end would be like dying in a forest fire. 00:32:25:27

FAVREAU (drama)

00:32:54:15 It's like like going to hell and coming back to paradise: Piccadilly Circus, warm pubs, the good times you know. And then the next morning, back to hell. The fear, the flak, the searchlights. This for me is the worst part of it, the worst. This to and from. Often, when we come back from a raid, I...I'm sitting back there all alone, I just cry, I cry like a baby. I have to. That's the only way to get out of it.00:33:48:08

TAKE OFF PAST BUBBLES

 

BUBBLES (V/O)

00:34:02:25 They left in the thin wind of the early evening, their faces in the little windows looking white and pinched. The trapper was the tail gunner. They said: "Bye bubbles, we'll see you in the morning." 00:34:20:02

00:34:31:10 I rose at dawn and on my way to the operations room I heard about the skylarks the sound of a kite in trouble. The fire engines and ambulances lined the tarmac as she came down, engines all ropy and wing drooping. C for Charlie. She slew off the runway and came to a stop like a big wounded bird. I ran over. The medics carried off men still in flying jackets, round toed boots sticking out the end of red blankets. The tail turret was gone. The skipper had a deep gash across his cheek. 00:35:19:09

00:35:23:10 They had successfully bombed the target when the trapper called out: "Three Messy Smits at three o'clock." He yelled: " I got one!" And there was a burst of gunfire and the whole rear turret blew off....the trapper....gone to eternity.

00:35:43:10

PAINTINGS PRESSURE/CRACKING

 

NARRATION

00:35:58:20 On almost every mission, the members of the air crews lost close friends or colleagues from the squadron. The cumulative effect of being constantly surrounded by death, added to the incredible stresses of their own missions, began to take a psychological toll on the airmen of Bomber Command. 00:36:26:09

DYSON (drama)

00:36:29:00 There was no easy way out for the boys who cracked. The rules of command were designed to ensure that crewmen should consider transfer a fate worse than death. When a boy was transferred for mental reasons, the cause was recorded as "lack of moral fiber". He was officially declared to be a coward. 00:36:50:08

DOUG HARVEY

00:36:51:05 It was a horrible system. This was your crew-mates and your buddies, and ah, you know, to be branded a coward when you knew they weren't. People can only stand so much stress. 00:37:04:18

NARRATION

00:37:07:15 The harassment and humiliation of such men was an RAF policy, but some Canadians applied it with vigour. Marvin Fleming was a wing commander: 00:37:17:11

FLEMING (drama)

00:37:17:12 They were just plain cowards. They'd be put into the "digger" for 21 days for a start. The digger's a military jailhouse -get up at 5 a.m. - lights out at 7 p.m. These fellows had volunteered for the Air Force, they wanted the extra pay of air crew and so on and they weren't willing to serve?

I'd say "Do you want to transfer to the army, with rifles and bayonets, out of the frying pan into the fire? Some of them were so upset that they'd say, "I don't care what you do with me but I'm not going to fly again, period." So, you'd say okay we don't need you around here and they'd get kitted up and away they'd go. You had to be tough. Get these people out of the way quickly or else you'd infect a larger chunk of the population. 00:38:11:26

PAINTING OF PILOT

 

NARRATION

00:38:13:20 The stigma of being declared LMF lead many crew members to hide their overwhelming fear until it was too late. One terrible night in a thunderstorm over Germany, a member of Doug Harvey's crew cracked. 00:38:28:28

DOUG HARVEY

00:38:29:29 He started screaming at the top of his lungs in a terrified voice. It just..it just put the hair up on the back of everybody's neck. Screaming, "Turn back, turn back, we're gonna be killed." And ah, I had enough time wrestling with the airplane, trying to get the thing through the ice and, St. Elms fire on the windscreen. And I sent the bomb aimer back to hit him, but he got back there and ah, came on the intercom to say that Ray had gone. I said to him, "Where is he gone?" and he said, "Jumped out, the door's open." And ah, he had bailed out in sheer terror. 00:39:02:24

AIRBASE

NARRATION

00:39:11:00 It was a devastating blow to be classified as LMF, lack of moral fiber, the judgment caused at least one Canadian too commit suicide...he hanged himself. 00:39:21:29

AERIAL SHOT OF DAM

00:39:29:18 In the first four years of the war, Bomber Command seldom tried precision strikes against key industrial targets in Germany. The dams on the Ruhr river were a much celebrated exception. The dams provide power to run nearby factories and water to irrigate the surrounding farm land. In 1943 British defence headquarters though it would be marvelous if these dams could be blown up. The mission became one of the most famous adventures of the Second World War.

It was hailed as a spectacular success. It earned Canadian pilot Ken Brown a decoration for bravery, and yet looking back on it now, he's not sure the mission was worth its terrible cost. 00:40:10:16

00:40:13:20 In 1943, Bomber Command had a problem. The Royal air force had a reputation to uphold... a reputation for excellence, daring and precision.

The dropping of bombs from very high altitudes was not very glamorous, or very effective... most bombs missed their targets by at least five miles. Most of them were falling in city streets, and killing civilians. Bomber Command wanted to focus public attention on something that would create a much better impression than the haphazard bombing of cities. 00:40:46:26

00:40:52:05 Along came just the ticket.. a new weapon that could be called a "smart bomb". It was a powerful depth charge that would bounce along the surface of the water and evade torpedo net defenses... perfect for attacking ships... or perhaps even dams! 00:41:08:25

00:41:16:20 The technique was invented by an eccentric scientist named Barnes Wallis, who cooked the whole thing up in his spare time.

BARNES WALLIS (stox)

00:41:23:10 I first started in my own garden and using the family washtub and firing little balls that size out of a catapult, and found that they would jump off the surface of the water. 00:41:41:20

HARRIS (drama)

00:41:43:10 This is tripe of the wildest description. There are so many ifs and buts that there is not the smallest chance of it working. My boys lives are too precious to be thrown away in this manner. 00:41:56:01

LANCASTER TAKING OFF

NARRATION

00:41:58:05 But the public relations side benefits of the plan were undeniable... and so Harris was persuaded to give it a try. The mission was going to be very tricky, requiring low altitude flying of heavy bombers at night. And so a new squadron was formed drawing the best pilots from all of Bomber Command.

The squadron leader was Guy Gibson, a perfectionist who set strict standards for his men. 00:42:23:25

00:42:26:12 When the pilots first saw the new weapon demonstrated, they were swept up in the technical marvel of it. They saw why a low level was critical to the trajectory, and they noticed another key requirement - backspin. The bomb had to revolve backwards to correctly bounce and impact the target. 00:42:44:28

00:42:51:15 The massive bomb was slung under a Lancaster...along with an electric motor to rotate it. 00:42:56:08

 

KEN BROWN

00:42:56:16 Now once it started rotating backwards, it rotated, normally three times, and then would hit the wall,and... roll down the wall, and with a hydrostatic detonator,would go off. It's very interesting that it would blow the water away, crack the wall, but the main force came from the water afterwards. 00:43:21:18

DAMBUSTERS NIGHT FLYING

NARRATION

00:43:27:10 For weeks the squadron trained without any knowledge of what the target would be. Because the training was at night over water, the men thought they would be attacking a German battleship. 00:43:39:02

KEN BROWN

00:43:42:18 We used to think that 500 feet was low level. On this particular squadron, they started us off at 150 feet. We were really getting low. But when they asked us to start flying at 60 feet at night, over water, believe me, this was a whole new experience. You had trees, you had high tension wires, you had all kinds of obstacles, even some balloons. And at that altitude, you can't really be sloppy in flying, because if you dropped a wing, at 60 feet, it would be on the ground. 00:44:17:20

NARRATION

00:44:17:08 The first target was to be the Mohne dam, a gigantic concrete wall 125 feet thick at its base, protected by anti-aircraft guns mounted in its towers. The second target would be the Sorpe Dam, a more vital dam. It was also much thicker, reinforced with earth and stone.

The huge earthen dam was obviously invulnerable to an attack by bouncing the bomb across the water. And so it was decided that the approach would have to be made sideways, coming in over this church steeple.

That was Ken Brown's assignment - dive down over the village, into the valley below, release the bomb at low level to roll along the length of the dam and then quickly pull up to escape the hills on the other side. 00:45:06:20

KEN BROWN

00:45:06:22 I think most of the crews really felt is was a one way ticket, and this was really why... 00:45:11:28

DOUG HARVEY

00:45:11:29 ...nobody was coming back from this, really... 00:45:15:00

KEN BROWN

00:45:14:29 ...not really. In fact in this one with so many things against you - low level, night, pylons, trees, etc., you were on the top of the trees - that your chances of coming back were indeed much slimmer than a regular bombing crew. We went out on the bus, going to the aircraft, with two other crews, we were the last to get off the bus, my gunner, as we stepped off stood there in the darkness with his parachute, hanging onto it, and looking at them as they departed. And I said,

"C'mon Mac." And he said, "You know they're not coming back don't you?" And I said, "Yeah." 00:45:55:22

NARRATION

00:45:58:15 Seventeen bombers took off for the dams mission on the evening of May 16,1943. The planes were so heavy they could barely clear the hedge at the end of the runway. They flew at low level all the way to the target, 600 kilometers away. Ken Brown remembers the flight well...at one point he found himself racing straight for the front door of this German castle. He pulled up just in time to clear the chimneys.When he got to the target area... he could make out the church steeple...but the rest of the valley and the earthen dam itself was covered in fog. 00:46:38:19

DISSOLVE TO DARK

 

00:46:41:20 The combination of darkness and fog made it almost impossible to make his bombing run. 00:46:47:28

SCENE FROM FILM - "There it is boys"

NARRATION

00:46:53:12 The famous 1954 Movie "The Dambusters" dramatized the attack on the other concrete dam - the Mohne. 00:46:58:29

FILM - "Can we really break that?"

00:47:04:28 Flak guns hit several planes... 00:47:06:25

LONG CLIP FROM FILM - ends with "It's gone! Look!" (00:47:42:09

NARRATION

00:47:49:15 Meanwhile 25 kilometers away, Ken Brown's crew was having trouble even finding the Sorpe dam... 00:47:55:20

KEN BROWN

00:47:54:29 I chose to run down, 90 degrees to the face of the dam, and after three runs, suddenly, we damn near hit, coming right in here, suddenly we said, "there it is!". 00:48:08:23

DOUG HARVEY

00:48:09:00 That was the first time you knew exactly... 00:48:10:29

KEN BROWN

00:48:10:25 That was the first time, exactly. And going around, we came and I got on the wrong side, the back side of it.. 00:49:17:28

DOUG HARVEY

00:49:17:28 Right here... 00:48:18:12

KEN BROWN

00:48:18:12 Way down here. And of course, by the time I realized I was on the back side over the powerhouse, there was a very large hill in front of me. And coming up that slope, my airspeed was dropping off like you wouldn't believe. And of course, just as I started shuddering, I was going to go in unless I made a stall turn. 00:48:40:22

DOUG HARVEY

00:48:40:23 Well, you did a hell of a job to get it anywhere near here and you put it on the target. 00:48:44:10

KEN BROWN

00:48:44:15 Yeah...with an awful lot of luck, that is. You had to have an awful lot of luck.00:48:49:29

DOUG HARVEY

00:48:50:05 You're talking war... 00:48:51:05

KEN BROWN

00:48:51:09 Yeah (laughs)

DOUG HARVEY

00:48:52:10 That's what it's all about... 00:48:53:22

NARRATION

00:48:55:05 Ken Brown made a direct hit on the Sorpe earthen dam. The villagers nearby saw the large splash of the explosion. But that was it - the dam did not give way in the least... 00:49:05:29

00:49:19:10 Ken Brown's Lancaster returned to base at 5:30 in the morning...he was one of the lucky ones. Of the seventeen attacking planes, nine were shot down - nine of the best air crews in Bomber Command. 00:49:32:29

KEN BROWN

00:49:35:12 We'd seen some go down on the way in, blowing up in the air. But we had no idea of the numbers until we got on the ground. And then it started to sink in.As much as we were devastated, Barnes Wallis was just beyond himself. He was elated for a moment I'm told at the time of the bursting of the dam. But when he started to find out about the discovery of the losses, he began to cry. He didn't expect to have that sort of... "losing so many young men" as he put it, "fine young men." 00:50:15:00

DYSON (drama)

00:50:20:06 The attack was more costly to England than to Germany. But like many other such follies, it was a public relations triumph. 00:50:28:12

NARRATION

00:50:30:10 The raid was portrayed as a gigantic success in Britain. And it was a great morale booster. Squadron leader Gibson received the Victoria Cross. But the damage to Germany was nowhere near the predictions.There were almost 1300 people killed in the flood, but most of them were the inmates of a Prisoner of War Camp just below the dam, Ukrainian women who had been enslaved by the Nazis... 00:50:55:23

00:51:01:26 The damaged dams were quickly repaired, and steel production actually rose that year in the Ruhr valley.The real success of the mission depended on the destruction of the Sorpe dam but there was never a chance that the skipping depth charge could destroy this massive wall of earth and stone ... 00:51:23:20

KEN BROWN

00;51:29:20 It was a challenge. Nor did we know that the place was going to be covered with fog... 00:51:34:25

NARRATION

00:51:34:28 Ken brown won a conspicuous gallantry medal for the dams' raid but lost many close friends that night. Now he wonders why an attempt was even made to knock out the Sorpe Dam. 00:51:44:29

DOUG HARVEY

00:51:45:10 So was the raid worth it do you think? 00:51:47:05

KEN BROWN

00:51:48:20 Not really, no. We should've had a weapon quite different. Because the weapon wasn't... 00:51:57:02

DOUG HARVEY

00:51:57:02 ...for this particular dam?... 00:51:57:15

KEN BROWN

00:51:57:15 ...for this particular dam. The Mohne dam, a different building altogether, construction altogether I should say. It may have worked well there, and did, but on this construction it was really almost useless. 00:52:09:09

NARRATION

00:52:11:28 The real lesson that could have been taken from the dam's raid is that the precise bombing of industrial targets was possible. The appropriate bomb for the job,the 12,000 pound tall boy, was eventually developed by Barnes Wallis. The scientists at Bomber Command figured a method of delivering the bombs right on to industrial targets from 5 miles in the air, significantly reducing the risk to crews. But precision bombing didn't really interest the head of Bomber Command. He wanted to win the war single-handedly by destroying every city in Germany and the people in them. Killing civilians didn't bother Arthur Harris. In fact, It was something he joked about. 00:52:58:06

HARRIS (drama)

00:52:58:18 A policeman stopped me speeding. He said, "Sir, you could have killed someone." I said, "Young man, I kill thousands of people every night."00:53:09:28

NARRATION

00:53:16:10 In the second half of the bomber war, Harris would turn the killing of thousands of people into a science but his air crews would pay the price for his obsession.. 00:53:27:08

POSCARD SHOT

SUPER TITLE

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C O M M E R C I A L

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RADIO BROADCAST

00:54:25:25 Reports from the Air Ministry late this evening give a fuller picture of last night's air raid on Berlin, the heaviest ever carried out on the capital... 00:54:33:20

NARRATION

00:54:38:08 This Lancaster bomber mounted on the Toronto waterfront is one of the few memorials in Canada to the Canadians who served in Bomber Command. The Lancaster was the main weapon of the bomber war. It was an efficient killing machine. It could fly for nearly nine hours and could carry up to ten tons of bombs. Thousands of Canadian airmen were killed in these aircraft. Hundreds of thousands of Germans were killed by them. 00:55:09:18

HANGAR DOOR BEING OPENED

00:55:18:05 At the bomber bases in England in 1942, the arrival of the Lancaster was a major event. 00:55:23:29

BROWN AND HARVEY WALKING TOWARDS LANCASTER

KEN BROWN

00:55:26:20 Look at that old Lancaster... 00:55:27:27

DOUG HARVEY

00:55:27:28 Hey, look at the bird... 00:55:28:25

KEN BROWN

00:55:28:26 ...have they dolled it up. 00:55:30:19

NARRATION

00:55:30:20 Canadian pilots like Ken Brown and Doug Harvey remember it well. Airmen were happy that the Lancaster could fly higher and faster. Their commanders were happy because the Lancaster could carry far more bombs. 00:55:49:28

STOX - BOMBS BEING LOADED

00:55:56:28 At the time of the Lancaster's introduction, there was a change in policy in Bomber Command. Until then,the major targets had been German industry and military installations. The first hint the air crews had of a change was a sudden desperation to increase the amount of bombs that each plane could carry. To accommodate the increased weight of the bombs, the head of Command ordered the removal of much of the safety equipment shielding the crews. 00:56:28:12

DOUG HARVEY

00:56:29:00 And Harris wanted to put more and more bombs on the German targets. He started to take things like this, this armored plate behind the head...00:56:36:08

KEN BROWN

00:56:36:10 Yeah, to protect the pilot... 00:56:38:08

DOUG HARVEY

00:56:38:16 It's to protect the pilot's head. Harris ordered it out. There was a door halfway down the fuselage, an armored plate door. That went. The rest bed, there was a crew rest bed, if one of the crew got injured. That was taken out for weight. And then he could put more bombs on. 00:56:54:22

NARRATION

00:56:55:00 Bomber Command Chief Arthur Harris had received new orders: from now on he was free to deliberately target German civilians. 00:57:01:25

HARRIS (drama)

00:57:01:20 We shall destroy Germany's will to fight. Now that we have the planes and crews, in 1943 and 1944 we shall drop one and a quarter million tons of bombs, render 25 million Germans homeless, kill 900,000 and seriously injure one million. 00:57:19:26

LARGE BUILDING

NARRATION

00:57:21:10 Under this building in central London is a bunker where Winston Churchill often slept and gave his famous radio broadcasts. In June 1943, more than nine months after the secret decision to aim at civilians, Churchill was still pretending the targets were industrial and military. 00:57:39:12

CHURCHILL V/O

00:57:41:20 During the summer, our main attack is upon that mainspring of German war industry, the Ruhr. There is no industrial or military target in Germany that will not receive exterminating force. 00:57:59:28

NARRATION

00:58:02:00 The real policy, to intentionally kill civilians, originated with Air Chief Sir Charles Portal. Portal wrote in his secret memo of February 1942, that it should be quite clear the aiming points should be built up neighborhoods, not, he emphasized, aircraft factories or dockyards. 00:58:18:26

DOUG HARVEY

00:58:29:28 My God! This is where it all happened isn't it? 00:58:25:26

KEN BROWN

00:58:26:05 Look at the telephone... 00:58:27:08

NARRATION

00:58:27:20 The lives of Canadian airmen were drastically effected by decisions made in this British command bunker. But the Canadian government was never consulted, never even advised of the secret decision to start targeting German civilians. Bomber pilots like Ken Brown and Doug Harvey had no idea during the war that such a decision had been taken. 00:58:48;28

KEN BROWN

00:58:49;16 Basically, we really thought we were putting out the German industry, and we were when we went into places like Essen, Croups, that sort of thing. We really weren't aware of the strategy of trying to destroy the German people, or the will of the German people, as it was put.00:59:10:22

DOUG HARVEY

00:59:11:00 There was a thing called the "morality of altitude". There were no faces. There were no faces on the German fighter pilots, there were no faces underneath us. The job was to go here, follow the ribbon down the map, and when you got to the end of that ribbon, you opened your bomb bay and dumped the bombs... and I guess we were all just terrified we were going to get killed... 00:59:31:29

 

DRAMA - DRESSING ROOM

NARRATION

00:59:35:10 Some crew members realized there must have been a change in bombing policy, like Canadian Jim Moffat. 00:59:40:22

MOFFAT (drama) (V.O.)

00:59:48:00 We were briefed to go and attack some rail yards, and he told us that the people from the city were trying to escape and that's why we were attacking the rail yards. I mean, we knew that people were getting killed because of what we were doing, but you know, accidentally. This was the first time it really hit me. Bomber Command is really aiming to kill people. It was another one of those things we didn't talk about. Everyone just focuses on doing their job, carrying out their orders, and surviving the mission. The target wasn't our decision. We just tried not to think about it. 01:00:35:28

CHARACTER IN DRAMA

01:00:49:05 OK guys? Let's go. 01:00:50:28

NARRATION

01:00:52:20 Sometimes Canadian pilots flying at low altitudes would get a vivid picture. 01:00:57:10

DOUG HARVEY

01:00:57:25 On the night we raided ______?, it was very clear. A very cold, clear night with snow on the ground. And ah, it was like a Christmas card scene down below. And I hadn't seen that before on a target. And you could see the houses, and the factories and the buildings down below. And the flares went down, and the bombs started going down, and we dropped our bombs. And we could seen the buildings going up, see the houses exploding, and see the bombs going along the streets, erupting, and ah, blackening the snow. And it was a very ah, very disturbing, for me, because I hadn't seen this happen before. Usually the target was obscured, and you didn't get a good view of it. But to watch those houses going, and to realize, these are your bombs, well it was a different kettle of fish for me. 01:01:52:08

 

NARRATION

01:01:52:15 Canadian Wing Commander Marvin Fleming. 01:01:54:24

 

FLEMING (drama)

01:01:54:20 If it was an old city, mostly wooden buildings, we'd try and set fire to it, go in with high explosives at first to blow up all the gas lines to get the thing going, and then put in the incendiaries in the second wave. Some of the incendiaries, the little four pounders, well you can kick those out of the way. But we'd carry 250 of those per can, as we'd call them, and then carry maybe 6 cans so you'd have over 1,000 of these per aircraft. 01:02:26:12

STOX - AIRCRAFT AT NIGHT

NARRATION

01:02:28:00 On the night of July 24, 1943, the air crews of Bomber Command were sent out in force with orders to destroy an entire city. The target was Hamburg. The mission was named for the biblical city destroyed by the wrath of God, "Operation Gomorrah". 01:02:47:16

 

HARRIS (drama)

01:02:51:16 The Battle of Hamburg cannot be won in a single night. 10,000 tons of bombs will have to be dropped to complete the process of elimination. On the first wave, a large number of incendiaries are to be carried to saturate the fire services. 01:03:07:28

STOX - AERIAL BOMBING AND EXPLOSIONS

NARRATION

01:03:10:18 The first wave of Bombers attacked Hamburg just before midnight on July 24, in the middle of a torrid summer heat wave. 0:03:17:20

DOUG HARVEY

01:03:19:02 There was a terrible storm that night, thunderstorms. Huge cunims all over the place, lightning all over the place, St. Elms fire, a blue flame, flashing on, dancing over your control columns, across your window, and blacker than pitch outside; big bolts of lightning hitting the sky. It was the first time we'd used "window", aluminum strips we threw out to fool the German radar. 01:03:45:08

NARRATION

01:03:47:28 The technique worked. The radar was fooled and the city of Hamburg was taken by surprise. The bombers dropped 9,000 tons of explosives over three days. Just as Harris planned it, the fire services were overwhelmed. 01:04:01:28

HANS BRUNSWIG ON CAMERA (speaking in German)

NARRATION

01:04:08:02 Hans Brunswig was the fire chief in Hamburg at the time.

BRUNSWIG

01:04:18:25 It was a picture we could never have imagined. We had no experience with this. Buildings were quickly catching fire all around us - some the ground floor, some the top floor, some in the middle. Flames were shooting out of the windows, there was an incredible shower of sparks which set fire to everything in their path. The wind was so strong that it simply swept people away and it was only possible to move around by crawling along the ground. Trees standing around here were just flattened to the ground. 01:04:55:28

STOX OF FIRESTORM

NARRATION

01:05:06:10 What Hamburg was experiencing was a fire storm. Individual fires in many neighborhoods joined together into a single inferno, engulfing the whole city. The winds reached 200 kilometers an hour, the temperature 1000 degrees. The fires drew oxygen so ferociously, the wind tore babies from mothers' arms and sucked them into the fire. 01:05:31:12

01:05:43:08 42,000 people were killed in the fire storm, 35,000 of them in one night. It rendered 900,000 people homeless. 01:05:52:28

HANS BRUNSWIG

01:06:01:12 The dead lay in the hot summer sun and so began to decay very quickly. The smell... Within a few days there were flies everywhere, black swarms of flies which covered everything. Then came a plague of rats, these horrible fat vermin running all over the place. They were eating the dead bodies, and there was absolutely nothing any of us could do about it. This plague of rats.. 01:06:38:29

HARRIS (drama)

01:06:43:09 In spite of all that happened at Hamburg, bombing proved a relatively humane method. There is no proof that most casualties were women and children.01:06:53:26

STOX - DEAD BODIES

NARRATION

01:06:58:08 In fact, there is proof. The Germans kept very careful figures. For every 100 men killed in Hamburg, 160 women died. Of the 42,000 killed in Hamburg, 8,400 were children. Most were crushed, asphyxiated, or roasted alive. 01:07:24:18

FLEMING (drama)

01:07:36:25 I'd been in the blitz in London. My bomb-aimer and my first tour, his mother and his sister had both been killed in Nottingham by German bombs. They started it, they asked for it, and no, we don't feel very badly.01:07:54:08

BROWN AND HARVEY INTRODUCED TO BRUNSWIG

NARRATION

01:08:06:22 Retired fire chief Hans Brunswig wanted to meet the Canadian pilots and show them some pictures he took of the aftermath of the bombing. 01:08:14:25

CU OF BRUNSWIG - VOICE OF TRANSLATOR

01:08:24:25 One customs officer who died in the heat... 01:08:29:08

DOUG HARVEY

01:08:29:15 A customs officer?... 01:08:30:18

TRANSLATOR

01:08:30:20 A customs officer...he didn't die from bombs, he died from heat. 01:08:38:22

01:08:43:12 A man, a woman and a little boy, he was six years old. They died through heat in their car. 01:08:55:20

DOUG HARVEY

01:08:54:25 In their car, right... 01:08:56:28

TRANSLATOR

01:09:06:16 There's about 25 people who were searching for some protection behind the fence over there... 01:09:12:29

KEN BROWN (V.O.)

01:09:18:25 It's a whole new gut-wrenching feeling that I've never had before, to actually see the pictures of the devastation here, and knowing what these people had to put up with. They must've had one hell of a time.01:09:36:16

STONE COMMEMORATING WAR DEAD IN HAMBURG

NARRATION

01:09:41:15 55,000 died in Hamburg during the entire war, 42,000 in that one fire storm. The dead were ploughed into a common grave. Each large timber marks the victims of an entire neighborhood. Around the edges of the grave, some families have placed individual markers to remember their loved ones. 01:10:05:16

 

PAINTING - BIRDS & RUINS

01:10:22:25 After Hamburg, the Germans were determined to exact a far higher price from the bomber crews sent over Germany, and that, they would do... 01:10:33:15

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COMMERCIAL

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GERMAN AIR FORCE DINNER DANCE / TOAST

 

NARRATION

01:10:52:00 A Reunion of German fighter pilots in the Rhineland. 01:10:54:22

01:11:00:10 50 years ago they were young men with a mission - to defend the German homeland from the allied bomber crews they called "terrorflugen"...terror-flyers. They shot down allied pilots by the score, many of them Canadian, and now they danced to that old Canadian favorite...snowbird. When he was 25 years old, Martin Becker was one of the German aces. He has 58 kills to his credit, 58 allied bombers with 7 air crew each. 01:11:32:02

MARTIN BECKER (voice of translator)

01:11:37:20 I was going out to do this job. I had taken it on as my duty and I had no reservations. Any inhibitions that any of us had disappeared as soon as we saw our cities burning on the ground. 01:11:51:18

STOX - GERMAN PILOTS RUNNING

NARRATION

01:12:00:22 German fighter squadrons had bases all over Europe. They developed advanced radar to warn them when the bomber streams were approaching. They went after the Americans came during the day, the Canadians and the rest of the RAF at night. The lumbering bombers were easy prey. The Germans had a harder time finding the bombers at night, until they developed a new secret weapon - tracking radar antennae fixed to the nose of their fighters. This radar would allow the fighters to close in for the kill at night completely undetected by the bombers, then they would use another secret weapon,an upward firing gun called "schrage musica", slanting music. Scientist Freeman Dyson tracked such developments from Bomber Command headquarters. 01:12:53:12

FREEMAN DYSON (drama)

01:12:55:10 A simple periscope gun sight was arranged so that the German fighter pilot could take careful aim as he flew quietly below the bomber's blind spot. The main problem for the fighter pilot was to avoid being hit by pieces of the exploding bomber. 01:13:09:28

STOX - EXPLODING BOMBERS

NARRATION

01:13:20:08 In spite of the horrendous losses his bomber squadron were taking, air Marshall Harris was determined to press home his attack against German cities. The Supreme Allied Command ordered Harris to redirect his attacks to precise military targets, in preparation for

"Overlord", the planned allied invasion of Europe, but Arthur Harris would have none of it. 01:13:42:00

HARRIS (drama)

01:13:42:00 It is clear that the best and indeed only support we can give to Overlord is an intensification of attacks in Germany. If we attempt to substitute attacks on gun emplacements, beach defenses, communications or supply dumps, this would bean irremediable error and lead directly to disaster.01:14:03:28

PAINTING OF BOMBER

NARRATION

01:14:10:00 In the end, Harris got his way. His campaign to destroy German cities would continue, with a devastating cost to his own air crews. 01:14:17:28

DOUG HARVEY

01:14:21:05 Bomber Harris came to Litton (?), our station, and both squadrons, 426, 408 and all the ground crew, were all jammed into a hangar - I guess a thousand personnel. And this guy bounds up on the platform, where we could look at him, short, stocky, very alert, and his first words were, "Most of you people won't be here in a few months."It got our full attention. 01:14:45:26

HARRIS (drama)

01:14:45:26 We will produce in Germany, by the first of April 1944, a state of devastation in which surrender will be inevitable. 01:14:56:28

STOX - AERIAL VIEW OF GERMAN CITY THROUGH CLOUDS

NARRATION

01:15:00:00 Harris liked to pick targets of symbolic importance. Nuremberg was one of those - Hitler had called it the most German of German cities. It was the birthplace of the Third Reich, the scene of the massive night rallies glorified in Nazi propaganda films. 01:15:18:25

MOON PAINTING

01:15:26:18 So anxious was Harris to destroy Nuremberg that he scheduled the bombing mission there on a night with clear moonlight, When crews would normally been allowed to stand down. Harris was hoping there would be enough cloud to hide his bomber stream, so a mosquito weather plane was dispatched to scout the German skies. The mosquito navigator was R.G. Dales. 01:15:50:02

R.G. DALES (drama)

01:15:50:25 We took off at 20 minutes past noon. Our flight was 900 miles in three hours. They said it was important. Would the route to Nuremberg be covered with cloud? Would the target be clouded over? 01:16:10:09

 

MOFFAT (drama V.O.)

01:16:12:05 We had a bad feeling about this one. It was going to be trip #13 for our skipper...unlucky 13. We were just praying the weather guys would tell him to cancel it. 01:16:24:18

STOX - PLANE LANDING

NARRATION

01:16:30:25 At 3:30 p.m., the weather plane returned from its mission. 01:16:34:00

R.G. DALES (drama)

01:16:35:05 I went straight to the phone - a direct line to Bomber Command. All the group captains come on the line simultaneously at their bases. Now I told them it was so clear, we left a long vapor trail in the sky. (V.O. pix of Harris on phone) The only place we saw high banks of clouds was over the target, Nuremberg. 01:16:59:19

 

DRAMA PIX OF HARRIS ON PHONE

NARRATION

01:17:02:28 Some of Harris's advisors tried to talk him out of the mission. 01:17:05:20

HARRIS

01:17:07:25 Thank you gentlemen. 01:17:09:19

NARRATION

01:17:11:08 In spite of everything, Harris was determined to press on. 01:17:15:12

************************

COMMERCIAL

************************

AIRMAN PINNING ON LUCKY CHARM

MOFFAT (drama)

01:17:56:25 Gotta do the same stuff as on the first trip, we came back safely - it's important, we can't change the luck. 01:18:02:15

NARRATION

01:18:02:20 Almost every airman had a special lucky charm to protect him from fate. Jim Moffat was no exception. It was considered even more unlucky to have to take along a trainee pilot. 01:18:13:28

GROUP CAPTAIN (drama)

01:18:14:28 Guys, listen up. This is Sergeant John Stainton (?) and he'll be flying second dickie with us tonight.

01:18:19:06

ALL

01:18:19:07 Hi...(shakes hands all around)

UNIDENTIFIED PILOT

01:18:23:10 Where you from John? 01:15:24:22

JOHN STAINTON

01:18:24:26 Peterborough, Ontario. You? 01:18:26:08

UNIDENTIFIED PILOT

01:18:26:10 Toronto.

2ND UNIDENTIFIED PILOT

01:18:28:22 Introduces himself (name inaudible) 01:18:29:18

JOHN STAINTON

01:18:29:18 Nice to meet you.01:18:30:29

3RD UNIDENTIFIED PILOT

01:18:31:00 Nuremberg, Jesus Christ... 01:18:32:18

MOFFAT

01:18:35:05 And under complete fucking moonlight too. 01:18:37:00

4TH UNIDENTIFIED PILOT

01:18:41:10 It's all right guys. We'll have one hell of a pub crawl tomorrow night.01:18:45:12

PILOTS IN PLANE COCKPIT

NARRATION

01:18:50:20 On the evening of March 30,1944, the crew of aircraft W for Willy was one of 782 bombers preparing to depart for Nuremberg. Jim Moffat was in the tail turret; Lloyd Smith in the mid upper gun. As the crews started their Rolls Royce Merlin engines, the sense of apprehension only increased. Many were still hoping for the sign to stand down, for the mission to be scrubbed. Instead, they were told to close the bomb doors and rolls out to the runway. 01:19:30:09

CREWS INSIDE PLANES

01:19:36:28 Some crew members distracted themselves with their jobs. Others said they started to pray for the first time in their lives. One pilot remembers repeating to himself over and over Psalm 23: "the lord is my shepherd." 01:19:54:08

PLANES TAXIING

01:20:01:00 The stream this night was to be 68 miles long. It was designed to pass over Nuremberg in 17 minutes, to concentrate the destructive power of the raid. 01:20:11:29

DARKNESS

01:20:19:06 It was dusk by the time the last bombers lifted into the sky. When the planes got above the clouds though, and started to form up into the stream, all the air crews were struck by the same unfamiliar and unwelcome feeling. In the moonlight they were fully exposed and vulnerable. 01:20:37:28

HARVEY AND BROWN AT MAP

DOUG HARVEY

01:20:42:19 Going south to the Ruhr here, I could stretch up in my seat and look back over the length of the Lancaster, and could watch my turret going. You couldn't see anything in a normal night, you couldn't even see a rivet on a wing, but you could see the whole airplane.01:20:56:08

MOONLIT SHOT OF FLYING AIRPLANE

NARRATION

01:20:58:00 Some navigators turned on their new H2S Radar, not realizing that instantly gave away their position to German Fighter Squadrons. 01:21:05:22

MARTIN BECKER

01:21:08:09 It was a very bright night - almost daylight. As we joined the other night fighters flying alongside the bomber stream, we could see the first kills in the sky. We shifted into the stream, and then shot down six bombers in a row. 01:21:27:28

FAVREAU (drama)

01:21:29:20 On Nuremberg, you could see everyone - the plumes of smoke, the contrails from your engines. Poof! They started shooting us down like geese.

 

DOUG HARVEY

01:21:4207 One guy, one German pilot, shot down six of us. Just bang, bang, bang. It was the only time I was really frightened on a raid. I was damn near standing up, on the rudder pedals. 01:21:54:26

NIGHT SHOT - GUN TURRET

MOFFAT (drama) (V.O.)

01:21:58:20 I'm sitting at my tail gun position and I see the first Lancaster explode - like a big fiery ball. And its our job to call them out so the navigator he can log 'em. Well, we're callin' them out one after another. And then finally Laird says, "I don't wanna hear any more guys." So we stop callin' them out. We just sit there and we watch 'em... 20 aircraft in 25 minutes. That's just the ones we saw. 01:22:27:05

 

MARTIN BECKER

01:22:29:00 I remember the first kill very well. He was very close to another one that had just gotten shot down. He was burning so from that light you could see very well. I flew up to him, a little over on the right side, and drove my attack home. I loaded my weapons, hit him, and he burned, the enemy bomber. We didn't watch long because the bomber stream was lit up by all the exploding aircraft. This is how we shot down one, two, three, four, five in a row. Actually, it was a nice shooting party, for us. 01:23:13:15

NARRATION

01:23:15:12 As Bomber W for Willy approached Nuremberg, a German fighter appeared on its tail. The pilot banked the plane steeply and narrowly escaped. Finally, the target was visible, with colored target marker flares dropped from the pathfinder aircraft in the lead. The bomb doors were opened, the bomb aimers stared down into the building inferno, and the crew held its breath. 01:23:49:19

 

BOMB AIMER RELEASING BOMB

MOFFAT (drama) (V.O.)

01:23:54:28 We dropped our bombs and said, "Let's get the hell out of here." And we just put the nose down at 300 mph, closed the bomb doors and Red Soeder the navigator gave the heading to get home. We figured we'd made it. Then after about half an hour, Soeder says: "I'm sorry skipper, I made a mistake." I didn't know whether it was the winds or what, but we were off course. But made the correction.And then every half hour or so, we'd hear Lairdsay, "Keep your eyes peeled guys - we don't wanna hit another aircraft." 01:24:31:18

MOFFAT (ON CAMERA)

01:24:46:05 Outta nowhere, a shadow just crashes across. And I see it's a Lanc. So, I call up to see if everything's all right, except my headset's dead; I can't hear anything. So I unhook to get up front to see what's happening, and my doors won't open - they're crumpled or something. So I sit down and I thought, well, we've been in tough spots before, I'll just sit it out. And I see,the tail fin's missing. And I realize we've been in this spin this whole time and the only reason why I didn't feel it is because I was in the center of the centrifical force. So I bail out, except, I'm being sucked down at the same speed as the plane, and all I got to kick off are the guns.Except I didn't put the guns on safety, so I'm gonna shoot myself. So I don't have a choice, I kick off the guns, they don't go off. And my chute opens, and it swings four or five times, and I hit the ground. A few of the other guys got out too, but ah....their chutes never opened.01:26:02:02

 

NARRATION

01:26:08:28 Of the 15 crew in the two colliding aircraft, only Jim Moffat survived. On the night of the Nuremberg raid, 96 bombers failed to return. 545 airmen died, more airmen killed in one night than died during the entire battle of Britain. 01:26:34:28

DRAMA - HARRIS AT DESK WRITING

01:26:40:29 Nuremberg was Harris' worst defeat, but in his memoirs, which go on at great length about his favorite raids like Hamburg, there is not a single mention of the Nuremberg raid. His obsession with destroying German cities and civilians would continue to the end of the war. 01:26:59:05

MEMORIAL CEREMONY/ DRUMMING

01:27:1:10 In Germany today, big military reunions are not that common. Many army and SS units get together only in secrecy. The German fighter squadrons however have never been reticent. They believe they have nothing to be ashamed of. 01:27:32:29

CU FACE

01:27:40:08 In the closing stages of the war, the fighters earned the admiration, even of some their enemies, like scientist Freeman Dyson. 01:27:47:28

DYSON (drama)

01:27:48:06 The night fighters and their supporting organization put up an astonishing performance, continuing to fight and cause us serious losses until their last airfield was overrun and Hitler's Germany ceased to exist. They ended the war morally undefeated. They had the advantage of knowing what they were fighting for, not in those last weeks of the war, for Hitler, but for the preservation of what was left of their homes and families, their cities and their people. We had given them, at the end of the war, the one thing they lacked at the beginning, a clean cause to fight for. 01:28:25:15

THE RHINE

NARRATION

01:28:49:00 A Sunday afternoon cruise on the Rhine is a favorite outing for Germans. The reunion of fighter pilots has decided to charter a boat. Tagging along are two unlikely visitors - their former Canadian enemies...Doug Harvey and Ken Brown. 01:29:06:15

01:29:12:00 The Canadians are in Germany meeting some of the people they bombed and some of the fighter pilots they fought against 50 years ago, and they find former German ace Wilhelm Seuss who well remembers the night of the Nuremberg raid. 01:29:24:28

WILHELM SEUSS

01:29:25:28 I know that exactly. I can tell you why. I wanted to go on leave at 2 o'clock in the night, because I thought this night, they will not come, because of the moon. 01:29:38:18

KEN BROWN

01:29:38:20 How many bombers did you get that night of the Nuremberg raid? 01:29:41:28

SEUSS

01:29:42:08 Ah...four.01:29:43:20

KEN BROWN

01:29:43:21 Four.01:29:44:08

NARRATION

01:29:45:10 A lot of German fighter pilots still have very mixed feelings about the tasks performed by their adversaries in Bomber Command. 01:29:52:05

SEUSS

01:29:53:10 The bomber pilots are the real, real (inaudible)... My highest respects for the bomber pilots and bomber crews who flew two and three and four and five hours over Germany, knowing that the night fighters and ____are behind them. But you had to keep on track in the bomber stream. I would have died. But, it was a great mistake of thinking that you can ah...ah... 01:30:27:08

KEN BROWN

01:30:29:08 ...destroy the morale

SEUSS

01:30:31:02 ...kill the morale of the population. My wife is half Jewish, and she was living in Munich. As the bombing continued and was more and more, resistance grew in the population, whether they like Hitler or not. 01:30:49:09

MARTIN BECKER

01:30:50:00 I'm Martin Becker... (shakes hands w. Ken Brown) 01:30:51:00

KEN BROWN

01:30:51:01 Oh, my name's Ken Brown. How do you do? I've heard about you, I wanted to meet you.01:30:55:08

NARRATION

01:30:54:25 Martin Becker was a little apprehensive about meeting Canadian bombers, having shot down so many of them during the Nuremberg raid... 01:31:01:02

DOUG HARVEY

01:31:01:20 How do you do. Doug Harvey's my name... Will you have a chair, and a beer?01:31:07:08

MARTIN BECKER

01:31:08:22 Why not? Why not?(laughter) 01:31:09:24

DOUG HARVEY

01:31:13:10 Were you on that... the Nuremberg...were ya? 01:31:16:28

MARTIN BECKER

01:31:16:00 I was pilot.01:31:17:08

NARRATION

01:31:17:08 Doug Harvey discovers he's talking to the very man who shot down so many bombers that night as Harvey looked on. 01:31:23:22

DOUG HARVEY

01:31:25:15 I saw somebody shoot down six, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. 01:31:29:00

MARTIN BECKER

01:31:29:00 Really?

DOUG HARVEY

01:31:30:10 I'd never seen this before. 01:31:31:19

MARTIN BECKER

01:31:31:20 (What Becker says is unclear) 01:31:36:00

DOUG HARVEY

01:31:35:20 What about that...

 

KEN BROWN

01:31:37:05 I would think he was the only man that saw you. 01:31:39:05
Tall Stories, lots of laughs. Finally, they toast and Martin Becker says:

01:32:04:18 That's a good time for us.. 01:32:05:26

NARRATION

01:32:06:10 Fifty years ago, they would have killed each other on sight. Now they toast the comradeship that can only be understood by veterans of the air war. 01:32:16:00

RADIO TOWER AND ZEPPELIN - V/O PILOTS WALKING

KEN BROWN

01:32:22:25 Remember this place?

DOUG HARVEY

01:32:24:00 Yeah, I remember Berlin... Yeah, I remember it eleven times, eleven nights.01:32:28:08

KEN BROWN

01:32:29:00 When I came into Berlin, you could see the searchlights a hundred miles away. If you had clouds, the reflection of the lights on the clouds were enormous. (Yeah) A hundred acres just figure it's that much, 200 feet high, that's awful lot of rubble. 01:32:47:02

 

DOUG HARVEY

01:32:47 Yeah, well an awful lot of buildings got smashed. 01:32:47:29

NARRATION

01:32:50:10 The rubble of Berlin was pushed into one big pile on the outskirts of the city. It's now covered over with a park. It makes it hard to picture the damage and misery the bombs inflicted on German civilians. In Hamburg, these are the canals that were filled with charred bodies after the fire storm of July 1943. 01:33:15:05

MEMORIAL STATUES

01:33:27:20 The memory is preserved with this sculpture at the Hamburg mass grave, and portrays the victims being carried over the mythological river of death. 00:33:36:20

01:33:48:05 That horrible night became the central event in the lives of the people of Hamburg. They have lived with the sense of incalculable loss ever since. 01:33:56:02

 

(Two shot) Ursula Gildenmeister was 17 years old when she witnessed the fire from the suburbs of the city. Inge Einspenner was 16, and she was right in the middle of the inferno. Like most residents of this city they find it very painful to stir up the memories of that night. But they agreed to meet with the two Canadian bomber pilots to explain what it was like on the ground. 01:34:24:08

SHAKING HANDS ALL ROUND

INGE EINSPENNER

01:34:26:00 It was at 12 o'clock p.m. It was daylight... 01:34:30:18

DOUG HARVEY

01:34:31:25 From the fires?... 01:34:32:15

EINSPENNER

01:34:32:15 From the fires. I saw people jump into the water because they were burning. When they came out,they were still burning, you know, it started all over again. 01:34:44:16

DOUG HARVEY

01:34:44:29 As soon as they got back into the oxygen, into air, the fire would start..?01:34:48:26

EINSPENNER

01:34:48:27 Yah, I've seen many of them. I was so scared, I don't know where to go and what to do, you know. 01:34:58:12

DOUG HARVEY

01:34:58:26 Yeah, well we were dropping fluorescent bombs, and these started the fires. They were very difficult to put out. And about the only way that they figured out was to cover them with sand to cut off the oxygen, so that they wouldn't burn anymore. But if you took the sand off them, they would continue burning. 01:35:15:20

EINSPENNER

01:35:16:00 That's right. I've seen them, because I've seen a child go on tar, you know what I mean, in the ground, and she was burning, you know, from phosphor, and from the tar, she was sticking in the tar, she couldn't move.01:35:39:08

DOUG HARVEY

01:35:39:09 In the road?..

 

EINSPENNER

01:35:40:10 ...in the road. And the mother, who wanted to help her, I've seen it, with my own eyes, the mother who would help her stuck too. She was sticking in the tar, she couldn't help her child. So it burned both of them. In the mother, it started in the back, and the child started in the bottom. That's why she couldn't get her child. So both of them burned to death. So I would to ask you, what do you feel now since you're here, since you've been here in Hamburg. 01:36:19:18

DOUG HARVEY

01:36:20:15 Well, it's been very revealing for one thing, and ah, terrifying in another way. You see we were flying, at 20,000 feet, 7,000 meters above you. You don't see any faces, you don't see any people. 01:36:35:28

INGE EINSPENNER

01:36:36:00 No no, of course not... 01:36:37:07

DOUG HARVEY

01:36:37:08 You were sent over to do a job. Ah, and we were fighting Hitler, not the people of Germany... 01:36:43:08

EINSPENNER

01:36:43:08 No no. No no. Well...

DOUG HARVEY

01:36:44:25 ...the Nazis. And he had to be taken out, this man. And the Nazis had to be taken out. So this was the way to get at them. 01:36:52:26

EINSPENNER

01:36;52:26 I remember, everybody said "Heil", you know, at that time. No, we were in...01:36:58:20

DOUG HARVEY

01:36:58:20 You see, I was 20 years old. I was only four years older than you... 01:37:02:28

KEN BROWN

01:37:04:20 You know, it was...what my colleague was saying, we really weren't fighting people. We were fighting a cause. We only saw the photographs of the burnt buildings, of the damaged buildings. We didn't see the faces of the people. 01:37:23:28

URSULA GILDENMEISTER

01:37:23:20 Nobody can blame each other now. And I am very happy we can stand here without aggression and really as normal people, as friends nearly I should say. 01:37:35:20

KEN BROWN

01:37:35:20 It's a pleasure...

GILDENMEISTER

01:37:36:10 ...and that's wonderful I think. 01:37:38:08

KEN BROWN

01:37:38:20 It gives us a greater appreciation of really what you people had to contend with.01:37:42:18

GILDENMEISTER

01:37:42:20 It is a very...touching feeling I think to stand here and talk to you. I'm old now, and it'll long ago, and you are no young men any longer, but...01:37:57:19

KEN BROWN

01:37:57:20 No, I'm afraid not...

GILDENMEISTER

01:37:58:15 I think it's very good, it's very good that we can speak to each other. 01:38:03:18

KEN BROWN

01:38:04:15 Thank you very much. 01:38:06:16

(Goodbyes all round)

EINSPENNER

01:38:08:00 Good luck to you.

KEN BROWN

01:38:08:26 Say goodbye to Douglas too. 01:38:10:22

NARRATION

01:38:11:00 The German victims of Bomber Command are estimated at 593,000, most of them women and children. After the war was over, many airmen were overcome with doubts about the morality of the area bombing they took part in. 01:38:27:08

 

FAVREAU (drama)

01:38:31:00 We must have killed a lot of people with those big bombs we had there. A lot of people were put away. It hurt us you know. It will hurt me for the rest of my life, because I think I had no right to kill those people.01:38:56:02

HARRIS (drama)

01:39:00:28 There is a widespread impression that I not only invented area bombing but also insisted on carrying it out in the face of natural reluctance to kill women and children that was felt by everyone else. The facts are otherwise. Such decisions of policy are not made by commanders in chief in the field but by ministries, by the Chief of Staffs committee and by the War Cabinet. 01:39:28:08

NARRATION

01:39:28:20 Because of area bombing, Harris was shunned after the war. He died bitter but unrepentant in 1984. 01:39:35:08

 

DYSON (drama)

01:39:39:05 At the beginning of the war, I was a follower of Ghandi, morally opposed to all violence. After a year of war I retreated and said, "Unfortunately it seems bombing is necessary to win the war, but I am morally opposed to bombing cities indiscriminately."

When I arrived at Bomber Command and discovered we were bombing cities indiscriminately, I said: "This is morally justified as it's helping win the war."

A year later I said, "Our bombing is not helping win the war, but at least I'm helping save the lives of bomber crews." In the last spring of the war I had no excuses and had no moral position left.01:40:28:22

BOMBS EXPLODING IN NIGHT SKY

KEN BROWN

01:40:37:20 I don't feel I did something wrong. I was trying to do the right thing, to destroy this man Hitler. I wasn't thinking of people at all. 01:40:51:29

DOUG HARVEY

01:40:53:03 I would...you know the crazy thing that comes to my mind is the fact, if we had had television in those days, and the satellite dishes that we have, that we'd come over and drop the bombs and then we could go home and watch it, and see the people on the ground burning, and their flesh burning off them, how many times we would have raided? I think once would have been enough. 01:41:17:12

PAINTING OF SEATED PILOT

FAVREAU (drama)

01:41:24:00 I did 35 missions. When I came home, my nervous system was shot. The streetcar bell would go "ding ding" and I would jump this high. At night, it was a scene from hell. Nightmares. I broke two teeth of my wife. Finally, I had to sleep alone, on the floor. As for my crew, one's a drunk, one's on drugs, a third one got heavy shrapnel in his nether regions and will have a colostomy all his life, another one fell from a turret ladder and shattered his back, and the last one got both legs shot off. 01:42:15:08

PAINTING OF STANDING PILOT

BUBBLES (drama)

01:42:28:00 After it was over, one day I was at Victoria Station. You know how youngsters buy up the old uniforms. Well I saw this one in Air Force blue with Canada written on his sleeve. The medals had gone, you could see where they'd been but, the wings were still there. I said, "You're not a Canadian are you?

What are you doing wearing that uniform? He said, "Oh miss, it's just gear." I thought of all my lovely Canadians who asked for tokens of affection on the edge of eternity... Why are we not taught more of the sadness of war? 01:43:12:00

BROWN AND HARVEY IN STONEFALL CEMETERY

NARRATION

01:42:18:00 Of the 125,000 air crew who served in Bomber Command, almost half, 55,500, were killed. One in every five was a Canadian, and by population Canada suffered the greatest loss: 9,919 pilots, navigators, flight engineers, bomb aimers and gunners. 900 of those Canadians are buried here at the Commonwealth war cemetery in Stonefall, Yorkshire. At the end of the war, fighter pilots were given a special campaign medal for their contribution to the war effort. Bomber pilots were refused similar recognition even though many more of them died in combat. They were treated as an embarassment - they had been ordered into the skies over Germany to bomb cities, and then they were blamed for the civilian deaths that resulted. 01:44:23:02

BROWN & HARVEY AT GRAVE SITE

DOUG HARVEY

01:44:26:00 Duffy...

KEN BROWN

01:44:28:15 Yeah...

NARRATION

01:44:31:10 They had watched their close friends disappear by the score. 01:44:34:18

KEN BROWN

01:44:35:00 There for the love of God go I... 01:44:36:28

DOUG HARVEY

01:44:39:08 617?

KEN BROWN

01:44:40:29 Yeah...

NARRATION

01:44:43:00 Many felt guilty that they had survived, when so many of their friends had not. 01:44:49:15

KEN BROWN

01:44:58:12 That terrible August day. 01:45:00:29

DOUG HARVEY

01:45:05:15 21 years old isn't too old. 01:45:07:18

KEN BROWN

01:45:08:20 None of us were.