Haven't been this early since the B-18 was the future bomber.

Siempre se habla del horror de las bombas atómicas a japón y nadie podría negarlo, pero poco de habla del terror que japón instauró en asia antes de este bombardeo en los años 30s y posteriormente en los 40s con miles de familias desparecidas y pueblos masacrados en distintos paises orientales por su propia mano. Buscando información, encontré que japón nunca pidió disculpas por esto ni por las "mujeres de consuelo", niñas y mujeres adultas de distintos paises de asia quienes sufrieron, en vida, el horror de los soldados japoneses en su más pura naturaleza sádica y cruel. La bomba atómica fué una consecuencia y la guerra no comenzó desde ahí. No olvidemos que japón era aliado de los nazis (eso ya dice mucho) no eran un pueblo pacífico y querían pelear sin parar. En películas japonesas (no norteamericanas) he visto la crueldad y maldad, tanto del soldado como del pueblo civil japonés, retratado por ellos mismos y hacia ellos mismos. Tenían esa mentalidad. Podían matarse a golpes o dejar morir a alguien de hambre sin remordimiento alguno. En un documental vi que la razón de la bomba atómica era detener una eventual extinción de japón, con los bombardeos convencionales, ya que, no se querían rendir y de hecho la segunda bomba fue porque con la primera no se rindieron. Creo que la bomba atómica nunca debió haber ocurrido, pero tambien creo que japón es víctima, pero de sus propios actos y de eso también deben hacerse cargo y asumirlo como tal.

WWII aircraft (and AAA) had amazingly sophisticated electronics. Many of those systems are still used (ILS).

There's areason why an aircrsft is flown by the Pilot in Command, not the Statistician in Command. Your analysis is flawed due to the idea of a 700-gallon fioor leading to a safe return to the Marianas in all cases. Any number of adverse conditions in flight can lead to excessive fuel consumption. In addition, the range from Iwo Jima to each base in the Marianas was not a simple average, but a fixed quantity that varied from Saipan in the north to the most southern base on Guam. Nor does your analysis include the prevalence of bad weather at the bases that would make a landing deadly. Betting the lives of a bomber crew against a dwindling fuel supply is called dereliction of duty when there is a suitable diversion base available to assure a successful arrival at a flights destination. Nor does your analysis include the dismal survival rate of crews ditching prior to February 1945: it was a death sentence. Leaving Iwo Jima in the hands of the Japanese was a threat to all of the installations in the Marianas since it was within the effective range of Japanese land based bombers from Iwo, and provided a base for Japanese interceptors to attack B29s on their missions. There is a concept known as military necessity that transcends a vague numeric analysis of a situation. Our objective was to win the war, not to play it safe.

I'm quite certain that many of those who ended up ditching in the Channel or in the North Sea in the winter had thought that they would make it back to land before things went bad and they had no other choice.

The fact that about half of the combat losses were caused by engine issues doesn't seem that disturbing to any of those who responded to this presentation. Resolving those technical issues could have save a lot of lives and made the bombing campaign less costly.

You know how the allies won the war? Tricking the germans into believing the earth is round. They took off in their planes and just nose dived trying to follow the curve.

Super interesting

Thanks for this video. This was one of the rare instances on the internet that I actually learned something in both its science and history.

It's mind bogling how early guided munitions were being developed.

I really tought the war planes were shooting 20 mm

Like shooting fish in a barrel.

So modern car racing engine oil API SL 10W 60 is or can be used in B-17 still flying in 2023/2024?. Such an engine in WW2 is said to have very short accumulative run hours in between overhaul. Like less than 500 hours?. 🤔. Using modern engine oil for current B-17 had extended it's running hour overhaul interval?😂😂😂

I like how they play on human nature as a security feature. If a human sees one button surrounded by red, it will be pressed. Two buttons? Not worth the effort, whatever it does.

👍👍

15:03, I can't think of a worse place to get caught than on a ridge 10 feet above everything for miles. P-51's did not do so good attacking airfields, maybe the total sorties were 6x higher to make that 60 lost seem on par with the others. In two years they (The 8TH Airforce) only lost 19 p-38's, that is pretty good. Drop Snoot sounds like a dive into the ground while strafing. I wonder if that was from passing through someone else's prop wash and losing a bit of lift.

Press both button to forget cipher code of your laptop's Bitlocker

I have one of those switches new in the box. I thought it would be funny to mount it to a milsurp "black box" and give it to someone to put in the officers club on the bar. Anyone dumb enough to push both buttons, a Jack in the box pops out of it holding a sign BUY DRINKS FOR EVERYONE.

Don't show Father Dougal.

Amazing Information !

I would have liked the job of holding the sign.

That whole ball turret design was a nightmare. I can't fathom those poor guys sitting in that thing for hours on end expecting combat. Any other position I'd be fine but they would have lined me on a wall and shot me for flat out refusing that ball turret assignment, way to cramped and I'd be freaking out due to claustrophobia in seconds flat.

No shark-repellant ......??

I bought a couple of those red danger boxes from Apex in San Fernando. I sent them to Dave Jones Mailbag on the EEV Blog and he showed it. The other one was sent before but never got there. Todd Black who used to work at Apex said he sold several of them to people at SpaceX and they used them as paperweights. The push buttons had unique contacts and were wired in series.

Love the jab against the flat earthers.

What an excellent video, so much information trailed out with no mistakes, almost no downtime and excellent images and sources. What a gem, thank you

Interesting even more so as my father was a P47 pilot as part of the 27th Fighter Group, squadron 524 in WWII. They flew out of Italy and then moved in to Germany near the end of the war. He told me that if it moved on the ground, they killed it. Trains were basically sitting ducks according to my father. He did tell me his wingman said my dad dropped his bomb directly down the smokestack on one train. Yes, a story, but they did try and get my father to train as a bombardier before the final phase of flight school. No real proof that he actually did that since it would have been an incredible feat, but apparently he had a good eye. Still have some of his gun camera photos and there are some showing a bombing run on a rail yard somewhere in Italy or Germany. Anyways, the 47 was hell on earth to those unlucky enough to be on the ground under fire.

Excellent presentation & Very well researched. Fascinating strafing clips as well. Very well done!

You said at around 10:19 go around for another pass, I was under the impression that second passes were rarely made due to the increased chance of being shot down

Never in the annals of history, have so few did so much to save our way of life, and to protect our freedom.Thank you sir, and thank you young man for the video.😊😊😊

Thanks 4 the video brother.

This is awesome. I love learning new things about WW2 technologies. And being blown away by how advanced many systems actually were.

I hope you're getting paid by YT OK, only 3/4 through video and there's been more than 20 adverts.

My Grandfather was one of those Radiomen-Radar Operators on a B-17 with the 384th Bomb Group stationed out of Grafton-Underwood. They bombed the marshalling yards and targets around Potsdam (Berlin); as well as many other targets deep within Germany without fighter escorts. At the end of the war he was stationed to the Pentagon, Korea, and then helped with the creation of the FAA and establishing facilities & training future radar operators. There were quite a few pieces of equipment that required self-destruction so that the Germans couldn't obtain them.

Great video! Thank you.

Boeing 767 that still had the round ashtrays in the cockpits were and are identical to those ones in the B-29. Many have been deactivated and covered now but when the widebody jet came out, crews could still smoke in the cockpit like passengers in the smoking section. I tried to see if I could acquire one during an overhaul but only got a passenger arm rest ashtray. As for the rad alts, the WW2 version used UHF frequencies, thus the little dipole reflecting off the wing, but nowadays they are at 4.3 GHz and sweep 100 MHz either side of that. The antennas are flush mounted. And redundant two or maybe three per jet plane. Power in the order of a couple watts CW at most.

07:00 I almost started to scribble notes on my pad to learn this one ready for my next mission.

The ID-14A/APN-1A is a conventioal mechanical dial and needle indicator instead of a CRT based indicator, selectable between 0-400 ft and 0-4000 ft. The transmitter circuit of the APN-1 uses a pair of 955 acorn tubes in a strange arrangement with the plates connected to the modulator and the grids going to the antenna. I wonder if the other radar altimeters use a similar arrangemant.

Excellent. Thank you for posting.

nothing pertinent to add. merely satiating the hunger of the tube'y'all's algo-deities

Great Interview! Awesome job, thank you.

All content, no filler. Excellent videos.

Sorry for the off-topic comment, but I wanted to ask; do you have any plans on covering the air campaign against Romania at some point? Operations like Tidal Wave, for example? Romania is an often overlooked Axis power, and it, Bulgaria and Hungary were actually the last/most recent formal declarations of war by the United States. Your coverage is always well researched and compelling, so I'd be very interested to see/hear your take on it.

Excellent presentation. +Cancer sticks in the cockpit. Radar really changed everything.

As an avionics tech in the Coast Guard in 71 and 72, I saw on the front panel of some of our comms and nav equipment large round covers that could be unscrewed to install or remove explosive devices. We were told that the charges used were essentially 12 gauge shotgun rounds of some sort. In our Era, these were all empty, but much of our avionics was quite old, going back to the post war period.

Is there any video anywhere of the gun system in use. Lots of stills and graphics but can’t find any video of testing or in action remote gun system. I imagine a version of this would be great anti drone tec!

Thank you for your videos. They are consistently excellent and show the time and effort you have put into researching and reporting on each subject.

Very informative

Just curious--how does measuring the altitude directly below the bomber assist in navigating safely, or bombing a target ten miles ahead of you? I suppose it's helpful in some ways to know what your altitude is right now, but don't you really want to know what altitude your plane will encounter front of you? To, say, avoid mountains or get a fix on a target? The video didn't say this radar was scanning in the direction of travel, but seemed to indicate it was scanning directly below the plane. Can someone help out here?

The U.S. GB-4 of WWII sounds about as accurate as Russian precision guided munitions of 2024.