American History In Video: Aces High
Aces High from The History Channel (A&E Television Networks, 1990) 22:52.
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Robert Vaughn If ever there was a job made to fulfill the American national character, it is the job of the fighter pilot. Sky combat in a small, swift, deadly aircraft is the ultimate expression of the aggressive maverick. The high-noon gunslinger, nobody behind him, but the enemy. It's only in the quickness of his eye, his brain, and his hand. Only the mastery of a fast-firing weapon to bring him home alive.
Robert Vaughn All the brave men who fought and died in the sky for the United States were well-appreciated. But fighter jocks were special. It was why John Wayne flew Hellcats, not B-17s in the movies. And why the story of America's fighter pilots in their journey from kite to flying bullet is so fascinating. Follow along as we trace their amazing exploits in this episode of America At War: Aces High.
AMERICA AT WAR ACES HIGH WITH ROBERT VAUGHN EXECUTIVE PRODUCER LOU REDA produced by MORT ZIMMERMAN written by NORMAN STAHL directed by DON HORAN
Robert Vaughn In the First World War, British and German fighter aces had scores of victories before the United States even entered the conflict. America's "Ace of Aces" was Captain Eddie Rickenbacker , who's 26 kills made him a national hero all his life. In the post-war years, the U.S. Fighter program always seemed a bit behind. The depression-squeezed country stopped too long with glamorous but obsolescent biplanes like the Curtis Hawk and open cockpit monoplanes like the Boeing P-26. The only fighter we had to test in combat was the Curtis P-40. In China , pilots of the American volunteer group under Colonel Claire Chenault ran up a respectable score in the P-40s mostly against second line Japanese opposition.
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Robert Vaughn Grumman's Navy Wildcat was a close match in performance. But America's fighters were pathetic compared to what their future enemies were building. Over Spain , Germany was proving out the brilliant Meschersmitt 109. High speed and high altitude, it was armed not just with machine guns, but a fast-firing 20-mm cannon.
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Robert Vaughn In the Pacific, the Japanese had put the finishing touches on their Zero fighter. Armed with multiple cannon, it could outmaneuver anything in the air. American fighter forces on the ground in Hawaii and the Philippines was slaughtered in Japan's surprise attack. Being to almost total Japanese domination of the Pacific air during the first six months' World War II.
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Robert Vaughn The Zeroes rose up to sweep the obsolete, outnumbered U.S. planes from the sky.
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Robert Vaughn Its probably just as well that American arms wound in Europe during the Battle of Britain. The U.S. had nothing to match the British Hurricanes and Spitfires that were protecting England from Hitler's rampaging Luftwaffe.
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Robert Vaughn Still in the Pacific, the Solomon Islands campaign proved that in any kind of equipment, the spirit, training, and skill of the U.S. fighter jock were potent weapons.
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Robert Vaughn The list of American fighter aces grew longer. But their exploits paled in comparison to those of the enemy.
Robert Vaughn In World War II, the thousands of American fighter pilots who fought on two great battlefronts never came close to matching the individual kill totals of Japanese and German aces. Adversaries like Eric Hartman had over 350 kills. Other enemy pilots had more than 200. Many were aces, 20 times over. Wether our boys as good, of course, they were. But their military commanders were smarter than those of the enemy. While the great German and Japanese superstars went into combat again and again until they died and took their priceless skills to the grave, the Americans flew a prescribed tour of missions then went home. A practice that was important for moral than morale. And send back to the United States , a corps of crack, battle-hardened fighter instructors.
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Robert Vaughn Every ace who survived, send hundreds of potential ones into combat.
Robert Vaughn In the end, the United States training advantage was to be the "ultimate advantage."
Robert Vaughn The Battle of Midway having proved that unescorted attack planes would be swept from the sky, United States developed its carrier-based fighter weapon to incredible heights. Flying from American Flattops, the hot new Corsairs and Hellcats carried on a war of escort and ambush. The violence sparks, ocean distance is vast and radar primitive, American planes had jumped the Japanese supply transports and their escorts everywhere.
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Robert Vaughn One ambush was pivotal, a broken naval codes and Army P-38 fighters to Morganville . They're to intercept a Betty bomber carrying the Japanese military genius Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto . A B-38 formed by Army Captain Thomas Lanphier blew Yamamoto out of the sky.
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Robert Vaughn High above the Marianas , Marine and Navy pilots engineered the greatest and most lopsided air slaughter of all time. In the so-called, "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot," 480 Japanese planes went down, against the American loss of 130. Everywhere, land and carrier-based U.S. fighters swept the enemy from the air and blasted him on the ground. As they spearheaded the unstoppable advance toward the Japanese home islands.
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Robert Vaughn Late in the war, Japan's effort to cripple the U.S. fleet with kamikaze attacks might have succeeded if American fighters have not been there to devastate those desperate men who had lost their fear of death. America's victory in the Pacific was doing no small part to the valiant contributions of her intrepid fighter pilots.
Robert Vaughn America at War will continue in a moment.
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Robert Vaughn We now return to America at War.
ACES HIGH
Robert Vaughn In World War II, the immutable truth of air combat were reconfirmed that fighter pilots' best tactics were those of the mugger, not the knight. Sneak up unseen and eliminate your foe before he can maneuver. Four out of five kills happen that way. Victory almost always went to the man who spotted his enemy first. Longevity in the air depended as much upon the swivel neck as the machine gun.
Robert Vaughn There were changes from World War I. The big flying circus formations became attacks by groups of two. The wingman system protected you 6 o'clock and still gave full rein to a free-wheeling aggressiveness.
Robert Vaughn Even the bravest learned it was smart to break off after the initial surprise hit. Many aces were successful just by refusing to accept even odds. The best killers were always the best shots. Speed, altitude, and quick thinking were the basic tools. The fighter pilots epitaph of that age was seemed to be, "Here lies an American flyer who ran out of speed, altitude, and ideas."
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Robert Vaughn In Europe, distance was the mortal enemy of the heavy bombers. Because the early fighters lacked the range necessary to escort them deep into Germany . Once the fighters turned back, the Luftwaffe was ordered in for the kill.
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Robert Vaughn The Meschersmitts and Focke-Wulf defend hungrily.
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Robert Vaughn The tide turned with the development of the drop tank for the American fighters. Now, the big Thunderbolts and Lightnings could make deep penetrations with their lumbering charges. Luftwaffe losses begin to mount.
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Robert Vaughn The answer didn't fully arrive until the powerful P-51 Mustangs came on line. As swift, heavily armed and agile as they were, their real advantage was a brilliant arrangement of big, separated, infallibly feeding-gas tanks.
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Robert Vaughn As round trip escort became assured, a blunt new tactic was made possible. Huge concentrated bomber attacks flying day and night were aimed at whittling down the Luftwaffe fighters as much as hitting the targets. German pilots called the skies over Europe, "the fighter graveyard." In two springtime months in 1943 , the Luftwaffe had lost over 5,000 planes and their irreplaceable pilots. The air war appeared blunt. But Germany still had one mighty card left to play.
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Robert Vaughn Their first jet aircraft was ready to fight. The ME-262 was an amazingly effective machine. Lighter, its caption design would feed American engineers for years.
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Robert Vaughn If Hitler had not decreed for too long, that it be developed as a bomber, it might have tipped the balance in the European air war. As it was, the 262's used their blinding speed and heavy armament to rip through the huge bomber streams and wreck havoc. Eventually, they were driven from the sky by the overwhelming presence of the prop-driven American fighters. When World War II ended, the U.S. finally got its own jets into the air. The F-80 Shooting Star ignored much of what the German designs have taught. It retains its straight wing and negated much of the advantage of jet engines should have given the fighter. But the Atom bomb had focused attention on high-altitude bombers. Fighters were given low priority.
Robert Vaughn In 1950 , a new war proved that theories and drawing boards rarely survived the real thing. The air war in Korea at first seemed merely an extension of the one, but it ended so successfully, five years before.
Robert Vaughn When North Koreans failed to appear on the air, American fighters, mostly old Mustangs and Corsairs, took the battle to the enemy on the ground.
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Robert Vaughn At the same time, a venerable drop-driven B29s pounded in from above.
Robert Vaughn At this point, a mid-war change in weaponry occurred. One as profound as the introduction of iron-clad ships in the American Civil War. A study piece of aeronautic genius streaked down from the north and did something the Germans and Japanese never could. It swept a propeller-driven aircraft from the skies.
Robert Vaughn The Mikoyan-Gurevich designed jet put an enduring new word into fighter pilot language, "MiG." It was small, simply made, blindingly fast and maneuverable and built-around devastating cannon.
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Robert Vaughn B29s, Corsairs, and Mustangs melted away. And with them, America's command of the air. But as so often before in the nations past, a single item was on the show, ready to solve the problem. North American Aviation's F-86 Sabre was a high-altitude bomber killer with swept-back wings and six tight-packed 50s in the nose. At first present in only modest numbers, it proved to be more than a match for the speedy MiGs. Eventually, the enemy jet sought safety behind the Chinese border. They would accept battle only sparingly, in a bit of Korean sky that became known as MiG alley. In those actions, American airmen killed the communist jets and their Russian and Chinese pilots had an 11:1 advantage. To this day, the Korean War remains the high tide of American fighters supremacy.
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Robert Vaughn America at War will continue in a moment.
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Robert Vaughn We now return to America at War.
ACES HIGH
Robert Vaughn In the Vietnam War, operational needs gave U.S. fighter planes role that did not thrill their pilots. When the powerful jet engines of planes like the F-105 and the F-4 Phantom could log big bomb loads surpassing those of World War II heavies. The jet fighters were effective in level bombing and even more so, in low-level attack. Their air-to-air roles stood slowly toward the back burner. Still, the powerful jet fighters were expected to continue America's mastery of the air.
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Robert Vaughn A Phantom wasn't compromised, designed to be as much a bomber as a fighter. The new MiGs were pure air fighters. American pilots could do no better than two to one against them in air combat. The U.S. had neglected realistic air-to-air preparation.
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Robert Vaughn This brought about Fighter Weapon Schools like Top Gun at Miramar, California . Here, handpicked aggressive airmen turned themselves into Soviet Squadrons with all their tactics. They simulate no-quarter combat in dozens of surprise attacks and intercepts. Fighter weapons being resharpened. And that goes for equipment in theory too. For years, America has built huge air superiority fighters like the Drummond F-14 Tomcat. The equipment is so complex that a separate human brain is needed in the back seat. The radar intercept officer, a nonflyer operates an electronic laboratory. The equipment can both jam and sense the enemy in the air and on the ground. They can pick up multiple targets and engage in a half a dozen at a time. With missiles, like the heat-seeking Sidewinder and the incredibly sophisticated and expensive Phoenix, a weapon that can find and kill planes at distances above a hundred miles. John Browning's trustee[ph] 50s have been replaced by a six-barrel electric gatling, delivering 20-mm shells at a rate of three thousand rounds per minute. The most sophisticated fighters have computer-controlled swing-wings that extend or retract automatically for maximum performance in every combat situation. Fighters now have their own escorts. Electronic jammers like the Navy's EA-6B Prowler and its crew of four fly along with them to baffle SAM missile ground radars and kill them too. Protecting the old 6 o'clock remains paramount. Modern fighters can release chaff and flares from behind to thwart both radar and infrared warheads. Cost and good sense is squeezing down the fighter size again. The F16 Fighting Falcon is small, single- seat and single-engine. And much more of a fighter than a hulking electronic platform, it is also cheaper, more buildable and more maintainable. Just how effective will the newest United States weapons be? Well, on the two occasions when Russian-built jets were sent against U.S. fighters in the Mediterranean, they were flamed with ease.
Robert Vaughn Fighters have reached the point where the pilot is the limiting piece of equipment. With Mach 4 speeds possible, Mach 1.8 is presently all that today's jet pilot can withstand in a turn. Beyond that, G forces can render him unconscious.
Robert Vaughn Even the human brain boggles as fighter pilots turn off their blurring array of warning lights and buzzers before entering combat.
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Robert Vaughn Deservedly, the American fighter jock is more of a national hero than ever. Of all the weapons in the U.S. arsenal, no one seriously suggest the end of fighter development.
Robert Vaughn The fighter plane, it seems, is as enduring and popular a symbol of indominatable American spirit as the stars and stripes.
AMERICA AT WAR assistant directors BILL BRAGDON LYNN KLUGMAN video editor WILL KELLY music editor MICHAEL SAHL sound mixer RICHARD WEIGLE sound effects DANIEL WHELAN sound editor MARK D'AURIA projectionist GEORGE HOWARD video post-production OPTIMEDIA SYSTEMS audio post-production ROSS GAFFNEY ultimate production IPC STUDIOS graphic design CHARLES FIFER DIANE DEPOALIS assistant to the executive producer SCOTT REDA production assistant MICHAEL AUGUSTINE film tape sources DEPT. OF DEFENSE, U.S. GOVT ARCHIVES U.S. ARMY U.S. NAVY U.S. MARINES U.S. AIR FORCE U.S. COAST GUARD GRUMMAN CORP. CONVAIR ELECTRIC BOAT DIVISIONS, GENERAL DYNAMICS BELL AEROSPACE BELL HELICOPTER MARINE SYSTEMS DIVS. OF TEXTRON, INC. AMERICAN HELICOPTER SOCIETY E.N. INDUSTRIES U.S.S. YORKTOWN U.S.S. CLAMAGORE U.S.S. LAFFEY PATRIOTS POINT, SC U.S.S. MASSACHUSETTS FALL RIVER, MA U.S.S. NORTH CAROLINA WILMINGTON, NC A LOU REDA PRODUCTION © 1990 in association with THE ARTS ENTERTAINMENT NETWORK THIS HAS BEEN A PRESENTATION OF H THE HISTORY CHANNEL
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