To go with this episode, Black Week article from WW2 Museum:
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/black-week-darkest-days-us-army-air-forces

How long did ground crews typically have to make repairs and turnaround damaged B-17s before the next mission?

Probably depended on the damage. Flak/bullet holes could be patched very very quickly. They'd use anything they could find, including C-Ration cans.

Larger damage would take time and those bombers were out of action till they were repaired. If it was too far gone, it became a donor to other planes

Cool interview. Rosie Rosenthal's grandson was an actor in the series.

I saw heard/that. Kind of feel they missed a chance by not having him play his grandfather.

Yes it was.

If I remember correctly, the Brits had special navigation squadrons who would fly in ahead of the main bombers and drop flares or incendiaries to mark the location. The Germans figured out that they could light fires away from targets and cause some crews to drop bombs in the wrong area.

Sazerac said:

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Stop

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Stop what?

Do any of you know where I can find military records for free? Everything I've found googling is all a pay site.

This show has peeked my interest in learning more about my Great Great Uncle and his time over there. I know he made it 25 missions in a B-25 (I believe) and came home.

I'm curious about the technique used by that last pilot. Did that really happen? I assume it's because the plane was vulnerable from the front and that it was a lot easier to kill an enemy fighter when it's delta V was small and you can turn your rear guns while he has to turn his entire plane.

The "We Have Ways of Making you Talk" just did an 8 part series on the 8th AF. They mentioned that there was an early type of ground radar H2X used by Americans and another version by the Brits by late 1943. Interesting stuff.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H2X

Sign up for the free trial of fold 3 then cancel it before your week is done. Great site.

JABQ04 said:

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Sign up for the free trial of fold 3 then cancel it before your week is done. Great site.

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Thanks! Found some info on there!

Hey Nav said:

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Seems like a good time for a quote from Stephen Ambrose's "The Wild Blue" . Applicable sentences are in the middle paragraph on the page.

My compliments to all the Navigators that led the way about 4 decades before my time.

Trying to research how they did their jobs without a ground mapping radar - and how the British Lancasters did the same at night …

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Trying to research how they did their jobs without a ground mapping radar - and how the British Lancasters did the same at night …

Dead reckoning. They still taught it when I went through nav school in 1996. I hated the nav log and the dreaded 6 minute DR, alter heading.

I will say, this episode was the first one that they added something that didn't happen, at least on this particular mission. Lt. "Bubbles" Payne didn't fly on the mission to Munster. He did get killed on a mission with a crew in April 1944. I think they just moved this around to add to the emotional impact and the fact that the show is only 9 episodes.

That reminds me of the astrodome, the bubble in the aircraft that allows for celestial navigation. The navigator could take readings and determine location the same way they do on ships.

https://www.ima-usa.com/products/original-u-s-wwii-boeing-b-17-flying-fortress-navigator-astrodome?variant=40617705046085

Thanks for that link about the H2X. It would be incredibly non-precision. It could be pretty helpful to identify high contrast markers such as a coastline or big lake. A large city would just be a round blob.

My first operational experience was with the AN/APN 59, which was in most C-130s built in the early 60s. It was helpful with thunderstorm avoidance (but nothing like a modern color radar).

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Dead reckoning. They still taught it when I went through nav school in 1996. I hated the nav log and the dreaded 6 minute DR, alter heading.

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Trying not to derail the thread, folks, but I find this topic to be of much interest. I knew at least one B-17 Navigator - who has since passed on into the Wild Blue Yonder, and hopefully is labeled a "select lead" and "tailwind" Nav.

I'm a Class of '80, so I went through UNT at Mather. I reckon you went elsewhere - and they had quit teaching celestial by then.

When you're on a plane headed 10 hours into nothing but blue Pacific waters, and in the days before INS or GPS - just DR and a sextant, the rest of the crew treated you like a Golden God, at least until they got close to a NavAid that locked on :-)

Am not familiar with your "the dreaded 6 minute DR , alter heading" comment.

To BBRex - cel is not very practical over land on a short route into Germany. It's pretty much impossible for a wingman. You need a very level aircraft with no heading or airspeed changes for accurate readings. In daytime, you'd only get one line of position from the Sun, and if you were lucky, another line from the Moon, hopefully at a much different angle than the Sun.

Don't want to continue to derail, but there is a great book by the same name. It's about the pilots who flew the P-38 mission to intercept Yamamoto.

I'm jealous. Buddy of mine got to go up in one several years ago. Makes me wonder what they did with the sets they built to film this show. I believe they built 2 of their own for filming.

Would be great to see those get donated to a museum somewhere to allow folks to get inside the ships

Another brilliant episode. I'm also of the leaning that this is gonna be right up there with BoB for me. So well executed. Not a lot of shows have me that tensed up and feeling punched in the gut afterward. I'd seriously give anything if I could be watching each of these in an actual theater.

Watched this episode twice last night. Letting my 12 y/o son watch them so I screen them (really just for sex and nudity). This is a terrific series. I just wish I went in to it not knowing anything about the 8th AF and the air war over Germany like I did going in blind with the BoB story.

That was another great episode. They have done an excellent job of portraying the brutality of this facet of the war (I expected nothing less, given BoB and The Pacific).

The main title musical theme in this series is really starting to grow on me., although I do find it odd how they choose to place the main titles with a long pre-title sequence. That's a minor gripe.