- 1941.
Nazi Germany dominates continental Europe.
It is vital to destroy the military power
of the Nazi dictatorship
and the industrial strength that sustains it.
- We needed an aircraft that was going to be able to go
basically behind enemy lines and destroy their supply lines.
- There was only one way
to strike directly at the brutal regime.
- Bomber Command took over and started
taking the fight to the enemy.
And it was the hard way.
- One aircraft has come to represent
the courage and determination of all who flew
and fought in a deadly, relentless aerial battle.
- As an aircraft it was ahead of its time.
It was more of a person than an aircraft.
- It was a powerful machine.
- Its aggressive capability
would play a major role in the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Its specialized missions would
become part of aviation history.
This is the story of the outstanding
heavy bomber of World War II, the Lancaster,
told by the men who flew her.
As they have done many times before in the long
and deadly war against Nazi Germany,
aircrew of Bomber Command gather for the briefings
that will detail their targets for the night.
- We went into the briefing room,
and there was always a huge map of Europe
at the end with tapes on it where the target was.
- I decided I didn't want to be called up,
because that would mean the army,
and I wasn't really a suitable physical man to go
into the army, so I volunteered to go into air crew.
- I tried to be a pilot, and I was told there was
a waiting list of one year, why not be an air observer.
In other words, to become a navigator.
- Most guys wanted to be pilots in those days.
Most of our fathers discuss, because he went through
World War I as a driver, and he did want me to fly.
- I went to Rhodesia to train as a pilot,
and then I got a dose of malaria.
And I was scrubbed off the course.
So I went down to South Africa to train as a bomb aimer.
- By the time, 1943, the losses of gunners were so high
that they said no, you can't become a wireless operator,
you'll have to be a gunner.
And so I became a gunner.
- After a number of training places in England,
I was taught to fly in the United States
in the Army Air Corps there.
- We had to learn the RAF way after we got back.
- For air crew, the price paid
in the fight for freedom is a grimly personal statistic.
- My own squadron numerically was wiped out twice
during the period I operated.
- Because none of us really expected to finish a tour,
especially when you're getting towards the end,
you felt now, am I going to finish it or not?
- It takes a particular kind of courage
to climb aboard an aircraft, fully aware of the growing
losses amongst aircraft and crews,
the slim chance of surviving.
- We met a crew and they were all excited,
they were gonna do their first operation.
And we said oh, good luck to them, and that was the last
anybody ever heard of them, they just disappeared.
- The word last comes in many, many times in preparation,
because you've written your last letter, possibly.
You had possibly your last meal,
and you've had your last cigarette.
- And yet night after night,
airmen, every one of them a volunteer,
will make the long flight through hostile skies
determined to smash the Nazi war effort.
- This was something we had to achieve to wipe out
as much of the enemy's industry
and occupy as many people defending Germany as was possible.
- In the counter-attack against Nazi aggression,
the Avro Lancaster and the men who fly her
will become the mainstay of Britain's Bomber Command.
It will fly the greatest number of sorties, and deliver
a greater tonnage of bombs than any other aircraft.
Bomber Command entered the war equipped with twin engine
aircraft that are no match for the enemy they would face.
Hitler's armies, aided by the Luftwaffe,
sweep across the low countries and into France.
The men and machines of Bomber Command join the fight
to disrupt the advance.
It becomes a losing battle.
- The Blenheims during the day were sitting ducks
to the single engine fighters.
The Blenheims on the battles of course,
they were the main casualties in the Battle of France.
Where they will be shot down, well,
complete squadrons were shot down sometimes.
- Faced with the demands of modern warfare,
these aircraft, with basic equipment and limited range,
are completely inadequate for the task demanded of them.
- On the 17th of May, 1940,
12 planes were sent to a place called Gembloux.
How many aircraft of those 12 do you think we lost?
The lot.
All 12.
- Hard lessons are being learned, at great cost.
- We are sitting ducks.
Fairey Battle squadrons, Handley Page Hampden squadrons,
Whitley squadrons, and Blenheim squadrons
in 1940 were almost decimated.
- At Dunkirk, British forces
are evacuated from France.
Britain and her commonwealth stand alone.
Only Bomber Command can carry the fight
back to the Nazi homeland.
- Where we were backed against a wall, and going to
take back, and going to push Hitler off his couch.
- Lacking equipment and instruments
capable of precision navigation and targeting,
only one in three aircraft succeeds
in getting within five miles of its target.
50% of bombs fall in open countryside.
- A map read isn't all that easy, you know.
Particularly if you're traveling at about 180 miles an hour.
That's three miles a minute, and if you're 20 seconds
in thinking, scratching your backside,
you know you've gone a long way off track.
- 169 aircraft set off to raid Berlin.
Fewer than half reached the target.
Very few bombs actually fall upon the Nazi capital.
Nine are killed and 32 injured on the ground.
120 air crew die on this operation.
And Britain itself has come under savage aerial attack.
- They started bombing out open cities.
Not only London, Coventry, Plymouth,
Manchester, and various others.
- In the course of the war
over 43,000 civilians are killed and many more
seriously injured in German bombing raids on Britain.
The ruthless nature of the Nazi war machine generates
a loathing of the Fuhrer and all he stands for.
- What do you think about us going over
to Berlin and doing the same to them?
- I should think so, too.
Bit worse than this, I hope, with a wicked bugger back east.
- Bomb 'em tenfold.
I'm sorry for the women and children of Berlin,
but what about the women and children of this country?
- Well, if I was a man I'd go over there
and I'd give them the same as what they gave us here.
- There became an urgent need for aircraft
powerful enough to cross the inhospitable skies of occupied
Europe, and strike hard at the heart of the Third Reich.
A new generation of warplane is developed.
The four engine heavy bomber.
They are the Sterling, the Halifax, and the aircraft that
will be described as the finest bomber of World War II,
the Avro Lancaster.
- We shall not fail or falter.
We shall not weaken or tire.
Give us the tools and we will finish the job.
- The Avro Lancaster will become part of Bomber
Command's effort to destroy the Nazi industrial might.
It will play the major role in this operation.
But its origins lay in another, far less successful design.
Three years before the outbreak of war,
Roy Chadwick, Avro's chief designer, responds to an air
ministry specification for a twin engine medium bomber,
powered by two Rolls Royce Vulture engines.
The first prototype of this aircraft, the Avro Manchester,
flies on the 25th of July, 1939.
Problems are immediately obvious.
The Vulture engines lack power,
and there are handling problems while in flight.
However, when war breaks out six weeks later,
the Manchester bomber is rushed into service.
But the Vulture engines are prone to bearing failures
and overheating, causing fires.
In spite of modifications, the Manchester continues
to suffer numerous problems
affecting its performance and reliability.
- The Manchester was greatly underpowered and quite useless.
- At Avro, Chadwick and his team of designers
are already planning to develop the Manchester
into a potent four engine bomber
with a highly successful Rolls Royce Merlin engine
replacing the unreliable Vulture.
- Roy Chadwick added another four foot, 6-1/2 inches
on each wing span that made it a four engine job,
and that was absolutely ideal.
- Here the propellor is being introduced to the
airplane of which in the future it will be an integral part.
- Known as the Merlin Manchester,
or Manchester Mark III for security reasons,
it is named unofficially the Lancaster by its design team.
The Manchester's wing span of 90 feet
is extended to accommodate the extra engines.
This increase in the wing area also improves
the new aircraft's takeoff performance.
The flying prototypes of the new aircraft
are an immediate success.
- As an aircraft it was ahead of its time.
- Technologically it was a fantastic aircraft,
and also she had a sort of character of her own, you know.
- And the name that would
become legend is now official.
The Lancaster Mark I is ordered into full production.
- She was a beauty.
There's no doubt about it.
Roy Chadwick designed a really tip top aircraft there.
- It wasn't designed for comfort.
Basically it's a metal tube with a main spar
to support the wings and the engines,
and then it has miles of cables, electronic equipment.
- The Lancaster will acquire
the Manchester's most singular feature.
A spacious and unobstructed bomb bay.
- A typical bomb load would be either 15 1,000 pounders,
or a cookie and cans, which was a 4,000 pounder
and 12 cans of incendiaries.
- Americans couldn't carry the bomb load
that the Lancaster could.
- As 1941 draws to a close,
the Avro Lancaster enters operational service.
And Bomber Command gains a new commander.
The single-minded, uncompromising
air chief marshal Arthur Harris.
- The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish
delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else.
They serve the wind, and now
they are going to reap the whirlwind.
- In the aerial battle to defeat Nazi Germany,
the gloves are about to come off.
The gathering strength of Bomber Command
will be used to wreck the centers of German war production,
shattering the confidence of munitions workers,
forcing them to abandon their factories.
- The civil population of Germany
have however an easy way to escape from these severities.
Abandon their work, and go out into the field,
and watch their home fires burning from a distance.
- The Lancaster makes
its first operational sortie.
It is an unremarkable debut for such a remarkable aircraft.
As four Lancasters from 44 squadron
take part in a night operation,
sowing anti-shipping mines off the German coast.
The first operational bombing mission
for the Avro Lancaster comes seven days later.
Two Lancasters join the force of 124 other aircraft
in a night raid on the German city of Essen.
Four aircraft are lost during the raid.
On the ground, very little damage is done
to a city that is home to many major munitions factories.
Increasing numbers of Lancasters are now joining
the squadrons of Bomber Command.
And pilots converting from more familiar aircraft
are quick to appreciate the Lancaster's flying qualities.
- The Lanc was such a different aircraft.
It was much lighter, much more positive in its reaction
to control, and it handled quite, quite beautifully.
- A force of 12 Lancasters embark
on a daring daylight raid deep into Germany.
Accurate navigation and precision bombing are essential.
It is a round trip of 1,250 miles
to the Bavarian city of Augsburg.
Flying at low level, they are confronted by enemy fighters
and a hail of anti-aircraft fire
as they battle their way to the town.
The factory producing diesel engines
for the German U-boat fleet.
In spite of losses, eight Lancasters make it through
the barrage to deliver their bombs precisely on target.
Of the 12 Lancasters taking part in the raid,
only five badly damaged aircraft return.
49 air crew are missing.
Squadron leader John Mettleton, who five weeks earlier
had lead the first operational flight made by Lancasters,
wins the Victoria Cross for his part in the operation
and becomes a national celebrity,
touring factories in Britain, addressing the workers.
- Well I do thank you very much indeed.
It is rather most important that we do blast these Germans.
And so.
But the more you give us, the more we'll do.
- Production of submarine engines
at the Augsburg factory is halted.
But the plant is back in operation within several weeks.
Such losses for so little result were unacceptable.
If Bomber Command is to remain in the war,
it has no other alternative but to fight by night.
- There was no other way we could do it.
People thought, well why didn't you bomb in daylight?
Completely useless, we'd all be shot down.
Why didn't you do precision bombing?
Completely useless, we hadn't got the equipment
to do precision bombing at nighttime.
- If you had 15 bombs,
and you release them at half a second intervals,
it would take 7.5 seconds from
the first bomb to the last bomb.
- Bombs away.
There goes the cookie.
- So how far would a Lanc fly in 7.5 seconds?
Quite a distance between the first bomb and the last bomb,
so that's why quite a number of bombs
actually missed their target.
- The industrial Ruhr district produces
80% of Germany's coal supplies and 75% of her steel.
This network of war industries is clustered
in and around Germany's major cities.
German defenses are concentrated around these centers,
creating a barrier of shells, high explosives,
and night fighters guided by probing searchlights
and the electronic gaze of radar.
- Searchlights could be a problem,
and they had what was known as a master searchlight,
which was a blue searchlight which suddenly
latched onto you and was radar controlled,
and you couldn't budge it.
- The airmen of Bomber Command would confront
the increasing strength of these defenses.
As Air Marshal Harris intensifies the aerial
bombardment of the Third Reich.
- Cologne, Lubeck, Wesel, those are only just the beginning.
But for the Nazis, the writing is on the wall.
- 73 Lancasters take part
in the largest raid of the war to date.
A total of 1,047 aircraft strike at the city of Cologne.
- That's not on your mind.
Your mind is on the job you're paid to do.
- 41 aircraft are lost.
In Cologne, production is halted at 36 major factories.
70 others have their output reduced by half.
Within a month production is back to normal
in the damaged city.
Arthur Harris intends Bomber Command to become
a war-winning weapon of devastating power.
He resolves to strike harder
and repeatedly at the enemy's resources.
- In your hands lie the means of destroying
a major part of the resources by which
the enemy's war effort is maintained.
Let him have it right on the chin.
- Hitler's dream of total victory
has not been realized.
He demands a huge expansion and output
from the German war industry.
Bomber Command is about to be tested
in the shadows of night and the fires of war.
The head of Britain's bomber force is a staunch advocate
of his command's ability to shorten the war.
- There are a lot of people who say
that bombing can never win a war.
Well, my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet,
and we shall see.
- Bomber Command air crew are aware of the
crucial role they play in crippling the German war effort,
and the high cost involved.
- On one side, you wanted to go and get this extra
flight behind you towards your 30.
On the other hand you,
you didn't want to go because you were bloody scared
and you knew the circumstances and the possibilities.
- The moment you entered the briefing room
and you look at the board, which is gonna be unveiled
and revealed as ribbon, you straight away goes to
the point where the ribbon starts to come down,
and so you know that that point is where the target is.
Every crew member had a job to do of its own.
And every crew member relied on the other,
whether it was a pilot or the gunner,
they knew that if you didn't do your job right
their lives would be at risk.
- Everybody is important to each other,
or to everybody else.
It is teamwork that counts.
- You live or die by the support of the rest of your mates.
- The Avro Lancaster carries crew of seven.
Young airmen whose average age was 22.
- The old man of the crew was a mid upper gunner,
and he was 29, which we all thought was rather old.
- All right chaps.
- The rest of us were in our early 20's.
And of course some were younger than that, on other crews.
- The bomb aimer's position is in
the Plexiglass blister at the nose of the aircraft.
Behind and below the pilot and flight engineer
are the radio operator and navigator.
- I was behind my screen doing calculations,
and I was so occupied that I really was in a position
to almost shut out what was going on outside.
- And if you're running late, you'd try and speed up a bit.
So the navigator worked out all those sorts of problems.
My flight engineer hated having to increase the revs
to speed up, it mucked up his fuel consumption.
And he prided himself on getting 1.1 miles to the gallon
out of a Lanc .
- The wireless operator's position
is close to the Lancaster's cabin heater,
and while the temperature at 20,000 feet in the night sky
could drop to minus 40 degrees, his position
by the heater is a dubious advantage.
- The utility was only about two inches from me.
And of course it was burning me like buggery.
So down there was the open gangway,
and of course nothing to obstruct anything
except cold air coming in from various holes
all over the place, so you've got cold air,
freezing air blowing down there.
You've got a burn going on down there,
so the wireless operator, you're sitting something like this
because you've been burned like over there,
and it's frozen there.
- Far back in the fuselage,
separated from the rest of the crew
are the mid upper and the rear gunner positions.
Of the two, the rear gunner is the most isolated.
He crouches behind four Browning machine guns,
exposed to the elements as well as the gunfire
of stalking night fighters.
- You're at the very, very end of the aircraft.
You're suspended, if you like, in mid air.
- It is hard to imagine the reality
of the rear gunner's situation in a space so cramped
he is unable to wear his parachute.
Faced with the prospect of being trapped in a disabled
turret, unable to escape as his crippled aircraft plunges
from the sky, it is the most vulnerable of vocations.
- That's what the enemy aircraft
would try and get rid of first.
So it was, the word we used in those days was pretty dicey.
Pretty dicey.
- Once the targets of the night have been
decided by Bomber Command headquarters,
they are passed to the squadrons.
The air fields become a hive of activity
as they prepare for another operation
in the unrelenting relentless battle.
The aircraft are fueled and bombed up,
final meals eaten, parachutes are issued.
- And the WAF girl who would issue the parachute
always had the standard joke,
bring it back if it doesn't work, you know.
- You always had the feel that the ground crew,
it was their aircraft and they were only lending it to us
to go and do a job.
- We couldn't take off without them.
We couldn't fly without them.
They were the boys who were 100% necessary.
- Not enough praise was given to ground crew.
They were, they were absolutely A one.
- With aircraft waiting, fueled, and armed,
there's a moment before the crews climb aboard.
For some, this is the moment of greatest anxiety.
- You had had your briefing,
you know what you're going to do, and we assembled
outside our aircraft waiting for the time to go.
And then the nerves are tight, and we didn't want to talk,
and we all hated it.
It was a very unhappy time, 'til we got on the aircraft.
- With the sun sinking over their bases,
the crews board the aircraft.
Engines burst into life.
- Waiting for the green light to take off,
and you whip the inner engines to the gate,
and the aircraft are still on the chocks, on the brakes,
and screaming, pulling, pulling again.
- As you're opening the throttles,
the flight engineer has got his hand behind them
helping you to push them fully open.
- And you really got to get the throttles fully open,
and it's a very heavy aircraft to lift off the ground.
- There's an awful lot of power in the four engines,
but there wasn't much problem controlling all those.
- And the roar of the planes is something
I just can't explain over here.
It's absolutely fantastic, the power,
and racing along the runway,
fighting against the force of gravity,
straining, straining, straining, and you're wondering
whether you'll ever get off at the end of the runway,
and then before the end of the runway, ,
and you'd be up like a lift going up.
- What do you got in front of you?
- What's your high?
I'm watching everything.
- Okay.
- Good luck to them all.
To the team that has done its job,
to the team that is again on the job.
- Hundreds of aircraft rendezvous
at assembly points high above the coastline of East Anglia,
where pilots set a course for their targets
as shadows close in around them.
They fly towards a formidable air defense system.
Almost a million men serve in Germany's air defense network.
Another million and a half are engaged
in air raid precautions and damage repair.
There are over 150,000 anti-aircraft guns
defending Germany's cities and industries.
To overcome the fury of the enemy defenses,
new tactics have been introduced.
Formations of bombers no longer make
their separate ways to the target.
All aircraft now fly on the same heading,
with only height and split-second timing separating them.
- The bomber stream was probably a mile wide,
half a mile deep.
- You're probably 700 or 800 bombers
all heading for the same place.
- The idea was for us all to
keep together as well as possible.
And in the stream, I mean it was a start.
Hitting other people's slip streams, started merging about.
- It is hoped the enemy defenses will be
overwhelmed by this concentrated mass of aircraft.
It is a dangerous tactic.
- And it was an air traffic control officer nightmare,
the whole thing.
- Both the bomb aimer and the wireless operator
yelled at me that there was an aircraft
approaching us on the port side.
And I just caught a glimpse of it, it was another Lancaster.
I heave back on my control column and climbed,
and he must have pushed forward on his and dived.
We were so close that I could see his instrument panel,
like glow, as he went underneath us,
and the rear gunner said he shook hands
with the other rear gunner as they went past.
- The Nazi warlords, stunned by the weight
of the attacks on their cities, reorganized their defenses.
Night fighters are no longer directed
onto individual targets by ground controllers.
Instead, they wait over the target cities
for the bomber stream to come to them.
They dive down into their own anti-aircraft fire to pick
off bombers, now silhouetted against the fires below.
Lancasters and their bombing men fly straight and level,
and make easy targets.
- We suddenly saw another Lancaster burst into flames,
and I can remember to this day, Leo the skipper
shouting at us, concentrate, it could be us next.
- In this savage battle, losses are mounting.
11,300 air crew have been killed
during the first three years of the war.
More than 12,000 will die in the fourth year alone.
The cloak of darkness that should shield the bombers
is no longer working.
The battle in the shadows is about to reach
a new and savage ferocity.
The commanders of the Allied bombing squadrons
have been tasked with the destruction and dislocation
of the German military, industrial, and economic system.
Aircraft are now equipped with a variety of electronic
devices developed to baffle and confuse the enemy defenses.
One of them is surprisingly simple.
Window is the code name given to thousands of strips
of aluminum foil cut to an exact length.
Held from the aircraft and fluttering slowly to the ground,
this metallic cloud reflects radar
and swamps the air defense screens.
- Their screens just went blank, covered with mush.
- To begin with, it was amazingly effective,
but the more it was used, the less effective it became.
- As each new development is countered
by the enemy, the pilots and crews still have to
fly into the same cauldron of fire and flame.
- You could see the target some time before you arrived.
And you think well, just hope you get through.
- They used to say that they chucked up
everything except the kitchen sink.
- Searchlights pierce the night sky,
seeking targets for the guns to finish off.
- And I immediately got coned by search lights.
Now coning is an experience and it's not to be forgotten.
I had to throw the aircraft around in all sorts
of different ways to try and get out of it,
and all the time they were shooting at me.
- So we opened up full speed, put the nose down,
and we got nearly up to 400 miles an hour,
which was far in excess of what
the Lancaster should normally do.
- All too often, the desperate attempts
to evade the deadly beam failed.
As the Lancasters reached the target,
evasion becomes impossible.
The aircraft has to fly straight and level.
- All you concentrate on, I must get it plumb in
those marshaling yards, I must get it smack on that factory.
This is what you aim for.
- Okay, steady.
Pull up a little bit.
- The whole crew was saying, for god's sake,
drop the bomb, let's get out of here.
- Two, three.
- And then you'd hear the two magic words.
- Bombs away.
- But even then, there could be no relaxing
of desperate vigilance.
- That's just when we know,
that's when the fear kicks in,
'cause you're not expecting it.
- If you didn't see him, it was curtains,
because with his firepower you were just blown away.
- Keep your eyes open, mid upper.
- You could imagine a direct hit on a bombed up Lancaster.
- When the fighters are spotted, the sturdy
Lancaster is capable of surprising maneuverability.
- A German night fighter came head on to us.
The flight engineer warned, sorry, the skipper, sorry,
almost at the same time.
And your shout call tripled.
- You descend at a high speed, and then you heave back
and swing the aircraft right over the other way,
and climb out as you can go,
and everything's going flat out.
- You lose complete orientation.
The G force is so tremendous
that you're pinned to your turret.
- Many damaged aircraft
will never make it back to their bases.
Pilots will nurse their injured machines over the miles
to fail moments from home.
- All around us saw horrible things were happening.
Two of our aircraft at about 700 feet collided
over the end of the air field, just off the air field.
And wiped out most of the crew.
and another aircraft flew into the ground.
- 19 Lancasters of 617 squadron
carry out Operation Chastise,
the attack on the dams of the Ruhr valley.
Specially modified Lancasters carry the bouncing bombs
developed by Barnes Wallis.
Huge 9,250 pound mines packed with high explosive
designed to rotate, skip across the surface of the water
in front of the dams, and settle hard
against their walls before exploding.
Using VHF radio, Guy Gibson, the leader of the raid,
maintains direct contact with all his aircraft,
guiding them to the target, correcting their bomb runs.
It is the first use of the master bomber technique.
It is a technique that will be adopted by
a new target finding and fixing force.
Fitted with the latest navigational equipment
and trained intensively in precision bombing,
the pathfinder force will be the first over the target,
marking the precise aiming points.
- When they got to the target they put down their markers,
which we could see, and we would bomb their markers.
- D-day.
The Allied armies land on Normandy beaches.
The main bombing effort is now focused on devastating
the defenses facing the advancing Allied armies.
Lancasters are the only aircraft capable of carrying
the huge, 21 foot long, 12,000 pound Tallboy bomb,
and the even more massive Grand Slam 22,000 pound bomb,
both created by Barnes Wallis.
Reinforced block houses, submarine pens, viaducts,
railway tunnels, launch sites of the V-1 and V-2 rockets,
even the German battleship Tirpitz sheltering
in a Norwegian fjord, all are targets for Lancasters
modified to carry the huge earthquake bombs.
They bomb with precision,
hitting their targets hard and accurately.
Operation Thunderclap.
796 Lancasters formed the main strike force
targeting the German city of Dresden,
classified as a major rail and communications center.
To the air crew of Bomber Command,
it is another long and dangerous mission.
- it was just a case of, there was a job to be done,
and you do it to the best of your ability,
and you hope that,
that every little bit that you do shortens the war
that little extra bit, that little bit.
- War is war, inevitably people are going to get killed, the
same as they got killed in London, Coventry, anywhere else.
- It was a raid that will cause
a controversy that endures today.
The intensity of the bombing and conditions on the ground
combine to create a fire storm.
- It was just Dante's inferno
for the people on the ground.
- The bombing of Dresden will focus attention
on the civilian casualties caused by Allied bombing.
There will be claims and counter claims
as to the importance of Dresden as a military target.
Sir Arthur Harris will be held
responsible for ordering the raid.
It will taint his reputation for years to come.
But the reasons for this particular raid
are varied and controversial.
- I personally went to see Butch Harris after the war,
and I spoke to him, he told me, said that
he personally did not want to bomb Dresden.
He said it was too far for too little.
- The war continues as Hitler clings to power.
With callous disregard for the suffering of his people
he declares if the war is lost, the nation will also perish.
Their fate is inevitable.
There is no necessity to take into consideration
the basis on which the people will need to continue.
With 55 squadrons now equipped with the Lancaster,
it has become the principle aircraft of Bomber Command.
They continue to pound targets in Germany as the Allies
fight their way into the heart of the Third Reich.
In sudden contrast to their usual role, Lancasters are given
a humanitarian mission, Operation Manna.
- A couple of months before the war finished,
and there we were faced with something totally different
from our normal job.
The Dutch, particularly in the western
part of Holland, were starving.
- A week before we'd been bombing Bremen at 18,000 feet.
And here we were now on a mercy flight,
pushing all these different types of food,
powdered eggs, chocolates, all sorts of things,
pushing 'em out the bomb bay.
- 31 Lancaster squadrons take part
in Operation Manna, flying over 3,000 sorties in nine days.
- There was a big white cross in a field,
that was our drop-in zone.
But as you flew across the town,
thousands and thousands of people in the streets
and the fields, hanging out the windows,
on top of the roofs, and they were all waving at you.
- I shall never forget the sight in my life.
They had gone up to every roof, every top,
and they had got pillow slips
and white blankets, and so on,
and they spelled out on the rooftop, god bless you.
There were tears in our eyes, I can tell you that.
- And the last trip we did, we just got across the sea
at noontime, and we heard on the RT Mr. Churchill
announcing the official end of the war.
- Signed the act of unconditional surrender
of all German land, sea, and air forces in Europe.
Long live the cause of freedom.
- The European war is over.
Lancasters assist in the homecoming
of Allied prisoners of war.
- There was Operation Exodus, which was a repatriation job.
- These British prisoners of war,
some of whom have been in enemy hands for five years,
are on their way home by air.
- Seeing those guys faces thinking they were
gonna be home for their first Christmas.
- Of a total of 7,377 Lancasters built,
some three and a half thousand are lost on operations.
- We gave our services for the peace of this country.
- It is an aircraft that will be forever
associated with the men of Bomber Command.
- Well, every time an aircraft didn't come back,
that was seven people.
- We played a part in bringing the war
to a swifter end.
- Of the 125,000 aircrew who served
in Bomber Command during the war,
73,000 became casualties.
55,573 of them killed performing their duty.
It was the highest loss rate of any of
the British armed forces in the second world war.
- The Lancaster fought a war for,
oh, 1942 right through to 1945
as the main aggressive side of our war effort.
- Their controversial commander would pay tribute
to the men who flew and fought in the battle.
There is no parallel in warfare to such courage
and determination in the face of danger
over so prolonged a period.
Such devotion must never be forgotten.
- Hip hip.
- Hurray!
Hurray!