MEMPHIS BELLE

from the Library of Congress in Washington DC [Music] this is a battlefront a battlefront like no other in the long history of mankind's Wars this is an air front [Music] the Working Day begins as it will end with the ground crews as much a part of the fortress as her wings if you're a mechanic you've got your own bomber you get attached to it but you know when your ship goes out on a mission you may never see it again so you do your work as well as it can be done perfectly because you wouldn't want anything to go wrong that would be your fault [Music] today the bombs will be taken from these bomb dumps somewhere in England and delivered to specific points in Vilhelm southern Germany [Music] to deliver them is the job of the eighth bomber command just a hauling job yet one of the most difficult and complicated of military operations [Music] general-purpose demolition bombs impact velocity as high as 750 miles an hour pierce five inches of armor plate destroy a factory briefing at a 800 pilots bomba Diaz and navigators take their places the group commander Colonel Stanley Ray steps up to the target map and for the first time you learn where you're going sometimes your face turns white when you find out sometimes the feeling you won't come back tightens your insides not so long ago you were sitting like this in a college or high school classroom not listening too hard perhaps even a little sleepy but you listen here and as you listen you don't have time to think of yourself fear fades you concentrate on the mission type of formation assembly point zero our route to target whether enemy fighters enemy flak route back home if forced down in enemy territory destroy equipment if taken prisoner give no information name rank and serial number that's all [Music] these are the passengers with one-way tickets and this is the crew of the Memphis Belle 324 squadron 91st heavy bombardment broke just one plane and one crew in one squadron in one group of one wing of one air force out of fifteen United States Army Air Forces well fellas we've never had an easy ride over there yet and today won't be any different no escort except unfriendly so keep your eyes peeled don't get excited and yell when you're talking on the intercom save your ammunition and make your shots count let me know what goes on back there Quinlan yes sir stay on the ball gang and she'll bring us back like she's always done okay let's go [Music] they have completed 24 missions in this the toughest theater of air war the big League of sky fighting their experience is priceless and so if the Memphis Belle comes back this afternoon they will be sent to bring the vital lessons they have learned to thousands of aircrew men in training at home home is America [Music] this is a battlefront like no other in this or any war no monster armies no booming cannon only the roaring engine sound of the bummers pounding through the quiet English countryside this is an air front [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the wheels of the memphis belle leave the soil of england for the 25th time the friendless soil of England with its bordered farms and rural Hamlet's its Country Estates surrounded by formal gardens and well-kept parks the England these Americans knew only from the classics they had to read in school the England of the towns and cities whose people have defended their islands freedom for over a thousand years but today their countryside has changed today their island has been converted into a gigantic bomber field a super aircraft carrier anchored off the shores of fortress Europe with hangars and machine shops with hundreds of dispersal points perimeter tracks and concrete runways this is England in its fifth year of war and this is the new battlefront the air front from which we seek out the enemy not as infantry or as artillery not his Panzer divisions but the greater menace the industrial heart of his nation the foundation on which the Nazi Empire and its army stand the power behind the German lust for conquest the steel mills and refineries shipyards and submarine pens factories and munitions plants tin points on the map of Europe which mean rubber guns ball bearings shells engines planes tanks targets targets to be destroyed and these are the Destroyers each with a belly full of bombs and ten men like the crew of the Memphis Belle pilot Captain Robert Morgan industrial engineer from Asheville North Carolina he's flown this ship across the Atlantic the other pilot captain Jim Vorenus Business Administration student at the University of Connecticut radio operator in Ghana sergeant Bob Hansen construction worker from Spokane Washington navigator captain Chuck blatant chemistry student at Ohio Wesleyan engineer and top turret gunner sergeant Harold Locke from Green Bay Wisconsin used to be a stevedore besides keeping the bill in order he covers the sky above tail gunner sergeant John Quinlan of Yonkers New York lurked for a carpet company but he quit December 8th 1941 ball turret gunner sergeant Cecil Scott Firstman for a rubber company in Rahway New Jersey pilot to crew 10,000 put on oxygen they're climbing higher now 300 feet a minute the strain on the plains and other men is mounting the rest of the crew Bombardier captain Vincent heavens operated a fleet of trucks in Fort Worth Texas waist gunners on the right sergeant bill Winchell chemist for a paint company in Chicago and on the left sergeant Tony Ness town used to repair washing machines in Detroit when he was a kid now he's 19 and has two Nazi fighters confirmed it takes all of the pilots strength to keep a 30-ton fortress in tight formation but the formation is the Bombers best defense against enemy fighters the planes are deployed to uncover every gun stepped up and down Peschel on to the right and left arranged to overcome the danger of Gunners firing into friendly ships arranged so concentrated cones of fire from the caliber 50 machine guns cover the sky for a thousand yards in every direction the friendly coast of England slips by below it doesn't look like much now but in a few hours when you come back if you come back this will be the most beautiful view in the world higher and higher climbing to reach your best operational altitude 25,000 feet five miles straight up so high you can't be seen from the ground with a naked eye so high that after one minute without oxygen you lose consciousness after 20 minutes you're dead from now to the target you go about your routine duties blood your course check your equipment and wait and think higher and colder temperature 40 degrees below zero take off your glove and you loosen fingers you look out at the strange world beyond reflections in plexiglass like nothing you ever saw before outside of the dream higher and higher into the lifeless stratosphere until the exhaust of the engines mixing with the cold thin air condenses and streams the heavens with paper trails to the men in the ships they're far from beautiful for they'd point like beckoning fingers to the formation signposts in the sky for the animators sparse for these bombers to accomplish their mission a plan is needed carefully worked-out time to the minute the job is to bomb Ville home southern effectively and economically the enemy is strong skillful determined to stop us here are his defenses airdromes well dispersed each plane indicates a stuff all or squadron of fighters heavy anti-aircraft highly-trained and accurate all along the coast and defending his vital installations radar to warn him of our coming here is our plan to divide his defenses and weaken his opposition at 13:30 hours shortly after takeoff six groups of planes will be heading toward the enemy Coast from six directions the blue force 100 b-24 Liberator four-engine bombers the white force 300 b-17 Flying Fortresses the green force 300 b-17s with an escort of six squadrons of p-47 Thunderbolts a force of b-26 Marauder twin-engined medium bombers with six squadrons of RAF Spitfires escorting almost a thousand planes and over 8,000 men in the air the enemy alerts all his air drones but which is our main force what are our targets where should the Nazi controllers send their fighters it's our job to make them guess and guess wrong a half hour later at 1400 hours the blue force will be heading east across the North Sea with the white force following these enemy fighters are tied down waiting to meet them and will not be able to attack the green force these fighters must come up to attack the green force and thus will be no threat to the blue and white forces the b-26s and Spitfires will bomb and strafe a key rail junction diverting these six stephane and preventing the enemy from concentrating too many fighters on the green force which is scheduled to bomb an aircraft Factory at Hannover at 1430 hours the blue force will threaten this entire coastal area of Northwestern Germany which target will it be Flensburg the Kiel Canal or will it turn suddenly in bomb Hamburg Vega sock or Emden actually it carries no bombs at all it's a decoy and keeps the fighters from the northern area busy while the white force the main effort heads for the submarine pens of Wilhelmshaven at 1500 hours while the white force is over its target only a fraction of the available German fighter strength of the area can intercept it because of the blue force diversion and the simultaneous bombing of Hanover by the green force this is the plan of battle for today drawn up by the combined operations planning committee and approved by the commanding general the white force lead group low squadron we've crossed the invisible line of enemy radar the Hun is expecting us steel helmets go on watchful eyes strain tight formations are held tighter still tense Gunners more alert because here it comes the enemy coast from up here it looks the same as any other houses roads green fields factories waterways they are the houses and fields that those who invade and oppress they are the factories and roads of the people who twice in one generation have flooded the world with suffering suffering in such quantity as the history of the human race has never known brought torment and anguish into countless American homes gold stars and telegrams from the War Department the first plaque just harmless-looking silent puffs of smoke only each puff is a shell exploding throwing shrapnel around the sky exactly the range accurate flak by radio prediction five miles down Nazi anti-aircraft batteries have calculated the altitude speed and course where will the next one hit you try not to be there the docks and submarine pens the village shaman approach to the target starts no smokescreen can protect it now the enemy knows the path of your approach and walls that path with a flak barrage but you fly right through it flexo thick you can get out and walk on it [Music] morgen changes course every 15 seconds evasive action to confuse the black batteries bomb sites set for correct altitude and speed bomb bay doors open the bombing run begins pilot to Bombardier okay then you've got it now heaven supplies the Memphis Belle controlling it through the bombsight and now we are most vulnerable committed to our bombing run we can't dodge Blackwell fighters here's the first top turret fire sanity Evans must ignore the battle crosshairs lined up on target adjustments the wind drift made two more fighters diving from nine o'clock FLAC now has the reins to they've hit this fort but he keeps on his bombing one [Music] as lead Bombardier Evans the same must be good every other ship in the group will drop its bombs when he drops his now one pointer on the bump site moves toward another stationary pointer the instant they touched bombs were release they touch bombs away [Music] the first half of the mission is over the easy huh now to get home [Music] the flax tops that means fighters are there somewhere a snaffle lurking behind that cloud or hiding up in the Sun where the glare blinds you and you can't see them waiting to dive down on you fight us at six o'clock this is what I'm gonna see is a speck in the sky that's a fighter and then a blink that means he's firing at you 2,300 rounds a minute in a running battle one of the most important instruments as they enter fall - five six o'clock upcoming Indialantic face don't see the trouble on to a flat watching an engine on bird [Music] come on you guys get out of that plane bailout there's money come out of the Bombay unites them there's a tail gunner coming up watch out for fighters keep their idle bill Sayle parachutes Quinlan comparisons so wide a minor Clark eight men still not b-17 come on get out of it three more ships flag level clock fighters six me-109 at three o'clock came bathroom which Oh I'm onna my god fighter he got him chief bug he's bailing out don't yell MMA fighters 10 o'clock much possible watch that fighter coming in this may o'clock this fortress is hurt engine fire losing airspeed and altitude drifting into the flock alone and helpless a straggler in a minute Nazi fighters will swarm in like buzzards for the kill you can watch but you can't go down to help you keep your formation here two of the mission is being flown nonetheless real for being in the minds and hearts of these men behind ask anybody who's been to a field in England or anywhere else our bombers are based and he'll tell you that this drama here - waiting to see who's coming back to watch them you might not realize how tense these ground crews are but they are tense and plenty worried in air force talk this waiting is known as sweating out the mission these men know the flight plan their watches told them when the bombers were running into enemy flak when they were over the target when they left the enemy coast and now their watches tell them the Bombers should be nearing the field every ear strains for the first sound of the engines and then somebody hears them and somebody sees the first faint specks in the distant sky every face tears to see the watches try to read the numbers on the ships these plans have priority to land first the colored flares mean wounded aboard in the hospital window these watching men know what that means they know what it feels like to lie on a bouncing fortress floor for hundreds of miles through the frozen stratosphere in great pain with the other men and your crew fighting to keep you alive until they hit the field the field home it'll be ok then because there'll be medical care the best as soon as the wheels of your plane stop rolling [Music] head would concussion 20-millimeter cannon shell exploded in his radio compartment shock internal injuries he'll be alright though flak bursts scattered flying shrapnel he's full of steel splinters this pilots leg is not a pretty sight neither are the dachshund villains homonym these men will all get the Purple Heart and this man to posthumously a [Music] transfusion right in the plane this Gunners too weak to be moved the new life-giving blood flowing into his veins might be the blood of our high school girl in Des Moines a minor in Alabama a movie star in Hollywood or it might be your blood who's ever it is Thanks thirty-six planes left this field this morning now six more arrived that makes twenty home and this one's 21 more wounded aboard 22 coming in with his left inboard engine dead 23 with a feathered prop on his left outboard engine 24 Southern Comfort with a chunk of tail gone 25 they flew home on their luck 26 not a scratch the control tower learns that two more landed at a British feel to the South one a crash landing crew safe that makes 28 29 a rough landing but her pilots badly hurt it's wonder a brought her back at all 29 planes back so far 29 out of 36 our losses were heavy but the enemies were far heavier we destroyed a German aircraft factory a rail junction submarine pens docks and harbour installations that's specific no one damaged but who can tell the number of German torpedoes that will not be fired the number of our convoys that will get through now the soldiers and seaman's lives that will be saved or the battles that would be one instead of lost because of what these bombers and airmen did today [Music] pilot and tail gunner I can laugh now fire on the inboard engine did this flames streak back and burn the stabilizer to another crew lock brought back [Music] here's old Bell a pretty good airplane when it took off lost its nose lost is navigating Bombardier wounded top turret gunner and pilot hidden hydraulic system shot out no brakes little flaps came back [Music] now among the returned crewmembers talk flows like a river talking out every detail of the mission these are the faces of combat faces of Americans who have watched their comrades die faces that can never forget the enemy and there are no mood there they picked you taken in the control tower Colonel Rey the group seal is still watching and waiting and then he spots the last flight three more planes and one of them is the ship everyone has been pulling for the Memphis Belle the last few miles of this trip of been a joyride the strain is over they can leave their guns now now they know they're going to go home to Spokane Green Bay Asheville Detroit Chicago Fort Worth and Yonkers the Bell comes in for a landing but first Morgan buzzes the field cuts the grass with the giant fortress it's against the rules but this is a special occasion [Music] the wheels of the Memphis Belle come back to the soil of England for the 25th time [Music] this is a day they will never forget [Music] another great day soon after Brigadier General Hansel visited the field and presented the Distinguished Flying Cross to every member of the crew and then there was another day [Music] their Majesties the king and queen of England [Music] Johnny Quinlan never thought anything like this would happen to him when he left the office the ground crew were a little self-conscious about being dressed in fatigues but the Queen thought they were very nice finally two more visitors came general acre commanding the 8th Air Force and general Devas US commander of the European theater the Bell crew received them in flying clothes as general acre read the order for what he called their 26 and most important mission returned to America to train new crews and to tell the people what we're doing here to thank them for their help and support and tell them to keep it up so we can keep it up so we can bomb the enemy again and again and again until he has had enough and then we can all come home [Music] [Music] to the men of the 8th Air Force who are now flying deep into Germany bringing destruction to targets almost a thousand miles from their bases destruction like this and who have never once been turned back by the enemy to those men this film is gratefully dedicated [Music] this has been a presentation of the Library of Congress visit us at loc.gov