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this was the largest bomber that we used in World War II it was used exclusively in the Pacific against Japan because we need longrange bomber uh this is the uh actual bomber that dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki again at the beginning of World War II uh China was at War but America was neutral so there were American volunteers who were flying from the Chinese and that was where the American volunteer group are Flying Tigers uh the Chinese government had contracted with a retired American fighter pilot named Clare Chanel to set up some kind of defensive capability to to protect them from the Japanese who were bombing them and he set up the Flying Tigers um they were flying again the p4s the p4s were provided by the American government on a on a secret very top secret under the table type of arrangement they were shipped as agricultural equipment so the shipping manifest said they were agricultural equipment uh but the American government provided them at that time we were still neutral so we couldn’t admit that we were providing weapons to the J to the Chinese um they provided about almost 100 uh p4s the P40 as I said was an improved version of the P36 I showed you earlier uh basically the engine has been replaced it went from the radial engine to a more powerful liquid cooled V12 engine here an Allison engine it has the the guns have been moved to the wing so now it has three guns in each Wing um it also added a armor plate behind the pilot to protect the pilot from some from enemy F behind him so armor plate will protect him from that has an armor plate it also has what’s called resalable fuel tanks so a resalable fuel tank is a rubber bladder that lines the fuel tank so the Bullet penetrates the fuel will hit that rubber the rubber will expand and close the hole so reseals the hole so that Bas allows them to withstand more battle damage so allows them to be more rugged uh air a little bit heavier but it does allow them to to with withstand bullet holes so that was with the P40 was fine now the P40 the Flying Tigers were flying against the Japanese zero this is the zero the zero was designed for long distance Japanese wanted something that could fly over 1,000 miles so they wanted a very lightweight aircraft uh it is designed specifically for very lightweight it doesn’t have any armor plating it doesn’t have receivable fuel tanks but because it’s very lightweight is very maneuverable it could out climb out turn out maneuver anything that we had at the time that’s why it was so effective at the beginning of the war because it was so maneuverable uh in a dog in a turning dog fight the zero would win over a P40 every time so what clar chanal did was he took advantage of the P40 strength the P40 being a heavy rugged airplane it could out diive J to zero it could dive much faster than the zero zero couldn’t keep up with it so what they did was they had Chinese observers on the ground would see where the Japanese formations were coming they would report they would tell the Flying Tigers where they were Flying Tigers would fly to a higher altitude wait from the Japanese formation and then dive through shoot up as many airplanes as they could as they were diving through and then fly away the escorting zeros couldn’t catch them so they would just fly away climb the alud wait for the formation again and dive through again by doing that they took advantage of their Superior dive speed and did not try to engage the Japanese in a turning dog fight which they’d lose and they had a very very high successful kill ratio they were able to destroy what many more Japanese airplanes than they lost Army Air Force ever practice the T ref the Navy did I’m sorry did the Army Air Force like by the AGG did they ever practice T we like the Navy no the thatch we was that was typically a Navy I think eventually probably learn learned it from from the Navy but that was kind of something the Navy development at the time of the army was doing this and what you consider the zero could be better over or better or equal to the Japanese key 43 which was also encountered over Burma the Japanese the Japanese most most like common army fighter was the t43 Nakajima yeah um not really sure I can’t really I I I just know I know the zero we have zero so I about that um this was it was very maneuver not I think they were probably cap this was probably maybe a long longer range so probably a little bit lighter might be a little bit more maneuverable but okay so um we get to early 1940 you know 1942 Japanese are sweeping across the Pacific uh pretty much defeating Americans every place we meet them so we needed a a morale boost so a Navy submarine Commander came up with a crazy idea of attacking the Japanese Homeland with army medium bombers launched from an aircraft carrier seemed like a crazy idea so they went to Jimmy dittle this mannequin represents Jimmy dittle he was a fighter pilot race pilot a test pilot from World War I to World War II was relatively famous as a test pilot and racing pilot he was also one of the first Americans with a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering so he knew airplanes from a theoretical standpoint from a flying standpoint so that’s why the Army went to him and said What airplane should we use can we do this he chose the B25 Mitchell bomber nicknamed the Mitchell bomber after Billy Mitchell the general I mentioned earlier he chose this airplane because the wingspan is short enough it could take off from a from aircraft carrier but it still had enough takeoff performance it could take off in 500 ft which was the length that they needed so they got 16 aircraft and crew took them to Florida started trading them to take off in 500 ft didn’t tell them why they had to take off in such a short distance as they had to take off in 500 ft it wasn’t until they got to the Pacific coast and saw the airplanes being loaded onto an aircraft carrier and they realized why they had to take off at such a short distance but they still didn’t know where they were going or what they were doing they weren’t told what the mission was going to be until the task force was at see and there wasn’t any possibility somebody would go to a bar afterwards and spill the beans so they were told where they were going they was they were told it was a very high-risk m mission so it was a volunteer Mission anybody who didn’t want to didn’t want to participate could back out didn’t have to fly nobody backed out they all said yeah let’s go let’s let’s hit Japan the plan was to get within 400 400 miles of the Japanese Coast launch attack at night drop bombs on factories in some of the industrial cities Kobe Tok some of the other industrial cities continue on fly to China the safe part of China that had not yet been occupied by Japan land they could then refuel from there and they could continue bombing the CH the Japanese in China area so they could continue to stay in the war there once they got to to China uh that was the plan but the task force was spotted 600 Mi off the coast by a Japanese Patrol boat they sunk the patrol boat didn’t know whether they got a message out or not so they had to decide whether to launch or not they deci to launch anyway so they took off you know 600 Mi out early they ended up attacking during the day uh fortunately the Japanese did not expect any possibility of anybody being able to bomb them at that time so they had very minimal defensive capability and very minimal ground guns very minimal Fighters so they basically fly flew in did you know dropped their bombs with very minimal defensive opposition and continued on into China but they did not have enough range to reach the safe part of China they had to fly until they ran out of fuel and then just jumped either jumped out of the airplane or crashed Landing so so they all basally inbound the Japanese occupied for of China forun to the Chinese civilians ESC Med help them guide them out of that portion to the safe part of China so they can then get rejoined to Americans and then get back to the United States Billy Jimmy ditt later commanded the bomber forces in Europe uh so he he got back into the war but so that they were able to get back into the into safely escorted out in retaliation for that they they say the Japanese that killed about 250,000 Chinese civilians in retaliation for them helping the Americans and now from a practical standpoint they didn’t do a lot of damage they just didn’t have enough bombs to do a lot of damage but they had a tremendous morale boost for the Americans cuz we were able to finally hit back as the Japanese successfully and it was tremendous loss of faith for the Chinese for the Japanese generals because they of course had told the the emperor there’s no way that anybody could possibly attack the Homeland and yet these bombers would come in and bombed they had no idea where they came from so they had to bring fighter units from front lines back to Japan to defend the Homeland from wherever these bombers were coming from so it did have a improve it did have a moral from that standpoint okay now I mentioned earlier the at aircraft were used for training the uh bomber and cargo pilots so these are a couple of the twin engine at aircraft used for trading up the aircraft you see up there on the pedestal that was used for training bombad ear so in World War II we had what was called the nordon bomb site it was a very accurate medium to high altitude bomber bomb site that was used for uh they claimed that they could hit a pickle Barrel from 177,000 Ft that was a gross exaggeration but it was a very fairly accurate bomb site so they would train them in aircraft like that now over here we have what’s called our wasp display women’s Air Force service Pilots at the beginning of the war we needed lots of Pilots uh of course we needed Pilots for combat but we also need pilot to do things like test the aircraft when they came out off the production line and make sure they flew the way they were supposed to then fly those airplanes from the factories to operational units we need Pilots to tow uh Targets on cables so other Pilots to practice aerial Gunnery we need instructor Pilots so we need lots of Pilots that weren’t doing combat missions so a group of women pilots suggested the women could do those missions and they formed the women’s Air Force service Pilots uh there were over a thousand women who flew those missions Train completed training and and flew those missions through the war basically com basically Army missions but non combat fairing the the aircraft to overseas units Etc um it continued that until until December of 1944 at that time the war in Europe was winding down we had bomber bomber Crews returning from from from Europe who had finished their their service there and the Army said well we can use these guys to fly these missions we don’t need the women anymore they said thank you ladies very much go back to your kitchens that’s it and they didn’t they didn’t give them any veterans benefits or anything it wasn’t until 1977 the Congress finally passed an act that recognized those women as veterans and finally gave them veterans benefits so it was 30 years later they were finally recognized for their service okay now this is our display for the Tuskegee Airmen again at during World War II we had segregation uh in in the mil have seg all way the military in particular you had either all black units or all white unit you could not mix uh races in in the same unit uh when the Army was looking to train lot of Pilots did not want to waste time and their consideration training black Pilots they didn’t think blacks could do it so they didn’t want to train blacks but uh Elanor Rosevelt the first lady and other civil rights activists insisted that they train blacks well we set up a program at tuske University in Alabama to train black Pilots uh to you know for the military um when they those they form fighter squadrons when went overseas went to but basically Europe as fighter squadrons most of them T painted their tails red like this model we have up there and so they were called the Red Tails I was to identify the unit they called the Red Tails they develop very very good reputation both for escorting the bombers into enemy territory and also providing air support for ground troops basically providing you know ground C you know air support from from other enemy Fighters and doing ground attack type Mission so they proved themselves just as good as anybody else and that they could do the job just as well as anyone so after the war uh we eventually had desegregation a lot of that was due to the example of the Red Tails now most people hear about the red tail Fighters they also there were some Tusk Airmen who trains bomber Bomber Crew but the bomber units never got to Europe so you don’t hear much about them mostly you only hear about the red red ta fighter pilots okay oh I’m running late okay all right so I mentioned strategic bombing earlier in World War II strategic bombing was very critical from the beginning of the war both the British and the and the Germans were bombing each other um mostly they they bombed at night the advantage of bombing at night is you don’t have to worry about enemy Fighters shooting down your bombers but you can’t really see your target you you know you can find the city you know about where the where the target is you drop your boms where you think that is whether or not you’re actually hitting the target you’re not really sure when America got involved we had our Northern bomb site which we CLA was so accurate as long as we could see the target so we insisted on Precision daylight bombing we would attack during the day we could see the target with a norn bomb site we could hit it that was the plan the problem is then you are facing Enemy enemy Fighters at the beginning of the war our American fighters did not have ranged escort the bombers very far into territory they only escort them a certain certain distance and from that point on they were the fighters had to leave and the bombers had to defend themselves that’s why the heavy bombers in World War II are very heavily armed if you look at the two main heavy bombers we have the B24 here and the B17 up there you notice they both have about about 10 machine guns on them they have top turrets bottom turrets tail turrets side turrets guns in the front guns in the back guns all over the place over half of the crew were dedicated just to Manning the guns to defend the bombers so the aircraft would fly very tight formations next to each other above and blow each other so that any attacking Fighters would face guns from a large number of of bombers so they would try to defend themselves but they were still having heavy losses also once they got close to the targets then they faced flat cannons so the cannon the artillery piece you see over there that’s an 88 mm German artillery piece that would fire a shell up to the altitude of the bomber formations Germans use radar to determine what the altitude was they fired the shells to detonate at that altitude uh the trap would go out trapal would kill air crew damage airplanes shoot down airplanes you’d have large for you know large B number of batteries around the factories defending them so they would face very heavy flat can or flat artillery uh fire when they got close to targets so they were have suffering very heavy losses uh if you look at the losses of the of the Marines in the Pacific and all the island hopping that they did throughout the Pacific there were actually more uh air crew killed in Europe bomber Crews killed in Europe and all the Marines killed in Europe in the Pacific because of the heavy losses because of that the morale was low the Army set up a program basically they would give the the the air crew a goal if they could survive 25 missions they would be S back home all they if they could survive 25 missions they would sent back to the United States and they would then train other Crews crew members in the United States but they be safe from from combat the Memphis Bell here that is the first7 in Europe 25 miss and then so after 25th Mission the meis Bell was back in the United States it FW around the United States on a on a u War tour basic people buy war bonds and that’s why it’s the most famous iconic aircraft from World War II this is the actual meis Bell after the war it was put on display in Memphis Tennessee for many years but it was outside exposed to the weather it was finally deteriorated quite a bit it was brought back to the museum here spent about 13 years in our restoration hanger and was finally restored back to its original condition and then it was put up on the on the pedestal here and was uh unveiled to the public on the 75th anniversary of its 25th Mission it’s a beautiful restoration job it is painted in exactly the scheme that the aircraft was on his last mission was on his last mission so if you notice um has a row bombs there on the nose and then you notice the photo over here that on that photo it has a row swash f is under the bombs that’s that was the way it was painted for the War Bomb but in the combat it had R bombs but then if you notice has one swash under the gun right behind the Memphis Bell there there’s one swash there that’s because that gun position shot down one ger fighter and so wherever the whatever gun position shot down a German fighter the swash came at that one position where it was so there slashers all over it but for for waron tour they decided to put them all in one row on the front so everybody would know how many airplanes were shot down by this air okay um I mentioned earlier the Spitfire this is our supermarine one of our supermarine Spitfires British uh one of top British Fighters next airplan want to show you is the M Smith BF 109 so the mess Schmidt BF 109 was the top well was the most numerously built of the German Fighters it was their top fighter at the beginning of the war it continued in service throughout the war as I say it was the most numerously built of the German Fighters This was probably their their main fighter uh it was very fast very maneuverable it had two machine guns that fired through col so two machine guns be mounted on the top top of the engine and fire through the propeller and then if you notice here in the center of the Hub that is for a 30 mm Cannon so we would have a 30 mm met cannon firing right through the center of the of the propeller have 30 mm Cannon and then two machine guns on time very effective fire very effective fire now talk a lot about combat airplanes let’s talk about some cargo cargo airplanes this is a c47 cargo airplane this is the type that was used for flying supplies uh to the Troops also used for carrying paratroopers uh tomorrow is the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion uh actually 80 80 years ago tonight the uh paratroopers launched so they launched on on June 5th flew behind in into into France and landed in France the night of the of the before the The Invasion and they were flying mostly in c47s or cargo planes like this they would basically parachute out with a gun a couple days ammunition and that was about all they had the next day they had to establish a landing Zone in France that they could bring in the cargo gliders so this glider up here is a cargo glider this would be towed behind a a c47 on a long cable once they got close to The Landing Zone it would disengage from the cable lights were Landing the front of that would slip up they could drive a Jeep out of that they could carry a hoer like this like this gun here you can carry mortars machine guns ammunition food and you know more troops everything they needed to reinforce the lightly armed paratroopers who landed the night before so that’s that’s how they had to support them okay now this is a P-51 Mustang one of the most famous American fighters in World War II it was originally built by North American for the British during the Battle of Britain American started North American started was was trying to provide the British with with more airplanes uh it was originally built within a V12 liquid cooled Allison engine when they got to England the British found it didn’t have very good high Al performance so they decided to see what would happen if they put a V12 Merlin engine one of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines in it also liquid cool deter engine they put that Merlin engine in it it had fantastic performance so from that point on they kept using a Merlin engine this engine is a Merlin it’s a Rolls-Royce Merlin design engine but it’s built by Packard so built under license by the Packard company here in the United States but it is the merland design built under license so we started basically building those Merlin engines and that was what powered the P the P-51 from that point on so with that the these aircraft had the range to escort the bombers all the way to Berlin in back they had long long range escorts were able to provide the the escort we needed now you notice the the drop tanks there those were used to to FY the airplane you know fly the airplane deep in enemy territory and then once they got in combat they dro the fuel they drop those fuel tanks and fly back on the internal tanks as Wing tanks and Fus life tanks but we found that the Germans were picking up the drop tanks and reusing the aluminum so these drop tanks are made out of paper mâché they would make them out of paper maade that have special laer lighting that would last a few hours before the gasoline would period and last long enough they can use up the fuel and then drop them okay now I mentioned uh cruise missiles before the uh kering bug this is a V1 buzz bomb German cruise missile from World War II uh this was much more effective than the uh kering bug I showed you earlier this has a pulse jet engine on on it so it was very fast uh fairly small it was difficult to catch but it could still be shot down and intercepted by Fighters so it could it could still be stopped uh it was wasn’t that accurate it couldn’t really pick out a Target I mean a building but they could hit London and that’s all they really cared about a big enough bomb that if it had land somewhere in London and detonate it would do a lot of damage to a lot of people so that was basically all all the Germans were looking for the missile behind it that’s a V2 that is a liquid cooled ballistic missile there was no defense against the V2 uh there was no there were no Interceptor missiles at that time the P couldn’t catch it no way to stop that come up high altitude come back down in High mock speed we couldn’t stop it the only way to stop the V2 was to divert the bomber missions to attack the factories and launch sites that they were coming from and Destroy them on the ground once they destroyed the factories and the launch sites then the bomber missions could be sent to other factories but that’s how that was the only way we could we could defend against the the V2 okay this is a junkers ju88 German bomber of the type types that was used during the Battle of Britain and under the wing is a very interesting Interceptor this is a rocket powered Interceptor a mess Schmid 163 uh it was very very advanced technology has a liquid liquid rocket engine here um very fast slip wi unfortunately it well fortunately for us it only had 7 Minutes of fuel so it was very high in technology but it only had 7 Minutes of fuel it’s had be based close to the Target that they were defending they could climb up to altitude above the bomber formations dive through try to shoot something down and it had to Glide down to a landing if it was gliding to a landing the wheel would actually drop off on takeoff and it would land on the skid underneath that so it was not very effective very high technology very Advanced but it was not a very effective weapon this on the other hand was a very effective weapon this is the m Schmid 262 this was the first operational jet fighter this was about 100 mph faster than any fighter we had faster than the P-51 or any other fighter we had um it was because it had it also had 4 30mm Cannon in the no had very heavy Firepower very effective for M boy but once you got into a turning DOL fight turning it couldn’t turn any better couldn’t maneuver any better in a turning maneuvering type of fight than any other fight so what once you got into a turning fight it lost the advantage of it of its higher speed so it it can out run anything but in a turning fight it wasn’t it had no Advantage it used uh two axial flow engines this is a cutaway version of the axial flow engine you see it has a a compressor stage here that compresses the the air pulls the air in and compresses it to high high pressure that high pressure air goes through the combustion chamber where they add Fuel and ignite it and then that fuel that burning high pressure air then drives the the turbine and the turbine is what spins the compressor so basically you have to get the engine spinning at a at a a high speed before you add the fuel once you get up to up to the right fast enough spinning fast enough then you can add the fuel and it’ll continue running to get it up to that speed small up here St that can be turn on the start SP it up but start that’s a start P today I mentioned helicop briefly mentioned helicopters earlier we have two helicopters hanging up on the ceiling here by 1944 helicopters had been developed to the point where they were practical but the Army really didn’t know quite what to do with them so they sent a couple of them to the China Burma theater to see what they could use them for mostly used them for liaison for observation just flying around seeing what you know seeing what was going on but they did use them a few of them for picking up down air crew in the jungle so airpl crash in the jungle they could pick them up with a helicopter so there were few instances where they were starting to use helicopters for uh picking up down air crew a few years later during the Korean War just a couple of years later helicopters were used much more extensively for picking up downed air crew and for evacuating wound so by that time they were used much more effectively okay the last airplan I’m going to show you is the b29 this was the largest bomber that we used in World War II it was used exclusively in the Pacific against Japan because we need long range bomber uh this is the uh actual bomber that dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki this is the the the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb OA was the anol gay that’s in the sasonian this is the box car and this dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki this is what’s called a silver plate version of the b29 silver plate meant it was modified specifically for the atomic Mission the atomic bombs were very heavy so they had a lighten the aircraft to do that they took off most of the defensive guns a normal b29 would have a couple of gun turrets on the top and on the bottom those gun turrets were removed from this aircraft the only guns on this aircraft are the two guns in the tail gun position so it only has two guns in the tail gun position they also took off some of the armor plating by the time this was service by the time this this was used America had pretty much Air Supremacy over Japan Japanese Fighters did not have the altitude capability to get up to the higher altitude than the b29 was operating at so they felt they could send this in with very minimal uh defensive capability but as I said this dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki now I ran a little a little bit over it’s 11:28 if you’re interested in the tour of the second building that starts at 11:30 so you have about 2 minutes actually you should be able to catch them just go if you go out go out this way under the glass go to the left to the second building look for a guy with a box around his neck like this and even if he’s started you you should be able to join up okay thank you very much any last questions [Music] [Music] the going all the way to Japan [Music] yeah right because it’s more famous for the European theater but I know that