Last night I watched a War Department documentary called "Target for Today"(1944), which follows the planning and execution of a bombing mission on German manufacturing plants by the 8th Air Force of the USAAF. The 8th came to England in 1943 to aid the RAF, which until that time had been fighting the air war by themselves.
Coincidentally to the film, I just this afternoon finished a book I've been working on for several weeks : "The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939-45 (Vol. 1)" by Noble Frankland and Charles Webster. This book, the first of four volumes, was written as Britain's official history of the RAF Bomber Command during WW2, and is extremely thorough in it's examination. I learned, over the course of 500 pages, just how complex the arrangements are for even a single operation by the Royal Air Force.
It's not just about getting some Lancasters up over Germany and bombing indiscriminately. There is first an overall strategy that is presented, which comes from the top down (i.e. from the Air Ministry in the case of Great Britain). I had to learn the difference between strategy and tactics, because in "military speak" you hear those two terms all the time, for instance as "strategic" vs. "tactical" weapons. In short, strategy is the overall plan to win the war; tactics are the methods you use to achieve it. In the bombing offensive against Germany, this translated into the strategy, early on, of trying to destroy German oil refineries, the obvious theory being that - without oil - the Nazis couldn't fuel their Wehrmacht. The initial tactics involved making "precision" target runs against the refineries, located in various parts of the country and also in Romania which was occupied by the Germans. But the precision runs were far from precise, due to many factors including weather, German defenses and the lack of technological instruments like radar and bomb sights (both of which came later). As a result of this failure, the tactic of precision bombing had to be shelved (as did daytime bombing runs, which resulted in high RAF casualties). Eventually, the strategy changed too. Oil refineries were scratched as targets in favor of manufacturing plants and the "area bombing" of towns, which was designed to destroy the morale of the German people. Nowdays this would be referred to as "carpet bombing". We first heard that term during Vietnam, and our generation rightly considers it an abhorrent and horrific practice. However, in the case of Nazi Germany, we were fighting an enemy that a) was the soul of evil, b) who had a formidable military, and (most importantly) c) who would not capitulate for any reason, as they thought they were a Master Race who were destined to rule the world.
When you study the subject, you can better understand why Sir Arthur Harris, as Commander-In-Chief of RAF Bomber Command, made the strategic decisions that he concluded would win the war.
At any rate, I'm talking about the book I just finished. The movie was about the contribution of the United States Army Air Force, who flew B17s out of bases in England. The combined effort of the USAAF and the RAF was organised as a single plan of action, by the heads of both forces, and was executed on a round the clock basis in some cases, with the Yanks bombing by day and then the RAF taking over at night.
The presentation of the documentary is a bit wooden, because real Air Force personnel are portraying themselves and are pretty stiff in reading their lines, but once you get past the "cue-card" dialogue, it's a fascinating and informative film, full length at 94 minutes and concluding with an actual bombing run against the German towns of Anklam and Marienburg, and Gdynia in occupied Poland. The raid included over 400 B17s, and there is a lot of aerial combat footage as well. When you see how fast the German Messerschmitts come at the Flying Fortresses, how quickly they appear out of nowhere and how sharply they maneuver, you can imagine how scary it was to be part of the crew on a heavy bomber. It gives you even more respect for the courage those guys displayed.
Well, at any rate, Two Big Thumbs Up for "Target for Today", which comes off as part Study Film and part Action Thriller in the form of a documentary. If I have one complaint it's that the filmmakers didn't encourage the Air Force crewmen to relax a little and "be themselves", at least in the scenes on base, away from the action. That "authentic" aspect was what I liked so much about "Coastal Command", a British War Department film similar to this one. In "CC" the pilots appeared to be actors but weren't. They were the real soldiers, just putting a dramatic spin on their roles in the movie, which added a lot to it's appeal. Leave it to the Brits, I suppose, to show off in front of the camera. Everyone's an actor in England. /////
The previous night we watched a regular dramatic war film, "Mosquito Squadron"(1969), the story of a controversial RAF bombing mission against a German "V" weapon development site. Before I begin my review, I should mention that I've been aware of this picture for months, but have avoided it due to strongly negative reviews at IMDB. That night however, it popped up on my Youtube recommendation list yet again. I needed something in a pinch and said "what the hell". I've been reading about Mosquito bombers in one of my books anyway. "Might as well see them in action", I reasoned.
To end this aside, I'll say that the negative reviewers must either be nuts or on a vendetta. If you wanted to say the movie was not a classic on par with "Battle of Britain", I'd agree, but the number of 3/10 reviews is way out of proportion, and there is even a 1/10, with the reviewers going far out of their way to describe how much and why they detest this film. Perhaps it's British fans who are resentful for reasons of historical accuracy or some similar reason. The movie is a Veddy Brrittish production and the Mosquito was a Brrittish plane. Anyhow, this is a lesson (as if you needed one) to once again never pay attention to reviews. From my vantage point, "Mosquito Squadron" was a very good example of the aerial combat subgenre, with above average camerawork and an interesting plot. It does get sidetracked perhaps a bit too much by an aborted romance, but even that applies directly to the emotional repercussions of the story.
In the movie's initial raid, the squad leader is shot down over Germany. David McCallum is named as his replacement. McCallum and the deceased former leader were best friends since childhood. McCallum feels a responsibility not only to honor his memory but to break the news to his wife. She takes it stoically, but leans on McCallum for strength, and in his off-duty hours he spends time with her. It's platonic on his part, but she starts to fall for him, an emotional rebound from her husband's death. McCallum doesn't want to go down that road, but it happens anyway.
Meanwhile, as the new squad leader, he is training his pilots for a run on a very important target : a suspected V3 plant, hidden below a churchyard. The V3, if it existed, would've been Hitler's so-called "New York" weapon, an experimental ICBM that we talked about recently. The Air Ministry has placed prime importance on destroying this plant. The only way to reach it is through a tunnel, meaning that the Mosquito pilots will have to approach from a very low elevation, like 60 feet. McCallum wonders how that will work : "How can we bomb horizontally"?
The answer is a new kind of weapon, a bouncing bomb of the type made famous in "The Dam Busters" (a must-see). Most bombs fall vertically, from a high elevation down to the target. The bouncing bomb is dropped at treetop level, at high speed, so that it skips across the ground to hit a target sideways. In the movie, the Mosquito pilots must deliver their bombs through the tunnel entrance. Anything wide of the mark will be useless. They have ten days to practice, on a mock up at their base, but eventually all are able to hit the spot.
But then another kind of bombshell is dropped by Air Intelligence. They deliver the news to the wing commander that a group of British P.O.W.s have been moved by the Germans into the underground rocket facility. This has been done as "insurance" against an RAF attack. The Nazis are figuring the Brits would never bomb their own men, but they are wrong. The Air Marshall declares that the raid will proceed. "It's too important a target", he states, adding that the lives of the P.O.W.s are expendable when weighed against potential loss of life from V3 detonations. The news is grim enough for the squadron pilots, as they will be the ones who have to deliver death to their comrades. But it gets worse when McCallum discovers that his friend the former squad leader is one of the P.O.W.s at the church. He apparently wasn't killed in the shoot-down after all.
Now McCallum is faced with two moral conundrums : Can he indeed follow the order to bomb the V3 facility, and in doing so bomb his own men? And can he keep the news from his friend's wife, who believes herself to be a widow, and has fallen in love with McCallum?
It's a hell of a setup, and even if the extended romantic aspect distracts from the aviation (which is what some of the fans are complaining about), I found that subtheme to be apt. After all, McCallum now knows that his friend is alive. But he is ordered to bomb the V3 facility, which will kill the man after all. Why not let a sleeping dog lie, he's thinking. His wife believes her husband to be dead; leave it at that. So yeah, I found the storyline engrossing from a human standpoint as well as a military one.
I'll grant you that David McCallum is not the greatest actor ever to come down the pike, though he deserves a mention for the episode of "Outer Limits" where he has a Gigantic Head. The main reason to watch "Mosquito Squadron" is the 'Skeeters themselves. They're badass little bombers with the speed and agility of a fighter. In my reading I've learned that they were a game-changer in the war, and you get to see plenty of Mosquito action in the movie, the only one I'm aware of that features this airplane.
Let's give it Two Big Thumbs Up. Ignore the critics - if you like WW2 aerial combat flicks you're gonna enjoy "Mosquito Squadron", and if you're like me, you're gonna wonder why everyone wants to condemn it. It's a doggone good movie, the Youtube print is sharp. Give it a watch, highly recommended. ////
That's all for the moment. Have a good evening. Tons of love as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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