Dogfights: Luftwaffe's Deadliest Mission part 2

In the face of the wholesale destruction of their homeland, young Germans were motivated to destroy American bombers by any means necessary.




On 7th April 1945 a volunteer unit, called the Sonderkommando ELBE, took to the sky with one goal in mind and that was to use their own aircraft as battering rams to destroy American bombers.




Rare interviews with the German pilots who mounted these attacks offer an unprecedented view into the mindset of these ram-pilots.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Dogfights
• Luftwaffe's
• Deadliest
• Mission
• Sonderkommando
• ELBE
• B-24
• WWII
• HITLER
• American
• bombers

[NAllen828]

Being in a bomber crew in WW2 was practically suicide until air supremecy was gained.

[camposi]

every nation that seems to loose the war tries strange things to win the war. If I think of pilots that were 19 years old and think about the 26-years old son of a collegue who calls my colllegue everytime on the phone when he has a fart in his ass. He alway thinks his mother would lay down the work, drive at home to cook him a tea!

[somewhere6]

@paspax There were many reasons to bomb during the day. For one, you can actually hit a target with precision instead of aiming at a whole city, you can also create formations that have coordinated fields of defensive fire. Escort fighters can also be coordinated better. British and Canadian bombers flying night missions also suffered badly taking as many as 10 percent casualties in a single raid which is a very high attrition rate for killing civilians.

[paspax]

American bombers carried very small bomb loads compared to British bombers.

I've never understood why the yanks flew during the day. Seems silly to me.

[justforever96]

@MrJp990 I couldn't say for sure. If fighting for my country meant stopping those who were trying to kill my fellow citizens and family, yes, I think I would. If fighting for my country meant going to South East Asia to stop communism, or to the Middle East to "defend my country from terrorists", no, probably not. If it was life or death for the country as a whole, or for my neighbors, that would be worth the price.

[justforever96]

@debzeppeliniv Actually, I think the whole aerial ramming-attack thing started with the Russians on the Eastern front. They were pretty successful, considering, and the Germans copied them. The Russians were certainly crazy and/or ballsy bastards in a fight. It may have certain parallels with kamikazes, but in reality it's a whole different idea. Death isn't the objective. It's just a very dangerous form of attack, rather than mission intent on suicide.

[MrJp990]

@justforever96 If you had to fight for your country, would you? This meant facing those machine gun rounds flying at you, killing to defend yourself, your friends, and your country, it also meant that you had to do things like this and what the Japs did. They were desperate.

[moron6123]

@debzeppeliniv In Japan, you flew a flying fuel tank into a huge ship made of armor and bristling with guns designed specifically to kill you, plus you had a bunch of bombs strapped on to the plane. In Germany all that was modified was less armament, and you aren't flying head-on into a huge mass of metal.

[MrJibjab01]

astonishing

[raphael103]

@debzeppeliniv you see, they were trying to stop other people from bombing cities instead of military positions. you know? civilians. :)

[BlamefulVermin2]

Love this show

[Badlycracked]

Thank you for the upload, I really enjoyed it. It is just a pity you get people on here that doesn't know or understand a thing about war. They will much rather say bad things to other people, then actually try to learn from the mistakes made by our fathers. If these men ever knew they fought for little idiots like most of you, nobody would of stopped the Nazi's.