- 25 minutes ago
American fighter-bombers made German tank crews fear daylight not by destroying every tank, but by disrupting the fuel, vehicles, and movement that kept an armored column fighting. This World War II military history documentary traces that change from the Normandy campaign to the Battle of the Bulge, where four P-47 Thunderbolts attacked Joachim Peiper’s advance through the Belgian fog.
Through accounts of German commanders, American pilots, and engineers defending key bridges, the story reveals how air attacks cost Peiper crucial hours—and how Allied air superiority helped turn the German offensive into a retreat. Explore WW2 aviation, fighter-bomber tactics, armored warfare, the Ardennes Offensive, and the often-overlooked role of logistics in battle. A detailed historical narration for listeners interested in World War II stories, military strategy, and documentary-style battlefield history.
Through accounts of German commanders, American pilots, and engineers defending key bridges, the story reveals how air attacks cost Peiper crucial hours—and how Allied air superiority helped turn the German offensive into a retreat. Explore WW2 aviation, fighter-bomber tactics, armored warfare, the Ardennes Offensive, and the often-overlooked role of logistics in battle. A detailed historical narration for listeners interested in World War II stories, military strategy, and documentary-style battlefield history.
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LearningTranscript
00:00December 18th, 1944.
00:03Chievre Airfield, Belgium.
00:06The fog is so thick that the men on the flight line cannot see the far end of the runway.
00:11The cloud ceiling is under 100 feet.
00:14Since dawn, every mission of the 365th Fighter Group has been scrubbed.
00:20The Thunderbolts sit dripping in their revetments.
00:22And somewhere to the east, under that same gray lid, the German army is moving.
00:29Around noon, the telephone rings.
00:32Colonel Ray Stecker, the group commander, picks it up.
00:35On the line is Colonel Gilbert Myers of the 9th Tactical Air Command.
00:40A German armored column has broken through at Stablo, and very little stands in front of it.
00:46Myers is not asking for a group.
00:49He is not asking for a squadron.
00:51He wants four airplanes.
00:53One flight.
00:55Can the Hellhawks put four Thunderbolts into that sky?
00:59Stecker says he will try.
01:01The job goes to Major Bob Brooking, commander of the 386th Fighter Squadron.
01:06He's from Bozeman, Montana, and he learned fighter flying on patrols over the Aleutian Islands,
01:11where the fog never really lifts.
01:14If any man in the group knows how to hunt for a hole in the weather, it's him.
01:19At about five minutes past one, four P-47s roll down a runway lined with flare pots.
01:26Each carries two 500-pound bombs with delayed fuses.
01:31With Brooking are Captain James Wells, 1st Lieutenant Robert Toman, and 2nd Lieutenant Roy Wayne Price.
01:38On top, there is nothing but white.
01:41A solid deck of cloud from one horizon to the other.
01:46Brooking circles for half an hour looking for a break.
01:49There is none.
01:51Two more flights arrive behind him, and he sends them home.
01:54Then he does something no instructor would have signed off on.
01:59He takes his flight down, under the cloud, through a gap in the hills,
02:03and flies up the valleys, with the overcast pressing on his canopy,
02:08and the ridgelines rising on both sides.
02:11The valley opens, and there it is.
02:14Tanks.
02:15Half-tracks.
02:17Trucks.
02:18Packed nose-to-tail on a narrow road around a small village.
02:21For a moment, nobody fires.
02:25The Germans on that road are every bit as surprised as Brooking is.
02:30Now look at that moment from the road, because this is where our question lives.
02:35The men in that column belong to the 1st SS Panzer Division.
02:39They are led by Joachim Piper, 29 years old,
02:43and they are among the most experienced tank soldiers Germany has left.
02:48They are on this road because of a decision made four months earlier.
02:52On August 19th, Adolf Hitler told his generals he would take back the initiative
02:57in the season when the Allied air forces would be unable to fly.
03:01Two panzer armies, the fuel scraped together through the autumn,
03:06the whole last great gamble in the West,
03:09timed around one thing.
03:11The weather.
03:12The men below Brooking had been promised a sky
03:15exactly like the one over Chiev that morning.
03:18Gray.
03:19Low.
03:20Empty.
03:22A ground controller talks the flight around a ridge,
03:25and the thunderbolts dive.
03:26Bombs on the head of the column.
03:28Bombs on the tail.
03:30The road is corked at both ends,
03:32and then the eight machine guns on each airplane
03:34go to work on everything in between.
03:37Wells puts his bombs into a cluster of tanks,
03:39and watches several of them tumble down the hillside.
03:42The flack wakes up.
03:44Price's fighter is hit hard.
03:46He radios that he is going to belly in,
03:48and he vanishes, trailing flame, into the fog.
03:52Wells takes 20mm hits and limps toward Liège, trailing smoke.
03:57Brooking stays.
03:58For the rest of the afternoon, he hangs over those valleys,
04:02calling other fighter bombers down through the gaps in the cloud,
04:05until his tanks are nearly dry.
04:07He lands about two and a half hours after he took off.
04:11Piper never forgot that afternoon.
04:14Thunderbolts struck his column again and again as it pushed west,
04:18and by his own later estimate,
04:20the air attacks cost him somewhere between two and two and a half hours.
04:25I want you to hold on to that figure.
04:28Two and a half hours.
04:30It sounds like almost nothing in a war that lasted six years.
04:34Before this story is over,
04:36you will see exactly what those hours bought,
04:39and at which bridge.
04:41Because here is the puzzle.
04:42Piper had Panthers and Tigers.
04:46Brooking had four airplanes and a hole in the clouds.
04:49So why had Germany built its final offensive in the west
04:53around the hope that the sky would stay shut?
04:56How had American fighter bombers taught the best tank men in Germany
05:01to be afraid of the sun?
05:03And the answer is not the one most people assume.
05:06It is not about how many tanks the Thunderbolts destroyed.
05:10When you hear that number, it may surprise you.
05:13If you want to see how American fighter bomber pilots
05:16and the GIs below them
05:18took daylight away from the Panzers,
05:20hit like and subscribe.
05:22It helps this story reach more viewers.
05:24To understand that fear,
05:27we have to go back six months
05:28to the week it was born.
05:30June 7th, 1944.
05:33The day after D-Day.
05:35A long column of German armor
05:37is grinding through Normandy toward the beaches.
05:40This is the Panzerlehrer Division,
05:42the best equipped armor division Germany had in the west,
05:45built from the demonstration troops of its own tank schools.
05:49At its head rides Fritz Beierlein,
05:52who had served as Rommel's chief of staff in the desert.
05:55He has seen enemy airplanes before.
05:58He believes he knows what they can do.
06:00He is about to find out he does not.
06:04Because when that day was over,
06:06Beierlein counted what he had lost on the road.
06:09Five tanks.
06:10That was the smallest number on his list.
06:13The other numbers on that list
06:15would change how German armor moved
06:17for the rest of the war.
06:19Here is how Fritz Beierlein told it himself
06:21after the war
06:22to his Allied interrogators.
06:24At two o'clock in the morning,
06:26on June 6th,
06:27he was woken with the news
06:29that the invasion fleet was crossing the channel.
06:31His division was spread around Le Mans,
06:34about 90 miles south of Caen.
06:37Then came hours of waiting.
06:39When the order finally arrived,
06:41it told him to start north
06:43at five in the afternoon.
06:45Beierlein did not like that order at all.
06:48In Normandy in June,
06:50five in the afternoon is broad daylight,
06:52with hours of sun still to come.
06:55He asked to wait until twilight.
06:57The request was refused.
06:59We moved as ordered, he said,
07:02and immediately came under an air attack.
07:05By nightfall,
07:06he had lost 20 or 30 vehicles.
07:09The division drove on through the dark,
07:11stopping just three hours to rest and refuel.
07:15At dawn on June 7th,
07:17General Doleman,
07:18commander of the German 7th Army,
07:21gave him a direct order to keep going.
07:23The first attack of the new day
07:24came at about half past five in the morning,
07:27near Falaise.
07:28By noon, Beierlein said,
07:30it was severe.
07:32Road junctions were bombed.
07:33The bridge at Condé was knocked out.
07:36His men had already given the main road
07:38from Ville to Benny Bocage a name.
07:41They called it
07:42the Fighter-Bomber Racecourse.
07:45Picture that road.
07:46Every vehicle covered in tree branches,
07:49columns crawling along hedges
07:51and the edges of woods,
07:52the drivers watching the sky
07:54more than the road.
07:56This is the most modern armored division
07:58in the German army,
08:00and it is moving like an animal
08:01that knows it is being hunted.
08:04Then, at the end of the day,
08:07Beierlein made his count.
08:09Listen carefully to the order of this list,
08:11because the order is the whole lesson.
08:15Forty tank trucks carrying fuel.
08:17Ninety other vehicles.
08:20Eighty-four half-tracks,
08:22prime movers,
08:22and self-propelled guns.
08:24And five tanks.
08:27Five.
08:29Beierlein noticed it himself.
08:31The tanks kept moving.
08:33Everything else slowed down.
08:36And that is the first thing
08:37you need to understand
08:38about what the fighter-bombers were doing.
08:40A panzer division
08:42is not a collection of tanks.
08:44It is a moving town.
08:46Fuel, ammunition,
08:48grenadiers riding in half-tracks,
08:50guns towed by tractors,
08:52mechanics, food, radios.
08:55The tanks are the fist.
08:57Everything else is the arm.
08:59On June 7th,
09:01the airplanes were not breaking the fist.
09:03They were cutting the arm.
09:05A panther with no fuel truck behind it
09:08is a steel box
09:09that will sit wherever it stops.
09:11Keep that list in your head.
09:13Especially one word on it.
09:15Fuel.
09:17It is going to come back
09:18at the very end of this story,
09:20in the snow,
09:21and it will matter more there
09:22than it did in Normandy.
09:24By Behrlein's own reckoning,
09:26the air attacks put him
09:27a full day behind schedule.
09:3072 hours after the first landings,
09:32the best-equipped panzer division
09:34in the West
09:35still had not fully arrived
09:37at the front.
09:38The airplanes over that road
09:40flew under two flags.
09:42British typhoons and spitfires
09:44were up there.
09:45So were the Thunderbolts
09:46and Mustangs
09:46of the American 9th Air Force.
09:48And it's worth seeing
09:49what the American side of that sky
09:51looked like that first week,
09:53because it was not
09:54what the newsreels showed.
09:56On D-Day itself,
09:58two pilots of the Hellhawks,
10:00Arlo Henry and John Fetzer,
10:02went down on German armor
10:03just behind the beaches.
10:05Henry's bombs
10:06went into a French farmhouse
10:07where a German tank
10:09sat with its gun barrel
10:10poking out between the walls.
10:12Fetzer bombed a tank
10:13he took for a Tiger,
10:15and he later said
10:16he was amazed
10:17to watch it flip over
10:18in midair from the blast.
10:20That is the image
10:21everyone remembers.
10:22A thunderbolt,
10:24a bomb,
10:24a tank turning over.
10:26Hold on to that image too,
10:28because before this story is over,
10:30you are going to find out
10:31how often that actually happened.
10:34And the answer
10:35changes the whole question.
10:38What was really happening
10:39that week was quieter,
10:40and far more dangerous
10:42for Germany.
10:43On June 7th,
10:44the same day
10:45Bayerlein was making his count,
10:46the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division
10:50was ordered out
10:51of its assembly area
10:52at Tuars,
10:53south of the Loire,
10:54toward the Normandy Front.
10:56One of its staff officers
10:58left an account.
10:59The men were in high spirits.
11:01They were eager to fight.
11:03Then the fighter bombers
11:04found the column.
11:06Vehicles burned,
11:07men scattered into the fields.
11:10After about 15 minutes,
11:11it stopped.
11:12An hour later,
11:14a second attack came,
11:15heavier than the first.
11:16The march was called off.
11:18The surviving vehicles
11:20were pushed into bushes and barns.
11:22This had been our first experience
11:24with the Yabos,
11:25the officer wrote,
11:26using the German soldier's word
11:28for fighter bomber.
11:29And then he wrote the sentence
11:31that matters most.
11:33Although now we only traveled at nights
11:35and along secondary roads,
11:38only at night.
11:40About 200 miles,
11:41and it took them roughly five days.
11:44And where did that division
11:46finally arrive?
11:47East of Perrier,
11:48in front of the American paratroopers
11:50and infantry fighting around Quarantan.
11:53Three days later,
11:54on June 10th,
11:56Erwin Rommel put his name
11:57to a situation report
11:58and asked that it be shown to Hitler.
12:01The enemy, he wrote,
12:03has total command of the air
12:04over the battle area,
12:05up to a point
12:07some 60 miles behind the front.
12:09And then the line
12:10that should have frightened
12:11everyone who read it.
12:13The movement of German troops
12:15on the battlefield,
12:16he wrote,
12:17is almost completely paralyzed.
12:20Four days.
12:22That is how long it took
12:23for the fear of daylight
12:24to travel from the road
12:26to the field marshal's desk.
12:28And so the German army
12:29made its first move
12:31in this contest.
12:32It surrendered the day.
12:35Move after dark.
12:37Hide by daylight
12:38under branches,
12:39in orchards,
12:40in barns.
12:42Drive the back roads.
12:44It was a sensible answer,
12:46and for a while it worked.
12:48But think about the calendar.
12:50This is June,
12:51the shortest nights of the year.
12:53Every hour a panzer division
12:55spends hiding
12:56is an hour it is not fighting,
12:58not repairing,
12:59not refueling.
13:00The Germans had traded
13:01the sun for survival,
13:03and they were paying for it
13:04in time.
13:05On the American side,
13:07a 40-year-old major general
13:08named Pete Quesada
13:10was looking at the same problem
13:11from the other end.
13:12His pilots could see the roads.
13:15What they could not do
13:16was talk to the American tank crews
13:18fighting blind
13:19in the hedgerows below them.
13:21Within seven weeks,
13:22he would fix that
13:23with a piece of equipment
13:24that cost almost nothing,
13:25put in a place
13:26no American airman
13:27had ever been asked to sit.
13:29July, 1944.
13:31Six weeks after the landings,
13:33the Normandy front
13:34has turned into something
13:35nobody on either side
13:37planned for.
13:38The hedgerows.
13:40Thousands of tiny fields,
13:42each one walled in
13:43by banks of earth
13:44and trees taller than a man.
13:46A war fought
13:47one field at a time.
13:49And in that country,
13:50the German army
13:51has learned the lesson
13:52of June completely.
13:54By day,
13:55its armor hides,
13:57tanks are dug
13:57into the hedgerow banks,
13:59draped in branches,
14:00parked under apple trees.
14:02By night,
14:03they move,
14:03refuel,
14:04and take on ammunition.
14:06The Germans have given up the day,
14:08and in return,
14:09the hedgerows
14:09give them something back.
14:11Cover.
14:13Now look at it
14:14from the cockpit
14:14of a thunderbolt.
14:16Below you
14:16is a green patchwork
14:18of small fields,
14:19every one of them
14:20hiding something.
14:22Somewhere down there
14:23are German tanks.
14:24Somewhere down there
14:25are American tanks.
14:27From a few thousand feet,
14:28at the speed
14:29you are flying,
14:30they look very much alike.
14:32And you have no way
14:33to ask the men on the ground
14:34which is which.
14:35That cut both ways.
14:38One man
14:39of the 2nd Armored Division
14:40wrote about
14:41a 500-pound bomb
14:42landing less than
14:4310 yards
14:44from his position
14:45during those weeks.
14:46Some pilots,
14:47he wrote,
14:48pull boners.
14:50The airplanes
14:51owned the sky,
14:52but they were deaf
14:53to the ground.
14:54On the German side,
14:56the picture was
14:57bleaker still,
14:58and the Germans
14:59knew it.
15:00On July 17th,
15:01General von Lutwitz
15:02of the 2nd Panzer Division
15:04wrote a top-secret report
15:06about his sector.
15:07The Luftwaffe,
15:08he wrote,
15:09was conspicuous
15:10by its complete absence.
15:12During the last four weeks,
15:14the total number
15:15of German aircraft
15:16he had seen
15:16over his divisional area
15:18was six.
15:19Six
15:20in four weeks.
15:22Four days after that,
15:24Field Marshal
15:25Gunther von Kluge,
15:26the new commander
15:27in the West,
15:28wrote to Hitler.
15:29In the face
15:30of the total
15:31enemy air superiority,
15:32he wrote,
15:33we can adopt
15:34no tactics
15:35to compensate.
15:37Read that sentence again.
15:38It is not a complaint
15:40about losses.
15:40It is a professional
15:42soldier admitting
15:43that his entire craft,
15:45maneuver,
15:46timing,
15:46and concentration
15:47no longer works
15:49in daylight.
15:51But Kluge was writing
15:52about the sky
15:53as it had been.
15:54He did not know
15:56that the Americans
15:57were about to change
15:58what the sky could do.
16:00Pete Quesada
16:01commanded
16:02the 9th Tactical Air Command,
16:04the fighter bombers
16:05working directly
16:06for Omar Bradley's
16:071st Army.
16:09He had been flying
16:10since 1924
16:11and had walked away
16:13from eight
16:13airplane crashes.
16:15And he had been
16:16studying the same
16:17problem the German
16:18tank commanders
16:19were living with,
16:20only from the other end.
16:23His idea
16:24was almost
16:24embarrassingly simple.
16:26Put an Air Force radio
16:28inside a tank.
16:30Put an airman
16:31in the tank
16:31with it.
16:33Let the man
16:34on the ground
16:34talk to the man
16:35in the air,
16:36in the same language.
16:38Quesada promised Bradley
16:40that this way,
16:41the direction
16:41from the ground
16:42would be in language
16:43the fighter boy
16:44in the air
16:45could understand.
16:46Bradley welcomed it.
16:48What happened next
16:49is a reminder
16:50that great ideas
16:51still have to survive
16:53the Army's paperwork.
16:55Ordnance shipped
16:55to Sherman
16:56for a trial installation.
16:58It was sent
16:58to the wrong place
16:59and ended up
17:00with an armored division.
17:02A second Sherman
17:03finally reached
17:04Quesada's headquarters,
17:05was sent back
17:06to Ordnance,
17:07and had to be
17:07retrieved again.
17:09At last,
17:10the right kind
17:11of aircraft radio
17:12was bolted inside.
17:13The tests went well.
17:15Every other installation
17:16was pushed through
17:17at top priority.
17:19So now,
17:20there was an airman
17:21where no airman
17:22had ever been expected
17:23to sit.
17:24In a tank turret,
17:26at the head
17:27of an armored column,
17:28with one ear
17:29on the tank net
17:30and one
17:31on the fighters overhead.
17:33In the 2nd Armored Division,
17:35one of those air liaison tanks
17:36belonged to a crew
17:37under 1st Lieutenant
17:38Philip Reisler.
17:40They rode with
17:41Combat Command A,
17:42and their call sign
17:43was Cut Break.
17:44The rules were written plainly.
17:46Every advancing armored column
17:48would be covered
17:49at all times
17:50by a flight
17:50of four fighter bombers
17:52flying armed reconnaissance
17:54just ahead
17:54of the lead tanks.
17:56The tank commanders
17:57could listen in
17:58and call for an attack
17:59on anything
18:00in front of them.
18:01Here's why
18:02that mattered so much.
18:03Remember the German
18:04answer to June?
18:06Hide by day,
18:07move by night,
18:08trust the hedgerow.
18:10That answer
18:11assumed the pilot above
18:12could not find you
18:14unless you showed yourself.
18:16Now the pilot
18:17had a guide on the ground,
18:18someone who could say,
18:20behind that hedge,
18:21the second field
18:22on the left.
18:23On July 25th,
18:25Operation Cobra
18:26opened with a carpet
18:27of heavy bombs
18:28west of St. Lowe.
18:29The next day,
18:31the armor went through,
18:32and armored column cover
18:33went with it
18:34for the first time.
18:36On that first day alone,
18:37four fighter groups
18:38flew 72 squadron missions
18:40of this kind.
18:42The 368th group
18:44flew 25 of them.
18:45And the stories
18:46that came back
18:47over the radio
18:48sound almost casual.
18:49A tank crew
18:50asked the airplanes overhead
18:52whether the road ahead
18:53was safe.
18:54The answer came back,
18:55stand by,
18:57and we'll find out.
18:58The fighters went down the road,
19:00found German tanks,
19:02and destroyed them.
19:03Another time,
19:04the planes chased off
19:05panzers closing in
19:07on a lone Sherman.
19:08When a column commander
19:09asked for a road
19:10to be swept,
19:11the flight swept it,
19:12then radioed back
19:13that they had missed a tank.
19:15They went down again
19:16and dive-bombed it.
19:19One German tank crew,
19:20strafed from above,
19:22climbed out
19:23and later surrendered
19:24to the American column
19:25it had been waiting
19:25to ambush.
19:27The Germans tried
19:28to answer back.
19:30American tanks
19:31carried colored panels
19:32on their decks
19:33so pilots could tell
19:34friend from foe.
19:36Quesada later remembered
19:37what happened next.
19:39The Germans caught on,
19:40he said,
19:41and began using
19:42the same color.
19:43So the Americans
19:44changed the colors
19:45every day.
19:46Move and counter-move.
19:48But the radio
19:49changed the game
19:50in a way
19:51no panel ever could.
19:53Think about what it meant
19:54for a German tank commander
19:56until now,
19:57the sky had been dangerous
19:58but blind.
20:00Now the sky could listen.
20:01It could be called.
20:03It could be pointed at him
20:04by the very tanks
20:05he was fighting.
20:07And at the end of July,
20:08the Germans ran out
20:09of time to hide.
20:11With the front broken
20:12and American armor
20:13racing behind them,
20:14entire divisions
20:15had to move
20:16or be trapped.
20:17In the words
20:18of the American
20:19Air Force history,
20:20they threw caution
20:21to the winds
20:21and moved in daylight.
20:24On July 29th,
20:25near a village
20:26called Ronsi,
20:27a German column
20:28found that road
20:29blocked by the 2nd
20:30and 3rd armored divisions.
20:32Over the radio
20:33that afternoon,
20:34an American general
20:35shouted at the pilots
20:36above him,
20:37Go to it!
20:38Get one for me!
20:40What those pilots
20:41found on that road
20:42and what a 25-year-old
20:43German Panther commander
20:44saw through his periscope
20:46that day
20:46is the moment
20:47the fear of daylight
20:48stopped being a theory.
20:50July 29th, 1944.
20:53A few miles south
20:54of Coutances.
20:56Fritz Lengenck
20:57is 25 years old
20:58and has spent
20:59seven years in the SS.
21:01He is not even an officer,
21:03but he commands
21:04a platoon of four Panthers
21:05in the 2nd SS Panzer Division,
21:08Das Reich.
21:09And tonight,
21:11along with thousands
21:12of other German soldiers,
21:13he is trying to get
21:14out of a trap
21:15the American armor
21:16has closed behind him.
21:19The night before
21:20had gone badly.
21:21The roads
21:22were jammed solid.
21:23At one blocked junction,
21:26La Croix-Marie,
21:27Lengenck had used
21:28his Panther
21:29to shove staff cars
21:30and maintenance trucks
21:31off the road,
21:32crushing some of them,
21:33just to clear a way.
21:35Then the major
21:36leading the column
21:37turned everyone around
21:38to try a route
21:39farther south.
21:41Lengenck thought
21:42it was a mistake.
21:43The traffic was too thick
21:45and the sky
21:46was getting lighter.
21:47He was right.
21:49When dawn came,
21:50the column was caught
21:51in the open.
21:53Pretty soon,
21:54he said later,
21:55aircraft dotted the sky.
21:57This is the moment
21:58the whole story
21:58has been building toward.
22:00For seven weeks,
22:01German armor
22:02has survived
22:03by giving up the day.
22:04Now there's no choice.
22:06Behind them
22:07is the American
22:082nd Armored Division.
22:09Ahead,
22:10and on the flanks,
22:11the 3rd Armored.
22:12To get out,
22:14they have to drive.
22:15And to drive,
22:16they have to do it
22:17under the sun.
22:19Lengenck's Panthers
22:20punched through
22:21a hedgerow
22:21into a big orchard
22:22and hid under the trees.
22:24The aircraft
22:25found them anyway.
22:26They strafed
22:27and bombed the orchard,
22:29again and again.
22:31Lengenck's radio sets
22:32caught fire,
22:33and he had to push
22:34the burning equipment
22:35off the back of his tank
22:36with his own hands.
22:38Bullets knocked
22:39the hatch cover
22:39off the turret.
22:41The crew stuffed blankets
22:42into the opening.
22:43And then something
22:44happened inside
22:45that tank
22:46that tells you
22:46more than any statistic.
22:49Near the Panthers
22:50lay German paratroopers
22:51killed in the first
22:52air attack.
22:53The fighter bombers
22:55came back
22:55and strafed
22:56the bodies again.
22:58Lengenck's gunner
22:59was watching it
23:00through his gunsight.
23:01He cracked.
23:02He tried to get
23:02out of the tank.
23:04Lengenck,
23:05he drew his pistol,
23:06pointed it at him,
23:07and ordered him
23:07to stop.
23:09The man recovered.
23:11Later,
23:12under artillery,
23:13Lengenck himself
23:14broke for a while
23:15and crawled around
23:16aimlessly
23:16until he got
23:17control of himself
23:18again.
23:19His crew
23:20never saw it.
23:21The continuous
23:22rattle of the bullets
23:23on all sides
23:24of the turret,
23:25he said,
23:25drove you crazy.
23:27Now listen to
23:28what he did next,
23:29because this is
23:30what fear of daylight
23:31actually looks like
23:32from inside a tank.
23:34When the column
23:35had to move,
23:36Lengenck stopped
23:37watching the ground.
23:38He watched
23:39the aircraft,
23:40He studied
23:41their flight paths,
23:42waited for the moment
23:43their turn carried
23:44them away,
23:45and signaled his tanks
23:46to dash to the next
23:47piece of cover.
23:48Then he waited again.
23:50A Panther commander,
23:52holding one of the
23:52best tanks in the world,
23:54had stopped fighting
23:55the enemy in front of him
23:56and was timing his life
23:58around the airplanes
23:59overhead.
24:00Up in that sky,
24:01the American side
24:02of the story
24:03was just getting started.
24:04In the afternoon,
24:06Thunderbolts,
24:06of the 405th Fighter Group,
24:08found what the
24:09official Air Force
24:10history calls
24:11a traffic jam
24:12between Rensi
24:13and Saint-Denis-les-Veteux,
24:16a German column
24:17boxed in by the
24:182nd and 3rd
24:19Armored Divisions
24:20with nowhere to go.
24:22The pilots started
24:23working it at
24:2410 minutes past 3
24:25in the afternoon.
24:26They kept at it
24:27until 20 minutes
24:28to 10 that night,
24:29more than 6 hours,
24:31flight after flight,
24:32landing,
24:33rearming,
24:34and coming back.
24:35The pilots had a name
24:37for what they saw,
24:38a fighter-bomber's paradise.
24:41They estimated at least
24:42500 vehicles
24:43jammed around Rensi.
24:45One pilot climbed
24:46out of his cockpit
24:47and said he had been
24:48to two church socials
24:50and a county fair,
24:51but he had never seen
24:52anything like this before.
24:54They were not alone.
24:56American artillery,
24:58tanks,
24:58and tank destroyers
24:59were firing into the
25:01column from the ground.
25:02And when the Americans
25:03spotted a large group
25:04of tanks near Gavray,
25:05they asked the British
25:06for help.
25:07And rocket-firing typhoons
25:09came in too.
25:11A young Thunderbolt pilot
25:13named Quentin Aniston
25:14was in that sky
25:15the same day.
25:16He was 23,
25:17from Minnesota,
25:18flying with the
25:20366th Fighter Group.
25:22On July 29th,
25:24his log records
25:25a dive-bombing attack
25:26on a bridge
25:27and tanks
25:27at Gavray.
25:29His bombs hung up
25:30and would not release.
25:32He brought the airplane
25:33home with the bombs
25:34still on it,
25:36landed hot,
25:37and rolled into
25:37another airplane
25:38that had not cleared
25:39the runway.
25:41And here is what
25:42that week cost
25:43the men
25:44who made the Germans
25:45afraid.
25:46In the five days
25:47after Cobra opened,
25:49Aniston's group
25:50lost pilot
25:51after pilot
25:52to Flack.
25:53On July 27th,
25:55his own element leader,
25:56Paul Bade,
25:57went in
25:58at low altitude.
25:59Aniston wrote about it
26:01in a single line.
26:02He waved to his wingman
26:04an instant
26:05before he crashed.
26:06I was that wingman.
26:08Remember that
26:09every time you hear the words
26:11fighter-bomber's paradise.
26:13The Flack gunners
26:14around those columns
26:15were shooting back,
26:16and the Thunderbolts
26:17had to come down low,
26:19into the guns,
26:20to do their work.
26:21When the army
26:22tallied the results,
26:23the figures were staggering.
26:2666 tanks,
26:28204 vehicles,
26:29and 11 guns
26:31destroyed.
26:3256 more tanks,
26:34and 55 vehicles
26:36damaged.
26:37When American troops
26:38later walked
26:39through the area,
26:40they found more
26:41than 100 tanks
26:42and over 250 vehicles
26:44in various stages
26:45of wreckage.
26:46Das Reich alone
26:48lost about
26:49two-thirds
26:49of its weapons
26:50and equipment
26:50in the pocket.
26:53Langanka made it out.
26:54At 10 o'clock
26:55that night,
26:56in the dark,
26:57his column broke out
26:58across the Hambai Road
27:00and kept moving
27:01through the night
27:01in short bursts
27:03toward Gavray.
27:04He brought hundreds of men
27:06out of the pocket
27:07with him.
27:08He had survived
27:09by doing the one thing
27:10every German tanker
27:11now understood,
27:13wait for darkness.
27:14But there is a detail
27:15buried in the American
27:16official history
27:17that is easy
27:18to read past.
27:20It says
27:20many of those vehicles
27:22were abandoned,
27:23intact,
27:24that the Germans
27:25fled on foot.
27:27Stop and think
27:28about that.
27:30If a tank
27:30is abandoned intact,
27:32who actually
27:33destroyed it?
27:35That question
27:36bothered a small team
27:37of British operational
27:38research scientists
27:39so much
27:39that,
27:40soon after the fighting
27:41moved on,
27:42they walked the length
27:43of one of those
27:44wrecked columns
27:45near the bridge
27:46at La Balleine
27:46and examined
27:47every burned
27:48and abandoned
27:49vehicle on it,
27:50one by one.
27:52What they wrote down
27:53about the bombs
27:54would have stunned
27:54the pilots
27:55who flew over
27:56Ronse.
27:56Here is what the
27:57British investigators
27:58found on the road
27:59near La Balleine.
28:00They went from wreck
28:02to wreck
28:02along the column,
28:03and the single
28:05largest known
28:06cause of destruction
28:07turned out
28:08to be rockets.
28:09But even that number
28:10was small.
28:11Far bigger
28:12was a different
28:13category altogether.
28:15Panthers
28:16that had been
28:16abandoned.
28:18Panthers that had
28:19been blown up
28:19by their own crews.
28:21And then the line
28:23that would have
28:23stunned the American
28:24pilots who flew
28:25over Rossi.
28:27None of the tanks
28:28or self-propelled guns
28:29on that road
28:30had been knocked
28:31out by bombs.
28:33None.
28:34Two of the Panthers
28:35were found
28:36completely undamaged,
28:37with fuel in the tanks
28:39and ammunition
28:40in the racks.
28:41Their crews
28:42had simply climbed out
28:43and left them.
28:45Another study
28:46of 33 Panthers
28:48found that 10 of them,
28:49almost one in three,
28:50had been abandoned
28:52or destroyed
28:53by the men inside.
28:54Experienced crews
28:55tended to stay
28:56in their tanks
28:57under air attack,
28:58the investigators learned,
28:59and they had
29:00great difficulty
29:00stopping the inexperienced
29:02men from bailing out.
29:04A captured German sergeant
29:05put it in one sentence,
29:07there is nothing
29:08but air attack
29:09that would make
29:09a crack panzer crew
29:11do that.
29:13So now go back
29:14to the question
29:14we started with.
29:16How did American
29:17fighter bombers
29:18make German tankers
29:19afraid of daylight?
29:21You might have assumed,
29:22as almost everyone
29:24did at the time,
29:25that the answer
29:26was simple destruction,
29:27that the Thunderbolts
29:28killed so many tanks
29:30that the survivors
29:30learned to hide.
29:32It's not what
29:33the record shows.
29:35The bomb rarely
29:36hit the tank.
29:37What the airplane
29:38really hit
29:39was the man
29:40inside it.
29:42A panther with a full
29:43load of fuel
29:44and shells
29:45was safer than
29:45almost anything else
29:46on that road.
29:48And yet its crew
29:49ran from it
29:50because the sound
29:51of the engines overhead
29:52had become more frightening
29:54than the open field.
29:55Hold on to that idea
29:56because it is the key
29:58to everything
29:58that happens next.
30:00It does not mean
30:01the fear was imaginary.
30:02The fighter bombers
30:03were burning the trucks,
30:05the fuel,
30:06the half-tracks,
30:07the men on foot.
30:08They were blocking
30:09the roads
30:10and leaving
30:11the panzers stranded.
30:12The tankers
30:13had every reason
30:15to be afraid.
30:16And the young Americans
30:17doing the attacking
30:18were paying for it
30:20in blood.
30:21On August 3rd,
30:23Quentin Anundsen
30:24was scrambled
30:24to dive-bomb
30:25German tanks
30:26counterattacking
30:27near Mortein.
30:28Over Veer,
30:3020mm Flack
30:31hit his Thunderbolt
30:32several times.
30:33Fire broke out
30:34in the cockpit
30:35and the supercharger.
30:37His canopy jammed shut.
30:39He crash-landed,
30:40blacked out,
30:41and woke up
30:42with a dislocated shoulder.
30:44He was one
30:45of the lucky ones
30:46that summer.
30:47Four days later,
30:48the Germans made
30:49their next move
30:50in this contest.
30:51And this time,
30:52it was not a retreat.
30:54It was an attack.
30:56And it was built
30:57around the sky.
30:58Just after midnight
30:59on August 7th, 1944,
31:02German Panzer Division
31:03struck west
31:04toward Mortein,
31:05aiming to cut through
31:06to the sea
31:06at Avranche
31:07and slice Patton's army
31:09off from its supplies.
31:11They went in the dark.
31:13And they had something else
31:14on their side.
31:15A thick summer ground fog
31:17that settled over the hills
31:18and valleys around Mortein
31:20and kept every allied aircraft away.
31:23On the ground,
31:24the men of the American
31:2530th Infantry Division held.
31:27At the crossroads
31:29and on the hill
31:29above Mortein,
31:30they fought German armor
31:32through the morning
31:33with whatever they had.
31:34And they held
31:35until the sun burned
31:36through the fog.
31:38At around noon,
31:39it did.
31:41The Luftwaffe
31:42had promised
31:42to put something like
31:43300 planes
31:44over that battle.
31:46The American 9th Air Force
31:48had a job too.
31:49Stop them.
31:51And the German fighters
31:52reported that they were
31:53engaged by allied aircraft
31:54from the moment they took off.
31:56They were unable
31:58even to reach the battlefield.
31:59With the German fighters held off,
32:01the RAF's rocket-firing typhoons
32:03went to work on the armor.
32:05And Quesada's thunderbolts
32:07flew some 200 sorties
32:09over the Mortein area
32:10that afternoon.
32:12General von Lutwitz,
32:13whose 2nd Panzer Division
32:14was leading the attack,
32:16described the moment later.
32:18Suddenly, he said,
32:19the allied fighter bombers
32:21swooped out of the sky.
32:22We could do nothing against them.
32:24And we could make
32:25no further progress.
32:27When the investigators
32:28later counted German tanks
32:30and assault guns
32:31left in the battle area,
32:32they found 46.
32:34They could attribute
32:35only 9 of them
32:36to air weapons.
32:389.
32:39And yet the attack
32:40had stopped dead
32:41on the afternoon
32:42of August 7th.
32:43And it never really
32:44started again.
32:45Do you see the pattern now?
32:47The German army
32:49had tried two answers
32:50to the fighter bomber.
32:51First,
32:52hide in the day
32:53and move at night.
32:55Then,
32:56attack in the dark
32:57and pray for fog.
32:59Both answers
33:00had the same weakness.
33:01Sooner or later,
33:02the sun came out.
33:04A week later,
33:05the Germans were trying
33:05to escape the pocket
33:06around Falaise.
33:08Prisoners told their interrogators
33:10the same thing
33:11again and again.
33:12The threat of air attack
33:14restricted movement
33:15to the hours of darkness.
33:16When aircraft appeared,
33:18crews took cover
33:19and drove their vehicles
33:20off the main roads.
33:21And the side roads
33:22jammed solid.
33:24German commanders
33:25estimated that a division
33:26trying to move
33:27in daylight
33:27could lose 30-40%
33:29of its combat strength.
33:31One German corporal
33:32wrote a line
33:33that says more
33:34than all the numbers
33:35together.
33:36The Yabos,
33:37he wrote,
33:37were a burden
33:38on our souls.
33:40And now,
33:41the fear climbed
33:42one last rung,
33:43all the way
33:44to the top.
33:45On August 18th,
33:47Field Marshal von Kluge,
33:49relieved of command,
33:50wrote a letter to Hitler
33:51before taking his own life.
33:53Among the reasons
33:54for the disaster,
33:55he wrote,
33:56was an air situation
33:57that almost completely
33:58ruled out a daylight battle.
34:00The very next day,
34:01August 19th,
34:03Hitler told his generals
34:04he would take back
34:05the initiative in the West.
34:07And he chose the season
34:08when the Allied air forces
34:10would be unable to fly.
34:12Think about how far
34:13that idea had traveled.
34:15In June,
34:16it was a division commander
34:17begging to wait for twilight.
34:19In July,
34:21a Panther commander
34:22timing his dash
34:23across a field
34:24to the turns
34:24of the airplanes overhead.
34:26In August,
34:27a Field Marshal's
34:28suicide letter.
34:30And now,
34:31the plan for Germany's
34:32last great offensive
34:33in the West.
34:35The fear of daylight
34:36had stopped being a feeling.
34:38It had become strategy.
34:40Four months later,
34:42on December 16th,
34:43the weather gave Hitler
34:44exactly what he had asked for.
34:47And for two full days,
34:49the Thunderbolts
34:50could not find the Panzers.
34:52Everything now depended
34:54on one question.
34:56Could the German armor
34:57reach the bridges
34:58over the Meuse
34:59before the sky opened again?
35:02December 16th, 1944.
35:05The Ardennes.
35:06Before dawn,
35:08German guns opened up
35:09along the front
35:10of the American 1st Army,
35:11and out of the fog
35:12came the armor
35:13of two panzer armies.
35:15Overhead,
35:16the sky was a low,
35:18gray ceiling,
35:19exactly as ordered.
35:20But the Germans
35:21had not trusted
35:22the weather alone.
35:23A few days before the attack,
35:25at Hitler's headquarters
35:26at Ziegenburg,
35:28the division commanders
35:29had been called in
35:29to hear the plan.
35:31One of them
35:32was our old acquaintance
35:33from the Normandy Road,
35:34Fritz Beierlein,
35:35now leading
35:36Panzer Lair again.
35:37He remembered
35:38Hitler promising
35:39fighter support
35:40of 3,000 planes,
35:42planes that would
35:43keep the Allies
35:43out of the sky.
35:45Think about
35:45what that promise
35:46tells you.
35:47Six months after
35:49Beierlein's
35:49march down
35:50the fighter-bomber
35:51race course,
35:52the German high command
35:53was planning an offensive
35:54with two separate shields
35:56against the American
35:56fighter-bomber,
35:58the clouds,
35:59and 3,000 fighters.
36:01Nobody in that room
36:03needed to be told why.
36:04The spearhead
36:05of the 6th Panzer Army
36:06was a battle group
36:07of the 1st SS Panzer Division
36:09under Joachim Piper,
36:10and the timetable
36:12was brutal.
36:14The army's plan
36:15called for its armor
36:16to reach the Meuse River
36:17by the evening
36:18of the third day.
36:19Remember that deadline.
36:21The evening of the third day
36:23was December 18th.
36:25For the first two days,
36:26the weather held.
36:28American fighter-bombers
36:30could barely get off
36:30the ground,
36:31and when they did,
36:32they groped around
36:33under the cloud.
36:35On December 17th,
36:37one Hellhawks flight leader
36:39found a tank column
36:40under the overcast
36:41and radioed down
36:42to the ground.
36:43Is that a friendly column,
36:45or are these the Germans?
36:46The answer came back.
36:48That's the enemy.
36:50I'm going down,
36:52he said.
36:52Send reinforcements.
36:54His squadron worked
36:55the column
36:56until the weather closed in
36:57and the bombs
36:58and ammunition were gone.
37:00It was a sharp blow.
37:02But it was one hole
37:04in a sky
37:04that was mostly shut.
37:06Now we come to December 18th,
37:08the day you saw
37:09at the very beginning
37:10of this story.
37:11Let's walk through it
37:12the way Piper lived it,
37:14hour by hour.
37:16By about 8 in the morning,
37:17his tanks were across
37:18the bridge at Stavolo.
37:20The Americans had not managed
37:21to blow it in time.
37:23Piper drove on
37:24toward Trois-Ponts,
37:25where the roads
37:26crossed the Embleves
37:27and the Somme
37:27on the way west.
37:29At about a quarter past 11,
37:31a single American
37:3257mm anti-tank gun
37:34knocked out
37:35his lead Panther,
37:36and American engineers
37:37blew the bridges
37:38in his face.
37:40So Piper turned north,
37:41along the Embleves valley,
37:43through La Glaise,
37:44toward the village of Chenet.
37:46His scouts reported
37:47a bridge there
37:48that was intact
37:49and strong enough
37:50to carry his tanks.
37:52One more river,
37:53one more bridge,
37:54and the road
37:55toward the Meuse
37:56was open again.
37:58And then,
37:59in the early afternoon,
38:00the clouds broke.
38:02An American liaison plane
38:04spotted the column
38:04at Chenet
38:05and called in
38:06the 9th Air Force.
38:08Thunderbolts came down
38:09on the road.
38:10The official army history
38:11records that they
38:12knocked out two or three
38:13tanks in seven half-tracks,
38:15and the burning wrecks
38:16blocked the narrow road
38:17for a considerable time.
38:20A German account
38:21describes the tank
38:22at the head of the column,
38:23at a sharp bend
38:24near the bridge,
38:25being blown to pieces
38:26by a direct hit.
38:28Somewhere in that same
38:30afternoon sky
38:31was Bob Brookings'
38:32flight from Chiev,
38:33down under the overcast,
38:35corking the road
38:36at both ends
38:37and calling every
38:38fighter-bomber
38:38it could find
38:39through the gaps.
38:41Notice how small
38:42that number is.
38:43Two or three tanks.
38:45After everything you've heard
38:47about La Balleine
38:48and Mortin,
38:49it shouldn't surprise
38:50you anymore.
38:51The Thunderbolts
38:52didn't destroy
38:53Piper's battle group
38:54that afternoon.
38:55They did something else.
38:56They stopped it.
38:59Piper's men
38:59made desperate attempts
39:00to get the column
39:01moving again.
39:02By his own estimate,
39:04the air attacks
39:05cost him somewhere
39:06between two
39:06and two and a half hours.
39:08The advance
39:09did not get going again
39:11until around
39:11half-past four.
39:12And on December 18th
39:14in the Belgian Ardennes,
39:16half-past four
39:17in the afternoon
39:18is very close
39:19to darkness.
39:20Now hold your breath
39:22because here is
39:23the bridge
39:24I promised you.
39:25After Cheneau,
39:27Piper's road
39:28ran on toward
39:29a small stream
39:30called the Lien,
39:31near the hamlet
39:32of Neufmoulin.
39:34There was one bridge
39:35there that could
39:36take his heavy tanks.
39:37And waiting at it
39:39was a squad
39:39of Company A
39:40of the 291st
39:42Engineer Combat Battalion,
39:44a unit of
39:45American engineers
39:46who had spent
39:47the last two days
39:48racing ahead
39:49of the panzers,
39:50blowing up
39:51everything they could.
39:53Their battalion commander,
39:55David Pergren,
39:56was 27 years old,
39:58an engineering graduate
39:59of Penn State.
40:01One of the men
40:02at the bridge
40:02that evening
40:03was a corporal
40:03named Fred Chapin.
40:05The charges were set.
40:08The Germans
40:09came up the road
40:09in the dusk.
40:11As the first German
40:12tank opened fire,
40:13the engineers
40:14blew the bridge.
40:16Piper's men
40:17searched for
40:17another way across.
40:18They found a bridge
40:19at Habimont,
40:20but it could carry
40:21only half-tracks,
40:22not tanks.
40:23There was nothing else.
40:24The battle group
40:25had to turn around
40:26and go back
40:27the way it had come,
40:28toward La Glaise
40:29and Stummel,
40:30away from the Meuse.
40:32The engineers
40:33later remembered
40:33Piper's furious words
40:35when he saw a bridge
40:36go up in front of him.
40:37Diese verdammten
40:38pioniere,
40:39those damned engineers.
40:42Now do the arithmetic
40:43for yourself.
40:44Nobody can prove
40:45what would have happened
40:46if Piper had reached
40:47the Lien two and a half
40:48hours earlier,
40:49in daylight,
40:50before the charges
40:51were ready.
40:52But think about
40:53what those hours meant
40:54to the engineers
40:55at that bridge.
40:56And think about
40:57the deadline.
40:58The Meuse,
40:59by the evening
41:00of the third day.
41:01This was the evening
41:02of the third day.
41:03And Piper was
41:05turning back.
41:06That is the real meaning
41:07of the two and a half hours.
41:09Four thunderbolts
41:10in a hole in the clouds
41:11didn't need to destroy
41:12Piper's tanks.
41:14They needed to take away
41:15his afternoon.
41:17And the American engineers
41:18did the rest.
41:19But the most important part
41:21of the answer
41:21was still five days away.
41:24On December 23rd,
41:26a great mass of cold,
41:28dry air
41:28rolled in from the east,
41:30and the clouds
41:31over the Ardennes
41:32began to clear.
41:34The sky
41:35Hitler had built
41:36his offensive around
41:37was about to open
41:38completely.
41:40And on the road
41:40at Le Glaze,
41:42Piper was about
41:43to discover
41:43that the word
41:44at the heart
41:45of Bearline's list
41:46from Normandy,
41:47fuel,
41:49would decide
41:49his battle.
41:50December 23rd,
41:511944.
41:53Overnight,
41:54the wind swung around.
41:55A mass of cold,
41:57dry air
41:58rolled in from the east,
41:59and by morning,
42:00the cloud that had sat
42:01over the Ardennes
42:02for a week began
42:03to break apart.
42:04The frost was hard.
42:06The sky was pale
42:07and clear.
42:08Across Belgium,
42:10France,
42:10and Luxembourg,
42:11on frozen airstrips,
42:12ground crews pulled
42:13the covers off engines
42:14that had been waiting
42:15for this morning
42:16since December 16th.
42:18Over Bastogne,
42:19where the American
42:20101st Airborne Division
42:21and the armor
42:22and artillery trapped
42:23with it
42:24had been surrounded
42:24for days,
42:25the transports
42:26came first.
42:27On that one day,
42:29more than 250
42:30American C-47s
42:32reached the drop zone
42:33and put over 300 tons
42:35of ammunition,
42:36food,
42:37and medical supplies
42:38into the town.
42:39And around them
42:40and below them
42:41came the Thunderbolts.
42:42The 406th Fighter Group
42:45flew over the Bastogne garrison
42:46for five days in a row.
42:48The paratrooper's
42:49acting commander,
42:50Brigadier General
42:51Anthony McAuliffe,
42:52later sent the
42:53fighter-bomber pilots
42:54a message
42:54that began
42:55with a confession.
42:56I never knew
42:57until now,
42:58he wrote,
42:59that fighter-bombers
43:00could do so much.
43:03Now go back
43:04to the north,
43:05to the village of La Glaze,
43:06because this is where
43:07the whole story
43:08comes together.
43:10Piper's battle group
43:11had been trapped there
43:12since the Lien Bridge
43:13went up in its face.
43:14And by December 19th,
43:16according to the army's
43:17official history,
43:18Piper had almost
43:19completely drained
43:20his fuel tanks.
43:22Look at that word again.
43:24Fuel.
43:26It's the word
43:26from the top
43:27of Beyerlein's list
43:28in Normandy,
43:29and it has followed
43:30the Panzers
43:30all the way
43:31to the snow.
43:33The Germans tried
43:34to get gasoline
43:35to him the only way
43:36left,
43:37by air.
43:38And look when
43:39they had to do it.
43:40On the night
43:41of December 21st,
43:43German planes
43:43tried a supply drop.
43:45It was hard
43:45to find the drop zone
43:46in the dark,
43:47and the battle group
43:48got only enough fuel
43:49to keep its radios going
43:50and move a few tanks.
43:52On the night
43:53December 22nd,
43:55about 20 planes
43:56dropped fuel
43:56and ammunition again.
43:58Many of the containers
43:59landed in American hands
44:00at Stummel.
44:01At night.
44:03Both times.
44:05Even the Luftwaffe,
44:06by then,
44:07could only come to
44:08its own tank crews
44:09in the dark.
44:10Late on December 23rd,
44:12with the sky
44:13wide open above him,
44:14Piper received permission
44:16to break out.
44:17And he understood
44:18exactly what that meant.
44:21He could not take
44:22his vehicles.
44:23He could not
44:24take his wounded.
44:25The escape
44:26would have to be made
44:27at night.
44:28And on foot.
44:30At one o'clock
44:31in the morning
44:32on December 24th,
44:34Joachim Piper
44:34and some 800 of his men
44:36slipped out of La Gleise
44:37and walked away
44:38through the woods.
44:40A rear guard
44:41stayed behind
44:41to blow up the tanks,
44:43trucks, and guns.
44:44When the Americans
44:45came into La Gleise,
44:46they found 28 tanks,
44:4870 half-tracks,
44:49and 25 guns.
44:51They took about
44:52300 prisoners,
44:54nearly all of them wounded,
44:55and freed about
44:56170 captured Americans.
44:59The armored spearhead
45:01of the 1st SS Panzer Division
45:03had ceased
45:03to be an armored division.
45:06Something similar
45:07was happening
45:07farther west.
45:08The furthest spearhead
45:10of the German
45:112nd Panzer Division
45:12had reached Selle,
45:13just a few miles
45:14short of the Meuse.
45:16There,
45:17an entire German
45:18tank battalion
45:19ran out of fuel
45:20and waited
45:21roughly 48 hours
45:22for supplies
45:23that never came.
45:25At Christmas,
45:26the American
45:272nd Armored Division,
45:28with fighter bombers
45:29overhead,
45:29fell on them.
45:31Years later,
45:32Field Marshal
45:33von Rundstedt
45:34listed the reasons
45:35the offensive failed.
45:36Number four on his list
45:38was the complete
45:39air superiority
45:40of the Allies.
45:41And he added
45:42that Germany
45:43had not had enough fuel
45:44and that what fuel
45:46there was
45:46did not come up
45:47in time.
45:48So now we can finally
45:49answer the question
45:50in the title.
45:51How did American
45:52fighter bombers
45:52make German tankers
45:54afraid of daylight?
45:55It was not mainly
45:57by destroying tanks.
45:58You've seen the numbers.
45:59At La Belaine,
46:01none of the tanks
46:02on that road
46:02had been knocked out
46:03by bombs.
46:04At Mortin,
46:059 out of 46.
46:07At Chenue,
46:08two or three tanks.
46:11A panther in a hedgerow
46:12was a hard thing
46:13to kill
46:13from a diving fighter.
46:15The Thunderbolts
46:16did something worse.
46:17They went after
46:18everything a tank
46:19needs to stay alive.
46:21The fuel truck.
46:22The half-track
46:23carrying its infantry.
46:25The road behind it.
46:27The bridge
46:28in front of it.
46:30On June 7th,
46:31Beyerlein lost
46:32five tanks
46:33and 40 fuel trucks.
46:34And that ratio
46:35was the whole lesson.
46:37Then Quesada
46:38gave the sky ears.
46:40A radio in a Sherman,
46:42an airman in the turret,
46:43and suddenly,
46:44a German tank crew
46:45hiding behind a hedge
46:46could be pointed out
46:47to four Thunderbolts
46:48by the very Americans
46:49it was waiting to ambush.
46:52Hiding was no longer safe.
46:54Moving was no longer safe.
46:56All that was left
46:57was the dark.
46:59And so the fear
47:00moved up the chain of command,
47:01one rung at a time.
47:03A crack panzer crew,
47:05bailing out of
47:05a perfectly good panther,
47:06a field marshal
47:08writing that a daylight battle
47:09was almost completely ruled out.
47:11And at the top,
47:13a dictator choosing the date
47:14of his last great offensive
47:16by the weather
47:17because he knew
47:19his armor could not survive
47:20a clear day.
47:22That is what
47:23afraid of daylight
47:24really meant.
47:26Not that every German tanker
47:27was a coward.
47:28They were not.
47:30Piper's men
47:30were among the toughest
47:31soldiers in Europe.
47:33It meant that
47:34the most powerful
47:34armored force
47:35Germany had left
47:36had been forced
47:37to fight on a clock.
47:39Twelve or sixteen hours
47:41of every day
47:41belonged to the Americans.
47:43The panzers
47:44could only move,
47:45refuel,
47:46and resupply
47:47in whatever was left over.
47:49Every clear sky
47:50took that time
47:51away from them.
47:53And when the sky
47:54stayed clear,
47:54as it did
47:55after December 23rd,
47:57there was simply
47:58not enough time
47:59left to win.
48:01The proof
48:02is that picture
48:03at La Gleise.
48:04Twenty-eight German tanks
48:05standing in a Belgian village,
48:07empty of fuel.
48:09And the men
48:10who had driven them
48:10walking away
48:11at one o'clock
48:12in the morning,
48:13in the dark.
48:14Because in daylight,
48:15they could not
48:16have got out at all.
48:18But one American
48:19from this story
48:20was still out in the snow.
48:22Remember Roy Wayne Price,
48:23the young lieutenant
48:24who belly-landed
48:25his thunderbolt
48:26into the fog
48:27over Piper's column
48:28on December 18th?
48:30What happened
48:31when he finally
48:31walked out of those woods?
48:33And who saved him
48:34at the very last moment
48:35is how this story ends.
48:37December 18th, 1944.
48:40Somewhere in the hills
48:41above the Embleve.
48:43When Roy Wayne Price's
48:45thunderbolt came down,
48:46it came down
48:47into the fog.
48:48He got it onto its belly,
48:50climbed out,
48:51and started walking west,
48:53away from the German column
48:54he had just been bombing.
48:56He was a second lieutenant,
48:58a fighter pilot
48:59without his airplane,
49:00alone, on the ground,
49:01in the middle
49:02of the biggest German offensive
49:03in the West
49:04in four years.
49:05He walked for about two days.
49:08Finally, near Stavolo,
49:10he reached American lines,
49:12troops of the 30th Infantry Division.
49:15The same division
49:16that had held at Morten
49:17until the fog burned off
49:18in August.
49:19And they did not believe him.
49:22You have to understand
49:23that week to see why.
49:25German soldiers
49:26in American uniforms,
49:27speaking English,
49:29were loose behind the lines.
49:31Every unfamiliar American face
49:33was a suspect.
49:34And here was a man
49:35walking out of the woods
49:37from the direction
49:37of the enemy,
49:38saying he was a pilot
49:39who had been shot down.
49:41The G.I.s were not about
49:42to take his word for it.
49:44Then a 1st Sergeant
49:45stepped forward.
49:46He was from Price's hometown.
49:48He knew him.
49:49He vouched for him.
49:51Out of all the soldiers
49:52in the American Army,
49:53the man standing in that spot
49:55near Stavolo
49:56was a man from home.
49:58Price made it back
49:59to the Hellhawks
50:00before Christmas.
50:01His flight leader,
50:02Bob Brooking,
50:03was awarded the Silver Star
50:04for that mission
50:05into the fog.
50:071st Army staff
50:08thanked the 9th Air Force
50:09for the strikes that day.
50:10And when ground troops
50:12later went over the road,
50:13they found the damage
50:14was greater
50:14than the pilots had claimed.
50:16Brooking came home
50:17after the war
50:18and lived to an old age.
50:20He died in Austin, Texas
50:21in 2008.
50:24Quentin Aniston,
50:25the young man
50:26from Laverne, Minnesota,
50:27who had waved
50:28to his element leader
50:29an instant before
50:30Paul Bade went in,
50:31also survived the war.
50:33On December 5th, 1944,
50:36he sat alone in his tent
50:37and wrote a letter
50:38to the girl he loved,
50:40Jackie,
50:41and he never sent it.
50:42In it,
50:43he wrote that he had
50:44never aborted a mission
50:45or failed to dive
50:46on a target,
50:47no matter how intense
50:48the flack.
50:49And he wrote four words
50:51that every man
50:52in those fighter-bomber groups
50:53would have understood.
50:55We are all casualties.
50:58He married Jackie in 1945.
51:01They had three children.
51:02He went into
51:03the insurance business.
51:04And almost 50 years later,
51:06in 1993,
51:08he finally told the story himself
51:10in a documentary called
51:11A Fighter Pilot's Story.
51:14He died on December 28th, 2008,
51:17and he is buried at Arlington.
51:20So is Pete Quesada.
51:22After the war,
51:23he became the first commander
51:24of the Air Force's
51:25Tactical Air Command
51:26and later the first head
51:28of the Federal Aviation Administration.
51:31He died in February 1993,
51:34at 88.
51:35The idea he had
51:36in the summer of 1944,
51:38a radio in a tank
51:40and an airman in the turret,
51:41is still the basic idea
51:43behind the way
51:44American ground troops
51:45call in airplanes today.
51:46On the other side,
51:47the men who had learned
51:48to fear the sun
51:49found their own ways home.
51:52Beyerlein's division
51:53never reached the sea
51:54in Normandy,
51:55and it never reached
51:56the Meuse in the Ardennes.
51:58Piper's men
51:59left Le Glaze on foot
52:00at one in the morning
52:02in the dark.
52:04That is where
52:05the German story ends.
52:06In the dark,
52:08where it had been heading
52:09since a June afternoon
52:10on the road from Veer.
52:12Because in the end,
52:14the answer to our question
52:15is simple.
52:16The American fighter bombers
52:17rarely had to destroy
52:19the German tank.
52:20They took away
52:21everything around it,
52:22the fuel,
52:24the roads,
52:25the bridges,
52:25and the hours,
52:27until the panzers
52:28could only live at night.
52:30Go back one last time
52:32to where we began.
52:34Kiev,
52:34December 18th.
52:36A runway lined
52:38with flare pots
52:38in a fog so thick
52:40you cannot see its end.
52:42A colonel on the telephone,
52:44saying there's a German column
52:45through Stavlo
52:46with very little
52:47in front of it.
52:48And four young Americans,
52:50Brooking,
52:51Wells,
52:51Toman,
52:52and Price,
52:53rolling down that runway
52:55into a white wall
52:57because somebody
52:58had to find a hole
53:00in the sky.
53:01One of them
53:02would walk home
53:03through the snow.
53:05All four of them
53:06did their job.
53:08Thank you for watching
53:09this story
53:09all the way to the end.
53:11If it meant something to you,
53:13please hit like.
53:14It is the single biggest thing
53:16that helps a story like this
53:17reach people
53:18who have never heard
53:19of Bob Brooking
53:20or Roy Wayne Price.
53:22Subscribe and turn on the bell
53:24so you don't miss the next one.
53:26And tell me in the comments
53:27where you're watching from.
53:28If your father,
53:30grandfather,
53:31or uncle
53:31served in the Second World War,
53:33whether he flew thunderbolts,
53:35crewed a tank,
53:36kept the engines running
53:37on a frozen airstrip,
53:39or carried a rifle,
53:40please write his name
53:42and his unit.
53:43The American pilots
53:44and ground crews
53:45of the Ninth Air Force
53:47and the men
53:48who served beside them
53:49deserve to be remembered
53:51by name.