The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was the biggest single-seat fighter of the war. You could park most of a Spitfire under one of its wings. The engine was as big and powerful as the frame that was built around it -- 2,000 horsepower and more, compared to, say, a Japanese Zero's 950. They could carry bombs and rockets. And it's armament consisted of eight fifty-caliber wing-mounted machine guns. The effect of their concentrated fire was devastating.
This color documentary was made at the order of General Hap Arnold in the last few months of the war, when the Luftwaffe no longer existed for all practical purposes and the P-47s were used mainly for ground support.
We constantly see gun-camera footage of things being shot up on the ground. A locomotive produces a plume of steam as its penetrated by the bullets. An object explodes and the camera zooms us through the debris field. We practically never see the footage in which all those machine guns swallow up a French farmer, his cart, and the horse pulling it. I've only seen it once. It's a strange set of values that allows real people to die on screen but not a horse.
The ground support role was extremely dangerous. Casualties were high. One of the best documentaries I've ever seen on the air war in Europe was shown on PBS some years ago, "Fighter Pilot," by Quentin Aanonsen, a farm boy from Minnesota who grew old overnight in the role and lost his taste for hunting after the war. A group of Thunderbolts was expensive in terms of money too. It took 1200 ground personnel to support 75 pilots.
This is by no means an insult to our nature. The men who are interviewed describe their motives the way most men in combat describe theirs: It was thrilling and necessary. The enemy was never seen face to face. The enemy was a German fighter or a flak tower. And some of them admit to some chagrin at seeing German cities after the war that were no more than hollow walls.
Yet, when Vera Lynn isn't singing "Long Ago and Far Away," we hear "The Flight of the Bumblebee" as the P-47s strafe an enemy airfield. No such sentiments are found in Quentin Aanonsen's dry, dispassionate, horrifying account of his personal experience. No "Flight of the Bumblebee" and no orders from Hap Arnold.