User Reviews

I rated this 9 because it revealed to me more than I knew about the air war over Europe.

I am an avid war buff & read & watch any material I can get my hands on.

I find most docco's go over old ground but this was very revealing in the mindset of the generals pre D-Day at the time.

To use the fortresses as bait to lure the Luftwaffe to their ultimate demise through attrition was an eye opener to me.

26,000 deaths, oh my those brave boys, more than the marines lost in all of WWll.

Recommended!!!

I dips my lid to them all, very very brave men.

WWII in HD: The Air War (2010)

**** (out of 4)

This follow-up entry in the History Channel's 2009 documentary series takes a look at the American 8th Air Force battle against the German Luftwaffe in the year leading up to D-Day. We learn early on that the 8th Air Force was started shortly after the Pearl Harbor bombing and that originally they had eight men and no planes. From here, in terrific color footage, we see the year's worth of battles where the young Americans were fighting with trained professional and all of it leading to one of the deadliest battles as the group tried to take out Berlin and finally cripple the Germans. As with the previous entries, this one here is yet another amazing example of documentary filmmaking because we get pretty much everything you'd want to see and know. Like the previous series we are treated with many of the brutalities of war including one graphic sequence where we see the most damaging thing of being fired upon and surviving and that's the major burns that you're likely to suffer. The footage contains many scenes of flesh being burned off and the sequence just shows what all these soldiers had to deal with. The aerial footage is quite amazing and seeing it in Technicolor certainly makes you see things in a different light. As you'd expect some of the footage is just jaw dropping as it puts you right there in the center of the action and seeing the heavy ambush of planes makes you wonder how some of these men were able to survive so many battles. Rob Lowe does a very good job with the narration and we get Casey Affleck, Sean Astin, Christ O'Donnell and Elijah Wood doing some of the narration. Real soldiers Joe Armanini, Steve Pisanos and John Gibbsons are on hand to share their memories of the battles as well as Andy Rooney who was covering these battles at the time.

I don't mind SEEING it from the American point of view in the amazing colour film, but I don't like the claims that THEY won the air war alone.

Only a little is mentioned of the RAF and there should have been more, as it was all a JOINT effort.

The affects it had on these young men seeing their friends die so horrifically, was tremendous.

The three brave men interviewed will obviously never forget it. They trained and went in for some fun - which in the case of war, can never be so.

This vivid documentary should be shown in schools, to the eldest children, to warn them of the horrors of war.