Fox News
Expand
Browse All Video
Watch Live

You're watching...

The Fighter Aces

Details

  • Description

    Fly into combat with some of America's greatest fighter pilots

  • Duration 9:31
  • Date

Clips

Also in this playlist...

Latest News

Auto-advance: ON

Auto-advance
View All

Transcript

This transcript is automatically generated

Tonight inside the world of the fighter race the brave men.

Battle in the -- like ancient nights there.

Single -- replaced by.

Tensions with thousands of -- Good evening I'm over north and welcome -- war stories.

This is the US air force museum in Dayton Ohio.

Imagine -- swirling massive -- it was -- -- force against -- when He won the plane's movements limited by nothing.

-- -- -- varying skill of the violence they twist and turn climbing guide Wall Street job.

Become an ace pilot must -- by air to air bills requiring extraordinary proficiency and -- Some say it also requires -- militants.

Warrior she that allows them to overcome here.

Find -- in the cockpit and join us in the wild blue Yonder but some of America's.

Greatest things.

You don't get you.

He will get you -- I've -- it here.

The next -- yesterday it is a dead man.

And I don't care if -- applications back to the Kremlin.

From the mythical tale of -- to the drawings of Leonardo Da Vinci we've always dreamt of achieving the freedom of like.

To bicycle builders from Ohio Orville and Wilbur Wright would be the first to make this flight of fantasy a reality.

At 10:35 PM and December 17 1903.

The first powered aircraft flew over the -- the beaches of kitty hawk North Carolina.

They're twelve seconds -- -- would change the world forever I've -- can occupant can.

There were test pilots -- They've premiere -- -- in 1923 Charles Chuck -- -- -- a typical West Virginia farm boy He didn't even see an airplane up close until He was a team.

His first flight didn't go.

Very well we took off and man -- -- recorder.

You don't Wear Clean Air Act and I'll never forget when I got back got on -- graphic.

And -- applied for pilot for you've made a big mistake.

Just eleven years after the Wright Brothers first flight Europe erupted in war.

The battlefields like none other in history.

New horrors like Germany's Max and machine gun mowed down scores.

And chemical weapons like chlorine and mustard gas wafted over the lines -- of traffic.

Yeah there was a new arena for battle the sky.

As soon as people that airplanes in the -- one -- guns on them.

-- the -- is a former US air force pilot who has written more than thirty books on the history of aviation.

By 1918 everything that has been done in combat today with the exception.

Nuclear weapons that can space satellites -- like.

Have been done and by airplane.

The airplanes real success came on the heels of daring men like the red baron.

Who scored an amazing eighty kills -- -- Rick and backer of former race car driver.

Leading US -- captured the imagination of millions.

-- And so it rapidly.

The focus of the press him.

Only young heroes became.

From Madonna's and stars in her own right.

After the -- -- one.

Surplus military aircraft were very cheap and a lot of guys who want to continue flying in by flying an -- -- You know all the effort they put out the idea that aviation was still viable so it was it was a different.

Aviators like Charles Lindbergh and Emilia Earhart with the -- astronauts of the day.

Pushing the limits of technology in a race to go higher further and fast.

They -- it was an optical.

And -- that.

You might say walker but -- heard of Fort Wayne, Indiana was born to fly.

As a boy no one could imagine what the future held for the son of an architect although his childhood -- would offer some ominous foreshadowing.

My big delight was to make a model airplane that was made of balsa wood and then look on the roof of our -- like that -- That blew up blew up.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ignited public imagination but many of the military's top brass of disdain for the it'll play.

But seven uniform -- believe.

None more outspoken and zealous than US earlier incorporated general Billy Mitchell that's it.

Clean air power could be decisive warfare that the next war would be won by -- part.

Would Mitchell's visionary idea that the United States should have a separate air force -- -- some enemies.

But it also made him friends many of them World War I pilots like captain Robert goals -- my dad and his son Robin can still remember hearing the -- boys in their yards.

Are you consider an accomplished here is that little boy lift -- that his contemporaries who was back during the depression.

Actually entertainment whatever they -- -- their -- -- and -- hear their tales of flying.

Rob Reynolds was born in 1922 -- follow his father into the skies becoming a legendary -- and military leader.

That currently up about birth.

They.

It was a black political -- this goes -- click.

Quite different from the chip.

That they -- the -- in your face.

-- -- salute the overcoming the military's prejudice against the airplane required a dramatic test.

Until I -- -- 21 -- scores of military press and cameras looking on Mitchell's air crews attacked a group of obsolete American captured German -- Off the Virginia -- they included the battleship -- -- line.

It was as big German battleship considered unthinkable.

All of sudden just -- over saint.

That's what the world looking.

It -- immediately convince everybody okay we're going there but didn't happen.

Billy Mitchell's unwavering and aggressive manner made -- more adversaries than allies in 1926.

He resigned from the military after being court martialed and subordination.

He died ten years later.

Of all of his predictions about -- -- that is more chilling than winning 1920s tree.

And reporting labeled the masterpiece of his career Mitchell report told of Japan's expansionist ambitions.

That nineteen point 3 report predicted -- Pacific war.

We Begin with a naval air attack on Pearl Harbor.

At 7:38.

AM.

The attack came at 7:55.

-- Mitchell is off by just 25 minutes.

Four days later the Germans declared war on America.

Both of these nations.

We're coming to go to war.

So they were determined to have air force.

We were about to your current happenings.

Instant money.

The Pearl Harbor was attacked -- was following his father's footsteps.

-- -- was nineteen and in his second year at West Point.

Hours on the way to the -- so somebody coming toward repairing items that it.

Power.

There where were you the.

-- the Japanese bombed pearl.

Was -- king beautiful young lady that back agenda Agnes Scott finishing school.

And Atlanta Georgia.

We could see it come.

Before so it was -- great -- for.

Five months before Pearl Harbor and short on cash John bolt dropped out of the university of -- joining the Marines scored well on an aptitude test.

Was selected for flight school.

Forty year old Jack has He prefers to be -- -- on the way to becoming a legend.

There's of certain instinct.

-- a really good fighter pilot that it is.

It's just killer.

I -- September 41.

Just after British art schools and our crew cheap apartment he's -- and on Saturday we -- -- -- spent the night and the next morning.

Radio and -- -- -- Bomb Pearl Harbor and we are told reporter -- big excitement.

That would the gong in the headquarters building rang after dark and we were all called.

-- and the formation.

But her and join the army air corps in 1941.

And by December of using primary flight training we were convinced.

That the Japanese were the aircraft carriers were down on the Gulf of Mexico and they would be -- bombing -- his tail off and landed then that.

There would be no attack on -- cassette.

But the summer of 1942.

Rob Reynolds John Bolton Chuck Yeager and but her and all shared -- goal to become fighter pilots.

The new year first of these American heroes it's the face of battle and killed or -- people.

Load More