(gentle music) (uplifting music) - [Narrator] Time passes.

Memories fade.

What's left is the story.

Words on paper.

Images on film.

But when you're lucky, really lucky, something more remains, something like a four-engine time machine.

- [Soldier] Flak will be heavy, probably accurate.

We've been through worse before.

Particularly for you gunners, you've got to be on the ball from the Danish coast on to the target.

- [Narrator] Suddenly it's 1943.

The world is on fire, and young men are flying into dangerous skies.

Many won't return.

But 10 men, who are good, brave, and very lucky, survive 25 combat missions, and that earns them a trip home, (plane rumbling) and a journey into history, on the plane they call the Memphis Belle.

(plane rumbling) (solemn music) There's no way they could have known.

When they signed up, they probably never heard the word flak.

They didn't know what it was, what it could do.

The boys wanted to fly, and they were eager to prove themselves.

They never saw a 20-millimeter cannon shell, the kind that veteran German fighter pilots would soon be pouring into their aircraft.

They wanted to be pilots, navigators, bombardiers, but they had no idea.

The British knew.

They tried bombing German targets in daylight, unescorted.

They learned the hard way.

(alarm blaring) So hard they stopped doing it.

Because if they didn't stop, they wouldn't have any planes left, or pilots or navigators or bombardiers.

So the Royal Air Force began bombing under the cover of darkness.

(explosions banging) The US Army Air Forces stepped into the breach.

They had a theory about precision daylight bombing.

With the right training, the right equipment, the right tactics, it could be, would be successful.

The theory would soon be tested, tested by young men like the crew of the Memphis Belle, a B-17 bomber, Eighth Air Force, 91st Bomb Group.

They were among the first of the American heavy bomber crews to see combat over Europe.

And so the campaign began.

It only took a few missions, and the realization hit like an 88 flak shell.

They had signed on for one of the most dangerous assignments of World War II.

In those cold skies, theory collided with reality.

The odds of a heavy bomber crew surviving six months of combat were just 28%.

(plane buzzing) In the air war over Europe, over 30,000 American bomber crewmen would die, but their story would not.

An important part of that story was coming back to life in a hangar in Dayton, Ohio.

(mellow music) It was the last Friday in October 2005.

Two semis were en route from Memphis to Dayton.

Their cargo was priceless, but unrecognizable to most people.

(solemn music) Old and weather-beaten, aluminum and plexiglass, a national icon in 1,000 pieces.

Final destination, the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

- Everybody looked at it, and we started taking it apart and cleaning it and immediately started assessing what we needed.

- That's when it became very real.

The Memphis Belle was here and we had a huge job to do.

- A lot of corrosion, it's very dirty.

Each little nut, screw, everything has to be taken apart - So literally thousands and thousands of pieces that our restoration staff had to go through, identify, catalog, keep track of, and the process of identifying the parts, evaluating them, and deciding if they could be kept or not took years.

- [Narrator] For the team, it was day one, the first step of a long journey.

63 years earlier, the plane that was sitting before them in pieces was on an airbase in England, a place called Bassingbourn.

The date was November 7th 1942.

Lieutenant Jim Verinis, co-pilot, had been out late, getting to know his new British allies.

- [Announcer] The museum is now closed.

We hope you've enjoyed your visit.

(solemn music) - [Narrator] Lieutenant Verinis.

- [Verinis] Hardly got to bed when they got us up.

We're finally off on our first combat mission.

We bomb Brest in France, a submarine base.

Started with 14 ships, but six dropped out halfway across the channel because of gun trouble.

- [Narrator] Waist gunner, Sergeant Bill Winchell, also kept a combat diary.

- [Winchell] 91st Bomb Group starts her trip along the glory road, her first combat mission.

Took off in the morning on ship 124485, the Memphis Belle.

Everybody was tense and very anxious to get going.

During the run over the target, everyone was keyed up, nervous and excited naturally, our first taste of combat.

The ship, squadron, and group came through with no casualties to personnel, not a scratch on the Belle.

- [Narrator] But that first mission was just a quiet prelude.

Two days later, all hell broke loose.

Lieutenant Verinis.

- [Verinis] November 9, 1942.

Off at 10:00 am to the submarine base at St. Nazaire.

An eight-hour round trip.

- [Winchell] Can combat get much rougher?

Came in over target from the ocean at 10,000 feet.

- [Verinis] Ran into terrific fire on bombing run.

- [Winchell] It seemed as though every flak gun in Germany was there to meet us.

- [Verinis] Shells burst all around us.

It felt like they were inside the plane.

Holes appearing all around, one directly beneath us.

- [Winchell] Fighters were more plentiful too.

Our ship came out of it with 40-odd holes.

(gunfire rattling) - [Verinis] Lost three planes.

Target destroyed by terrific bombing, but well near suicide for us.

- [Winchell] When it was over, we were all convinced that war can be hell.

- [Narrator] Missions like that had the ground crews scrambling, patching holes and replacing battle-damaged parts.

In Dayton, the restoration team was busy doing the same thing, but the enemy was different.

The Memphis Belle was in a battle against corrosion.

Time and the elements had taken a toll.

- Things are only original once, and once you replace it, it's gone forever.

- [Narrator] So the team saved everything they could.

But some things were beyond saving.

They had to fabricate several 100 replacement parts over the course of the restoration.

- Love that part of the process.

Taking something from a blueprint and then winding up with a usable part, it's very satisfying.

- There's probably not anything we couldn't make.

- When I'm fabricating a part, the way that I personally bend the metal or shape something, it's kind of like your little signature.

It's not like you're doing that on purpose, but that's just how it comes out.

So if I see a part, I can usually pretty quickly tell that I made it because of the way it's fabricated.

So it's neat to have your little signature on the airplane.

- [Roger] We kept maybe 90 some percent of the original air frame.

But so many of the parts that we had to make, you can't see, but we know they're in there.

They have to be in there.

- A thing that I really enjoyed on working on the Memphis Belle was the fabrication of a glycol heater.

It goes on the inboard section right between the number two engine and the fuselage of the left wing.

It provides heat to the cabin of the airplane.

The Memphis Belle's was missing, so we had to make a new one.

What was so gratifying about it is we fabricated this part and it's fully functioning.

It works like a radiator.

It pulls heat off the number two engine through liquid and generates heat for the cabin.

It's mounted in the wing but no one's ever gonna see it, but we know it's there.

- [Narrator] The glycol heater was important.

At altitude, air temperatures could plunge to 60 degrees below zero.

Frostbite was not uncommon, especially for the waist gunners like Bill Winchell.

His workspace featured open windows, limited heat, and very little protection from flak, but it did offer a wonderful view, when people weren't trying to kill you.

(plane buzzing) (gunfire rattling) (solemn music) After three missions, the Memphis Belle's crew was becoming battle-hardened.

Winchell's glory road had turned into a long walk down a dark alley in the worst part of town, a place no mother wants her son to be, and the worst was yet to come.

- [Verinis] Sure enough, late getting to bed, so we're up early for a mission.

Back to St. Nazaire.

- [Winchell] Started our fourth trip but had to turn back, number two engine.

- [Narrator] The mission continued on.

(planes buzzing) Several hours later, when the remnants of the group returned to base, word spread quickly.

Lieutenant Verinis.

- [Verinis] Disaster has struck.

Four ships only got over the target and were jumped on by fighters.

Two ships definitely down at sea.

The one that cracked up in England, piloted by Lieutenant Corman, hit a high tension wire while trying to land, killing most of the occupants.

- [Winchell] Maybe it was destiny that the Belle turned back.

I'll never know.

First time any of our buddies have been killed in action.

- [Verinis] Sorry to see old P.K.

Baxter go.

A big, happy boy, and his wife about to become a mother too.

Some of the boys fighting mad.

Anxious to get back at the Jerries.

The mission proved one thing.

You've got to have a large formation, or else they'll jump you and shoot the hell out of you.

- [Crewman] I got my sights on them.

- [Crewman] Check out B-17, Chuck, three o'clock.

- [Narrator] The theory of successful daylight bombing called for large numbers of planes flying in tight formations.

- [Commentator] Experience has shown that this arrangement of the group brings to bear on attacking fighters the greatest possible amount of firepower by utilizing to fullest advantage the field of fire of each gun in the formation.

- [Narrator] Strength in numbers, like a vast migrating herd.

But in late 1942, the numbers just weren't there.

American industry was still gearing up, so these early missions were extremely small.

And because of that, a price was being paid.

There were other issues.

- [Jeff] The B-17s came over with 30-caliber machine guns in the nose, and they were essentially useless.

In fact, a lot of times, they weren't even carried.

And the Germans figured this out, and they started attacking from the front.

We're losing airplanes left and right.

- [Narrator] Here's how it happened.

Americans called this variant the triple threat.

Luftwaffe fighters would fly parallel to and 500 yards above the bomber formation, out of range of the American guns.

Three German fighters would fly ahead of the group and turn back toward the bombers.

At this point, the adversaries are hurtling toward each other head on.

Closing speed, over 500 miles per hour.

The German pilots each had about three seconds to fire before peeling off at the last instant.

Well-executed frontal attacks were devastating.

- We need to do something right now.

We can't wait for the states to fix this problem.

So they decided to put reinforcements in the nose to carry 50-caliber machine guns.

We went through 50,000 pages of documents from the Eighth Air Force Service Command.

We found out that there were 200 of those kits made.

They were made at a place called Langford Lodge, and we even know when they were shipped.

We have no idea what they looked like in terms of drawings.

There are no drawings of these reinforcements.

- [Narrator] Between the Belle's last combat mission in 1943 and its arrival at the restoration hangar in 2005, these gun braces had disappeared.

The team needed visuals to guide their fabrication of accurate replacements.

With no official visual documentation, the team turned to William Wyler.

His 1943 documentary, "The Memphis Belle, A Story of a Flying Fortress," provided the answers.

- There is coverage of these reinforcements from all angles in that 11 1/2 hours of color footage.

So by taking stills of that footage, our restoration staff were able to recreate those reinforcements known as nose spiders.

They're on the airplane today, and they are identical to what was on the Memphis Belle back in 1943.

- [Narrator] Lieutenant Morgan and his men were far from home and far from safe.

But they were decently paid.

They had some time between missions, and Bassingbourn, their home base, was just 50 miles from London.

It was a road well-traveled.

Lieutenant Morgan.

(jaunty music) - [Morgan] We fought as hard and lived as intensely as we could, seeking laughter and swing music and liquor and the comfort of women.

It wasn't long before my officers and I had worked out a deal with the base, a deal that let us maximize those London romps.

We'd call our operations officer on the phone from the hotel at night and ask, "Are we gonna play baseball tomorrow?"

If he said yes, we'd grab the next train back to Bassingbourn.

Those London nights helped.

In London, we could live make believe lives for a little while.

(pensive music) - [Narrator] Years passed and the Belle sat, seemingly frozen in time.

The restoration team was mired in minutiae.

The Belle was being restored as a plane of record.

That meant every detail of the plane, seen or unseen, had to be exactly as it was on May 17th 1943.

The level of detail was excruciating.

For the team, this was not a time of attaboys or admiring crowds of museumgoers.

Casual observers might have even questioned why they chose this intricate and arcane type of work.

- I was just a kid who loved airplanes and grew up building models, and I knew from a very early age I wanted to do something in aviation.

- I can remember my parents when I was a kid dropping me off at the museum in the summer, and I'd spend the whole day walking around looking at airplanes.

I was probably 12 years old at the time.

- Went to school to get my FAA certificates and licenses, and one of my instructors restored antique airplanes on the side and let me work with him for several years, so I learned a lot from him.

- I was in the military.

I was a crew chief in the military.

I really, really loved that job, and in my spare time, I started volunteering at the museum.

- [Narrator] In the early 1990s, Casey's mom took him to a World War II Fly In at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

An older man who Casey didn't recognize was signing photographs.

They got in line.

- He signs it, "To Casey, Robert Morgan."

And he's like, "Now what's your favorite airplane?"

I, of course, said a B-17, and he thought that was great.

He didn't have to take the time out to be nice to a 12-year-old kid and talk to them about the airplane.

But he did and he made me feel special, and it really boosted my enthusiasm about aviation which has obviously lasted my life.

I knew this airplane growing up as a child just from model kits and things, but why would I ever think that I'm gonna have anything to do with the actual airplane?

I still have that photograph today.

- [Narrator] The men of the 91st Bomb Group were approaching their first Christmas at war.

America seemed like a world away.

And their next target, 180 miles deep into France, didn't seem much closer.

- [Morgan] The reception committee showed up early.

- [Winchell] Met at the French coast by German fighters.

One long, nerve-wracking dog fight all the way in and all the way out.

- [Verinis] The sky was full of them, more than I had ever seen before, all making head-on attacks.

- [Winchell] Saw two B-17s go down in flames, a sickening sight.

- [Verinis] The crew bailed out of one of them.

- [Morgan] Everybody was blazing away.

As for me, I just flew the airplane as usual, keeping her steady.

You're in tight formation, tight, tight, tight.

That was my war mostly, the instrument panel right in front of my eyes.

Steady, steady, steady.

- [Winchell] Bombs away.

We turned and started to fight our way back home.

- [Verinis] This was really the toughest mission yet.

I wouldn't care for many more like it.

- [Narrator] For museum curator Jeff Duford, telling the story of the Memphis Belle is a sacred mission.

His home base for that mission is located inside the gates of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

- The building that I work in is about 200,000 square feet.

It was made out of poured concrete during World War II.

It has a steel reinforced roof, and then there are thousands of artifacts.

There are engines, bombs, parts of airplanes.

It really is, in many ways, an amazing museum in and of itself.

Every day is different.

It's this huge investigation, and it's a chasing of information, and the information is located in so many different places.

There are documents, there are photos, there's film, there's objects, there are oral histories, there are interviews.

Who was on the airplane?

When did they fly?

What kind of bombs did they carry?

What's the history?

But then there's the technological history of the aircraft.

How was it configured?

How was it changed during the combat tour?

- [Casey] It was a lot of information that he had to come up with because he ultimately has to be the one that gets it exactly right because he's gonna be the one answering questions from people.

(mellow music) - [Narrator] In late 1942, the bomber crews at Bassingbourn could see into the future.

Everyone knew what was next.

Soon they would be in the belly of the beast, striking targets inside Germany.

(gentle music) - [Morgan] We'll be getting to Germany in January.

With that frame of mind, the Mighty Eighth got set to celebrate Christmas 1942.

Maybe celebrate isn't the right word.

There were a lot of empty chairs at mess in these opening months, a lot of empty chairs.

- [Narrator] On the Christian calendar, December 28th is Innocents Day, a day to remember the male infants of Bethlehem slaughtered by King Herod.

At Bassingbourn, snow fell for the first time that winter.

Two days later, the war came back.

- [Verinis] Up at 5:30.

A mission to Lorient sub pens.

Took off with snow falling.

Peace and quiet till we got on bombing run.

- [Narrator] Sergeant Winchell.

- [Winchell] Too quiet.

Something going to happen soon.

(artillery humming) Here it comes.

Heavy, accurate, black flak and moving in.

Only expert evasive action and a prayer will get us through this.

- [Verinis] Hit by fighters, ME 109s and FW 190s.

Nobody shot down over target, but we went out to sea and came back over France.

Had a 100-mile an hour headwind.

Everyone thought we were over England and got careless.

- [Winchell] One fort was lost over the coast due to it, shot down by fighters.

- [Verinis] Many wounded.

Major Myers died.

Third squadron commander lost out of four.

Mighty tired.

Ready for New Year's Eve party tomorrow.

- [Narrator] That's just how it was.

Catastrophes happen.

They were acknowledged and then they were locked away, rarely mentioned.

Because the air crews had to get up the next morning and do it all over again.

1942 was nearly gone.

But in war, there's always time for one more calamity.

(gentle music) Lieutenant Verinis.

- [Verinis] Went up on practice mission and had Spitfires make passes at us for gunner practice.

Two of them collided in midair.

Only one bailed out safely and he fell in the water.

Rescue boats got there too late.

New Year's party here tonight.

January 1, 1943.

Golly, what a headache.

- [Narrator] Captain Morgan.

- [Morgan] The attrition rate got so high so fast and the horror of it grew so haunting for each crew that survived a run, that before long the generals decided to build in a little incentive, sort of like the Fuller Brush Company did for its salesmen.

25 missions and your war is over.

(soldiers chattering) What a master stroke of psychology that announcement was.

Yes, we were hardened veterans in a lethal air war, and our prospects for survival weren't any better than they had been before the general's challenge.

But we were young men too, boys still, many of us, and like young men, we fastened eagerly on this new incentive.

25 missions?

We can do that.

- [Narrator] The 25 mission incentive was announced on December 31st.

The new year would bring new hope, but on January 3rd, it was the same old reality.

- [Verinis] Mission today.

Off to our old friend St. Nazaire.

- [Winchell] The group went down through France to Flak City with the Memphis Belle leading the pack.

As we approached the target, hell broke loose.

Heavy flak and fighters at the same time.

First time fighters have come in right through the flak at us.

They bored in close too.

(gunfire rattling) - [Verinis] Biggest losses for us to date.

We lost nine bombers.

We can't stand trips like that too often.

- [Narrator] The heavy losses made everyone anxious.

It was just another battle to be fought.

Captain Morgan.

- [Morgan] Half an hour before taxi time, all the members of the crews made that sobering little ride to the waiting airplanes.

If it's going to hit you, it's going to hit you then, fear, anxiety, or urge to turn back.

Once you're underway, your mind can finally attach itself to the routine tasks at hand and push the terror deep into the background.

It's the damn ride to the planes that nearly kills you.

- [Narrator] Lieutenant Verinis.

- [Verinis] Boys are all getting uneasy.

Combat is steadily taking its toll.

Everyone thinking in terms of going home for a rest.

We have lost about 1/3 of our group to date with less than half of the necessary missions completed.

What a dangerous life we live.

- [Narrator] Prophetic words.

Just 12 days later, the Belle faced almost certain annihilation.

Restoring the Memphis Belle required some heavy lifting.

- You don't move forward with any type of a project like that without meeting together as a group, discussing what you're gonna do and how you're doing it, so everybody's on the same page.

And then it's just one step at a time, take it nice and slow, and nothing gets damaged and nobody gets hurt.

- [Narrator] The restoration team lived with the Belle for well over a decade.

The knowledge they acquired put them in good company, and it gave them a great appreciation of the original ground crew led by Master Sergeant Joseph Giambrone.

In the Memphis Belle's six-month combat career, 10 engines, sections of both wings, both main landing gear, and the vertical stabilizer were all replaced.

The ground crew was fighting the war their own way.

According to the manual, changing an engine on a B-17 takes 25 hours.

Giambrone and his crew changed one in four hours.

It wasn't just about setting records.

There was an enormous amount of pride in seeing your plane roar down the runway, when 12 hours earlier, it was battle-damaged and far from combat ready.

- There was absolutely kinship between us and Joe because he's doing the maintenance on the airplane.

That's what we're doing right now.

So you would see him like painting a little bomb on the side of the airplane, and it's like, wow, I get to do that too.

I'm doing exactly what he does.

And you're trying to look in his hand, like what screwdriver does he have or what wrench does he have?

It's just a neat thought to be kind of walking in his footsteps.

- [Narrator] On January 23rd, the group flew to Lorient to bomb the submarine pens.

The Belle was flying into extreme danger.

(solemn music) - [Winchell] Ninth mission today for the Belle and her crew.

Third time in a row as lead ship.

As it has been the last few times, there was not much doing until we passed over the Hun airdrome just north of Lorient, but after that, wow, the usual hell in large quantities.

(planes rumbling) - [Verinis] We had only six ships, so they picked on us, coming in on head-on attacks.

So close, we had to get out of their way and avoid collision.

- [Morgan] Vince down below yelled, "Airplane, 12 o'clock!"

And at that instant, a Focke-Wulf came streaking in right for our nose.

I shoved the throttle forward and sent the Belle into a steep climb.

At the same instant, I heard J.P. Quinlan's voice screaming through the intercom from his tail gunner slot, "Chief, the tail is hit, the whole back end is shot off!"

The burst of enemy fire intended for our nose had ripped into our tail instead.

I'd prevented an annihilating front-end hit, but maybe we'd lost the plane anyway.

- [Narrator] Drawing on all his experience, strength, and skill, Morgan wrestled the plane back home.

Sergeant Winchell.

- [Winchell] Several ships damaged badly.

Lieutenant Fischer's crew, poor devils, in bad shape.

- [Verinis] Many wounded, one gone.

Phil got glass in both eyes from a burst of 20-millimeter cannon fire which shattered cockpit glass.

He may lose sight in one eye.

- [Winchell] Technical Sergeant McInerney, radio, lost a leg.

Staff Sergeant Richardson, waist gunner on Lieutenant Cliburn's ship, The Bad Penny, hurt for the second time.

And so it goes, on and on.

- [Narrator] Years of taking things apart, cleaning them, and putting them back together, grinding, riveting, fabricating, and finally the wings and the fuselage were partners again.

The Belle was standing on its own.

After years of making things right, the team gave the Belle a little time in the sun.

(uplifting music) And the transformation continued.

It began to look like a B-17.

(gentle music) And then 12 years after arriving in Dayton, it began to like look the Memphis Belle.

- [Chad] When we started putting paint on it, it really started to come to life.

- [Casey] Once the paint started going on, that's a big moment for me.

- [Narrator] But the paint started going on only after a fundamental decision was made.

- Picking a point in time was absolutely essential because that gave us the guidepost.

That gave us the end state.

And combat aircraft change a lot through their lifetime.

They're modified, the markings get changed.

So deciding at what point we're going to pick for the Memphis Belle for its restoration was truly significant.

Really important that we get the right moment in time.

And we felt very strongly that that moment in time was the 25th mission because finishing the 25th combat mission is an essential part of the Memphis Belle story.

(jaunty music) - [Narrator] Captain Morgan.

- [Morgan] It was hardly surprising that when the war came, thousands of lonely servicemen adorned their weaponry with an assortment of Suzie Qs and Miss Liberties.

To the German fighter pilots homing in on our American bombers, it must have looked like they were being attacked by a wave of flying underwear catalogs.

- It was definitely a big honor to paint it.

It was also a huge nightmare because the whole time you're thinking, I cannot screw this up.

- That part was really nerve-wracking.

'Cause you want it to be a good representation of what was there originally.

- [Narrator] Part of the challenge was avoiding the temptation to make the nose art look better than the original.

- The image of the Memphis Belle nose art that I had in my mind is not actually what was on the airplane.

It was a much, much more simplified version.

- [Narrator] To stay faithful, they worked closely from photos of the original nose art.

- We were both excited.

For years, as we'd been working on the project, both wanted to have a hand in painting the nose art.

- [Casey] So I just told him, I'm gonna paint the left side of the airplane and you're gonna paint the right.

So I got the blue girl and he got the red one.

- Chad and Casey started putting the nose art on it, and that's when it really stood out.

And it kind of came home at that point.

- It's like, oh man, here it is, the Memphis Belle.

- [Roger] Those guys just nailed it.

- [Narrator] A new man, a trim, confident officer wearing a major's uniform, showed up at Bassingbourn in January 1943.

- [Morgan] He was a Hollywood film director.

He'd arrived to make a documentary for the Army Air Force Film Unit about the effectiveness of daylight strategic bombing over Europe, still a matter of controversy between America and a skeptical Britain in the early weeks of 1943.

His name, somebody said, was Wyler, William Wyler.

- [Narrator] Wyler was an A-list Hollywood director.

He won the 1943 Academy Award for Best Director.

His wife picked it up for him.

Instead of being on the red carpet, Wyler was flying combat missions over Europe.

The risks were real.

One of his cameramen, Lieutenant Harold Tannenbaum, was killed in action.

Wyler wanted one plane, one crew to represent the American heavy bomber experience.

Originally that plane was a B-17 named Invasion II, but nobody let the Germans know.

On April 17th 1943, it was shot down on a raid to Bremen.

Instead of becoming stateside celebrities, the crew of Invasion II became prisoners of war.

Meanwhile, the Memphis Belle kept flying into harm's way, and it kept coming back.

- [Morgan] 16 missions down, nine to go.

We didn't talk about it.

We never talked about it.

We spent a lot of time not talking about it.

- [Narrator] They didn't want to jinx their luck.

Prayer, a lucky horseshoe, a lucky mascot, a lucky rabbit's foot, the crew was covering all their bases.

Because every mission now was a walk down that dark alley.

March 28th 1943, Sergeant Winchell.

- [Winchell] Rouen again today.

We were jumped by Jerry fighters as we paralleled the French coast.

(gunfire rattling) Two B-17s shot down.

A rough and tumble fight all the way.

Six FWs bore down on us.

The second one shot down Lieutenant Coen's ship flying on our right wing.

My roommate, Jimmy Bechtel, Grant, Nebraska, was waist gunner aboard her.

Jimmie Bechtel was a comparatively new man to the outfit.

Came to us in January as a member of our first replacement crew.

Roomed with me from the start and was or is a hell of a swell fellow.

I said is because I'm sure he's alive, a prisoner of war.

Jim was on his first flight since returning to duty after being shot down in the North Sea and fished out.

He only made four raids altogether.

Went down at sea his third and now shot down again on his fourth.

Good luck, Bech.

See you back in the States when it's all over.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Back in the States, loved ones were fighting a different kind of war.

- [Announcer] We went into this war fighting.

We know what we're fighting for.

- [Narrator] They wrote letters, planted gardens, recycled rubber, and tried their best to stay hopeful.

But every day of the war, on average, 297 telegrams were sent from the War Department.

They carried the worst possible news to the big cities and to small towns, including the one that reached Grant, Nebraska.

In the spring of 1943, America needed some good news.

America needed the Memphis Belle.

William Wyler clearly recognized the strength of this story.

- It was perfect.

There was a girl back home story.

Heck, the pilot flew with a picture of his girl in the cockpit on every mission.

The nose art was based on a George Petty pin-up, which everyone read Esquire Magazine.

So the Memphis Belle was a natural pick to be the one, plus they were getting close to finishing their tour.

- [Narrator] But nothing was easy.

Nothing was guaranteed.

The crew of Invasion II would tell you the same thing.

May 1st 1943, Mission 22.

The Belle visited the German submarine pens at St. Nazaire for the fifth time.

Job done, they headed back for England.

Sometimes a plane makes it home because it's lucky.

Sometimes it's because a team of men never quit looking out for each other.

- [Morgan] We noticed that the group on our right had started heading off back east more and more.

Chuck Leighton, who never stopped concentrating, was on to it right away.

He got on the phones from down in the greenhouse.

"Don't follow that group.

They're headed right back for France."

Sure enough, as we watched, they headed right back toward the viper's nest we just escaped.

We wanted to radio them and alert them to their mistake, but we could not.

Military orders strictly forbade breaking radio silence over or near enemy territory.

We watched helplessly as our comrades drifted and drifted and finally got the hell shot out of them with anti-aircraft guns.

- Every time you're in there working, it's hard not to imagine yourself 25,000 feet in the air flying along with those guys.

It's very humbling to just imagine what it was like to be there.

- My biggest fear of what could have happened is a burst of flak because no one can control that.

You don't know where it's gonna happen.

So a lot of times when I was sitting there, I would think about that, how terrifying that must be and how that would have to consume most of your thoughts.

So I don't know how they ever became numb to that or put it out of their mind, but obviously they did because they completed their missions.

(pensive music) - [Morgan] First thing you do is you sit there.

You sit there.

You don't move.

You let it wash over you.

You've come through it again.

(plane buzzing) (gunfire rattling) You've got at least one more night of poker ahead of you, one more morning when you won't wake up dead, maybe one more red-hot date in London.

It doesn't matter if it's the first time or the 24th, which this one was.

What matters is you're down out of the sky.

Your wheels are on the tarmac.

You brought your crew back, safe.

(solemn music) - [Narrator] James Verinis, the Belle's co-pilot, had been promoted and given his own plane to command.

Being a native of New Haven, he called it the Connecticut Yankee.

He was among the first to finish 25 combat missions.

That meant he was also among the first to experience an uneasy reality.

His war was over.

He was safe.

But his friends were not.

Over eight days in May, his diary entries told a conflicted story.

- [Verinis] May 14, 1943.

Boys went to Kiel Submarine Works in Germany.

I took a sun bath.

11 bombers lost.

May 15, boys went to Wilhelmshaven.

I played tennis.

Six bombers lost.

May 17, boys went to Lorient.

I played tennis and sunbathed.

Three bombers lost.

May 21, the boys went to Wilhelmshaven and took a horrible beating.

Our group lost four planes, three from my squadron.

My buddy Phil Fischer went down on his last raid.

The poor devil.

God rest his soul.

(gunfire rattling) (plane buzzing) - [Narrator] On May 17th 1943, the crew of the Memphis Belle completed their final combat mission.

(gentle music) - [Morgan] It was a wild ride home from the English Channel on.

The Belle's gun muzzles spent most of it waving around in the high winds 'cause the crew was all over the airplane, hugging, slapping one another on the back, grinning, crying a little.

All of us were trying to process the fact that the horror and risk were over, that we'd done our duty and survived, and now we could return to America.

(jaunty music) - [Narrator] After missions to St. Nazaire, Lorient and Wilhelmshaven, the Memphis Belle would be visiting cities with more familiar names.

The Belle's 26th mission would be to tour America, raising money and raising morale.

It was the War Bond Tour.

- The War Bond Tour had multiple purposes.

Number one, of course, was to raise money for the war and selling bonds.

Another reason was to go around the country to various bases and tell crewmen in training, hey, these are the things we did.

Learn your formation flying.

Be focused on your gunnery.

These are the things that are gonna save your life.

These are the things that are gonna bring you home.

- [Narrator] While the crew was in Southern California, they were invited to William Wyler's studio.

He had a film to finish and he needed their help.

Thanks to a German submarine, Wyler's sound recording equipment was on the bottom of the Atlantic, so he had to shoot his Memphis Belle film without sound.

Wyler needed to record their voices to add to his documentary.

(keys clacking) - [Morgan] All of us were laughing, joking, cutting up, just enjoying the hell out of going to Hollywood for a little while.

Seated in soundproof booths, in front of microphones connected to recording equipment, the Belle crew and I recreated some of the dialogue that we'd typically use during a mission.

(reel rattling) (solemn music) We watched the scenes of our actual aerial combat up on the screen and improvised dialogue into our microphones.

- [Crewman] I see two at two o'clock.

Watch 'em, Scotty.

- [Crewman] I got my sights on them.

- [Crewman] Check out B-17, Chuck, three o'clock.

Motor's smoking.

- [Crewman] Fighter 10:30 coming around.

(gunfire rattling) - [Morgan] At the onset, it was a lark.

But as the hours mounted up and as Wyler's raw footage kept scrolling before us, our moods began to change.

The reality of it all came flooding back to us for the first time since we'd left England.

We watched footage of B-17s going down, airplanes that had friends of ours in them, and felt our stomachs tighten.

It brought a solemn mood over us.

We tried to tell a few stories and kid one another to get back to that holiday mood we'd come in with.

I suspect that for some of the boys, as for a lot of the World War II veterans, that solemn mood never did go completely away.

(reel rattling) - Surprisingly, the Memphis Belle in many ways just kind of faded away after the War Bond Tour.

There were 15 million Americans in uniform, and when that war, that awful, awful war, finally ended, service members just wanted to get back to their lives, build their houses, work, create their families, and so a lot of things just kind of went away.

- [Narrator] One of those things was a fairy tale romance.

The love story between Robert Morgan and Margaret Polk, his real life Memphis Belle, came to an end.

Today, in a park in Memphis, a young woman waits.

Margaret Polk, forever 19, searches the skies for the plane named in her honor.

In 1945, the Memphis Belle was discovered in an airplane boneyard in Altus, Oklahoma.

Like the other Flying Fortresses and Liberators, the Belle was in line to be cut up, melted down, and recycled.

But the city of Memphis came to the rescue.

The plane was purchased, flown to Memphis, and put on display.

- So there has been criticism of Memphis about the condition of the Memphis Belle, but that criticism is not only unfair, it's inaccurate.

They really did a great job considering the resources they had at hand.

And then even after the Memphis Belle came up to the Air Force's National Museum, they continued to support the restoration.

So we were all pulling in the same direction.

It was like a relay race, a long race, and it was many laps.

We crossed the finish line very publicly, but the folks down in Memphis also ran several of those laps before they passed the baton on to us.

- [Narrator] After 13 years in the restoration hangar, the Memphis Belle was ready for her final mission.

She would tell a story of valor and sacrifice for those whose voices are now silent.

- [Jeff] When the sunlight hit the Memphis Belle as it came out of the hangar, that was literally breathtaking.

I don't know that it's possible to describe what that felt like after years and years of work by so many of us.

- [Chad] It was kind of a bittersweet moment.

Excited that it was done and it's heading to the museum on one hand.

The other hand, sad to see it leave the hangar 'cause you know when you come into work the next day, she's not gonna be sitting there.

Very bittersweet.

(audience applauding) When the curtain dropped, it was pretty overwhelming.

- There's no crew left unfortunately, but their kids were there.

And I was sitting across from them, and I could tell it was pretty tough.

It's the first time a lot of them had seen the Belle.

But when they saw it like it sits now, it was quite emotional for a lot of people.

- There were lots of hugs and a lot of misty eyes.

We all have some love in that story.

(audience applauding) - [Roger] We all stood back a little bit, took a breath, and realized how important this thing is.

- [Chad] My hope was that if they were here today, they would be extremely proud of the job we did.

- [Casey] It was that feeling of joy because it's all that work we had put into it.

It's time for everyone to see it now.

- [Roger] Someday we're all gonna be gone.

But she'll be here.

She'll always be here, telling that story.

We were the lucky ones who got to spend some time with her.

♪ Lord, guard and guide the men who fly ♪ ♪ Through the great spaces in the sky ♪ ♪ Be with them always in the air ♪ ♪ In darkening storms or sunlight fair ♪ ♪ O, hear us when we lift our prayer ♪ ♪ For those in peril in the air ♪ (gentle music)