Wings Of War

In this heart-pounding episode we feature the greatest and most influential bombers ever built and with first hand accounts from pilots who get to see, hear and feel what it must be like to be in cockpit of these exceptional Wings of War.

Fokker, Bristol and Sopwith fighters fought for supremacy. New heroes were created in the skies as pilots became the stuff of legend. The Red Baron, Eddie Rickenbacker and Oswald Boelker wrote the rule book of aerial combat that is still used by pilots today.

From the trusty Lysander that flew Special Operations agents under the cover of darkness into occupied France, and the C47 planes that dropped paratroopers on D-Day in World War Two - carefully drawn up plans are dropped as everything changes in a crisis.

This is the story of how 'the Few', the name of the squadrons of pilots, coined by Winston Churchill, and they fought off the might of the German Luftwaffe. It's a story of sheer courage, technological prowess and epic aerial combat missions fought over England during a bloody 4 months in the summer of 1940.

Their plan - to obliterate the US Navy and take control of the Pacific. Untested American pilots are pitted against both experienced Japanese fighters and superior planes. Over the course of a matter of hours in June 1942 the course of history lies in the balance.

The story of their role in Vietnam is told by combat veteran "Woody" Spring; new tactics are employed to defeat the enemy - "Hunter Killer"packs of dual helicopters roam the skies to defeat the opposition. The Black Hawk Helicopter operated in Somalia - and was the catalyst for the epic Battle of Mogadishu.

The Battle of Midway. Including; the Japanese Zero that amounted to the most feared Fighter of World War Two, the Deadly Dauntless SBD, the US torpedo bomber that turned the tide of war, as well as the Japanese Val dive bombers that helped sink the US fleet at pearl harbor and, the weaving American Wildcats.

During World War Two, the British is commanded to sink the Bismark. The task falls to an old World War Plane vintage plane, the Swordfish, ranged against the might of the German Battleship.

The Jet engine transformed aerial combat - it made the revolutionary vertical take-off and landing fighter the Harrier Jump Jet possible - and ushered in a new age of combat at supersonic speed. The story of how the American F86 went head to head with the Russian Mig 15 over Korea is told in a first hand account by veteran US pilot James Shelton.

from the iconic American Eagle F15, to the F22 Raptor and the state-of-the-art Lockheed Martin F35 - these planes are command and control centres in the sky, able to eliminate the opposition long before they're even seen. When it comes to Tank Busters, nothing can match the older and trusty A10 Warthog, dubbed "The tank in the sky".