Target for Today

Flight Journal, Oct 1998 by Farmer, James H

Target for Today

Video may be ordered from The Armchair Dogfighter: (973) 3-488; $29.98. Produced overseas by the famed "Culver City Commandos" of the USAAFs First Motion Picture Unit, the 1944 documentary Target For Today" offers a remarkably thorough counterstroke to the RAFs earlier "Target for Tonight

In short, this outstanding wartime documentary is the definitive portrayal of the English-based 8th Air Force Bomber Command. Employing footage amassed from more than a year of operations as well as the day in question, the film purports to take the audience step by detailed step through the myriad preparations for the October 9, 1943 multi-taskforce mission to the Arado factory at Anklam, the Fw 190 assembly plant at Marienberg, the shipyards at Danzig and the port facilities at Gdynia. The operation was labeled a "maximum effort," requiring every wing and group Flying Fortress and Liberator bomber that could fly.

The countless thousands of details that must be attended to in such an enormously complex operation before even one of the "heavies" becomes airborne is laid out so thoroughly in this extraordinarily informative film that it is simply mind-boggling!

The 93-minute black-and-white film opens by carefully outlining the 8th's organizational structure from bomber command to its three divisions and on down to wing, group and squadron level. Then, as with any operation from wartime England, a weather forecast is analyzed, and the leaders proceed to consider targets based on weather and on a prioritized list of enemy military and industrial sites established by the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington and the Bombing Priorities Committee in London.

Once the targets have been identified, specialist officers study the nature of the target and the architectural construction and recommend the proper type of bombs and fuses necessary to do the job. Here, as elsewhere throughout the film, animation does much to illustrate the issues at hand.

Routes to the target are determined by enemy flak and fighter concentrations, Allied escort fighter units assigned and medium bomber (Martin W26s) operations that were assigned to help suppress enemy fighter field activity upon the B-17'sandB-24'sreturn leg to England.

While crews work through the night and into the dawn at more than 20 fields across East Anglia, combat crews are awakened, fed and briefed. Actual footage of the briefings for the day's mission are offered in rapid succession at the bomb groups of the 303rd, 379th, 384th, 351st and 305th.

The taxi, takeoff and formation sequences in "Target for Today" are Onothing short of spectacular. For the WW II film enthusiast and particularly 8th Air Force veterans and buffs, `Target for Today" is a document of unparalleled significance. -James H. Farmer