This film is a B&W film from 1944 that depicts the importance of tiny ball bearings in the ability of a nation to carry out warfare. Allied military leaders decide it is necessary to curtail Germany’s ability to provide itself with ball bearings. Intelligence is gathered from many sources in order to plan an aerial bombing raid on Schweinfurt, home of Germany’s ball bearing industry.

Produced by The U.S. War Department, A Signal Corps production. 0:33 Opening Scene: Text intro warning: “For reasons of security, the methods of obtaining target information portrayed here are simulated. They are, however, typical of many strategic bombardments.” 0:48 Individual pieces of many thousands of mechanical machine parts that make up our fighting weapons: bolts, screws, clips. 1:01 Fighting airplane takes off from a runway. Tank travels over land. 1:11 Military Meetings between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Locations of cities: Quebec, Casablanca, Washington, London, and Berlin. 1:15 Adolf Hitler strategizes war plans. 1:21 This film is the biography of one of those fragments: the life and death of a small steel ball. 1:28 Cooperating room of military experts, scientists, business men, operatives sitting at a conference table. Men are laying the groundwork for bombing of the enemy’s industrial targets. 1:44 Map of Europe shows the location of industrial manufacturing plants for Oil from Ploesti, Romania; Steel plants in Ruhr, Germany, Guns from Skoda in the Czech Republic, tanks from Essen, Germany, Optics from Jena. 1:55 Submarines from St. Nazaire, France; Rubber from Hannover, Germany. 2:10 Strategy on how best to hit German manufacturing facilities are considered and planned. How best to destroy Nazi power? 2:45 Two-thirds of Germany’s anti-friction bearing industry is concentrated in Schweinfurt-am-Main. 2:50 Manufacturing process of Bearings which play an important role in the successful implementation of: roller-bearings, ball-bearings. 2:59 Bearings play an important part of the German 88mm anti-aircraft and anti-tank artillery. 3:06 The Mark IV. 3:14 4,000 bearings used in a Dornier. 2,000 bearings used in a Fokker military plane, flying in the sky. 3:24 Bearings are made with 120 thousandths of an inch tolerance. 3:32 Aircraft falling from the sky due to faulty ball bearing operation. 3:40 Ball bearings rolling out during manufacturing process. Bearings are critical to all forms of military machinery and weapons. 4:38 In Schweinfurt, Germany makes bearings and the machines that make bearings. 4:44 What do we know about Schweinfurt? Maps of the Schweinfurt city and its manufacturing facilities are learned by looking at older industrial product catalogues from before the war. 5:26 U.S. Department of Justice keeps files on recent immigrant men who worked making foreign products. 6:21 Interviewing man who escaped concentration camp helps the U.S. Military learn about German manufacturing facilities and processes. 7:26 Bearing production is a 12-step process, and destroying any one step could bottle-neck the entire operation. 7:31 A production refugee helps in learning about the facilities. 9:38 Photo intelligence and aerial photography are used to learn about manufacturing plants. Once plans are drawn up, secret operations for bombing are underway. 15:24 One hundred and twenty Nazi fighter planes are downed. 15:48 U.S. military loses 60 bombers and 593 men, during operations. Was the operation on the facility worth the cost? 18:49 Future offensives and war campaigns lie ahead, and ball bearings affect every form of our enemy’s weaponry.

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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com