Discovering the Jet Stream

Witness History

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, History

4.5 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2021

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Jet Stream is formed by powerful high-altitude rivers of air which circle the globe and help determine our climate. The existence of these winds was first documented in Japan in the 1920s, but only became more widely known during World War Two, when American airmen encounter high-speed winds on bombing missions over Japan. At the same time, the Japanese military also began to use these powerful transcontinental winds to carry innovative balloon bombs all the way to the West Coast of America. Using archive recordings we tell the story of the discovery and speak to Professor Tim Woollings from Oxford University, the author of Jet Stream: A Journey Through Our Changing Climate. Photo: B-29 bombers passing Mount Fuji on their way to Tokyo, April 1945 (Getty Images)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Alex
0:39.7	Last with more first-hand accounts of events that shaped our world.
0:44.0	And today, using recordings from the BBC Archive,
0:47.5	we hear the remarkable story behind the discovery of the jet stream,
0:52.0	the fast high altitude rivers of wind, which profoundly affect
0:56.4	our environment all around the world. Our story begins in 1994 when towards the end of the Second World War, the United States
1:10.6	sent their new high-altitude bomber, the B-29, to the Pacific to launch a ferocious
1:16.6	bombing campaign on Japan.
1:18.9	The 73rd wing lines up for takeoff.
1:21.8	15 hours, 7,000 gallons, 4 engines, 11 guys.
1:27.0	Destination Tokyo.
1:30.5	Launching from island bases, the planes would fly in daylight, some six miles up at over 35,000 feet
1:37.7	to drop their bombs on the Japanese mainland.
1:40.9	Lieutenant Ed Hyatt was a B-29 pilot.
1:45.0	After flying six hours, we climbed up to bombing altitude.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.