Military Blunders

A WWII U.S. B-24 Liberator crew crashes in the Libyan desert. It takes 20 years to learn their fate. Then: Hermann Goering's plans for the new Luftwaffe lead to trouble for Germany.

First, the captain of a German battleship on a secret mission in the Atlantic sails into a blind alley. Then: Churchill dispatches two of Britain's mightiest warships to Singapore - without air cover.

In 1940, after an off-course pilot bombs London, the British bomb Berlin. Then: A WWII U.S. B-24 Liberator crew crashes in the Libyan desert. It takes 20 years to learn their fate.

Using rare archival film, we take a look back at two colossal political and military miscalculations.

A review of the shooting down of KAL 007, a South Korean commercial airliner, by Soviet fighters. Moscow claimed it had strayed into Soviet airspace.

Gary Powers' reconnaissance spy plane is shot down on a high altitude mission over the U.S.S.R. Then: In another blunder from the early 1960s, a hydrogen bomb is dropped dangerously close to a Spanish holiday resort.