>> you are watching american history tv. every weekend on c-span3. follow us on twitter at c-span history. her information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. >> c-span is visiting pueblo, colorado this weekend to take a look at the city's history. coming up next, we will visit the museum and hear about the city's contribution to world war ii. >> we are at the pueblo aircraft museum in pueblo, colorado. this museum is located at what was the site of the world war ii pueblo army air base. ii,he opening of world war

fore was a tremendous need training americans. the bombing of pearl harbor, pueblo had been looked at and identified as a potential location for a training facility. 1941 thate in surveying began here in pueblo and pueblo county for the pueblo army ordinance, which is just located to the east of the airbase. initially the airplanes that we would see coming in and out of were transport type aircraft. -- we hadn personnel fortresses started training

here in pueblo. we would seabees flying fortresses out over the city, then pretty soon we heard about where we hadnt bombing ranges set up. the fights that went on in pueblo were not only the flights that went out of pueblo, there were new crews arriving to learn how to fly the b-17. lights would originate in pueblo. many of the flights would go down to the gulf of mexico for practice bombing missions. other flights, i heard airmen talking about practice bombing from the golden gate bridge. they would fly clear to

california and rectus bomb runs. -- and practice bomb runs. it was navigation bombing, all the facets of warfare were trained here at the base. ocally, we had bombing ranges. they had navigation flights learning how to do that properly. the b-17 was the first aircraft i saw flying out of pueblo. then, it shifted to the b-24 liberator. principal of the period of -- for the old of the period of time the airbase was in operation, it was the liberator that was the principal aircraft that was used in training. our school was only two miles from the fence.

we were able to see these aircraft's taking off at all times during the day. even into the night. towards the end of the war, we were a little surprised when the b 24's started leaving and the b-29's started flying out of the pueblo army airbase. what we later learned was that the intention was we were training trainers here at the pueblo army air base with the expectation that if the war with extended, webe would have to have more b-29 training facilities throughout the united states. the groups the trained here in way below -- pueblo were intended to be training groups to set up other training

programs around the world, the country. with the end of the war, that all came suddenly to an end. the planes rapidly disappeared from pueblo. me is aircraft behind a fortress. the british originally thought they were not going to be successful in their fight against the germans during world war ii. the aircraft was designed for a flight to europe, conduct a bombing mission, and return to the united states. it was named the euro bomber. thank god, as it turned out, the brits were successful. this aircraft was already on the drawing board and was capable of missions flying great distances required over the pacific. they were based primarily out of china, but they could only reach

the southern parts of the home islands of japan. as we move forward with the invasion operations throughout the islands in the pacific, when we reached the marianas, that's when the b-29's were staged heavily, in those islands. this aircraft never quite made it to the war. it was very heavily utilized after the war as a reconnaissance aircraft. once we got it, we had to put it back together again. one of the things you may notice, these rivets are raised. this tells us that this was an after-market modification, if you will. these are the original factory rivets. the difference is these are flushed. this allows the wind to go smoothly over the aerodynamic body of the airplane. these are raised, because we

don't have the capability of flush riveting. the air force found had they left these rivets up, it would've slowed the aircraft down by 40 miles per hour. these were never painted. if you painted this airplane, you just added 4000 pounds of weight. right now, we are in the nose section of the b-29 "peachy." this airplane has a number of different stations. all the way in the nose is the bombardier. he has the bomb site, and his actual work in a 16 or 18 our mission lasted five or 10 minutes.

when you move back a little bit, to the left, is the pilot position. this is the seat where the pilot would've been sitting during his mission in august of 1945. to his right is his copilot. in the event the aircraft commander or pilot needed some relief, the copilot would take over. he was also very competent and capable. directly behind the copilot is the flight engineer. this is one of the most important positions on this airplane. the flight engineer monitored the performance of the engines and the systems within the airplane. this was the one job that never got any rest. he was constantly on duty. since he was the flight engineer, he was also crew chief, which meant any work or

post mission repairs it had to be done were also his responsibility. says he of reading probably got sleep maybe eight hours out of every 48 hours during a mission push. i'm sitting at the radio operator's position. the radio operator communicated for both his airplane and possibly a whole section of aircraft. he was also responsible for navigator, whose position is directly across the airplane, on where they were in 80 given period of time. what we have here is a 1942 indian motorcycle. as you can see, this was configured to be a security vehicle. should the operator of this vehicle -- when he is doing his normal perimeter check, driving this motorcycle around the

airfield -- should some have attempted to come in, he has a thompson machine gun with which he would dissuade the person from entering. he had extra ammunition. this vehicle is on loan to us from a gentleman who has an automotive private collection in trinidad, which is south of us here. the vehicle does operate. and we get a lot of guests who desperately want this motorcycle. since is hours, -- ours, this actually served here at the air force base during the war years. the display cases behind me are artifacts brought home from conflicts past by our fighting forces. back then, you could bring home war trophies. it's pretty much for bid and nowadays -- for bid and --

forbidden nowadays. you can't bring things back with you. back then, you could. the biggest thing that people notice is the large nazi banner that is hanging from the wall. this banner was taken by one of the infantry divisions when they were clearing a germantown. they were made by the nazis by the tens of thousands. they were draped everywhere throughout germany during the war. one of the commanders of the infantry division said, tear it down. a g.i. tore it down and folded up and put it in his backpack and brought it home. somehow, it made it here. we've had it cleaned once. the folks at the clean establishment said, never bring this back again. not because they had problems with it. it was so inexpensively made and it was so fragile, they said the

next time you run through the washer, we may tear it up. we don't want to do that. -- she will be displayed as she is right now. i think the pueblo army air base reflected a community support. the level was so great. part of it, i think, is because of the diversity of this community. we had italians, we had slovenians, we had slovakian's, hispanics, we had whites, we had germans, we had everything. pueblo was a real melting pot. but the people were well below -- were puebloans. they were americans. i think we had a pride in the city. i think we put up against any community. no community could've worked harder or cared more for the betterment of america and this united states.

announcer: this weekend, we are featuring the history of web low, colorado, without comcast cable partners. ueblo ande about p other stops at c-span.org/citiestour. you are watching american history tv. >> what makes movies or stories in a people in crisis, or crisis, and the crisis either changes them or changed everybody else. if you don't show conflict, if you don't show flaws, and if you don't show someone growing out of their flaws, you see something that you can't really connect to, and it doesn't have the same impact. announcer: sunday night on q&a,

a movie reviewer for the weekly standard talks about the movies he has reviewed, ranging from open vote we," "spotlight," to "straight outta compton." >> it is an update to the classic showbiz story about how the band got together. pretty strikingly effective. announcer: sunday night on c-span's "q&a." announcer: the caa recently released 2500 pages of previously classified material from the nixon and ford administrations. the documents were the president's daily briefs on national security threats and issues, which are seen only by the president and selected officials. this weekend, the richard nixon presidential library hosted a discussion with historians about the changes presidents have made to the darren -- to the daily brief.

here is a preview. >> johnson had it delivered to 10 people, nixon cut it back to six, and he gradually expanded it to nine. it has gone to as many as two point five dozen individuals outside the immediate circle. in other cases, it has been very close held, entirely up to the president. the key point here from a relationship perspective is the pdb under next and lost -- nixon lost in standalone quality. the way kissinger ran the intelligence process here is that he would take that document, let it sit for 12 hours, constantly up dating with

situation room material, and prepare in the morning a national security memo that kissinger took to the president for a one-on-one briefing. the cia is completely out of the picture. individual items in the presidential security memo was tagged specifically to the pdb. at the start of the administration, we largely read out of the process document terribly. we also read out of the process in feedback, because there is no continual back and forth between the white house and the cia. as one of kissinger's aides said, you and the president's work styles to not lend themselves to feedback, meaning you like to go in the of the law office, slammed the door shut, cook up something, and then spring it on the policy community. the caa is not involved. you are sort of taking it as a cons and going from there. as a result, the pdb is growing

ever more useless over time in the nixon administration. announcer: watch the entire program sunday at 8:00 a.m. to midnight eastern "american history tv," only on c-span3. announcer: when bush became president, valdes was aimed to have the white house photo operation. his, valve is discusses position as a photojournalist for the bush family. this is part of an annual conference on the presidency and the press. it is hosted by the marlon fitzwater center for communications at franklin pierce university in new hampshire. it is about 50 minutes.