Category: WW2 Podcast

On the night of May 16th, 1943, 19 Lancaster bombers took off from England heading toward the German industrial heartland of the Ruhr. They carried a new bomb, designed to skip across water avoiding any torpedo nets before hitting the target and sinking into the depths; then exploding.. The bomb was codenamed ‘upkeep’, we know…

On the 17th September 1944 Gene Metcalfe, of the 82 Airbourne, parachuted in to Holland as part of Operation Market Garden. Approaching the bridge they were to capture Gene is injured in a firefight and left for dead. He would spend the rest of the war as a POW. Angus talks to Gene about his…

al topic. And this is the case for Peter Lion. If you recall in episode 33, Peter told us how elements of the US 28th infantry division, stationed in the Luxembourg town of Wiltz put on a christmas party for the local children, and this included GI Richard Brookins dressing as St Nicholas and arriving…

September 2019 marks the 75th anniversary of Operation Market Garden, the allied attempt to create a sixty mile corridor, and secure a crossing over the Rhine. The plan was to use the newly formed First Allied Airborne Army to seize and hold nine key bridges until relieved by the British Army’s XXX Corp. The Airborne…

In this episode Ray Fitchett recounts his time on HMS Exeter, and it’s sinking at the second battle of the Java Sea, he was rescued by the Japanese and sent to a POW camp. Ray would eventually sent to work in Japan at the fukuoka camp near Nagasaki, where he would witness the atomic bomb…

In this episode Angus is looking at an RAF raid in 1940 against the Dortmund-Ems canal. The canal was a vital trade route with huge amounts of supplies and raw materials passing along it daily. With the fall of France and the build up to Operation Sealion, the invasion of Britain, interrupting the traffic on…

For a long time I’ve been fascinated by movie stars who chose to join the military and saw combat in World War Two. And one star in particular has always interested me, ‘Jimmy Stewart’.  A big star in the 1930’s, in 1940 he would win the Oscar for best man in The Philadelphia Story’ and…

The usual narrative for WWII is that turning points of the war are in 1942 with the battles of Midway, El Alamein and Stalingrad. While these are unquestionably major victories that signalled the ‘end of the beginning’, as Churchill would put it. Friend of the podcast Andrew Nagorski has suggested that actually 1941 was the…

In the last episode we looked at the American experience of D-Day at Omaha beach, this time it’s the turn of the British and Canadians at Sword, Juno and Gold on the 6th June 1944. In this episode we’re going to concentrate on the British and Canadian landings on D-Day. Angus is joined by John…

‘Before the war, Normandy’s Plage d’Or coast was best known for its sleepy villages and holiday destinations. Early in 1944, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel took one look at the gentle, sloping sands and announced ‘They will come here!’ He was referring to Omaha Beach ? the primary American D-Day landing site. The beach was subsequently…