- 1 week ago
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:09When World War I began, everyone thought it would be short and fast-moving.
00:17Instead, the power of the machine gun, massive artillery bombardments, and barbed wire led
00:23to the nightmare of trench warfare.
00:38For the next three years on the Western Front, millions of men lived a nightmare existence
00:43amidst squalor and constant danger from enemy fire.
01:06They went over the top in futile mass attacks, only to be mown down in their hundreds of thousands
01:17by enemy machine guns.
01:22Attempts were made to break the stalemate, one of the most macabre thought up by the German
01:27General Staff.
01:30The historic fortress town of Verdun would be assaulted, not to achieve a breakthrough,
01:35but simply to bleed the French army to death.
01:39The town of Verdun had occupied a crucial defensive position on France's north-eastern border for
01:44centuries.
01:50Around it was an elaborate and mutually supporting system of fortresses designed to hold any enemy
01:56advance.
02:02The Germans calculated that the French could not afford to allow the position to be lost.
02:07They would pour the elite of their army into what would become an horrific killing ground.
02:14The fortresses like that of Douaumont had first been built in the 16th and 17th centuries.
02:26Their walls and underground defences had been constantly updated to withstand assault or
02:32siege by modern weaponry.
02:33They had massive and heavily armoured rotating turrets for heavy artillery.
02:44And many machine gun nests.
02:50But the reality was that since 1914 the defences had been allowed to crumble and the forts were
02:55severely undermanned.
03:02On the 21st of February 1916, after a nine-hour bombardment, the German attack began.
03:14After four days of savage fighting, the German assault pioneer, Sergeant Eugen Kunze, managed
03:20to get into Douaumont.
03:25To his astonishment, he wandered entirely alone through a vast concrete ladder.
03:33He could hear the muffled reports of Fort Douaumont's 155mm gun.
03:39Guided by these, he made his way nervously to the main turret.
03:43The French gun crew were so preoccupied that they didn't notice him until he made them prisoner.
03:51Kunze then roamed on.
03:55The realisation dawned on him that the fort was virtually unmanned.
04:02In fact, its garrison had been reduced to a mere 56 elderly French gunners.
04:18Scarcely able to believe his good fortune, Kunze found the remainder of these in the main
04:22dormitory, many still in their beds.
04:27He simply locked them in the room and called his men into the fortress.
04:34Sergeant Kunze had single-handedly captured Verdun's most powerful bastion.
04:42Despite this disaster, the French held Verdun.
04:48Astonishingly, three quarters of the French army was involved in the fighting during the
04:52next nine months.
04:54More than 750,000 men, roughly half of them French and half German, were sacrificed in
05:01the bloodbath.
05:04This was the war in which many of the weapons which came to revolutionise today's battlefield
05:08were first developed.
05:09The machine gun, the tank.
05:19It witnessed the world's first tank-against-tank engagement.
05:24Fortified positions had to be defended against this revolutionary new weapon.
05:30Specialised combat aircraft, like fighters, came into being.
05:39Bombers also added a new dimension to warfare.
05:44As did the submarine and the aircraft carrier.
05:49Warfare would never be the same again.
06:02In the wide open spaces of the Eastern Front, warfare was much more fluid.
06:08In August 1914, Zar Nicholas II and his generals planned to send the Russian First Army across
06:14the border of East Prussia in the north, advancing along the railway line towards the capital,
06:19Königsberg, and drawing the German defenders towards it.
06:25Four days later, Russian Second Army would move into the heavily wooded area near Tannenberg in the south.
06:33It would then strike north to capture Königsberg and cut off the main German army.
06:39The Russians surprised the Germans by how quickly they were able to mobilise.
06:47And the appearance of hard-riding Russian Cossack cavalry struck terror into the local Prussian population.
06:56First Army crossed the East Prussian border within two weeks of the outbreak of the war.
07:01It had 150,000 men and alone outnumbered all the German forces in East Prussia.
07:09The opposing armies clashed indecisively near the town of Gumbinen, whereupon the German commander,
07:14Max von Pritwitz, fell back in panic, begging for permission to evacuate East Prussia.
07:19The Russian general Pavel Renenkampff advanced a few miles and then stopped.
07:25Unfortunately, he hated Alexander Samsonov, the commander of Second Army,
07:30and had no intention of doing anything to support his advance.
07:33The German High Command now called 67-year-old Paul von Hindenburg out of retirement
07:39to replace von Pritwitz with the highly able Erich Ludendorff as his chief of staff.
07:47They spotted the opportunity which the excellent German railway system now gave them
07:52to use their much smaller army to beat each of the Russians in turn.
07:58One army corps was urgently sent by rail round to the Russians' left flank.
08:12This went unnoticed by the Russian Second Army.
08:15It remained unaware that it faced any serious opposition.
08:21Most of the remaining two corps were then ordered to march south-west as fast as they could
08:26to take up a position on the right of the advancing Russians.
08:29Once again, all evidence of a major enemy move was ignored by Second Army,
08:34while the remaining German division spread out as a covering force to harass the First Army
08:39once Renenkampff decided to get moving again.
08:47The Germans proved that a little, very mobile artillery and cavalry
08:52could imitate a much larger force.
09:03In the south, the Germans watched as the Russian Second Army lost cohesion amidst the forests and lakes.
09:14Then they went in for the kill.
09:19Thrusting forward through the town of Nidenberg, the corps, which had moved secretly by train,
09:24sliced through the Russian line of advance, cutting off much of Second Army.
09:39Then the other corps, which had moved south-west, completed the encirclement.
09:53Confused and terrified by this sudden and unexpected assault, the Russians broke and fled.
10:01General Samsonov went into the woods alone and shot himself,
10:04while more than 300,000 of his men were killed or wounded, and more than 90,000 were taken prisoner.
10:17The German victory at Tannenberg was one of the most complete in military history.
10:33One of the most significant attempts to break the trench stalemate was a British invention, the tank.
10:41By mid-1916, armour, caterpillar tracks and the internal combustion engine had been brought together to form the first land
10:50ships, capable of crossing trenches and supporting infantry.
10:55These were either the female, armed only with machine guns,
11:01or the male, with two six-pounder guns in the side sponsons.
11:07These first tanks had a speed of about four miles an hour, and a crew of eight.
11:15The British tanks were first used piecemeal in September 1916, during the Battle of the Somme, when they achieved some
11:22local successes.
11:26But it was not until the Battle of Cambrai, in November 1917, when 376 tanks were used, that their true
11:34potential was shown.
11:42Holes were punched in the German line, and by nightfall more than five miles had been gained.
11:48But the unreliability of these early tanks meant that the breakthrough could not be followed up.
12:02Nevertheless, the Germans were so impressed by the British successes that they urgently developed their own tank,
12:08a 33-ton monster with a crew of 18, named the A7V.
12:13Armed with 57-millimeter cannon and six machine guns,
12:18it was totally underpowered and unwieldy, and could only manage three miles an hour.
12:26But it was rushed into service to counter the British threat,
12:29and the first tank-against-tank confrontation soon followed.
12:36This came during the Great German Offensive in 1918,
12:39when the storm troops tore through the British lines and penetrated more than 40 miles.
12:47A second assault in April kept up the momentum,
12:50and the possibility of breaking through to Paris suddenly seemed feasible.
12:54On the early morning, on the 24th of April,
12:57Ludendorff's forward units were less than 10 miles from Amiens,
13:00probing towards the village of Villers-Bretonne.
13:05One and a half miles southwest of the village,
13:08a section of British tanks, one male and two females,
13:12was waiting in support of dug-in infantry.
13:15As the crews peered through the mist, they saw an extraordinary sight.
13:24One of the few operational German A7Vs lumbered into view.
13:31The British started up and moved forward to engage it.
13:41The world's first armoured duel was underway.
13:45The ironclad monsters ponderously closed the range.
13:55Inside the tanks, the conditions were appalling.
13:58There was no proper suspension,
13:59and the unsilenced engines roared and belched fumes.
14:04Finally, the leading British tank, the male,
14:06opened fire with its six-pounder gun, but missed.
14:19Unscathed, the A7V trundled on,
14:22its crew desperately trying to see where the fire was coming from.
14:25Finally, they spotted the enemy, halted,
14:28and opened fire.
14:40No effect at first, but then it began to find its range,
14:45and struck both British females.
14:55Neither was disabled,
14:56but unable to make any impression with their machine guns,
14:59they halted and began to pull back.
15:08While the German was concentrating on its mates,
15:11the British male continued to advance and close the range.
15:21Its crew desperately trying to hold the A7V in their sights as they were thrown around in the unsprung tank.
15:31At last, they got within effective range, and opened fire again.
15:47Soon, the A7V was hit.
15:50Its crew decided that the British fire was getting a bit too accurate,
15:54and began to withdraw,
15:55thus ending the world's first tank versus tank battle.
16:20by the fourth winter of World War One, the Allies were holding on grimly,
16:25desperately waiting for the arrival of millions of fresh American troops to turn the tide.
16:30The Germans were equally aware of this danger.
16:33Russia's collapse in December 1917 meant that they could bring more than a million men west,
16:39and General Erich Ludendorff, their commander on the Western Front,
16:42was determined to use these to achieve a swift and final victory.
16:51Knowing an attack was imminent, the British commander, Field Marshal Douglas Haig,
16:56adopted a new defensive system based on depth.
17:00There would be a forward zone, or blue line,
17:03lightly manned but with strong points to blunt the initial attack.
17:07Then the battle zone, or red line, where the main fighting would take place.
17:16And finally, the rear zone, or brown line, where the enemy assault would be held.
17:30Ludendorff decided that a new attack method was needed to break these defences.
17:34Storm troops, lightly equipped and fast-moving units of the most battle-hardened men,
17:40which would slip into the enemy's lines under cover of the bombardment.
17:48These would use surprise and speed to bypass centres of resistance
17:52and break through deep to the enemy's rear.
17:56At four in the morning, on the 21st of March 1918,
18:006,000 German guns opened up on the full depth of the British positions
18:05with gas and high explosives.
18:08Just over four hours later, the first wave of storm troops leapt out of the trenches and raced forward.
18:23They slipped through the wire, using stick grenades as one of their main weapons.
18:34Another was the deadly belching fire of flamethrowers.
18:46The German barrage moved forward 100 metres every two to three minutes,
18:51protecting this human tidal wave.
18:57But in the end, it ran out of impetus, and the last great German offensive fizzled out.
19:13On the evening of the 22nd of April 1918, a task force set sail from Dover Harbour.
19:21Their objective was to block the harbour at Seebrugge,
19:24where the channel from the Germans' main U-boat base came out into the North Sea.
19:29For the previous week, monitors with their massive 15-inch guns
19:33had been bombarding the German coastal guns and strongpoints.
19:45night fell, and German searchlights probed the darkness as the town behind them was lit up by British shelling.
20:02Then, at 23.30 hours, coastal patrol boats surged in and released their smoke floats.
20:10The wind was blowing from the northwest, wafting the smoke directly towards the one-mile-long protective mole and the
20:17port.
20:22Realising that something was going on, the Germans opened a furious fire.
20:25But their view was increasingly obscured by the smokescreen from the criss-crossing small boats.
20:41Behind the protective cover of smoke, the cruiser HMS Vindictive,
20:46with two escorts also packed with troops should she be sunk, moved into position.
20:56The cruiser's captain ordered full speed ahead.
21:04And the three assault ships raced into the smokescreen.
21:14On the harbour mole, German sailors strained to see their enemy.
21:20Then, with only 250 yards to go, the three British ships emerged.
21:26And the Germans opened a withering fire.
21:30In the few moments that it took to reach the mole, the two most senior Royal Marines and two naval
21:35officers were killed.
21:37A German destroyer moored at the mole also joined in the firing.
21:41And a heavy swell was making it hard for Vindictive to get close enough.
21:54The German defenders were now firing at point-blank range.
21:58And the Royal Marines, crowded on the deck of Vindictive, were being slaughtered.
22:09At this critical moment, the commander on one of the cruiser's escorts, the converted ferry, Daffodil, saw the difficulty she
22:17was in,
22:17and nudged his bows against Vindictive's side, to push her alongside the mole.
22:32At last, the landing ramps went down, and the Royal Marines could start to fight their way ashore.
22:39One officer, seeing a platoon of men crouched close to a ramp, ordered them ashore.
22:44But no-one moved.
22:46They were all dead, cut down by a single machine gun.
22:57But despite the German fire, the boarding parties on Vindictive began to get ashore.
23:10The men on her two escorts were unable to disembark because of the height of the sea wall.
23:15So those from Daffodil clambered aboard Vindictive, so as to use her landing ramps.
23:25As the landing parties came over the top of the wall, they were met by a storm of bullets, which
23:30cut down many of them.
23:36An attempt was made to rush the tip of the mole, but every single man in the attack became a
23:42casualty.
23:52The Germans were firing from well-fortified positions, but it seemed almost impossible to wrinkle them out.
23:59From the foretop of Vindictive, a section of Royal Marines was manning Lewis guns to provide covering fire.
24:06One by one, the men were cut down, until only Sergeant Norman Finch remained.
24:12Despite his wounds, he continued to fire on the German positions,
24:15and was one of the eleven Victoria Crosses awarded that day.
24:19The most ever during a single action.
24:28Gradually, however, the desperate gallantry of the Marines seemed to be having some effect.
24:32The fire from some of the German positions was slowing,
24:35and they were so preoccupied with fighting off the assault,
24:38that they would be unable to turn on the block ships that would go in behind them.
24:47While this desperate struggle continued, another threat to the Marines became apparent.
24:55One which could abort the whole mission.
24:58A battalion of German infantry on bicycles was seen approaching the mole.
25:02If they got onto it, the Marines would be overwhelmed.
25:10But the British had anticipated this, and a submarine packed with explosives headed towards the arches of the mole.
25:17Without a shot being fired directly at her, her commander rammed the submarine into position.
25:29Before the Germans on the mole had realised exactly what was going on, the seven men of the crew leapt
25:34into a skiff,
25:35but most were wounded by heavy fire before they could escape to a waiting motor launch.
25:45The submarine then exploded, blowing a 30-yard hole in the mole.
25:50Any German hope of reinforcing their troops was now at an end.
25:54With the Germans on the mole fully tied down, it was time for the crucial block ships to move in.
26:01Three elderly cruisers, Thetis, Intrepid and the Iphigenia, had each been packed with 1,500 tons of concrete and equipped
26:09with scuttling charges.
26:11Manned by volunteer crews, they now slipped past the mole and headed for the entrance.
26:24Seeing this new threat, the Germans in the port itself concentrated their fire on the three ships.
26:32Thetis was hit particularly severely, and began to fill with water, so her commander had to scuttle her outside the
26:39entrance.
26:40Despite point-blank German fire, the other two ships succeeded in entering the canal,
26:45and were successfully scuttled.
26:57Launchers were standing by to rescue the crews of the block ships,
27:01and these now moved in under heavy fire.
27:19As they moved off with the survivors, klaxons sounded to signal the end of the operation.
27:26The Royal Marines on the mole began to fall back to HMS Vindictive.
27:31Amazingly, the cruiser was able to get away from the mole and limp back to England.
27:36Her part of the raid had been a triumphant success, but a success which had been bought at a very
27:42high price.
27:461,300 Royal Navy and Royal Marine volunteers took part in the action.
27:50Over 600 were killed or wounded.
28:07The dawn at Seebrugge showed that two of the three block ships were well in the entrance, sunk across the
28:14main channel.
28:15The sheer audacity of the raid was a welcome boost for the morale of the British public,
28:20at a time when the successes of the German storm troops on the Western Front
28:24looked to be close to breaking through the Allied line.
28:29The Seebrugge raid, with its intricate coordination of landing forces with the block ships,
28:35and the submarine used to isolate the mole, was the biggest special operation of World War One.
28:54Barrage balloons were widely used all along the Western Front for observation and artillery spotting.
29:01Shooting them down was one of the most dangerous missions faced by early pilots,
29:05since they were closely defended by anti-aircraft guns and enemy fighters.
29:19One of the most successful, famous and short-lived balloon busters was 21-year-old American Lieutenant Frank Luke.
29:30Luke only reached a frontline squadron in August 1918,
29:34and was determined to become famous as a fighter pilot.
29:38He saw the dangerous job of balloon busting as his quickest way to get to grips with the enemy, and
29:44volunteer.
29:48On the 12th of September, just two weeks before US troops began the Murs-Argonne offensive,
29:54Luke went on his first balloon hunt.
29:57He shot down one that day.
30:07And eight more over the next four days.
30:15Within a fortnight, he had 14 confirmed kills.
30:21During this devastating aerial rampage, he had also shot down five enemy fighters, making him America's leading ace.
30:31But Luke was now becoming dangerously punch drunk by his success, and felt that nothing could stop him.
30:37On the 29th of September, he took off and flew over his airfield, dropping a note saying,
30:43Watch the three Hun balloons on the Murs.
30:48He wanted an audience for his next spectacular.
30:52And US troops watched, as the first balloon burst into flames and the tiny plane moved on to the next.
31:10Frank Luke was as good as his word.
31:13The third balloon also went down.
31:20But he never got back to base to bask in his glory.
31:25As night fell, there was no sign of him.
31:30Only after the war was it established that his lone aircraft had been jumped by eight fockers,
31:35and forced to land after destroying two.
31:39He died from the wounds he had received in the air.
31:57The tank had revolutionised the battlefield, and the French were quick to see the need to add speed and mobility.
32:05They developed the seven-ton Renault FT-17,
32:09with a two-man crew and a machine gun or 37mm cannon in the world's first traversing turret.
32:21The American forces, which had begun arriving in France in summer 1917,
32:27soon replaced their French helmets with the British version,
32:30but enthusiastically adopted the small French tank.
32:36They practised with it before the cameras for publicity.
32:51Several hundred were brought forward in support,
32:54when the Americans began their first major action as an independent force.
33:04This was September 1918, in the Meuse-Argonne area of northeastern France.
33:15There, the Americans faced a daunting challenge.
33:19Their trenches lay at the foot of the slopes, running up to the Argonne forest.
33:24They would have to attack uphill, against an experienced enemy,
33:28which had had plenty of time to build elaborate defensive positions.
33:40Behind the barbed wire and trenches of the German front line,
33:44lay a series of machine gun nests, which had been carefully camouflaged in the wooded terrain.
33:52German reinforcements could be rushed to these to blunt any breakthroughs.
34:03From them, the German defenders could bring withering fire to bear on advancing troops.
34:21The Americans had practised hard, using tanks to support their infantry.
34:26But these frequently came to grief, since the Renaults were only lightly armoured,
34:31and they could only get across a gap of six feet.
34:51Despite these problems, the U.S. troops were able to break through after three weeks' savage fighting,
34:58and forced the Germans to abandon their defensive line.
35:15While the guns thundered over the Western Front for four years,
35:19warfare moved into a new dimension.
35:21The romance of flying attracted the young and adventurous.
35:30At first, the aircraft was used for reconnaissance and artillery spotting.
35:37The earliest planes, like this British BE-2C, were unarmed,
35:42although their crews soon took to carrying pistols or machine guns as they encountered their rivals over the lines.
35:54But the work they were doing proved so vital that the enemy soon developed anti-aircraft guns to deter them.
36:11Early in 1915, the Germans introduced a devastating new aircraft.
36:17The world's first true fighter, the single-wing Fokker Eindecker.
36:23Dutch aircraft designer Anthony Fokker had developed a revolutionary interrupter gear,
36:28which allowed a machine gun to be mounted so it fired forward through the propeller.
36:32Not until early 1916 did the Allied air forces receive aircraft such as the Newport Beven and Sockwith Puff,
36:41which put a stop to the Fokker Skull.
36:44Now followed a technological race, with both sides introducing new and more powerful types.
36:50German Albatrosses and Fokkers against Allied Sockwith Cameras, SE-5s and Spags.
36:58The main reasons for the dogfights, which erupted to achieve air superiority, remained reconnaissance and artillery observation.
37:11As the stalemate of the trenches ground on, both sides relied increasingly on their eyes in the sky
37:17to spot any enemy build-up which might herald an attack, and to direct artillery fire to break it up.
37:28Fighter patrols not only escorted the reconnaissance aircraft on their vital work,
37:33but mounted offensive sweeps to intercept enemy spy planes.
37:39By the end of World War I, armies had learnt not to move by day, for fear of being spotted.
37:55By the middle of 1917, the Germans were grouping their squadrons together in large wings,
38:01often called surfaces by the Allies.
38:04These would be concentrated at particular sections of the front,
38:07where air superiority was urgently needed.
38:21By the last year of the war, the fighter had evolved into a rugged machine,
38:26of which the biplane British SE-5A was a typical example.
38:32It carried two machine guns, and its top speed of 138 miles per hour was not to be exceeded by
38:39most of the fighters introduced during the 1920s.
38:50It was machines like these which fought out the last great air battles of 1918,
38:56while the German army made its final desperate efforts to break the trench stalemate and win the war.
39:03And then the Allies launched the series of rolling offensives, which ultimately drove the Germans back to defeat.
39:11By this time, the men who flew them had achieved iconic status as the aces.
39:17The exploits of outstanding fighter pilots, such as the Red Baron, Germany's Manfred von Richthofen,
39:24helped to ensure that this period of fighter combat would always be remembered as a unique and extraordinary time.
39:37But, amid the romantic image of the aces grappling in close combat,
39:42it is easy to forget that the average young pilot reaching a squadron during the last year of the war
39:47had a life expectancy of less than two weeks.
39:54Parachutes were generally not issued to fighter pilots,
39:56and the penalty of failure in a dogfight was often an agonising death in a spinning, burning aircraft.
40:09For ten years after World War I, the pace of fighter development was slow.
40:16The British Bristol Bulldog, which came into service in 1929, still carried only two machine guns,
40:23and could go less than 40 miles per hour faster than the SE-5A.
40:29It remained in frontline service until 1936.
40:37But radical new developments were on the way.
40:40In 1931, a sleek single-wing float plane, the Supermarine S-6, won the Schneider Trophy for the third time.
40:57It then went on to establish a world speed record of 407 miles per hour.
41:04The S-6's designer, Reginald Mitchell, was soon developing it into a monoplane fighter
41:10with retracting undercarriage and an enclosed cockpit.
41:18From this were born the fighters, which would win the Battle of Britain,
41:24the Supermarine Spitfire,
41:28and the Hawker Hurricane.
41:36When Hitler began to rebuild his Air Force in 1934,
41:39the Luftwaffe's first fighters were also biplanes.
41:46But the Germans, too, had been developing the all-metal fighter monoplane,
41:51and their first was a formidable design,
41:54the Messerschmitt Bf 109.
41:59Its main armament of two 20mm cannon and two machine guns
42:03was substantially more powerful than the British fighters' eight machine guns.
42:11In 1939, the Bf 109 proved lethal against the biplanes of the Polish Air Force.
42:29By 1918, another essential component of air power had been developed.
42:34heavier bombers which could raid enemy cities far behind the lines.
42:42Some military theorists saw strategic bombing as the future of warfare.
42:53And as the 1920s began, the Royal Air Force also began experimenting with other uses of air power.
43:04What became known as air control,
43:06using light bombers to police far-flung parts of the British Empire.
43:15A few aircraft seemed to offer a far cheaper way of intimidating unruly tribesmen,
43:20or deterring potential invaders, than keeping large armours on the ground.
43:28And the experiments also had the useful side benefit of justifying the RAF's survival as an independent armed service.
43:37So nowhere was the theory of air power more avidly discussed and developed between the wars,
43:42than by Britain's Air Ministry.
43:45Most bombers were still biplanes.
43:47But by the beginning of the 1930s, the RAF was aware of experiments in the United States with monoplane bombers,
43:54which had the potential to outfly the biplane fighters, then widely in use.
44:03Specifications were issued for both medium bombers, like the twin-engined Vickers Wellington, with a bomb load of 4,500
44:10pounds,
44:12and, very far sightedly, for much larger heavy types, like the Short Stirling and Avro Lancaster,
44:20which could carry more than three times the bomb load.
44:23It was these heavy bombers which gave Britain her only means to strike back against Nazi Germany,
44:30once most of Europe had been conquered by Hitler.
44:38The Germans, too, had seen the need for a strong bomber force.
44:42Their main types, the Heinkel He-111 and the Junkers Ju-88,
44:48were faster than the British Wellington, but carried much the same bomb load.
45:00On the 26th of April, 1937,
45:03the Luftwaffe's first He-111s were used during the Spanish Civil War against the town of Guernica.
45:20They laid waste to it, seeming to confirm the military theorists' belief that bombing would now be the critical factor
45:28in modern war,
45:29and that the bomber would always get through.
45:38But four years later, the same Luftwaffe bombers proved to be inadequate to bring Britain to its knees during the
45:44Battle of Britain.
45:59For the first time, they would expect them to bring them back to the United States.
45:59They were very exposed to the old internal soldiers to break their bodies from the Little Muscle,
45:59The most recent soldiers of the young soldiers are in the early 19th century.
45:59We've been waiting for a long-term kämpath!
46:00Who was going to be the most merciful while also?
46:00In the early 19th century, we'll be able to enrich their body of the world the most scary man.
46:14They were very quickly to talk about the most popular challenges of the world.
46:15We've been really looking for a long-term love and посмотреть Sven's future development of the past.
46:29In September 1939, Hitler's blitzkrieg overran Poland.
46:35Britain and France declared war, and by the spring of 1940, Germany was ready to attack them.
46:43But one obstacle stood in the way, the massive Belgian fortress of Eben-Eymar.
46:52Reckoned to be the most powerful in the world, it controlled the bridges, whose capture was vital for the German
46:59plans.
47:00Anti-tank ditches and barbed wire, covered by hidden machine gun emplacements, meant that a conventional assault would be impossible.
47:08The armoured cupolas containing its main armament could be retracted into the ground, so that bombing and artillery would not
47:15harm them.
47:17Some other way had to be found by the Germans to surprise the fort's defenders and neutralise the threat from
47:23its guns.
47:34So, just before dawn on the 10th of May 1940, nine DFS-230 gliders were cast off by their Junkers
47:42JU-52 towplanes about three miles from the fort.
47:48The Belgian anti-aircraft gunners watched in amazement as the gliders swooped in, but failed to open fire before the
47:57first was almost upon them.
48:03Each glider contained a squad of eight elite assault troops, and each was aiming for a particular cupola or gun
48:10emplacement.
48:13It had been Hitler's idea to use his new airborne forces like this, and to send in gliders which could
48:21be precisely targeted rather than drop paratroops who might be too widely scattered.
48:26The one thing the fort's planners had never anticipated was this, the world's first glider-borne assault.
48:34All nine gliders landed safely, some skidding to a halt within yards of their objectives.
48:40Then the assault teams leapt out.
48:44Some machine gun emplacements turned out to be unmanned.
48:51Others were dealt with using hand grenades, and explosive charges which were pushed through the gun slits.
49:11Once the machine guns had been silenced, the assault troops closed in on the vital big guns in their steel
49:16cupolas.
49:21Specially developed armour-piercing hollow charges were placed on top.
49:28And within 20 minutes, all the main guns had been destroyed.
49:35Next day, the last Belgian defenders waved the white flag of surrender.
49:46German troops proudly took over the fort.
49:53The swastika was raised over it, while the panzers surged across the bridges which had been captured intact.
50:05And rampaged on into France.
50:22The French and British armies were defeated within six weeks, and France overrun.
50:28On the 14th of June, 1940, German troops marched into Paris.
50:33Now Hitler's only remaining enemy was Britain.
50:41The Luftwaffe prepared to batter her into submission.
50:44It outnumbered the Royal Air Force by more than four to one.
50:57The German bomber crews anticipated another walkover.
51:00But they were unaware that the British had a secret weapon, radar.
51:05Following its development by Robert Watson Watt in 1937,
51:09the British had raced to build a chain of stations along their south coast which could detect hostile aircraft at
51:15over 100 miles.
51:17Information was then fed back to fighter command's headquarters, which alerted the appropriate RAF airbase.
51:28This early warning system would enable the RAF's new Spitfire and Hurricane fighters to scramble and get into position to
51:35intercept the enemy.
51:38Rijks Marshal Hermann Goering, commander of the Luftwaffe, had been advised of the mysterious towers along the British coast.
51:46Suspecting that they must be some sort of early warning, he first sent his aircraft to attack them.
51:56Several were severely damaged.
52:05But just when the whole system seemed in danger of collapse, Goering switched his assault to the RAF's bases.
52:18Once again, the Luftwaffe came close to destroying its enemy's defences.
52:25But then, on the 7th of September, Hitler intervened, ordering that Britain's cities must be devastated.
52:32The Luftwaffe switched targets again.
52:35The RAF was given the opportunity to fight on until the losses which its fighters inflicted meant that the German
52:41air assault was scaled down
52:43and Hitler abandoned his plans to invade Britain.
52:53Victory in the Battle of Britain meant that Britain was still in the fight.
53:01But the blitz on her cities went on, and she was still standing alone against the Nazi menace.
53:07The liberation of Europe seemed a distant dream.
53:27Italy's declaration of war in June 1940 put Britain under further pressure.
53:32The modern fleet of this new enemy threatened to cut her vital lifeline through the Mediterranean.
53:41Something must be done urgently to remove this menace.
53:47On the 11th of November, the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious moved into position 170 miles from the main Italian fleet
53:55base at Taranto.
53:57At 8.30 in the evening, 24 swordfish torpedo bombers took off.
54:03One got lost and reached Taranto early, so when the first wave went in, the Italian defences were ready.
54:11The military harbour was protected by searchlights, 90 barrage balloons, and more than 200 anti-aircraft guns and 100 machine
54:19guns.
54:20So the attackers faced a wall of fire as they swept in.
54:25In the first attack, the leading swordfish was hit just after it had aimed its torpedo at the battleship, Cavour.
54:31It crashed as its target exploded, but the crew survived.
54:36Another aircraft at 8.30.
Comments