The Deadliest Machines That Won WWII [4K] | Combat Machines Compilation | Spark

there's a way to make an entrance my destiny it was now a conspiracy of witches download vili today [Music] the 20th century saw the dawn of a new type of warfare machines ruled the battlefield conventional infantry assault across no man's land was bound to fail Flesh and Blood simply could not get through that type of Defense a fierce arms race led to even more deadly weapons those Gunners on the tanks had rounds in their cannons and they were ready to execute if they were told to behind the lines the development of powerful and Innovative Vehicles meant the difference between Victory and defeat this is absolutely one of the unsung heroes of the second world war the Relentless pursuit of military Supremacy would lead to machines capable of destroying Humanity itself there are very few mistakes you could make there wouldn't have some kind of catastrophic consequence this time the Epic Second World War battle in the North African desert Rommel is very much a doer a fast-moving General somebody who wants to get things done and is prepared to take risks facing Rommel Montgomery's Desert Rats one of the toughest units in the British Army and it was meant to be a five-year operation it turned out to be one of the finest British armored operations of the second World War in a straight up standard fight the British had finally been the last man left in the ring success relied on both sides Combat Machines and their extraordinary Firepower tungsten core round would punch through the side of the turret and beat around inside until everything was either broken or on fire victory in the desert was hard fought and it changed the outcome of the second World War [Music] foreign [Music] on June 22 1940 France surrendered to Nazi Germany after a battle lasting just six weeks the German Army the Vermont stormed over First World War battlefields where their predecessors had been bogged down for four years both the French Army and the British expeditionary force or bef had been outmaneuvered he lacked air cover we lacked the right weapons and trained to go with them and also the fact was that the bef had not expected virtually to have to take on the might of the Vermont without the support of the French whose Army was crumbling in the battle for France British tanks were exposed as mechanically unreliable and often unable to penetrate the armor of the German panzers humiliation but soon a very different Battlefront opened up an opportunity for a second chance how would the British Army's Combat Machines fare in the deserts of North Africa the war in the desert began in September 1940 because of the territorial Ambitions of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini Mussolini felt deprived of Victory Germany had conquered France he conquered nowhere Britain was on the ropes in 1940 of course had withdrawn from France and was beginning to fight the Battle of Britain this seemed the opportunity for the Italians to move into Egypt had no interest in North Africa on the Mediterranean with the battle for France over his eyes were fixed firmly eastwards towards Russia it was Mussolini who was trailing along in the coattails of his glorious Ally his armies deprived of any kind of Victory he wanted a win and he wanted to take North Africa Mussolini had a huge Army in Libya of 250 000 men his plan was to invade Egypt and seize the strategically important sewers Canal getting access to the vital oil fields of the Middle East Italians was the 36 000 strong Western desert force made up of British Australian and Indian infantry and armored units they would soon acquire the nickname first given to the British seventh Armored Division The Desert Rats inspired by the African rodent the jaboa one of the tanks The Desert Rats placed their faith in because of its heavy armor and two-pound gun was this machine a 29-ton British infantry tank known as the Matilda at the tank Museum in bovington in England a World War II Matilda is being lovingly restored it gives fascinating insights into the machine and those who made it [Music] it came in for what was a routine bit of Maintenance and it turned into um so far a three-year rebuild the aim is to get as many systems on this vehicle working as if it came out of the factory there's a certain amount of engineering archeology that has to take place when you build something of this kind of historic value bolts are cut at certain lengths that are not come off the shelf in order that they're fit sometimes the sides of them are flattened in order that things can operate the designers of the Matilda struggle to find an engine big enough to power it they finally hit upon a solution not one but two 95 horsepower diesel engines that gave it a top speed of 16 miles per hour faster than the Italian tanks this is one of the pair of engines that's fitted to the Matilda tank we're just getting them prepared for testing and running in 1939 many British companies shifted their production to the war effort Matilda tanks were constructed by firms such as Harland and wolf who also built the Titanic [Music] in Lancashire famous for its powerful locomotives the repair team at bovington tank museum is constantly learning about the Ingenuity of the men and women who made the matildas one key element of the Matilda's turret has been stripped down and repaired this component here is called the rotary base Junction its function is to transfer the electrical and the hydraulic power into the turret the rotary base Junction allows the Matilda's turret to Traverse 360 degrees in any direction [Music] this is the fixed part and the top rotates and carries the hydraulic connections all the way around the turret inside this drum is a tower with electrical contacts in the fixed wires come out from the hull and they're bolted here they relate to contacts that run down the side of here and as the turret rotates it maintains an electrical contact all the way around in order to strip a component like this down the electricians and the Fitters at the time would have had a number of specialist tools that can order to carry this out we've had to make these special tools and there's some examples of them here they get from the sublime sometimes to something a little more crude but it's amazing how sometimes a bit of wood can help in order to fix this particular component we had to make upwards of nine tools normally these would have been issued to the tank Crews with the tank when the vehicle went to the regiments by the summer of 1940 The Desert Rats had about 270 tanks at their disposal of which 50 were matildas on September 13 1940 the desert campaign began aliens invaded British controlled Egypt after 60 miles they stopped and dug in creating a series of fortified camps the man in charge of the British counter-attack knew the terrain well his name was Lieutenant General Richard O'Connor [Music] O'Connor was a professional Soldier pre-war regular he'd served a distinction in the Great War but he knew the desert he knew the capabilities of his British forces and he knew the limitations of the Italian forces and exploited both to great effect O'Connor devised an ingenious plan christened operation compass Lieutenant General Richard O'Connor was arguably one of Britain's best generals of the second World War in operation campus he was set a pretty ambitious task with limited numbers of men he was going to attempt to drive the Italians right out of Egypt and it was meant to be a five-year operation it turned out to be much more of a momentous operation than that in fact one of the finest British armored operations of the second World War operation comp is essentially set out to destroy the Italians the destroy their attack from Libya as the Italians moved rather cumbersly along the coast Road the British forces simply penned them there whilst O'Connor launched a major flanking attack striking Southward through the desert to roll up a line of Frontier four touch the Titans and built and to destroy the Army by attack on the flank and rear provided by 50 Matilda tanks which emerged out of the desert at speed the Italians were thrown into confusion and panic so we've got this situation where after some of the initial attacks they're sending the Matilda tanks forward almost with bravado to crush down the Italian artillery and that very quickly sends a level of Despair through the Italian military that's infectious they think they cannot fight against this new British tank that's appearing which in the end gets its nickname the Queen of the Desert nothing can seem to touch it one Australian Soldier wrote home [Music] of British tanks terrorized them and the side of our bayonets was enough to make them throw up their hands fascism operation Compass had pushed the Italians back it took them completely by surprise their army began to crumble very quickly and soon the times were thinking simply in terms of Escape into the route of safety of Libya [Music] victory over the Italians had done something to repair the Damage Done by the humiliation of defeat in France but how would the Desert Rats fare against a more deadly and sophisticated foe the legendary German tank commander Erwin Rommel and the lethal Combat Machines he brought with him the range and the flat trajectory of the 88 allowed it to reach out to enemy tanks before they were even within range of firing back the round is leaving the barrel at the speed of 2 200 feet per second after France fell to the German Blitzkrieg in June 1940 the British and their allies were in need of a victory they were given a second chance in North Africa when in December The Desert Rats and their Combat Machines routed the Italian 10th Army who had hoped to capture Egypt and the sue his canal then to the surprise of the British there was a chance to turn a victory into a stampede an officer Lieutenant General Richard O'Connor had hastily assembled a flying column of fast vehicles to intercept the fleeing Italians he gave his men orders to stop them at all costs charge Scout cars like this one by British manufacturer Daimler and known as the dingo the dingo was designed as a light reconnaissance vehicle on this part of the ethos of the British army for light Mobility so it acted as eyes and ears the name dingo is derived from Australian wild dogs which is perhaps rather Aptos this was used in the desert as you can see it's quite a compact vehicle not very big but it just takes two crew you've got the driver here on the right Gunner on the left equipped with the 303 brand gun for self-defense um not too bad on the front you've got 30 millimeter plates here but only 12 millimeter on the side so not so great on the sides obviously you've got 360 visibility from the top which is what made it ideal for Desert Warfare You Can See For Miles on the flat desert terrain if you saw a dingo coming over the horizon it meant there was a Patrol on the way which obviously signaled that there were larger forces behind them that's a usually alerted to the troubles in route [Music] accompanying the dingo as part of O'Connor's flying columns was a vehicle with a better pedigree than any other British combat machine the Rolls-Royce armored car [Music] built on the chassis of the luxury limousine the Rolls-Royce Silver ghost she was powered by a seven and a half liter straight six engine that gave her a top speed of 45 miles per hour [Music] both the Royal Air Force and the British army use these vehicles 40 the Armored Cars had been in service for 20 years and nearing the end of their operational life [Music] but they remained popular with The Desert Rats with good reason the tanks even then were still not particularly serviceable all the time they broke down quite often that meant that the rolls royces themselves were much preferred because they could travel faster they could travel further it didn't take as much fuel and if you like the physical footprint which is the dust etcetera generated by their movement across the desert was nowhere near as grit as the tank with a crew of four men one of whom was a gunner the roles could pack a punch it had a Vic as many machine gun the ones you know from World War One and the trenches of Nissan and latterly it had a boys only tongue rifle which was killed checking out most other armored cars and some light tanks [Music] [Applause] the dingoes like tanks and armored cars that made up Lieutenant General O'Connor's flying columns headed south into the desert to race ahead of the Italian 10th Army as they fled back towards Tripoli in Libya the Bold flanking move through the desert moving fast hitting hard exactly what light Cavalry would have done in the previous century they set up roadblocks at a place named bada Farm just 30 minutes before the remnant of the Italian 10th Army arrived still had a sizable amount of armor and I still had a high sizable amount of men the problem it had was it did not expect out of the Morning Mist British armored vehicles to be blocking the course road to the Shelf the armor car sealed off the pass and the times you'd have to fight their way through them to get towards sanctuary and effectively after two days of fighting the Italians almost our master in the town [Music] O'Connor's plan had exceeded expectations at the end of the battle of beta form British officers were reporting the number of Italian prisoners they had in terms of acreage of saying I have two acres of offices and 10 acres of other ranks so many Italians in the hundreds of thousands surrender despite the victory the battle marked the end of an era for one of the Desert Rats best-loved Combat Machines better from the saw the Swan Song of the Rolls-Royce as a Frontline armored reconnaissance vehicle with the seventh Armored Division and with the Hall of the British Army in the western desert it had operated in some cases for more than 20 years and was wearing out and wasn't as up to date as some of the more modern designs operation compass and the Battle of bada Farm had helped to build the reputation of The Desert Rats but on the 12th of February 1941 only five days after the victory at beta Farm a more formidable Force arrived in North Africa the German Africa Corps led by Lieutenant General Irwin Rommel and his Columns of deadly Panzer tanks Rommel had made a name for himself commanding a fast attacking tank division in France in May 1940. Rommel is very much a doer a fast-moving General somebody who wants to get things done and is prepared to take risks but in the desert the fuhrer wanted his famous General to employ a more cautious strategy in terms of Africa Corps the Germans Hitler had never intended to become involved in the North African war that was Mussolini's Folly as far as he was concerned Rama's mission was simply to bolster the Italians this is an Italian War Rommel decided to ignore Hitler's orders he believed it was very much a German war he would take on the British and their allies but first Rommel unloaded a weapon he knew would protect his troops and soften up the enemy [Music] [Applause] this is the legendary 88 millimeter flak gun it was a favorite weapon of Rommels when he first arrived at Tripoli and his Africa Corps was just coming into port to support the Italians one of the first things he did was to send an anti-tank Battalion and a mechanized reconnaissance Battalion out to the east of Tripoli to screen against the British coming West and the anti-tank Battalion had 88s in it so one of the first things he did was deploy 88s in a defensive role to guard his entire share of operations built initially to arm pre first world war dreadnoughts of the German Navy the 88 is one of the most versatile weapons in the history of warfare and can be as equally devastating on land as at sea so feared were they the guns were outlawed as part of the Versailles treaty in 1919 but not for long when in 35 Hitler decides to denounce the Versailles treaty the guns are then being produced in most of the major Metallurgy plants in Germany in the re-armed Third Reich the 88s were to be used as defense against aircraft the Germans claimed that a shell fired from its 16-foot Barrel could reach a height of 32 000 feet is designed primarily as a flack which means flieger of their Canon basically anti-aircraft Cannon then during the battle for France in 1940 Rommel gave the 88 a new role as an anti-tank gun Rumble sees though if you use the 88 millimeter anti-aircraft gun it has actually an armor piercing round he insists they turn and they fire at the oncoming British tanks and he sees again there he's got that lesson already before he goes to North Africa he can see the benefit of Firepower such as the 88 millimeter against Vehicles such as a Matilda 2. this is one of the shells for the 88 flag this one is an anti-tank shell a solid 22 pound bullet if we're firing any tank there is no arming of the shell one of the ammunition loaders will pick the shell up shove it in the back of the breach of the weapon another Cannon here is closing the bridge right behind it in the anti-tank roll the man who is sitting in the gun layers seat is the one that's actually aiming the gun and he signals The Man Behind him to pull the trigger [Applause] thank you the ground is leaving the barrel at the speed of roughly 2 200 plus feet per second range from the flat trajectory of the 88 allowed it to reach out to enemy tanks before they were even within range of firing back at the 88 almost two miles foreign meters they were very effective use of a weapon that was not actually designed for an anti-tank roll one British tank commander wrote I saw three of the leading Matilda's stop abruptly and burst into flames I realized with dismay that the Germans now had an anti-tank gun to which even the matildas were not immune I understood clearly that none of our future battles would be as easy as the previous year even though the 88 shells carried no explosive they could inflict terrible damage this tungsten core round would punch through the side of the turret and beat around inside until everything inside was either broken or on fire and the lighting on fire is not because it explodes it's because it's just creating so many Sparks as it spins around inside that metal box that anything that's in the tank is going to light up it's purely kinetic energy weapon foreign the power of the 88s gave rommel's men a definite advantage over The Desert Rats Rommel didn't only bring an anti-tank gun to the desert he had at his disposal another lethal combat machine the Panzer III in February 1941 the German Africa Corps led by Lieutenant General Irwin Rommel joined their Italian allies in a campaign to win control of North Africa facing them was a British Australian Indian and South African Force known as The Desert Rats [Music] one of the big features of the Desert War from 1940 to 1942 is the way the tide turns so quickly from one side to another the Italians have initial success the Italians are then beaten effectively by the British the British take their eyes off the ball Rommel enters a favorite of Hitler somebody who's an ambitious fast moving man Rommel brought with him one of the Combat Machines the Allies feared most the 25-ton tank known as the Panzer III [Music] as soon as the sun rises through the Morning Mist the regiment starts to roll forward we disperse into the desert 40 to 50 kilometers an hour on our taco but the nicest is the attack the German Panzer our beautiful wide humming Panzer Panzer Panzer to the full [Music] the 18-foot long Panzer III was designed in 1937 to be the main German Frontline tank for any future conflict as they think the Panzer 3 is going to be the vehicle that will be leading the attack will be coming across potentially enemy tanks coming the other way back at it they want to give it an anti-tank weapon so they start off by giving it the standard 37 millimeter gun that's the standard anti-tank gun for the whole German Army many countries in the 1930s have anti-tank guns about this caliber the battle for France showed the Germans that the Panzer lacked sufficient Firepower the demand for a bigger gun came from the very top of the Nazi hierarchy now very quickly Hitler who is so influential on German tank design he's arguing for more protection on tanks for more Firepower so under the fuhrer's direction the Panzer III was equipped with a 50 millimeter gun far out muscling the British tanks unfortunately for the British a similar gun upgrade on the Matilda tank proved impossible one of the biggest problems about putting a new gun on a tank is this idea of upgrading the vehicle by increasing its Firepower the turret's circumference the diameter there tends to limit how big a gun you can fit in Matilda has a small turret circumference which meant that an upgrade from its two pounder just wasn't feasible the Panzer 3 has a much larger turret ring that potential it has for getting more Firepower means a Panda 3 last longer in Frontline service than the Matilda does [Music] the tough conditions in North Africa meant that further adaptations to the design of the Panzer III were essential [Music] the other issue about the desert of a course is just the physical landscape they're going to have to cope with that landscape with rock with sand with grit all the time that's getting into the vehicle you've got dust that can choke your filters they're trying to keep those clean all the time so the engines don't stop all these factors make desert Warfare that much harder than perhaps the sort of scenarios Northwest Europe that these tanks have actually been designed for so in the back there's a May back trm 120 engine that now has for North African campaign extra filtration put on it to help get the dust out before it actually reaches the engine to help cool that engine in the rear this system helped the Panzer 3 achieve a top speed of 25 miles per hour [Music] although it was faster than most of the British tanks the Panzer was still vulnerable to attack a further modification was necessary you'll see there's an extra almost inch of armor plate has been added as spaced armor at the front of the vehicle that's where they thought they were most likely to be struck that's where they put that extra protection on three-year desert conflict between the panzers of the German Africa Corps and the tanks of The Desert Rats took place over a stretch of land that bordered the sea no more than 40 miles wide the problem is that the front line if you like it's 1500 miles long and the Desert War is called a pendulum as the Allies Advanced the Germans retreated as the Germans Advanced the eyes were treated Rommel used ingenious tactics against the Allies earning him the nickname The Desert Fox his dynamism is charismatic leadership the lightning speed with which he moved and the instinctive feel he had for dead Warfare made him a legend Rommel would lure the British tanks to attack his anti-tank screen as they broke through they would be ambushed by 88 millimeter flat guns meanwhile the panzers would attack the British flank and rear from the British point of view we ended up if we weren't careful doing Cavalry Charges against German positions where the panzers would tempt the British forward disappear behind a screen of anti-tank guns and the British would after would be left lifting their wounds wondering what went wrong later on as we get better at those tactics in the desert we're less likely to fall for those sorting tricks that Rommel actually does of seducing the British into attack foreign August 1942 after two years of fighting Rommel had pushed The Desert Rats back to what was known as the El ala Main Line in Egypt if the Germans broke through North Africa was lost the British if they have to retreat further east then Alexandria Cairo the whole of the Delta is open to the enemy El alamed for the British had to be the last ditch defense line the situation was so serious in Cairo the British burnt official papers in case they fell into enemy hands but could there be Hope For The Desert Rats mechanized reinforcements appeared in the shape of a new more powerful American Tank designed to take the fight to the panzers the M3 Grant and it really improved the British chances of being able to take the Germans on head to head and the new British commander arrived to take on Rommel Lieutenant General Sir Bernard law Montgomery if money was on the job the ordinary Tommy thought he would get the job done by August 1942 three years after the start of the second world war the commander of the German Africa Corps Irwin Rommel had pushed the Allied Force known as The Desert Rats back to El Alamein in Egypt ically important port of Alexandria was only 60 miles away if the Germans broke through North Africa was lost morale Among The Desert Rats was low German tanks dominated the battlefield one man was given the task of achieving victory Britain's Lieutenant General Sir Bernard law Montgomery Montgomery has been described as being by one of his own subordinates as as quick as a ferret and just about as likable but the men believed in him because he had this great Charisma and confidence somehow Monty was the British version of Rommel if money was on the job the ordinary Tommy thought he would get the job done on the 23rd of October Montgomery began The Desert Rats fight back they launched operation Lightfoot Monty was determined in his words to kick Rommel Out of Africa for good on the 23rd of October the battle begins with this huge iconic artillery barrage the night sky litter by the flashes of hundreds of Allied guns pounding the German positions Montgomery's plan is the British would launch a faint in the South to draw the Germans out the same time British infantry will push two corridors through the German minefields and through their defenses to allow the armor to pass through and attack the German tanks Rommel was outnumbered along a 40-mile front he had a hundred thousand men and 675 tanks compared with Montgomery's 150 000 men and a thousand tanks and many of these were new American tanks especially adapted for Desert Warfare like the 30-ton M3 Grant the M3 Grand had exactly what The Desert Rats needed greater Firepower to match the German panzers a 75 millimeter gun had been added to the right hand side of the tank turret with its 37 millimeter gun was offset to the left for balance the M3 Grant is really the first tank that the British were able to feel in the desert that had a 75 millimeter gun previously they had been Fielding smaller caliber weapons a lot of the tanks had for instance a two pounder Cannon the grant really was a surprise to the Germans when they were actually being hit by 75 millimeter shells at distances of more than 1200 meters the grant tank was something of a hybrid because it mounted a 75 millimeter gun in its Hull and a 37 millimeter in its turret this was something of an odd Arrangement because the main Firepower had less Traverse than the smaller turret the grant is a modified version of a tank known as the M3 Lee [Music] the British asked for changes to its communication system the lead tank actually had its crew of seven individuals the grant only had six men and that was because the British asked for the radios to actually be put in the turret American tanks had the radio down in the hull so this allowed the British to have one less man necessary to operate the radio it sounds like with one less man it would be very roomy in there it's really not it's very tight the M3 Grant performed well in the desert but wasn't without its flaws most tanks were welded constructions but the grant was riveted which meant that when Under Fire it was a hazard to those inside if those rivets are hit by an incoming shell they can actually Shear off inside the tank and create a Ricochet effect that's very dangerous for the crew the grants had an aircraft petrol engine built by the American company Wright Continental although its top speed was a decent 25 miles per hour it was a devil to start it's got an airplane engine in the back a radial engine which needs to be cranked before you start the vehicle it's quite the workout for the individual who gets lucky enough to be chosen to be the man cranking that engine you have to spin it about 50 times to make sure the oil gets into all of the cylinders foreign it still was certainly a significant weapon on the battlefield and it really improved the British chances of being able to take the Germans on head to head [Music] despite the new tanks and the numerical strength at El Alamein for almost a week after operation Lightfoot began The Desert Rats had failed to break through the German and Italian lines the battle is incredibly intense the attrition in terms of armor on both sides is very high Montgomery is utterly ruthless he will not abandon a plan once it's been set in motion but even he realizes that operation Lightfoot isn't going to achieve final break [Music] at El Alamein there was another battle going on a war fought behind the scenes by the engineers on both sides to keep their tanks repaired and operational fighting in the desert was punishing for the men and their Combat Machines the debt is very harsh terrain it's largely waterless the rocky surface is not all smooth sand is murderously hard on vehicles it degrades tank tracks it shreds tires the dust clogs engines those who maintain World War II tanks today some form a tank crew themselves are only too aware of the dedication of those tank engineers a lot is said of the camaraderie that exists between the crewmen that work on one of these vehicles and having done it myself you know you never experience teamwork and a sense of purpose when four people which is the amount of people it takes to run this machine all have to work in concert in order to navigate over terrain spot targets load the correct ammunition pick up the targets fire and hit them in order for all that to work once that breaks and that vehicle is broken down another gang of people come up and turn and in very adverse conditions such as in the desert without often the correct equipment in order to fix it they have to repair this thing in Under Fire sometimes and get it back going again part of the reason that we do this kind of work as a homage to those people and the people that crude the tanks in the first place team 42 shorter Fuel and weakened by five days of fighting at El Alamein Rommel only had 35 serviceable tanks left Montgomery came up with a plan codenamed operation supercharge that he believed would finish off the desert fox Rommel once and for all a combined force of Tanks infantry and artillery would smash their way through Enemy Lines destroying their tanks and supplies it worked the German line is fractured the armor pours through by the second of November his tanks shot up and strapped by a British planes because British now of sviority Roman realizes the game's up he's gonna have to retreat but of course Hitler orders him not to give an inch he has to stand and die and the stimulate the command he just thinks it's like some kind of medieval battle where you stand the Holy Ground the last man Romney knows Hitler's command and begins a retreat that Retreat this time never stops that Retreat goes on Till May 1943 when the Germans and the Italians finally surrender a Tunis and the Desert War is Over Cyril Jolly a British tank commander wrote as the sun rose it was marvelous to see again the Brigade spread out in open battle formation with the plumes of sand pillowing in the wake of each tank and vehicle as we moved in a wide Arc to cut off and encircle the enemy [Music] it was a costly victory a total on both sides of about 5 000 men were killed at El Alamein it was a significant turning point in World War II before El Alamo in the eyes had never won a major victory after Alabama they never suffered a major defeat it was the Tipping Point of the war [Music] and better equipped British Force had finally made up for their humiliation in France after three years of continuous defeat of privation of Terror of German invasion finally the British armies had done what British armies always did in the past and won a famous British Victory the pride of Germany's forces Roma and the Africa called the best Germany had had been defeated by the British AIDS Army Desert Rats and their Combat Machines had ultimately triumphed over the elements and rommel's army in a straight up stand-up fight the British had finally been the last man left in the ring and now with American Manpower and American armor victory over the Third Reich was closer to becoming a reality 20th century saw the dawn of a new type of warfare machines ruled the battlefield conventional infantry assault across no man's land was bound to fail Flesh and Blood simply could not get through that type of Defense a Fierce arms race led to even more deadly weapons those Gunners on the tanks had rounds in their cannons and they were ready to execute if they were told to behind the lines the development of powerful and Innovative Vehicles meant the difference between Victory and defeat this is absolutely one of the unsung heroes of the second world war the Relentless pursuit of military Supremacy would lead to machines capable of destroying Humanity itself there are very few mistakes you could make that wouldn't have some kind of catastrophic consequence this time the fate of the greatest amphibious Landing in history and the liberation of Europe depends on a collection of remarkable machines Vehicles like this while they may not get all of the glory of say a Sherman tank they're significant in winning Wars machines that were pushed to Breaking Point with the Jeep you could take it anywhere you could drive up mountains you could take it in the desert across Fields Through Rivers it didn't matter it kept going the heroic exploits of their drivers were legendary these guys look like they've stepped out of a movie they come like knights in shining Armory they are the true liberators they like the Knights of the Round Table these kinds [Music] thank you [Music] D-Day June 6 1944. after nearly five years of war the long planned for liberation of Europe from Nazi rule has arrived over 6 000 vessels transport troops and Equipment across the channel from England towards the Normandy beaches in northern France [Music] ever amphibious operation mounted in history the scale was truly breathtaking by the end of the first day a 50-mile beach head had been secured but victory in Europe depended on more than just a successful landing and first 24 hours the need was to put something like a hundred thousand men ashore Birch on day one and then to continue the backup the immense backup of troops coming forward on day two three four five Etc to push the battle for Normandy forward it was enormous Britain the United States and their allies faced a formidable enemy after D-Day the Allied pushed towards Germany would test both troops and machines there were a number of vehicles the Allies relied on to get men and Munitions ashore for the push towards Berlin this is an example of a combat machine which truly broke the mold the dukw known affectionately by the gis as the duck it has a trick up its sleeve it's a two and a half ton truck that is just as happy at Sea as it is on land this ingenious vehicle was designed to overcome a problem that had plagued invading armies for centuries the delivery of troops and supplies to Invasion beaches this takes time and makes them vulnerable to enemy attack this vehicle can drive off of a landing craft into the water float to shore driven by a propeller and then when you get to shore you switch it over to the wheel drive so you don't have to deal with the process of taking things to the beach on a boat unloading them and then putting them on a truck to move Inland you can just drive ashore and continue on like any old truck which meant that the men were under Fire for much lesser period of Time how do you move them much more quickly this amphibious truck was the brainchild of an American Racing yacht designer named Rod Stevens he took the chassis of a General Motors Company truck and encased it in a steel hull powered by a six-cylinder engine it can do 50 miles per hour on land and six knots in the water it has a Rudder and propeller at the rear and the front wheels also help it steer watertight seals and thick grease keep any water out essentially this vehicle needs very little preparation once it's in the water working like a boat with the propeller spinning once you get to shore all the operator has to do is shift the lever basically and it turns it into a land-going vehicle the propeller shaft is no longer spinning and there is now drive to the wheels in 1942 Rod Stevens and his team built a prototype in just over a month he was given the code letters d meaning 1942 u meaning amphibian a denoting front-wheel drive and W rear-wheel drive Steven's fast work was wasted the U.S army took little interest in this strange looking craft then in the spring of 1942 a U.S Coast Guard ship ran aground off Cape Cod and it looked as though the ship and her crew were doomed until they turned for help to the dukw in just 10 minutes the duck reached the stricken vessel saving the lives of all on board President Roosevelt himself got to hear of the rescue and a large order for the Ducks soon followed twenty thousand would be constructed between 1942 and 1945. foreign was first tested Under Fire in the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943 as American Canadian and British forces attempted to force Italy out of the war main is fair to say the dukw performed very well indeed it was ideally it could carry a couple of tons of supplies or 24 fully armed infantry so it was a very good vehicle it was very versatile the Allies knew that D-Day would be a Sterner test but confidence amongst dukw drivers was high they gave us a sort of pep talk they said we were going to invade France in the morning I thought so why I drive in and out of the ocean hundreds of times [Music] the dukws worked hard in the early days of the D-Day invasion they brought 40 of the 14 500 tons of supplies carried to the beaches each day as soon as we hit the shore on D-Day we were rushed into service the fact that we hadn't had any sleep for more than 24 hours didn't matter the combat troops were in dire need of food and ammunition as the British Canadian and American troops and their allies slowly Advanced through Normandy they faced a formidable enemy the Germans would fight tooth and nail to hang on to what they had they realized every yard the Allies cupboard was a yard nearer Berlin so it was going to be a very very tough fight indeed the Nazi war machine would fight a fierce rear guard action testing Allied Ingenuity to its limits in terms of liberation of Europe having vehicles which are easily maintained plentiful rugged and reliable was absolutely vital the dukw's had some Innovative features to help them adapt to a range of terrain they were expected to run on both sand and road but this meant manually changing the tire pressures placing the drivers in grave Danger So In late 1943 an ingenious tire inflation system was devised that could be operated from the driver's seat a compressor powered by the engine fed all Six Tires that meant the pressure could be adjusted without stopping even tires riddled with bullet holes could be kept inflated [Music] Advanced the dukws proved to be remarkably effective Combat Machines when the Germans retreated they blew up bridges over rivers and canals to hamper the Allied advance but the dukws were able to cross the water with ease who needs Bridges when the Ducks are willing and able our tanks were penetrating deeper into Germany's Soul by the hour and race we did a lot of attention is given to the the well-known systems the tanks the bombers the the fighter planes and their significant always but while the shooters get all of the glory it's trucks and other equipment like this amphibious duck that allowed the military to continue providing the supplies and indeed also win the war essentially through material so Vehicles like this while they may not get all of the glory of say a Sherman tank they're significant in winning wars to healthy Allied armies succeed in their aim of pushing into Germany and ultimately securing victory troops the dukw supplied needed a swift light tactical vehicle it is an ideal all-terrain vehicle it can be used as a weapons platform if Mountain machine learning with the Jeep you could take it anywhere you could drive up the mountains you could take it in the desert across Fields Through Rivers it didn't matter it kept going this iconic vehicle would be tested in some of the toughest operations of the second World War [Music] in the summer of 1944 the fate of Europe depended on the Allied plan to land over 150 000 troops on the beaches of Normandy and then race to Berlin to defeat Nazi Germany getting there before the Soviets coming from the East success relied on the skill and courage of the troops and the quality of their Machinery modern fast-moving Warfare meant that both sides needed a tactical vehicle that was lightweight and versatile the Germans possess one this is the kubelvagan Life as a peacetime vehicle the best-selling people's car or Volkswagen designed in the early 1930s by the legendary Ferdinand Porsche directive from the German Army Porsche took his famous design and turned it into a combat machine basically it was a Volkswagen however with a couple of modifications higher suspension so it had a higher land clearance and also a more rugged chassis as well as having a lower gearbox so that it could be driven both a walking pace and also to go at the highest speeds that the Volkswagen as well as the Cooper wagon were very well known to getting up to [Music] Bargains reinforced chassis was a single steel plate that formed the whole of its Underside which was able to deflect say for instance rocks or Pebbles going into the inside of the car the main concept of that was basically to protect the vulnerable underside of the car same way that you would do with a tank or even with a truck summer of 1943 a captured kubelvargan was taken to the United States for a series of tests the Americans wanted to know if anything could be learned to improve their version of the machine a vehicle that was beginning to make a name for itself on the battlefield a vehicle that would become one of the most famous Combat Machines in history the Jeep [Music] by the time of D-Day the jeep was Battle proven having been used in North Africa and Italy and one of the great things about the jeep was it was proven to be Soldier proof soldiers have a really nasty habit of breaking stuff and that's the key to a good military design it's got to be Road past utilitarian and pretty much unbreakable of the Jeep tick to all those boxes [Music] back in July 1940 the U.S army had asked car manufacturers to come up with a design for a rugged four-wheel drive reconnaissance vehicle small company named Bantam won the bid and provided a working prototype in only 49 days but their Triumph short-lived unfortunately Bantam simply wasn't a big enough company to compete with the larger players the design it came up with and the Prototype it came up was ideal unfortunately it just didn't have the wherewithal to produce some large enough numbers the manufacturing contracts for bantam's Jeep went to two much larger American firms Willies and Ford U.S army policy was never to name their vehicles and so the trucks rolling off the production lines were simply known as the quarter ton truck 4x4 was shorthand for GP government purpose the generic term for military vehicles in World War II although it had been used in the campaigns in North Africa and Italy it was the liberation of Europe that would push the Jeep to its limit with any military vehicle it's going to be able to function really well off-road the minute it breaks down off-road it's useless with the Jeep you could take it anywhere you could drive up the mountains you could take it in the desert across Green Fields with plowed Fields Through Rivers it didn't matter it kept going you can be used to pull the trailer so you can fill the jeep with kit you can fill it with people it can be used as a wetness platform if marketing machine learning so you can carry a lot of Supply with a relatively small vehicle and over any background that you choose Jeeps were also used to lay smoke to deceive the enemy carry the wounded to carry dignitaries visiting the battlefield including King George VI and President Roosevelt Jeeps even became communion tables in church services and when movie stars were asked to promote U.S war bonds the iconic jeep was chosen to carry them [Music] back on the battlefields of France in the summer of 1944 the jeep was in the thick of the action often leading the charge [Music] the newly formed British Special Air Service the SAS liked it because it was fast and its specially designed combat Wheels still functioned even when the tires were deflated the Jeep's headlights could be tilted up to illuminate the engine for Urgent nighttime repairs following the D-Day Landings I mean the Jeep remained what it was a jack of all trades and was used for hit run raids by the SAS the Seas Bridges they spent a lot of time supporting the front resistance darting about France once again the Jeep showed its versatility for these raids they wouldn't be driven into position they would be flown in now a Jeep because it's compact relatively light fits very nicely into a glider if your Glide around successfully you open the doors you roll the Jeep out press and start the motor and off you go foreign by August 1944 the Germans had lost control of most of Normandy SAS devised a plan to block enemy units retreating through the so-called Paris Orly on Gap it was called operation Wallace the idea of operation Wallace was to actually disrupt enemy Communications and to support the resistance this was highly successful but the key to that mission was speed and obviously the Jeep enabled them to bomb through what had been effectively banned its territory in the face of the retreating Germans and the sheer psychological factor of having swiftly moving Vehicles behind their own lines which could easily be part of a much larger attack was something which helped to unhinge the German defense [Music] for weeks the SAS wreaked havoc amongst enemy bases and Troop convoys the Royal Air Force were able to drop 12 new jeeps to replace ones the SAS lost in battle Jeep became a vital resource in the next key campaign of World War II by September 1944 the Allied armies were close to the German border the Americans in the South and the British and Canadians to the north British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery pushed for Airborne drops of paratroopers to secure bridges in Holland in an operation known as Market Garden mortalized in the classic British film averaged too far once again Jeeps were to be dropped to assist the troops the role of the Jeep in this operation was quite interesting because it was the prime mover of the parachutists when they were on the ground this use of the Jeep by Airborne forces was really intended to boost their functions firstly give them the capacity to transport their supply and to give them a reconnaissance capacity now the eyes and ears of your Airborne Force the cheap had a much bigger impact in the second world war than it's often given credit for it's one of those Vehicles which was produced in huge numbers and could do almost anything this was not an advantage enjoyed by the enemy their production of vehicles was nowhere near as great and as a result small unit Mobility was often better with the Americans or the British than it was with their eminence people have occupied Europe there was one vehicle in particular that came to represent their hard-won freedom often arriving even ahead of the Jeeps these guys look like they've stepped out of a movie they are the true liberators they like the Knights of the Round Table these kind for one Village in particular a Harley Davidson and her Rider would become a legendary hero in the months after the D-Day invasion in June 1944 the Americans Canadians British and their allies had to fight hard to break out beyond the borders of Normandy in France Hitler had told his troops in early July that every square kilometer must be defended tenaciously it was a battle of attrition the Germans had to be ground down slowly Village after Village was liberated one American GI wrote to be 19 and fight for the liberation of France from the Nazis in the summer of 1944. at time of Hot and cloudless Blue days when we shouted strange phrases in words we didn't understand to men and women who cheered us as if we were gods [Music] racing ahead of the Allied tanks and troops were reconnaissance units on machines which more than any other came to symbolize the coming liberation all right it was the first sight of Freedom the iconic Harley-Davidson WLA in the late 1930s the reconnaissance units of the United States Army were still heavily horse related but by the late 1930s they wanted to mechanize those troops and they were looking into solutions to replace the horses by Motor Vehicles the Army ordered some motorcycles from the different brands such as Indian and Delco and Harley-Davidson to test them and to see what they could could do Harley-Davidson who had proved themselves to be one of the United States most Innovative motorcycle manufacturers who won the bidding war over 90 000 wlas would be produced between 1942 and 1945. they were used for escort Courier radio and reconnaissance duties one of the strengths of the WLA was that it was reliable and easily maintained by the rider the WLA is a very basic motorcycle based on a civilian model it is equipped with a 750 cc V-twin engine and it drives the gearbox through a primary chain on the left side and then the rear wheel through a secondary chain on the right side early Harley-Davidsons had an inefficient oil system that meant the rider had to manually regulate the lubricant whilst riding [Music] the 1930s a new more dependable automatic oiling system was devised oil from a tank beside the fuel tank was circulated through the engine via an oil pump oil was then pumped up to the oil tank for recirculation this so-called dry Sump System gave the wlas a longer operational life although the engine was world class the WLA was a tough bike to master it has brake on the right side and foot clutch on the left side so it has no clutch on the handlebars you change gears with by hand on the left side of the tank you have throttle on the right and ignition spark Advance on the left so with this really fairly complicated to ride if you're not used to it [Music] love their bikes as they were reliable easily maintained and well kitted out for combat with blackout lights a gun rack for a rifle or submachine gun and an ammunition box and large luggage rack with leather saddlebags the German Army had their own hard-working motorbike BMW r75 [Music] designed for a direct combat role never see a motorcycle or any kind of motorcycle unit being employed in such large numbers as the Germans did the BMW r75 was powered by a 750 cc side valve engine that gave it a top speed of 59 miles per hour the motorcycle was designed to carry three men one machine gun and two Riflemen each motorcycle in a squad of say for instance 10 motorcycles that would be a platoon worth of 30 men who are very heavily armed they would have been able to give suppressive fire and be able to get in and out of tricky situations if needs be so they converted their bikes into if you like mini jeeps in a way they were two-wheel drive Jeeps and I think there was a drive through the sidecar as well and these of course they were fast they were versatile and they were very good for the reconnaissance Rule and they were also armored so they used their bikes perhaps should we say rather more aggressively as the U.S army Advanced through Europe in the Summer and Autumn of 1944 the Harley WLA took on a new vital and dangerous role motorcycle scouts at the head of advancing Army columns are not as well armed as their German counterparts were given the task of seeking out enemy positions and radioing back with urgent Intel obviously if you advance any of the enemies you're treating you have to assume that he may well have left a rear guard in any a defended area or certainly he may well booby trap gems are very good at booby trapping the area so you always have to make sure you have reconnaissance forces in place first before you bring the rest of your armored formations up just so the enemy hasn't sprung any surprises the motorcycle Scouts were often the first Allied Soldiers the French and Belgian civilians saw the gi's distinctive bikes soon acquired a nickname The Liberator one American in particular became a folk hero for the people of Belgium [Music] [Applause] [Music] a scout with the 628th tank destroyers battalion [Music] Eve of the 3rd of September they were in the woods at Conde a small village on the French Belgian border Carroll's commanding officer sent him into Belgium to see what was going on if there were still German troops in The Villages and Carol across the border on his Harley-Davidson and he took the main road into Peru paraway was a small Belgium town that had been under Nazi occupation for four harsh years [Music] [Music] that might have a sort of uh it's obviously I foreign [Music] the morning of the 3rd of September 1944 James Carroll cautiously made his way into peraway parked his bike close to the town's church he spoke to the priest who told him that the Germans were in the process of moving out everybody visited the we as carefully as he could Carol then headed out of the town to get help he returned shortly after with a unit from the French Resistance news of the young gi's arrival soon spread uh the power foreign remember me [Music] [Applause] Pierre de prey is a local historian fascinated by James Carroll's story is observations [Music] looked like they've stepped out of movie they are driving these becoming iconic Vehicles they have so much of everything they have so many rations they have chocolate they have cigarettes they've got nylons they come like knights in shining Armory it's a romantic view they are the true liberators they like the Knights of the Round Table these guys Paraguay never forgot James Carroll and his motorbike and was sad when they'd heard he'd been killed a few weeks later Pierre de prey was determined to find Carol's final resting place so they could honor their first American Supreme [Music] but the village discovered to their Delight that James Carroll had survived the war and was very much alive it's me I'm still alive foreign so in 1995 almost 50 years after he first arrived he returned once more to peraway as their special guest [Music] s [Music] lyrics Carol return to paraway every September for the next five years [Music] old foreign in June 2005 James Carroll passed away at his home in America four years later a statue was erected by The Grateful people of Belgium in tribute to all the Harley bike riders who liberated them in the months after D-Day their exploits and their iconic machines will never be forgotten as the Allied armies moved across France and Belgium in 1944 The Liberator was a key part of that success but that success posed a problem a lack of supplies of food and equipment and so a solution was devised a rolling convoy system that became the stuff of Legend the British Canadian and American troops and their allies who fought hard to liberate Europe in 1944 and 45 relied on a series of remarkable machines from the dukw amphibious vehicle to the Jeep and the Harley-Davidson WLA supporting them was an unsung hero a vehicle that would help the Allies solve a problem of their own making in the weeks leading up to D-Day the French Railway Network had been repeatedly attacked by the British and Americans [Music] although this had hindered German attempts to defend the beaches it left a huge logistical problem for the Allies how to supply their troops especially because the channel ports were still under German control when you imagine industrial war and when you just stage a very successful amphibious operation but you're pushing out in what is effectively enemy our territory Logistics are absolutely vital without Supply the Army just stops at the end of August 1944 as the Allied Forces pushed even deeper into France an ingenious plan was devised to create a rolling convoy system nicknamed The Red Bull Express the Red Bull Express is one of the most innovative Supply Solutions of all time as the Allies moved North through France away from the Normandy beaches as the supplies kept coming in six thousand trucks mainly American trucks were used on a vast one-way system you've got to bring the food for the troops and the medical supplies and you've got to take back the wounded and the red ball Express essentially kept a 24 hour a day seven day a week Highway going from The Invasion front which had been Normandy up to the the front lines and which were getting further and further from the beaches of Normandy as the war progressed through 1944 and into 1945. the Red Bull Express was named after a famous 19th century fast Freight Service on the Santa Fe Railroad in New Mexico the backbone of the 1944 version was this U.S army vehicle the two and a half ton cargo truck nicknamed the Jimmy but by a 90 horsepower engine that gave it a top speed of 50 miles per hour [Applause] it could cross water almost three feet deep and climb a 65 degree slope and they were more than just work horses if required the Red Bull trucks could take a direct combat role in some cases if they're working close to the front where they might encounter enemy fire or run into pockets of resistance they could actually mount a machine gun on this truck with a ring over the drivers and co-drivers cab we're supplying 28 Allied divisions with 12 and a half thousand tons of food Fuel and Equipment a day in October 1944 American General Dwight D Eisenhower the Allied Supreme Commander wrote to encourage officers and Men of the Red Bull Express you are doing an excellent job but the struggle is not yet won so the red ball line must continue the battle it is waging so well with the knowledge that each truckload which goes through to the combat forces cannot help but bring Victory closer foreign this truck is not only an important part of America's military history it's an important part of its social history too [Music] most of the drivers on the red ball Express were African-American their vital role has been overlooked for decades at the time very few African Americans were allowed to serve in the fighting units so it was particularly significant that their contribution to the war was so great even though they don't get the recognition that a lot of the troops at the front lines and the fighting troops got you can essentially credit victory in in no small part to their work as well they were a significant part of the logistical supply of an advancing Allied Army the driver's work was hard and full of risk Red Bull convoys were quite dangerous simply because they were quite often traveling through territory where Minds had not been cleared there were still pockets of German resistance they could get strafed and also in the name of getting supplies through these things ran 24 hours a day pretty much which meant the drivers were very tired and accidents were quite common but if it was dangerous for the Allied Supply vehicles for the Germans under heavy bombardment it was often a suicide mission the backbone of their supply network was a truck that didn't come from the factories of Germany but the factories of France after France surrendered in June 1940 over 6 000 of these citro new 23 trucks were commandeered by the German army they were badly needed there's this stereotypical view of the Germans going into the second world war fully prepared to go up against the allies and it was simply not the case you see many cases of the Germans using vehicles from skoda Citron and other foreign Nations to bolster their own war effort against these nations and their allies the French had used these citroens as Supply Vehicles as ambulances and radio cars but the Germans saw they had greater potential after the occupation of France the first thing that they did was they improved the chassis they reinforced the chassis and improved the brakes they gave it hydraulic brakes which basically made the Citroen U23 more reliable and also it made its total Laden way up to a massive four tons compared to how it was back before the modifications of 1.5 tonne the Citroen was now capable of carrying almost twice as much as its Red Bull rival the Jimmy but the German policy of using other nations transport for their war effort had a dangerous flaw the result was a wide variety of vehicles each with different maintenance schedules and requiring different parts whereas Red Bull trucks like the Jimmy produced in their thousands were entirely standardized and reliable the Germans realized too late the need to standardize their trucks by 1944 Allied attacks made it impossible and their vehicles had a further weakness the Germans had a tendency to over complicate their engineering their engineering was brilliant but in many ways it was more sophisticated too sophisticated for the job in hand [Music] by November 16 1944 the French Railways had been repaired and channel ports were open along the Allied line of advance the decision was taken to finally halt the Red Bull convoys [Music] by then the two and a half ton truck had proved itself to be one of the most significant Machines of the conflict U.S General Patton described it as their most important weapon this is absolutely one of the unsung heroes of the second World War we give so much credit to the tanks and the fighter planes and the bombers but trucks like this allow mechanized Warfare to move forward and they're in a central part of the battle victory in Europe finally came in May 1945 it was achieved by a combination of heroism Superior Firepower and machines that proved to be fit for purpose skilled and fast reconnaissance pioneering strong and versatile in those hard-fought months after D-Day these groundbreaking machines designed and built at speed became symbols of Liberation for millions and secured themselves a lasting Legacy the 20th century saw the dawn of a new type of warfare machines ruled the battlefield conventional infantry assault across no man's land was bound to fail Flesh and Blood simply could not get through that type of Defense a fierce arms race led to even more deadly weapons those Gunners on the tanks had rounds in their cannons and they were ready to execute if they were told to behind the lines the development of powerful and Innovative Vehicles meant the difference between Victory and defeat this is absolutely one of the unsung heroes of the second world war the Relentless pursuit of military Supremacy would lead to machines capable of destroying Humanity itself there are very few mistakes you could make that wouldn't have some kind of catastrophic consequence this time intricate Combat Machines built for the shadowy world of spies deception and trickery so these are the generals sending messages to and from Hitler if you can read these messages potentially you're going to get into the mind of what Hitler is planning to do machines capable of stealing secrets from under the noses of the enemy from a military perspective it was an unprecedented intelligence coup machines whose secrets were a matter of life or death if you were taken alive in the first place you would then be simply tortured to reveal as much information as possible and then take an outside and shot [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] the 20th century was an era of Rapid technological advances one of the most significant inventions was radio it changed the lives of millions forever and also the nature of warfare the investor radio communication transformed War exponentially and it meant that the man in the front line could now communicate directly with the man in real life you die at the radio you're speaking to the Gunner and his child is going to start for you in the next 30 seconds by the outbreak of World War II it was clear radio had another use as a vital tool in the shadowy world of Espionage and counter-intelligence foreign British secret organization formed in July 1940 radio became a key part of their covert fight against the Germans in occupied Europe their name was Special Operations executive or soe prime minister Winston Churchill gave soe their orders to set Europe Ablaze [Applause] [Music] foreign forty he wanted a means of taking the fight to the enemy which meant the factory clandestine operations we couldn't fight them on any conventional battlefield but what we could do was still the fires of resistance in Europe and attack the Germans effectively from within soe agents were recruited from all walks of life from chefs to electricians and trained in Scotland and at the secluded country estate of bewley and Hampshire in the south of England foreign agents was radio communication radio was their Lifeline to base it was the wireless that was the principal instantaneous method of communication it's your link to life and death during the SEC the second world war radios were used by both the Germans and the Allies to transmit vital coded information they knew that the intelligence sent by these Combat Machines could affect the outcome of the conflict the radio is used by soe were normally quite small a small suitcase a small tattoo case or a backpack type Arrangement and normally comprise a receiver a transmitter a power supply which could either run off whatever AC was available in the country they were in or DC from a car battery or similar and with that in the code book you would code your message the radio operator would then send in Morse code but it was a dangerous job the life expectancy of an soe agent in France was only six weeks the consequences of being firmed with a radio transmitter during Second World War quite simple if you were taken alive in the first place you would then be simply tortured to reveal as much information as possible and then taken outside and shot as the war progressed so vital and yet so perilous had soe's role become it was thought that female agents stood the best chance of carrying out missions Behind Enemy Lines without being detected one of soe's 60 female agents was a 22 year old named Yvonne Basden codenamed Odette [Music] Yvonne had two months training at bewley and then on the 18th of March 1944 was parachuted into France her mission was to assist the French Resistance near Toulouse in the run-up to D-Day the invasion of Europe [Music] Yvonne had the vital job of Wireless operator for the resistance cell the wireless operator in communication with London can enable parachute drops of supplies and can bring in more people and is absolutely key the Germans had perfected an ingenious way to detect enemy agents who were using radio transmitters powered by Mains electricity by they would turn the power off block by Block in the city until the radio transmission went off and then obviously they would know which block you were in we counted that by fitting the radio with a power supply which would also work off a battery at the flick of a switch the Germans think that you are not in that building they've just turned the power off and luckily they look elsewhere in France Yvonne trained French Resistance Fighters how to set explosive charges and by using coded radio messages organized parachute drops of weapons one successful drop on the 16th of July 1944 involved over 400 tons of armaments there's so many canisters of supplies were dropped as Testament to her role as a wireless operator but then the next day disaster as Yvonne and the resistance cell were celebrating the successful Mission the building was surrounded by German soldiers some of the resistance were shot the rest were captured Yvonne was tortured but managed to keep her identity Secret [Music] the Allied Supreme Commander General Eisenhower paid tribute to those in France who fought German occupation after the war Eisenhower suggested that the French Resistance contributed to shortening the war by up to nine months the work of the various groups around D-Day in harassing German soldiers and delaying their travel up to the Normandy beachhead meant that Allied servicemen were able to get a foothold in France and it saved many lives as a result Yvonne based and survived the war and was honored by both the British and French governments for her bravery as Yvonne based and worked undercover in France a spy in London was transmitting urgent radio messages to German intelligence from the heart of the British government but all was not what it seemed in the spring of 1944 the Germans knew that British American Canadian and French troops were massing in the south of England an invasion of Europe was clearly imminent so the big issue really is when is the inversion going to take place and where is it going to take place the fact that the invasion was coming was no big secret an Allied plan was devised to trick the Germans to make them believe the invasion wouldn't be in Normandy but further east the plan was christened Operation Fortitude and the main part of the fortitude plan was actually to mislead the Germans into thinking that the invasion of Europe would fall on the part of Calais this was quite clever because the parda Calais had actually been considered as a potential Landing Zone in one of the most bizarre twists of the second World War British intelligence believed that a former chicken farmer with a radio transmitter should be a major part of the fortitude deception his name was Juan pujol a Catalan who believed the Nazis were destroying Europe to fool the Germans he conjured up a network of fictitious agents around Britain who he claimed were providing him with valuable intelligence [Music] from the roof of mi5's headquarters in Saint James Street pujol transmitted their reports using a captured German spy radio the Germans came to trust Juan pujol because of his results and they came to the conclusion that he was the best agent with the best Communications and so the Germans came to not only believe in Peugeot but to rely upon him then knock has a radio similar to the one pujol would have used one of the German spy sets in my collection unusually has all the controls with English lettering my only assumption there being that if anybody was poking into it being nosy they would open the suitcase see the English writing and not think twice but D-Day posed a problem for the double agent for weeks pujol had been telling German intelligence the Allies weren't ready to invade in June when D-Day happened he would be shown to be wrong and therefore not to be trusted it was decided that at the last minute Kajol would tip the Germans off at 3am on the morning of the 6th of June prejol Radio decoded message three days ago cold rations and vomit bags had been distributed to troops of the third Canadian division and that the division had left Camp its place now taken by Americans [Music] this could only mean one thing to the Germans invasion the vomit bag suggesting a sea Journey was a clever touch but pujol also said in his message that the attack was a trap to make us move our reserves the real invasion was elsewhere it was to put across the deception that this was a diversionary faint and that the real Attack was going to take place a couple of weeks later in the paducale there is in fact concrete evidence that the deception worked German tactics changed on D-Day and that's why the first SS Panzer Division which started to move down to Normandy when the beachhead was established was turned back stopped in its tracks and sent back to the franco-belgian Border in anticipation of the real Attack which was going to take place of course in the patakana the Germans never suspected pujol was a double agent on the 29th of July 1944 he received an extraordinary message from German intelligence Hitler was awarding him the Iron Cross for his courageous work and his radio transmitter made a significant difference to the outcome of the invasion of Europe hard to exaggerate the contribution that Juan pujol made to the successful prosecution of the D-Day Landings and indeed of the second World War he certainly saved tens of thousands of lives as Juan pujol played his D-Day trick 30 miles north of London a combat machine unlike any other on Earth was hard at work deciphering orders from Hitler himself in time of war the flow of radio information is constant and vital it can mean the difference between Victory and defeat it has to remain secure messages are often sent in code to ensure total secrecy but codes can be cracked if you have a high-tech combat machine code making and code breaking go hand in hand you make codes so that your messages are kept secret but if you want to know what the enemy is doing you have to break those codes and many of them are broken [Music] in the 1930s the Germans developed a cipher machine that they believed could produce messages that would be impossible to decode this is Enigma the most famous Cipher machine of them all and for good reason it was an ingenious device the plug board and the settings of the rotors were designed by the Germans to produce 150 million million million possible combinations every 90 days the Germans were send out under armed guard a key list and the keyless would say which rotors to use which order the rotors were going to be in what the settings of those rotors would be which numbers this machine has numbers some had letters and what the plug board setting would be now this machine did not send the message it only encrypted and decrypted the messenger sent through the radio the Germans know it's intercepted but they're not concerned because they don't think anyone can read enigma at the height of the second world war about 20 000 Enigma machines were used by the German Army and Navy they were fairly simple to operate so let's pretend it's December 7th 1944 and the settings today are 26 4 1. we're going to send a short message from Berlin the Stuttgart so Berlin encrypts a message as the Berlin operator types hello Enigma encrypts the letters producing f w c z r now it's sent from the radio and the Germans know it's intercepted but are not concerned again because they're not aware anyone's reading enigma the Stuttgart operator receives the message then using an Enigma machine with the same settings 26 4 1 types in fwzcr and gets the original pre-encrypted message hello despite what the Germans believed Enigma was vulnerable two British mathematicians Alan Turing and Gordon welchman based at the British Center for code Breakers at Bletchley Park north of London built an electromechanical machine known as a bomba to attack the Enigma code by mid-1940 the British were able to read vital German Naval signals as the British were decoding Enigma the Germans were developing another more sophisticated Cipher machine a machine to be used by Hitler himself to communicate with his battle Commanders it would make Enigma look like Child's Play Enigma was effective but had its limitations It could only be used to send short messages the German High command they need to send reports to and from Hitler these are Big reports well over a hundred characters and in actual fact there was one message that was reported to be over 60 000 characters long you cannot send that by morse code there needs to be another method in 1941 the German electrical company Lorenz designed a cipher machine that could encrypt rapid teleprinter traffic the Lorenz sz-42 so now you've got high speed communication going on that is encrypted very complex much more complex than the Enigma and it can cope with very very large messages if you can read these messages you potentially you're going to get into the mind of what Hitler is planning to do the British had no idea that Lorenz existed summer of 1941 an intercept Station in London was listening out for spy Transmissions coming out of Europe they started to pick up high-speed German teleprinter traffic and then got a surprise they connected that radio equipment into Teddy printers and they were able to read the plain text message but very soon afterwards it went into encrypted mode and at that point they realized that there must be a machine that the Germans had developed that would encrypt Teddy printer traffic but at that point they had no idea what the machine looked like they had no idea of who manufactured it the Germans believed that their complex combat machine couldn't possibly be broken the Lorenz may have had no weaknesses but its operators certainly did on the 30th of August 1941 a German operator in Athens sent a 4 000 character message to a colleague in Salzburg twice without changing the 12-wheel settings of the Lorenz the British had been listening in for the code Breakers at Bletchley Park these two messages were a gold mine they were successfully decoded but if they were to read other teleprinter messages they had to find out how the German Cipher machine worked the Athens messages were given to a 24 year old British mathematician named Bill Tutt and he strips that string of characters down into pure bit patterns when he starts to see the repeated patterns caused by the wheels rotating three months work the outcome is that he has worked out the complete architecture of the lorenza said 42 and even at that point they still had no idea the name of this machine the analyst Andy Curtis who worked at bachelor party them as the collected bunch of individuals Britain has ever brought together they did it with such Brilliance such breathtaking capacity for Innovation and for lateral thought and this pooling of this massive IQ of brain power was unequaled in history the work at Bletchley Park was laborious one single Lorenz message could take up to six weeks to Decode by hand but then in January 1944 the future arrived at Bletchley the world's first programmable electronic computer Colossus Colossus was built primarily to do a statistical attack on the Lorenz Cipher to tease out the starting position of the 12 wheels of the Lorenz that the operator setting the machine to when he sent the message the cipher message was fed into Colossus via paper tape and the computer's 2500 valves set to work finding the lorenz's wheel settings [Music] this is a fully functioning replica of Colossus at Bletchley Park built according to the plans of its brilliant young designer Tommy flowers the original Colossus was built by flowers and his team in only 10 months what used to take the cryptographers six weeks to decode was done in four hours the British were reading Loren's messages sent by Hitler sometimes even before his generals the secret of the computer was its 2500 valves the valves on Colossus does all the processing it's the heart of the machine it processes data at high speed and the only way you can do that is to use Electronics in those days Electronics with valves by the end of the war Bletchley Park had 10 Colossus computers it's estimated that 63 million characters of German Communications had been decrypted by May 1945. Colossus remained a secret until the mid-1970s this rebuilt Colossus is in part a tribute to the men and women who operated the groundbreaking computer many of whom died before their significant contribution to the war effort could be recognized foreign as the United States fought the Japanese in the Pacific another code-breaking battle was taking place combining modern technology and an ancient language on the Second World War battlefields between 1941 and 1945 the U.S army went to Great Lengths to maintain security their radio operators were given the latest combat equipment but some units had a secret weapon from among their own ranks as the Americans fought their way across the Pacific towards Japan they soon discovered their enemy was skilled both in battle and in cryptography breaking English language-based codes almost at will but what if the codes weren't transmitted in American English but instead in the Indigenous language of the United States Native American the reason why Native American tribal languages were so good for secure Communications is they were very secluded only those tribal Nations understood their particular language and there was a variety of them and sometimes even within that language there were different dialects of all the Native American languages Navajo is one of the hardest to understand so in 1942 the U.S Marine Corps took on 29 Navajo recruits to operate its radio equipment if you don't hear it as an infant you will not learn to speak it properly it has the quality of tonal inflections changing the meaning of a word entirely which we don't really have a corresponding association with in English and that's one of the reasons Marine Corps went with it they knew no one else would ever learn it George Naz was one of the first to enlist I really enjoyed you know too protect our country my crypto went in was called the first original 29. these were the legendary code talkers the Navajo radio operators used standard radio equipment to contact each other however they took steps to make their messages even harder to decipher translating messages from English to Navajo wasn't enough they developed their own Battlefield code words for Combat Machines and combat weapons in Navajo a bomber was a buzzard eggs were bombs potatoes were hand grenades the same size and the same shape sharks were destroyers the ship destroyers whales were battleships on the land we have tortoises which were tanks they're slow they're green they have a hard shell it was very easy to learn our clothes one car would crank up the batteries and the other guy used a microphone to send message the first message that I sent in a Battlefield was it went like this Japanese machine gunness on your right slack destroy and in a cold outside most of the best on the nationality the code talkers proved themselves to be fast and accurate even in the midst of one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific War at the Battle of Iwo Jima there were six Navajo code talkers over the course of 48 hours since 600 coded messages and didn't have a single mistake you couldn't say that using machine encryption systems those took time you would have to encrypt the message take it to the radio room it would be sent out in Morse code at the other end they'd have to write it down go back to their encryption system to decrypt it and it would take significantly longer the Japanese found it impossible to decode the Native Americans messages they resorted to Desperate Measures so they did put a high priority on capturing a Navajo and forcing him to translate and that's one of the reasons why many of the Navajo code talkers had personal bodyguards to protect them from being captured but none of them were ever captured and the code remained secure the war in the Pacific ended in September 1945. celebrations were short-lived within a year suspicion and hostility between the Soviet Union and the West turned into a new world conflict the Cold War vast sums were spent by both sides on weapon technology but also on ways of stealing the secrets of that technology the intelligence collection process was the coal face of the conflict that in order to avoid a hot War you collected intelligence in order to make certain that troops were not deployed unexpectedly that there was not a surprise attack south coast of England was a significant Center for underwater warfare research it was therefore of great interest to the Soviets who had an aging underwater Fleet [Music] Soviets were very well aware of anglo-american technology and they were anxious to steal secrets into monitored developments in submarine warfare and Technology they were particularly interested in a British submarine sonar system called the type 2001. enter Harry Houghton a British civil servant who was also a Russian spy in 1956 together with his lover Ethel G who also worked at the Portland base Houghton began to steal vital Naval secrets G collected documents that she had access to she had access to the registry and the drawing office she then gave those to Harry Houghton who photographed them on 35 millimeter film and then once a month usually the first Saturday of the month Harry Houghton sometimes accompanied by fog would travel up to London there they met a Soviet spy called Gordon Lonsdale who passed on the secrets to the final Link in the Spy ring a middle-aged American couple called Helen and Peter Kroger living in an unassuming house in the west London suburb of ruislip who had the perfect cover story to all intents and purposes to their neighbors it was thought that they were an unmarried couple running this second-hand book business from an office in the Strand in London this Soviet spiring in the heart of Britain had the latest intelligence technology at their disposal to obtain classified information and get it back to Moscow the most reliable method was to turn photographs into tiny images known as micro dots perhaps the best known camera that was involved with microdot production was the minox camera it had a very good lens on it and importantly from the micro dot perspective It produced a negative that was just 8 by 11 millimeters and then using a fairly complex Optical system that then was reduced down by 100 or more times from the original size to a literally a fraction of a size that literally a full stop on a page and then that micro dot that piece of film which contained all of that really important valuable information would then be either affixed to a letter into a book and then it was literally invisible to anyone that didn't know or wasn't expecting it popular places are underneath a stamp on the outside of an envelope or inside a letter that has been written or typed and perhaps just simply placed directly over a full stop and unless you know where to look it's virtually impossible to find it then through a complex Optical system the image is enlarged back to a size where the information can be transcribed or turned into another photograph in 1960 the British Security Service MI5 became suspicious of Harry Houghton he seemed to have more wealth than a humble civil servant should have mi5's surveillance of Houghton LED them to Gordon Lonsdale and then to the Krogers in ruislip on the 7th of January 1961 the entire spy ring was arrested by special Branch Detectives as they searched the Kroger's house it slowly revealed its Secrets a radio to transmit to Russia their dark room where the micro dots were made as well as cameras and spy equipment hidden in everyday objects [Music] the Portland spy ring were all jailed for their treachery but it was too late the Soviets had got what they wanted most Intel on the British sonar system the type 2001 and in 1967 the first Soviet nuclear powered submarine was launched it had a particular sonar system that was almost identical to the type 2001 so they were able to cut a great deal of Corners by using British technology to virtually copy the type 2001 sonar [Music] West would have its revenge an audacious mission to listen in on Cold War Secrets right under the noses of the Russians foreign this is one of the world's leading diving centers based at Fort William in Scotland here they use underwater technology pioneered in the Cold War versatile machines like these were once used in covert combat situations to steal enemy secrets one top secret mission has become legendary for its bravery and audacity it allowed the United States to listen into the secret conversations of the Soviet Union just miles from the Russian coastline [Music] in the early 1970s the United States suspected that a crucial Communication cable lay on the bottom of the sea of oakhotsk between the large Petro pavlovsk submarine base and the Russian mainland going all the way to Moscow if the cable could somehow be tapped the U.S would be able to intercept vital Intel on sub and missile technology How could a single cable be found in over a million square kilometers of water one of the U.S Navy's most experienced Naval Intelligence Officers Captain James F Bradley Jr had an idea he was out on a weekend with his son in a small outward boat and he happened to notice it was a sign that said don't anchor here underwater cables he said you know we have those because we don't want people to drag up the cables and the Soviets have underwater cables and they got signs probably in Russian that say don't anchor here underwater cables what if we could somehow get down there and tap into those cables what kind of intelligence could we derive from that even if the U.S Navy could find the cable how could they get a tap on it 200 meters down [Music] a new technique called saturation diving held the key on land humans breathe about 80 nitrogen and 20 oxygen for saturation diving some of the oxygen and all of the nitrogen is replaced with helium which is non-toxic the benefits of saturation diving is that the diver can stare down at any given depth for much longer for days weeks if needed and then decompress just once at the end of that it's a long decompression but it's a safe decompression [Music] you go down you could go down to 30 meters 40 meters 100 meters 200 meters 300 meters and then you stay there because your body takes on the gas at that pressure and it becomes saturated to a point where it can't take any more on so you can then stay down there for as long as needed and then decompress very slowly you just decompress once the U.S Navy's mission to tap the Soviet cable was christened Operation Ivy bells and it was decided the nuclear submarine A USS Halibut would carry the divers to the Target area halibut was chosen because in her bow she had a large hanger nicknamed the bat cave the bat cave became nothing more than a very large open space in the submarine where we could put a univac computer and other equipment and men who were monitoring what was going on in the water on the Halibut stern was attached to decompression chamber needed to get the saturation divers ready to work underwater it was so conspicuous the Navy pretended it was an underwater rescue vehicle [Music] the infrastructure that it took and the research and the preparation and the training and the cost was very much the equivalent of going to the moon for the first time in October 1971 the USS Halibut arrived in the sea of okhansk and began to search the shoreline at Periscope depth for the sign warning of underwater cables that Captain Bradley believed had to be there after a week they spotted one to find the cable in the murky Waters the Halibut deployed from its bat cave are remotely operated underwater vehicle known as an ROV nicknamed the fish foreign Diving Center has its own 21st century version of the halibut's ROV okay the system here this is the CI Falcon ROV probably pretty similar to The Ivy Bells fish out of E it consists of in this case we have five Thruster units four horizontal one vertical Thruster these are electric the single camera which can either be a color camera or a low light black and white depending on configuration we have a mechanical scanning sonar system and at the front here a single function a grabber where we can use that to pick up little cables or rods from the seabed once the Halibut dive is located the cable with their ROV the saturation divers entered the decompression chamber at the sub Stern breathing the helium and oxygen mixture after a few hours they were ready to join the ROV in the freezing water [Music] the halibut's divers and crew were well aware of the danger of discovery these were enemy Waters and they were constantly patrolled the Soviets had a couple of submarines out there now these were older submarines they were diesel powered which meant that they couldn't spend an awful lot of time underwater but they were very quiet and they had sensitive sonars and they're listening for any kind of sound that anything down there might make which put us in a position of having to be very very quiet all the time you don't drop a wrench on the deck you don't drop a spoon on the table everything you do is whisper quiet once the divers had located the cable the listening device had to be installed cable couldn't be cut open that would alert the Soviets so a 16-foot wiretap that worked through induction was attached literally listening in it was known as the Pod the whole purpose of Ivy bills when you strip away all the Adventure and all of the excitement and all of the research was Intelligence exactly like a detective Taps into a perps telephone line that's what we were doing because you have electricity with built-in intelligence moving through the cable it produces a magnetic field and this pod was able to pick up that magnetic field and pull the intelligence out of it and then record it and back then believe it or not it was tapes it was actually recorded on tapes as the Americans had hoped the communications were unencrypted it was Intelligence gold including details of Soviet tactics and sub patrols off the U.S Coast the Halibut stayed in position by the cable for a week from a military perspective it was an unprecedented intelligence coup right into the 1980s the USS Halibut and other subs would return to the cable twice a year to pick up the recordings the Americans listened in to Soviet messages for over a decade it's claimed that one piece of information they intercepted helped bring about the end of the Cold War we became aware after the fact of one particular message that had enormous significance when President Reagan was in Reykjavik at the summit with Gorbachev Reagan had information that Gorbachev didn't and this was about a plot to assassinate Gorbachev and he was able to tell gory who was after him and Gorbachev was able to nip that assassination plot and that gives you some sense of why Gorbachev liked Reagan so much the Revolutionary devices used by spies and covert operatives over the years had keys and valves dials and Aerials cameras and microfilm emphatically proving that Combat Machines didn't have to rely on awesome Firepower or heavy armor to win the day [Music]

Channel: Spark

Views: 1,793,199

Keywords: Air combat, Amphibious warfare, Anti-tank weapons, Artillery, Land warfare, Military aviation, Military innovations, Military inventions, Military training, Military vehicles, Naval submarines, Naval warfare strategies, Personal accounts, Spark, Tank battles, Vehicle warfare, WWII battles, WWII documentary, War in the Pacific, War tactics, Warfare technology

Id: -3PaIQI-ouo

Length: 131min 34sec (7894 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 03 2022