Episode 6.14 (Vietnam 1955 - 1965)

In this episode, I deal with the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army their effective use of ambushes and bobby traps..  I compare their main gun the AK47 and the American M14 rifle and why the more rugged AK47 proved to be a better weapon in the jungle of South Vietnam. 

At first American troops in South Vietnam simply protect American bases but General Westmoreland get permission to change their role to include search and destroy operations to go out an fin the enemy and kill them.  One of the first is Operation Starlite carried out by American ...  Show more

By the end of July 1914, the world hovered on the edge of a cataclysmic world war; Austria was at war with Serbia, Russia with Germany, and an ultimatum had been handed to Belgium. The July crisis had resolved itself in the most calamitous way possible. But how did this state of ...  Show more

“We have been forced to draw the sword”. Following the expiry of Austria’s Ultimatum on Saturday 25th July 1914, the Kaiser and the Tsar - friends and cousins, long desirous of peace between their two nations - found themselves in a new and highly precarious situation. Even so, t ...  Show more

On the 20th of July 1914 the heads of state of two great European powers - France and Russia - met in St Petersburg. Little did they know, though they may have suspected, that the Austrians were simultaneously writing up an Ultimatum, and waiting for the departure of the French t ...  Show more

In the wake of the cataclysmic assassination of Franz Ferdinand on the 28th of June 1914, in Austria, the long percolating question of what to do about Serbia, reached a climax. At last, they had been handed an opportunity to take decisive action. On Sunday 5th of July an emissar ...  Show more