253 - Fortress Britain

Before the Second World War, learning to fly by instruments was one of the most difficult and dangerous skills a pilot had to master. Training had to be done in real aircraft, often in poor weather, and accidents were common. In the late 1920s, an American inventor named Edwin Al ...  Show more

My guest today is William Hogan, and we are going to be talking about the remarkable story of his father, Sam Hogan, and the men of Task Force Hogan. At just twenty-eight, Sam was one of the youngest lieutenant colonels in the US Army, commanding a battalion of Sherman tanks in t ...  Show more

The U.S.S. O'Bannon was a Fletcher-class navy destroyer with an impressive array of weaponry and a solid track record in conflicts in WWII. However, even the most experienced sailors aren't perfect -- and when the O'Bannon happened upon a hapless Japanese submarine, both crew eng ...  Show more

Submarines are the silent hunters of the deep. From the large nuclear-powered boats of today’s navies, to the German U-Boats of the First and Second World Wars, these machines hidden beneath the waves can change the course of history. In the United States, the first submersible w ...  Show more

On this episode of Battleground '44 Saul speaks to friend of the show Evan Mawdsley about the subject of his new book -The Battle of the Philippine Sea. The often overlooked battle was one of the major naval battles of World War II that eliminated the Imperial Japanese Navy's ab ...  Show more

In 1923, legendary navigator Captain Dolly Hunter led a squadron of warships into America’s worst peacetime naval catastrophe. The mission was supposed to be a speed trial, a display of the squadron’s skill. But it ended in a maritime pile-up, with some destroyers stranded on roc ...  Show more