World War Two
Published 4 Feb 2023The Allies begin a new operation in the Pacific this week: assaulting the Marshall Islands. They also make big attacks from their beachhead in Italy at Anzio, but these are called off after only a few days in the face of heavy enemy resistance. However, in the USSR there are several successes against the Axis, as they are pushed back both in the far north and the far south of the front, and still surrounded near Korsun.
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February 5, 2023
Leningrad: NO STEP BACK! – Week 232 – February 4, 1944
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February 4, 2023
Poland’s Descent into Civil War – War Against Humanity 097
World War Two
Published 2 Feb 2023Poland, occupied, abandoned or even threatened by her allies is left to fight her own war. A war that under the influence of internal and external forces looks more and more like a full blown civil war inside the world war.
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January 21, 2023
When the SS Go Too Far – War Against Humanity 096
World War Two
Published 20 Jan 2023The internal conflict between Poland and the other United Nations Allies deepens as Churchill faces them with diplomatic defeat over Soviet land grab. In the Occupied Netherlands and Poland the Nazis continue their atrocities.
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January 15, 2023
Time to Liberate Leningrad! – Ep 229 – January 14, 1944
World War Two
Published 14 Jan 2023Three Soviet Fronts launch major offensives to try and finally free Leningrad, under siege for nearly two and a half years now. The Soviets are, in fact, making attacks along most of the Eastern Front. In the South Pacific, the Allies step up their aerial assault to wreck Rabaul’s air power, thus neutralizing it as a base.
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January 3, 2023
1943 in Numbers – WW2 Special
World War Two
Published 1 Jan 2023This war is massive. Our chronological coverage helps give us an understanding of it, but sometimes statistics help us understand the bigger picture.
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December 30, 2022
Stalin Deports An Entire Ethnicity – War Against Humanity 093
World War Two
Published 29 Dec 2022The last week of 1943 is a busy one. Stalin deports the Kalmyk minority from Kalmykia, the escapees from Fort IX get away, and the US President moves to found the post-war UN.
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December 18, 2022
A Super Bomber to Break Japan – WW2 – 225 – December 17, 1943
World War Two
Published 17 Dec 2022This war has now lasted as long as the Great War did, but there’s no signs of it slowing. The Soviets have three offensives going on on the Eastern Front, in Italy the Allies are attacking at San Pietro and over the Moro River, in the Pacific there are Allied landings on New Britain, but in Pacific Command, the big talk is all about a new super bomber.
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December 17, 2022
The RAF’s Worst Day of the War – War Against Humanity 091
World War Two
Published 15 Dec 2022The United Nations Allies has some success bombing the Nazi German Reich, but it comes at a heavy price. In the village Kalavryta in Greece, the Wehrmacht massacre hundreds of men and boys.
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December 11, 2022
An Amphibious Landing to take Rome? – 224 – December 10, 1943
World War Two
Published 10 Dec 2022There are plans afoot to hit the enemy from behind in Italy. Allied leaders are meeting again in Cairo to go over other plans, notably what to do about China and Burma. There is active fighting on two fronts in Italy too, though this week it doesn’t go particularly well for the Allies. Attacks in the USSR are unsuccessful for the Soviets, but do go well for the Germans, and there are Allied attacks by air in the Marshall Islands and over France.
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December 9, 2022
V-1: Hitler’s Deluded Revenge Plan – War Against Humanity 090
World War Two
Published 8 Dec 2022Japanese planes bomb Calcutta when it is still being crushed by the weight of the Bengali famine. Adolf Hitler and Albert Speer are obsessively trying to increase war production so Germany can begin launching its vengeance weapon against Britain. The wars of resistance continue across the Balkans with continued brutality and a new resistance force emerges in Italy.
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December 8, 2022
Is the Luftwaffe Defeated in 1943? – WW2 Documentary Special
World War Two
Published 7 Dec 2022Outnumbered and outproduced, the once mighty Luftwaffe is battling to hold its own across three fronts. Every month brings new pain for the force. But the Luftwaffe still has a few tricks up its sleeves and can make the Allies bleed heavily. If only Hitler and the Nazi leadership weren’t sabotaging its chances …
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December 2, 2022
Bombing Berlin with Ed Murrow of CBS – War Against Humanity 089
World War Two
Published 1 Dec 2022Ed Murrow accompanies the RAF on a bombing raid on Berlin, and files one of his most iconic broadcasts with CBS. In Teheran, Winston Churchill walks out on a dinner with Joseph Stalin, after the USSR Premiere suggests mass murdering German officers.
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November 27, 2022
The Costliest Day in US Marine History – WW2 – 222 – November 26, 1943
World War Two
Published 26 Nov 2022The Americans attack the Gilbert Islands this week, and though they successfully take Tarawa and Makin Atolls, it is VERY costly in lives, and show that the Japanese are not going to be defeated easily. They also have a naval battle in the Solomons. Fighting continues in the Soviet Union and Italy, and an Allied conference takes place in Cairo, a prelude for a major one in Teheran next week.
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The Biggest Lie of WWII? The Myth of the Norden Bombsight
Flight Dojo
Published 16 Jun 2022I think most of us, at some point, have had someone say to us “You know, we went to the moon with less computing power than your iPhone” or something to that effect. What you may not know, though, is that less than a century ago, a 2000-piece mechanical computer that lacked a single transistor or chip was the most closely guarded military secret of the Allied war effort. Or, at least, the second most.
Before being overshadowed by the Manhattan Project, the U.S. Navy spent billions helping Carl Norden develop a mechanical computer with one job and one job only: to determine the point at which a level-flying bomber would need to drop its bombs to achieve “pinpoint accuracy” on an intended target.
When it was completed, Mr. Norden famously claimed that the sight was so accurate that it was capable of putting a bomb inside a pickle barrel. And if it could, then war would be revolutionized, or so the powers-at-be thought. The idea was simple: fly your bombers above the enemy’s air defenses, above the reach of their flak batteries, faster than their fighters could fly, and drop your bombs, with pinpoint accuracy, on crucial industrial sites, robbing the enemy of their ability to manufacture the equipment they need to wage a war in the first place.
The only problem was that everything about the Norden Bombsight turned out to be a myth. Not just the obviously mythical bits, like the fact that the crosshairs in the site itself were actually webs from a Black Widow, or that, instead, the reticle was made from the strands of hair of a young Midwestern girl, but everything, the accuracy, the secrecy, and even the fact that it was the only bombsight used in the war.
So how can this be? Until two weeks ago, I believed that the Norden Bombsight was an ingenious piece of equipment that more than any other singular device, changed the tides of WWII in favor of the allies. So why do we still believe in the Norden Bombsight?
Because, as it turns out, myths are useful, not just to the Army Air Corps, the Carl Norden Company, and Hollywood, but to us, the public. As it turns out, they can help us swallow hard truths about the war we’d prefer to avoid.
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November 25, 2022
The Secret Radio in Auschwitz – War Against Humanity 088
World War Two
Published 24 Nov 2022In Auschwitz the inmates gathering evidence of Nazi crimes score two successes, while the RAF score a direct hit on Goebbels as they set Berlin aflame. In the Pacific the accidental sinking of the SS Suez Maru triggers a Japanese war crime.
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