Bitesize Battles

History's Greatest Naval Battles, Ep.3: Lepanto

As the Ottoman Empire spread inexorably across Arabia, Persia, North Africa and the Levant, it seemed nothing could stop it. It even shook Europe to the core when Ottoman cannon blasted holes through Constantinople's previously impregnable walls, causing the final collapse of the 1000-year Byzantine Empire.

Now, in 1571, with Venetian Cyprus on the brink of falling, Pope Pius V calls together a Holy League to try to halt the Ottoman advance into the Mediterranean Sea. Fail, and all Christendom might fall. 

At the Battle of Lepanto, a Christian alliance of Spain, Venice, the Italian States and the Knights of Malta and Hospitallers took on the might of the Ottoman Empire.

The outcome would decide the fate of Christian Europe, and by extension, the world.

 

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History's Greatest Naval Battles, Ep.4: Trafalgar

This is the battle more than any other which confirmed that Britannia rules the waves, and set in stone the reputation of Admiral Horatio Nelson, even at the moment of his own death.

In October 1805, 27 British ships of the line took on 33 of the French and Spanish Empires. Waiting for the outcome was Napoleon, desperate to be rid of the Royal Navy so he could invade Britain and take out the perennial thorn in his side, just out of reach across the waves.

The outcome of the battle would play a key role in the outcome of the Napoleonic Wars.

 

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History's Greatest Naval Battles, Ep.5: Tsushima

If there was one battle the world might have wished had never happened, it might be Tsushima in 1905. This one clash set dominos falling which would see Russia become the Soviet Union, World War I erupt, and the Pacific theatre of World War 2 explode at Pearl Harbour in 1941.

In its own right it was a colossal clash of 16 battleships, 32 cruisers, 29 destroyers and multiple other warships. It announced to the globe that Japan was now a world power to be reckoned with, and its effects, already noted as global, would also have long lasting implications for Korea, China and the whole Asia-Pacific region. Implications that still exist today.

The story of how it unfolded deserves a grand plaque in history’s hall of fame.

 

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History's Greatest Naval Battles, Ep.6: Jutland

The Battle of Jutland was the shuddering earthquake that released the seismic tension of the Anglo-German naval arms race of the last decade.

What was at stake was the blockade and starvation of the vanquished. The German High Seas Fleet aimed to destroy a large enough part of the British Grand Fleet to allow it to break out to the Atlantic where it would effectively blockade the commerce and supplies Britain utterly relied on to survive, let alone fight. If that happened, Britain would be forced into submission.

No wonder then that Winston Churchill said of the commander of the British Grand Fleet, Admiral Jellicoe: “He is the only man on either side who could have lost the war in an afternoon.”

Churchill was right. This one battle, more than any other, would decide the outcome of World War One, and with it the likelihood of a World War Two. The future of the world rested on Jellicoe’s shoulders.

 

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History's Greatest Naval Battles, Ep.7: Midway

6 months after the infamous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, Admiral Yamamoto aimed to lure the American carriers to Midway and destroy them once and for all. 

Midway would have been taken, and perhaps even Hawaii. Along with a string of other  islands it would have created a Pacific wall over which the Americans would have to bloodily clamber if they ever wanted to win the war. But the repercussions of a Japanese victory would have had world-wide repercussions too.

The outcome of this battle would either see an American defeat even more devastating than Pearl Harbour, or see a turn in the tide from which the Japanese would never recover.

 

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Secret Warfare Ep.1: The Spies of WWII - Virginia Hall & Dusko Popov

In the midst of the fury and horror of World War 2, a secret war was waged in the towns, cities and countryside of Europe. Spy games respected neither borders nor neutrality, and the agents that played them knew that if caught, they would be first interrogated, probably tortured, and then either shot or hanged.

The spies of WWII took on assignments that made hearts hammer and palms grow sweaty, but two of them in particular took them on with such cool-headed swagger that their exploits resound with heroism and adventure.

Virginia Hall was a Gestapo-swerving, jail-breaking, one-legged hero who supported the French Resistance until it was finally time to get out of dodge. Dusko Popov was one of the inspirations for James Bond, a Serbian playboy and womanising double-agent who could have changed the course of the entire war. 

Both of them, and all Allied spies like them, fought a different kind of war to the men flying Spitfires or storming the beaches of Normandy, but it was all in the cause of the liberation of Europe from Hitler’s Nazism, and their contribution was just as dangerous and just as great as any soldier, sailor or airman.

 

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Secret Warfare Ep.2: Francis Walsingham

16th century England was a seething hotbed of religious rivalry, a cauldron of conspiracies, treason, rebellion, persecution and war. At stake was the life of Queen Elizabeth I, English Protestantism, and England itself.

Into this mix strode Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's ingenious and pioneering spymaster. He was an expert in subterfuge, a creator of international networks of informants, a code-maker and code-breaker, and agent provocateur. 

Without him, its possible England would have become dominated by Spain just as it was about to burst on to the world stage.

Delve into 16th century intrigue and spy games, with Francis Walsingham.

 

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Secret Warfare Ep.3: The Culper Ring

“I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” The last words of Nathan Hale, an American patriot sent to spy on New York by George Washington, but captured by the British and hanged.

George Washington was hit hard and resolved never to use amateurs to do his spying for him again. Instead, he set up the United States' first professional spy network - the Culper Ring.

They saved the critical fort at West Point, uncovered the treachery of Benedict Arnold, saved the newly arrived French under Rochambeau, the new American economy and George Washington himself. I think, they saved the Revolution, and the new United States with it.

 

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Secret Warfare Ep.4: The SAS & Operation Trent

In the wake of 9/11, Britain stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States. It joined the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and soon its special forces were engaged all over the country.

In one mission, the largest concentration of SAS firepower since World War II took on crack al-Qaeda terrorists guarding an elevated, fortified opium factory at the base of a mountain. 

The Regiment had to draw on all its expertise to face down hardened, heavily-armed fanatics in a rare, direct-action assault.

 

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Secret Warfare Ep.5: The Hunt for bin Laden

On 9/11, 2001, the United States and the world watched in shocked disbelief as al-Qaeda hijacked passenger airliners were flown directly into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre, causing them to collapse into dust, blood and tears. Nearly 3000 people were killed.

The Pentagon, a symbol of the United States’ military prestige, was hit too, and a final airliner crashed when its heroic passengers fought back against the hijackers.

The experience was searing, enraging, and awakening for the United States, in a way the country hadn’t experienced since Pearl Harbour 60 years before. And like Pearl Harbour, the American military giant now unfurled itself, flexed its muscles and called its friends to assemble.

Just a month later, the United States and its allies retaliated in a massive invasion of Afghanistan, from where the attack was orchestrated and financed. But while the conventional militaries of the coalition overran Afghanistan’s Taliban, what the American people and government wanted most of all was the man who had masterminded 9/11. Revenge would not be considered to have been had until he had been found and brought to justice.

That demand sparked the largest, most expensive, most determined and most far-reaching manhunt the world has ever seen. From the mission control rooms of the CIA, to the barren wastes of the Afghan-Pakistani mountains, the hunt lasted a decade.

 

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