Special Forces In World War 2 Podcast

She is forty-eight metres long, flat-bottomed, and built without a keel. She crosses the Atlantic under her own power, carrying two hundred infantry to defended beaches her smaller cousins cannot reach. Her side ramps earn the grim nickname of "bullet magnets" from the soldiers who descend them under fire. Without the Landing Craft, Infantry, Large, there is no Sicily, no Salerno, no Anzio, no Normandy, no Iwo Jima, and no Okinawa at the scale the Allies achieve.
This episode of The Special Forces in World War II Podcast, tells the story of the seagoing infantry landing craft that fills the gap between the davit-launched assault craft and the great Landing Ship, Tank. From the desperate summer of 1940, when the British Army stands on the wrong side of the Channel without the means to return, the Royal Navy and the United States Bureau of Ships develop the vessel together. The first contracts are signed on June 3rd, 1942. The first hull is afloat by September of the same year. Ten American shipyards, from George Lawley and Son in Massachusetts to Albina Engine and Machine in Oregon, build nine hundred and twenty-three of them in less than three years.
We follow the L-C-I-L through her three principal design types, her transfer to the Royal Navy and the Soviet Navy under Lend-Lease, and her conversion into gunboat, mortar boat, rocket ship, flotilla flagship, and minesweeper. We follow her into combat in two theatres of war. We watch Lieutenant Alec Guinness, the future actor, land troops near Cape Passero lighthouse at Sicily. We watch the Coast Guard-manned LCI(L)-85, LCI(L)-91, LCI(L)-92, and LCI(L)-93 destroyed on Easy Red at Omaha Beach. We watch the Royal Canadian Navy's 262nd Flotilla charge through the beach obstacles at Bernières-sur-Mer at thirty kilometres per hour. We watch Group Eight at Iwo Jima, where Lieutenant junior grade Rufus Herring's LCI(G)-449 wins the Medal of Honor and ten Navy Crosses are awarded to her sister ships.
This is the story of the unglamorous, slab-sided, flat-bottomed troop carrier that helps put the Allied infantry ashore on every contested beach from Licata to Okinawa. From the Channel to the Mekong, from Bethlehem Hingham to Subic Bay, this is the operational biography of one of the most-produced and least-celebrated Allied vessels of the Second World War.
For maps, photographs, original documents, and the full source base behind this episode, visit www.worldwar2-sof.com.
#WW2 #WorldWarII #MilitaryHistory #SpecialForces #LCI #LandingCraftInfantry #LCIL #DDay #Normandy #PacificWar #Anzio #Salerno #Sicily #IwoJima #Okinawa #Walcheren #Dragoon #OperationNeptune #USCoastGuard #USNavy #RoyalNavy #RoyalCanadianNavy #History #Podcast #WW2Podcast #NavalHistory #Amphibious #WW2History #SecondWorldWar #AlliedForces #Mountbatten #BuShips #RufusHerring #AlecGuinness #BeachAssault
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She has no name. She carries only a number on her bow. She is slow, flat-bottomed, and unglamorous. Sailors call her a Large Slow Target. Yet without the Landing Ship, Tank, there is no Operation Torch, no Husky, no Avalanche, no Shingle, no Overlord, no Dragoon, no Iwo Jima, and no Okinawa.

In this episode of The Special Forces in World War II Podcast, host Michael Weyers tells the story of the vessel that solved a problem the Royal Navy had carried unsolved since the beaches of Gallipoli in 1915. How do you put a thirty-tonne tank ashore on a hostile coast where no port exists, no crane stands ready, and no pier reaches into the surf?

The answer arrives, improbably, on the back of an envelope in a Washington office in November 1941. John C. Niedermair sketches the design in a couple of hours. From that sketch flows a programme that builds more than 1,051 ships in inland yards beside the Ohio and Illinois Rivers. The cornfield shipyards employ firms with no prior shipbuilding experience. Reservist crews learn their craft under fire, driving their bows onto hostile beaches in defiance of every instinct trained into a naval officer.

This episode follows the L.S.T. from Churchill's first memorandum on July 6th, 1940, through the Maracaibo conversions, the Anglo-American design meetings, the production miracle, the disaster of Exercise Tiger, the cross-Channel shuttle to Normandy, and the kamikaze storms of the Pacific. Twenty-six L.S.T.'s are lost to enemy action. Hundreds of crewmen die by torpedo, mine, and kamikaze. Their story deserves to be told.

#WW2 #WorldWarII #MilitaryHistory #SpecialForces #LST #LandingShipTank #DDay #Normandy #PacificWar #Anzio #Salerno #Sicily #IwoJima #Okinawa #Gallipoli #Churchill #History #Podcast #WW2Podcast #NavalHistory #Amphibious #WW2History #SecondWorldWar #AlliedForces #RoyalNavy #USNavy #Niedermair #ExerciseTiger #OperationOverlord #OperationDragoon
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On the morning of May 10th, 1940, sixty-two Fallschirmjäger of Sturmgruppe Granit hold the roof of the most modern fortress in Europe. Below them, around twelve hundred Belgian soldiers of Fort Eben Emael are sealed in the tunnels under steel doors and sandbags. Between them, in the stairwells and ascent shafts, a silent division of the battlefield is in place. Their commander, Oberleutnant Rudolf Witzig, is still trying to reach his fort.

In this final episode of our series on Unternehmen Danzig, we close the story of Sturmgruppe Granit and the assault on Fort Eben Emael. At 08:30 a glider circles over the fort, and the long contest for the fortress begins in earnest. We follow the afternoon on the superstructure under hollow-charge attack, the air resupply by Heinkel He 111, and the Belgian counterattacks that move out from the tunnels into the woods and onto the slopes. We descend into the fort with Chaplain Meesen, Major Van der Auwera, and the wounded. We follow Feldwebel Portsteffen and the 51. Pionier-Bataillon as they fight west to the Albert Canal under fire from Casemate 17, and we wait with them on the dark bank for a chance to cross.

What happens in the tunnels, on the canal, and at the gate of Fort Eben Emael in the hours that follow brings the operation, and the series, to its close.

For maps, photographs, original documents, and the full source base behind this series, visit www.worldwar2-sof.com.

#WorldWarII #SpecialForces #Fallschirmjäger #Airborne #AlbertCanal #FortEbenEmael #FallGelb #SturmgruppeKoch #SturmgruppeGranit #BelgiumCampaign #1940 #MilitaryHistory #WWIIPodcast #GermanAirborne #UnternehmenDanzig #Paratroopers #SpecialOperations #WWII #WarHistory #MilitaryPodcast #DFS230 #HollowCharge #RudolfWitzig #Jottrand #KölnOstheim

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On the morning of May 10th, 1940, as German armour rolls west, DFS 230 assault gliders descend on the roof of Fort Eben Emael, the most modern fortress in Europe. Ten Gruppen of Sturmgruppe Granit, under Oberleutnant Rudolf Witzig, set down on the grass of the superstructure with hollow charges of up to fifty kilograms, flamethrowers, MP 38s and grenades. Their objectives are the heavy artillery cupolas, the machine-gun blocs, the anti-aircraft position and the observation posts of a fortress designed to break any attack coming from the ground.
In this second part of our coverage of Sturmabteilung Koch, we follow each Gruppe across the superstructure. We watch Feldwebel Niedermeier and Leutnant Delica at Maastricht 2, Feldwebel Arent at Maastricht 1, Feldwebel Wenzel at Mi Nord, Feldwebel Haug at the anti-aircraft position and later at Cupola 120, Oberjäger Unger at Cupola Nord, Oberjäger Neuhaus at Mi Sud, Feldwebel Harlos and Feldwebel Heinemann at the northern turrets, and the reserve under Feldwebel Hübel. We follow the missing Gruppe 2 under Walter Meier, forced down inside Germany, as it tries to reach the fort overland. And we follow Oberleutnant Witzig himself, whose tow rope parts over the Rhine and who sets out by bicycle and requisitioned staff car to get back to his battle.
We see the fight from inside the fort as well, through the eyes of Major Jean Fritz Lucien Jottrand, Sergent Joris at Cupola Nord, Sergent Cremer at Cupola 120, Sergent Poncelet at Maastricht 2 and Sergent Gigon at Maastricht 1, as Belgian gunners confront a new kind of warfare they have never trained to fight. Junker 87 dive bombers wait on call overhead. Belgian guns from Forts Pontisse and Barchon turn on their own fortress. And in the tunnels below the surface, a garrison of twelve hundred men has to decide how to hold a fort under attack from its own roof.
For maps, photographs, original documents and the full source base behind this series, visit www.worldwar2-sof.com.
#WorldWarII #SpecialForces #Fallschirmjäger #Airborne #AlbertCanal #FortEbenEmael #SturmabteilungKoch #SturmgruppeGranit #Witzig #FallGelb #BelgiumCampaign #1940 #MilitaryHistory #WWIIPodcast #GermanAirborne #UnternehmenDanzig #Paratroopers #SpecialOperations #WWII #WarHistory #MilitaryPodcast #DFS230 #Cupola120 #Maastricht #KölnOstheim #Liège
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On May 10th, 1940, 86 Fallschirmjäger combat engineers of Sturmgruppe Granit board eleven DFS 230 assault gliders at Köln-Ostheim and turn west toward the most powerful fortress in Belgium. Their target is Fort Eben-Emael, a self-contained underground city of 1,200 men whose guns dominate every Albert Canal crossing from Maastricht to the south. Without the fort, Fall Gelb stalls. Without the bridges, the fort cannot be bypassed. Unternehmen Danzig must achieve both objectives simultaneously, in darkness, and in complete surprise.

This episode covers the full story of part one. It begins with the fort itself, its construction, its garrison, its command structure, and the serious deficiencies that its commanders know about but cannot correct in time. It then moves to Hildesheim in the autumn of 1939, where General der Flieger Kurt Student and Hauptmann Walter Koch begin assembling Sturmabteilung Koch under conditions of absolute secrecy. It covers the formation of all four Sturmgruppen, the extreme security measures, the months of rehearsal on Czech fortifications, the two secret weapons at the heart of the assault, and the alert issued on the afternoon of May 9th, 1940. It then follows the gliders from Köln-Ostheim into the pre-dawn darkness, through the tow rope failure that strands Oberleutnant Witzig six kilometres outside Cologne, and on to the moment the first DFS 230 begins its landing run on the roof of Eben-Emael.

For more on Fort Eben-Emael, the Albert Canal crossings, and the full source base behind this series, visit www.worldwar2-sof.com.

#FortEbenEmael #SturmgruppeGranit #UnternehmenDanzig #SturmabteilungKoch #Fallschirmjäger #AlbertCanal #FallGelb #DFS230 #GliderAssault #RudolfWitzig #WalterKoch #BelgianCampaign1940 #AirborneWarfare #May1940 #SpecialForces #WorldWarII #WWII #MilitaryHistory #WW2Podcast #SpecialForcesWW2 #GermanAirborne #Belgium1940 #Blitzkrieg #Hollowcharge #Pioniertruppe
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