- 5 days ago
New tactics in World War II shifted the conflict from the static, trench-bound attrition of World War I to a highly dynamic mobile war. These innovations, such as the Blitzkrieg, carrier-based naval warfare, and combined amphibious assaults, ultimately determined which battles were won or lost...
二战期间因新战术应用而决定胜负的关键战役合集，核心在于闪电战、纵深作战、岛屿跳岛、雷达协同防空及两栖登陆战术的革新与实战验证...
二战期间因新战术应用而决定胜负的关键战役合集，核心在于闪电战、纵深作战、岛屿跳岛、雷达协同防空及两栖登陆战术的革新与实战验证...
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00:03Every battle is both a victory and a defeat.
00:07It depends which flag you fly.
00:13In every theater of the Second World War,
00:17battles won and lost determine possession of territory,
00:22of resources, and of the strength to go on fighting.
00:30For some of the battles,
00:32it was the victory that most influenced the future course of the war.
00:37For others, it was the defeat.
00:42This is the story of the battles won and lost,
00:47that decided the outcome of the greatest conflict in history.
01:02Every war sees new tactics, some inspired, some desperate,
01:08that try to influence the course of battles.
01:12In the Second World War, campaigns were waged against non-military targets
01:17in an attempt to destroy morale.
01:21Suicide missions were launched when traditional weapons failed,
01:25and forces withdrew rather than fire on their fellow countrymen.
01:31These are the battles, won and lost,
01:34that rewrote the rules of engagement.
01:50An archipelago of almost a thousand islands, Solomon Islands,
01:55is critically positioned off the northeastern Cape of Australia.
02:01The Japanese called the main island Gadaru-Kararu.
02:06The Americans called it Cactus.
02:09Its name is Guadalcanal.
02:13Japanese troops landed there in April 1942,
02:17as part of their sweep through the Western Pacific.
02:20The Allies were shifting from a defensive mode into an offensive mode.
02:26They hadn't yet done it.
02:28They were still short on resources.
02:30There was a great argument going on in the halls of power
02:33about Europe being the dominant theatre of war
02:37and the Pacific being the secondary theatre of war.
02:40So there was always a fight over who got what resources.
02:44But the mentality was changing.
02:46The attack on Guadalcanal was the first of these offensive moves.
02:53Japanese bases in the captured Solomon Islands
02:55threatened the whole Allied position northeast of Australia.
02:59Their recapture marks the beginning of the second phase in the Pacific.
03:03Following the naval victory at Midway,
03:06the American Chiefs of Staff devised a three-phase campaign
03:09to wrest control back from the Japanese.
03:12Admiral Nimitz would lead the offensive to recapture Tulagi and Guadalcanal.
03:18General MacArthur's objective would be lay
03:21before moving on to the rest of the Solomon Islands.
03:24And finally, MacArthur would move on Rabaul,
03:28the Japanese base in the southwest Pacific.
03:32Operations would begin on August 1st.
03:35But on July 5th, intelligence was received that changed the plan
03:40and promoted one of those place names in the story of the war,
03:44particularly in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps.
03:48The Japanese were observed to be building an air base on Guadalcanal.
03:53And from that airfield, they based aircraft which could range over all of the Solomon Islands
04:00and further south.
04:02Occupation of Guadalcanal provided the Japanese air cover for that whole region,
04:06which meant that then any plans they had for that region
04:10could be covered by those aircraft.
04:13This became the first priority of the counteroffensive.
04:17And on August 7th, American forces landed on Guadalcanal.
04:23It was the first landing by American forces in the Pacific.
04:27Eight months after Pearl Harbor,
04:29America hit back hard with a smashing blow at Japanese power.
04:33The Marines who landed on Red Beach were 1st Marine Division
04:38under Major General Vandergrift.
04:40Their primary target was the airstrip that the Japanese had been constructing.
04:46Their task was codenamed Operation Watchtower.
04:50But there was so little time for planning
04:53and so few resources from which to construct the invasion force
04:56that it was nicknamed Operation Shoestring.
05:02The carriers of Task Force 61 would provide the only air cover.
05:07The 1st Marine Division would go in with only half its vehicles
05:11and ten days' supply of ammunition.
05:13And the landing would be preceded by a single rehearsal.
05:18The invasion force evaded Japanese patrols.
05:21But Japanese ignorance was matched by that of the Americans,
05:25who had no real idea of the size of the defensive force awaiting them.
05:30Just after dawn on the 7th of August,
05:32the Marines went ashore, intent on striking out for the airfield
05:37and cancelling the threat of any land-based aircraft that were there.
05:41As they were to discover,
05:43the Japanese force established on Guadalcanal numbered 2,200.
05:48They were mainly construction workers
05:50and they were taken completely by surprise.
05:57The Americans captured Henderson airfield very quickly.
06:02They occupied that on the 8th of August.
06:05And from that moment on,
06:07Henderson became a thorn in the side of the Japanese.
06:11The night after the initial landing,
06:14a Japanese naval task force of seven cruisers and a destroyer
06:18caught an Allied force steaming through the 15-kilometre-wide channel
06:22between Guadalcanal and Savo Island,
06:26sinking the American and Australian cruisers
06:28with the loss of 1,270 Allied seamen and 34 Japanese dead.
06:35Following the Battle of Savo Island,
06:38the U.S. Navy withdrew,
06:40leaving the Marines on Guadalcanal without support.
06:44But the Japanese allowed their opportunity to pass,
06:47not bringing up reinforcements until August the 18th.
06:51The first Japanese counterattack went in on August the 21st.
06:58900 men, commanded by Colonel Ichiki,
07:01attacked at the Battle of Tenaru River.
07:04The Americans lost 35 men.
07:08The Japanese were wiped out.
07:12Later in August,
07:14continuing naval action in the waters around the Solomons
07:17further swung the advantage in favour of the Americans,
07:20whose fighters were by now operating from Henderson Field.
07:24The Japanese eventually started calling Guadalcanal
07:28Starvation Island.
07:29Their men were short of food and, of course, ammunition.
07:34Because of the inability to bring ships across during daylight,
07:40they resorted to what was called the Tokyo Express,
07:44which was destroyers running at high speed,
07:47bringing troops and supplies across.
07:50The next significant attempt to displace the Marines was led by General Kawaguchi.
07:57The Battle of Bloody Ridge in mid-September was fiercely contested.
08:01The Japanese were driven back with 600 dead.
08:06By late September, Marine strength under General Van de Grift had risen to 23,000.
08:13And the Japanese, recognising the struggle that they faced,
08:17had sent Lieutenant General Hiakutake from Rabaul and built their force to about 20,000.
08:25The battle for Guadalcanal raged from mid-October until the final Japanese evacuation at the beginning of February 1943.
08:34In November, the fighting was offshore, where two knights became known as the first and second battles of Guadalcanal.
08:46On the night of the 12th, both sides suffered heavy losses in a naval encounter,
08:51in which American forces came off worse, but did seriously disrupt an attempt to reinforce the garrison.
08:58The following night, the Americans again fared worse in terms of losses,
09:03but in this attritional war, it was the Japanese who could not afford to make good their losses.
09:09At sea, the Japanese succeeded quite often against the US Navy.
09:15The Japanese were exceptionally good at night fighting.
09:20They defeated the US Navy on several occasions, and they never pressed their advantage.
09:27Despite causing more damage than it suffered,
09:29the Japanese Navy was unable to reinforce or resupply Guadalcanal,
09:34where troops were now starving and short of everything needed to carry on the battle.
09:40In the first two weeks of December, the first US Marine Division,
09:44severely debilitated by six weeks of fighting and the depredations of tropical disease,
09:50was relieved by three Marine Divisions of 14th Corps, General Alexander Patch.
09:55Patch began offensive operations almost at once.
09:59Losses to hunger and disease were far outstripping losses to enemy action.
10:04Evacuation was ordered, the troops to be taken to New Guinea.
10:09On January 23rd, the vital high point, Mount Austin, fell to the Americans,
10:16and on the night of February the 1st, the Japanese began to evacuate the island.
10:21A total of 11,000 troops were taken off by the Tokyo Express,
10:26and on the 9th, General Patch signalled that the Tokyo Express no longer has a terminus on Guadalcanal.
10:34The Japanese lost a great number of very highly experienced troops during the Solomons campaign.
10:45From that time on, the Pacific War became a war for Japan of defence and for the allies of offence.
10:55And so, Guadalcanal and the Solomons campaign has been, I think, quite rightly described as the turning point of the
11:02Pacific War.
11:18In 1932, the British Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, declared that the bomber will always get through.
11:27The belief grew between the world wars that bombing would be a decisive weapon.
11:35That it would destroy civilian morale, and therefore the will to go on fighting.
11:41That belief was a mistake.
11:44Because nowhere did the bombing of civilian targets, area bombing,
11:49significantly impede the ability or will to continue fighting.
11:54The strategic bombing campaign arises originally as a strategy of desperation, almost.
12:00France has fallen, the low countries have fallen.
12:03Britain essentially stands alone with the support of the Commonwealth.
12:07All of its European allies have gone.
12:09And it needs a way of striking back against Germany.
12:14Partly for the morale of its own population.
12:17Partly for political, diplomatic purposes, that obviously the United Kingdom wants the support of the United States in the war.
12:25It wants to draw them in to the war.
12:27It needs to demonstrate that it is still a viable ally, that it's still fighting.
12:32So it needs to take the war to the Germans.
12:34Germany has felt the growing might of the Royal Air Force.
12:37Soon America's strength will be added to ours.
12:41They had not arranged for people who had done their 30 operations to come back and say to us,
12:51Now, fellows, this is the sort of thing that you've got to protect yourself.
12:56Maintain your height at about, say, 7,000 feet or 10,000 feet.
13:01That'll be about the best protection you can get.
13:03But they didn't do that.
13:05All we had to do was just purely and simply raw recruits doing bombing raids on Germany.
13:16The targeting of those raids through the summer of 1942 was the implementation of the man who had, on February
13:2423rd,
13:25been appointed Chief of Bomber Command.
13:30Air Marshal Arthur Harris, who popular history would always remember as Bomber Harris.
13:38There are a lot of people who say that bombing can never win a war.
13:44Well, my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet.
13:50A turning point for Harris's strategy was the 17th of April,
13:55when 12 heavy Lancaster bombers raided the German city of Augsburg.
14:02Seven were lost, and Harris concluded that daylight raids were too costly.
14:09It's quite ironic, really, because Britain, who has managed to defeat
14:13a German bombing campaign through a very well-integrated air defence network.
14:19It then wanders off quite naively to try and attack German industry,
14:24underestimating how costly that will be.
14:29Within the week, the bombing campaign against Germany had switched to night raids.
14:35Switching to night bombing reduces accuracy.
14:37So, thus, in order to maintain the bombing campaign and seek to have an effect on German industry,
14:45and to make up for if they can't accurately hit pinpoint targets,
14:49there's a switch to area bombing.
14:51The idea being that if you're bombing areas, you will strike at the population that works in the factories.
14:59On May 17th, Arthur Harris received Churchill's approval for a raid which would stretch his resources to the limit.
15:09The first raid by 1,000 bombers, codename Millennium.
15:16The target was the city of Hamburg.
15:19The objective was to destroy the city.
15:24Harris managed to assemble more than 1,000 aircraft.
15:28But bad weather ruled Hamburg out.
15:32Cologne, the alternative target, felt the force of an attack that lasted for 75 minutes.
15:48A day later, just under 1,000 aircraft hit Essen.
15:54And three weeks later, 1,000 aircraft raided Bremen.
16:01The losses in aircraft and aircrew were mounting.
16:04And the evidence that such massive raids were having a meaningful effect was slight.
16:11There would be no further 1,000 plane raids for two years.
16:19But Arthur Bomber Harris was rewarded for his questionable strategy.
16:24On June 14th, 1942, he was knighted.
16:31The strategy was continued throughout the war and at great cost.
16:40Not just in enormous loss of civilian life, but in the figures that point to an attrition rate amongst bomber
16:47crews that was certainly in the British military higher than any other part of the armed forces.
17:03The division of France, following her capitulation, was complex.
17:09Territorially, a line wound its way through France, separating the German-controlled area of occupation from the area under the
17:19control of the collaborationist government, centered on the spa town of Vichy.
17:24Premier Reynaud was eased out of his position so that Marshal Pétain and General Weygand might make terms with Hitler.
17:31Only General de Gaulle and a remnant of gallant Frenchmen elected to carry on the struggle beside Britain.
17:36Charles de Gaulle is the leader of the Free French.
17:39He is the personification of the liberty of France.
17:42But he's only got the French troops evacuated from Dunkirk.
17:46So what de Gaulle desperately needs is to bring some of France's colonial empire and its military resources into the
17:53fight against Germany.
17:55Second most powerful in Europe, the French Navy was indeed a glittering prize for the Nazis.
18:02The British were determined that such a significant weapon should not fall into German hands.
18:09And famously, at Meir's al-Kabir on July 3rd, joined battle against the Vichy fleet in the harbour,
18:18which had resisted calls to either surrender or sail to a neutral port.
18:24More than a thousand French sailors were killed.
18:29Attention turned to the French colonies and particularly to the port of Dakar in French West Africa.
18:36There's a lot hinging on this for de Gaulle.
18:39He has to persuade the French sailors, the French admirals in West Africa to declare for the Allies and not
18:46for Vichy France.
18:50A large Royal Navy task force, to which was joined an Australian heavy cruiser and 8,000 troops, including Free
18:58French under de Gaulle, sailed south from Gibraltar.
19:05Some of the vessels that had escaped from Meir's al-Kabir and found safety in Toulon had themselves departed for
19:13French West Africa,
19:16days before Admiral Somerville led his force H into the Atlantic.
19:23He had under command the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, two battleships, five cruisers, ten destroyers and transports.
19:35It was quite a show.
19:36Waiting for them was a garrison, shore batteries, two cruisers and three destroyers, the vessels that had escaped from Toulon
19:47and an incomplete battleship, Richelieu.
19:52The first action was carried out by aircraft from the carrier Hermes, the first ship anywhere to have been designed
20:01as an aircraft carrier.
20:04Her swordfish attacked Richelieu at her moorings on July 8th.
20:09The damage the battleship took immobilised her, but she remained a significant gun platform.
20:18Force H sailed south, passing Hermes, now joined by HMAS Australia and anchored in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
20:30De Gaulle was confident that the Vichy garrison under the High Commissioner, Pierre-Francois Boisson, would come over to the
20:39cause of the Free French.
20:41De Gaulle was an immensely charismatic figure. He's tall and he's persuasive and he thinks he can persuade the French
20:47admirals to come to his side.
20:50He turns up with the British fleet and he uses his rhetorical magic on them and it fails.
20:56On September 23rd, aircraft of the fleet Air Arm flew over Dakar, dropping propaganda leaflets.
21:07And the next day, aircraft operating off the Ark Royal landed at Dakar Airport in the expectation of a welcome
21:16and the commencement of discussions.
21:18They were immediately taken prisoner. A boat carrying De Gaulle's personal representatives entered Dakar Harbour where it was fired on
21:28and forced to withdraw.
21:30It was evident that De Gaulle had miscalculated the sentiments ashore. They would have to fight for the keys to
21:37the city.
21:39Later on the 23rd, the first attempt to land troops south of the city was repelled due to fog and
21:48heavy fire from well-prepared positions.
21:53Rather abruptly, rather unexpectedly, the mission to bring Dakar into the Free French Fold had turned into a battle.
22:04Force H was powerful, but it was not equipped to force a contested landing.
22:10The admirals and indeed the sailors had a deep resistance to firing on the French.
22:15I mean, the French were allies. These men were not Germans.
22:19My feeling is that the British sailors' heart is not in this operation.
22:23The resolute defence did not waver, and with De Gaulle saying he would not be responsible for Frenchmen killing Frenchmen,
22:33Force H was forced to withdraw.
22:36It returned to Freetown.
22:44Here it is, Leningrad, a city of heroes, defiant of death, ready to die on their feet because they don't
22:54want to live on their knees.
23:00The former imperial capital of St. Petersburg had been in a state of siege since the 8th of September 1941.
23:10In January 1943, Operation Iskra was launched.
23:16The Leningrad and Volkov fronts succeeding in opening a land corridor that increased supply to the city.
23:23But the siege continued until January 1944, when the Soviet Leningrad-Novgorod strategic offensive of the Leningrad and Volkov fronts,
23:35with the 1st and 2nd Baltic fronts, went in.
23:40In the late hours of January 13, 1944, long-range bombers from the Baltic fleet attacked the main German command
23:48points on the defensive line.
23:51Soviet aircraft leading the counter-offensive continue to give the Hun a belly full of his own medicine.
24:01And the following day, the offensive began, when the 2nd Shock Army, which had clung to the Iranian-bound bridgehead
24:08for the whole of the siege, attacked.
24:11Time after time, they hurled themselves against the invader, driving him inch by inch back from the city's outskirts.
24:20The next day, following an artillery barrage all along the front, the 42nd Army launched from the south.
24:29Although fog slowed progress for the first few days, the 42nd had linked with the 2nd Shock Army by the
24:3719th.
24:43At the same time, the Volkov Front, south of the city, had begun to move on the German 18th Army,
24:49crossing a frozen lake and threatening the 18th's southern flank.
24:54On the 19th, the 2nd Shock Army captured Rockshire.
25:00And the 63rd Guards Rifle Division, part of the 42nd Army, drove the Germans out of Krasnoye Selo.
25:14On the 22nd, von Keuchler, commanding Army Group North, asked Hitler for permission to withdraw the 18th, which was in
25:23danger of being encircled.
25:25Hitler refused, promising reinforcements.
25:29But when the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian fronts launched their assault on the German salient beyond Kiev, no troops could
25:37be spared.
25:41The attacks by the 2nd Shock and 42nd Armies had cost the Germans about 21,000 casualties, captured 85 artillery
25:52pieces and pushed the Germans back by between 60 to 100 kilometres.
26:03The day after the Ukrainian fronts moved, January 26th, Govorov's Leningrad Front, in a general advance, cleared the Leningrad-Moscow
26:13railway line of enemy troops.
26:15On the 27th of January 1944, 872 days after it had begun, the siege was lifted.
26:27The death toll at Leningrad alone was greater than the total combined British and American losses for the whole war.
26:44Lady Gulf, the 2nd Battle of the Philippine Sea, was a decisive defeat for the Imperial Japanese Navy.
26:53It was their last defeat in set-piece action.
26:57The Japanese Navy, on paper, was quite formidable.
27:01They still had a number of fleet carriers, a number of battleships.
27:04What they didn't have was a naval air arm.
27:07They could barely muster 100 aircraft on their carrier strike group.
27:13They'd been totally out-fought, not only at midway, but in a whole series of actions.
27:17To compensate, a desperation weapon made its first appearance in the engagement.
27:23It was called Divine Wind Kamikaze.
27:29Because the Japanese had lost most of their naval air power, they resorted to kamikaze tactics,
27:34in which pilots deliberately crashed their bomb-laden aircraft on enemy ships.
27:40Kamikaze was an innovation, but it was needed because of the Imperial Japanese Navy's failure
27:47to prepare for the new age of naval warfare.
27:51The admirals of the Japanese Navy were schooled on the extraordinary success
27:56that their predecessors had enjoyed in smashing the Imperial Russian Navy 40 years before.
28:02That had been a victory for battleships, and it encouraged a belief in the value of the capital ship in
28:09a sea battle.
28:09So Admiral Toyota, commanding the combined fleet, devised a plan that would exploit the might of his battleships,
28:17and turn the US Navy and its invasion fleet back from the Philippines.
28:22The problem here was the complexity of the Japanese plan.
28:26In this case, the carriers who they assumed the Americans would be looking for, and indeed they were,
28:32they would be a decoy.
28:37Using as bait his remaining carriers, Toyota would lure the American 3rd and 7th Fleets into a trap
28:44that he set between two battleship groups, drawn from the first striking force.
28:49But on the 23rd of October, the attack group was engaged by American submarines.
28:54Two cruisers were sunk.
28:57And this, rather than the bait, attracted the attention of 3rd Fleet, Admiral Halsey.
29:05He turned south.
29:08He was under attack from land-based aircraft operating out of Luzon.
29:19They sank the carrier Princeton.
29:24But he sailed on to the first engagement.
29:28Admiral Kirita was going to bring in the big battleships, including the two biggest in the world,
29:34the Musashi and the Yamato, with the 18-inch guns.
29:37This was going to be the main force.
29:39Halsey's aircraft sank the battleship Musashi.
29:46In an action known as the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea.
29:55Admiral Kirita split his force, and 2nd Striking Force now sailed south to swing towards Leyte.
30:06Kurita passed through the narrow San Bernardino Strait,
30:12before turning north towards the Mobile Fleet, the bait that hadn't been taken.
30:19Admiral Shima's 2nd Force was sailing into the jaws of Admiral Kincaid's 7th Fleet,
30:25which simply destroyed it.
30:29Two battleships went down, Fuso and Yamashiro.
30:36Now Halsey, who had turned towards the Mobile Fleet,
30:40learned that the American invasion fleet was coming under pressure from Kurita.
30:46Admiral Halsey had to make a difficult decision.
30:49Should he go to the rescue and ignore the surprise from the north?
30:53Should he hold his position and leave our small force off Samar to fight overwhelming odds?
31:00Halsey let his carriers sail on.
31:09They sank all four of the bait carriers in the Mobile Fleet,
31:19and turned to deal with Kurita.
31:22The Japanese Admiral doubled back on his course, making again for the San Bernardino Strait.
31:29This allowed the landings to go ahead.
31:34Once those troops got ashore at Leyte,
31:37there were only 20,000 Japanese troops at Leyte to counter the 200,000 troops that had landed.
31:45The Leyte Gulf was the first time that all of the major commands in the Pacific joined up.
31:49So you had MacArthur coming up from the southwest Pacific area,
31:53Admiral Halsey who had been fighting his way up through the Solomons,
31:56and the central Pacific area Nimitz coming across from Pearl Harbor.
31:59They all linked up in the Philippines.
32:02The Battle of Leyte Gulf cost the Japanese three battleships,
32:07and it left the Imperial Navy with no aircraft carriers.
32:13The first encounter with Kamikaze had unsettled nerves and sunk and damaged ships.
32:21But neither in Leyte Gulf nor in any subsequent engagement could they turn the tide of battle.
32:31The Imperial Japanese Navy was now finished as an effective fighting force.
32:36The American Navy's dominance of the Pacific was complete.
32:41It was a bitter blow for the Japanese, but they were still determined to fight to the end.
32:59On the 27th of April 1941, German troops entered Athens.
33:06The Greek resistance against the initial Italian invasion had crumbled before the German onslaught.
33:19British troops sent from North Africa to support the Greeks.
33:24Force W had been pushed back until it was agreed that,
33:28in a Dunkirk-like operation, they should be evacuated.
33:33And, as with Dunkirk, most of the equipment was lost.
33:39It was, of course, thanks to the Royal Navy that evacuation was possible.
33:42They'd been through hard times during the battle,
33:44so the issue of special rations was doubly welcomed.
33:50The evacuation aboard cruisers, destroyers and transports ferried Force W to Crete,
33:59where they were formed up as Cree Force under Major General Freiburg.
34:06His defence of the island would last for one week.
34:13On April 25th, before taking Athens, Hitler had issued Directive Number 28, Operation Mercury.
34:23It ordered the capture of Crete.
34:27Crete's an island in the Mediterranean.
34:29Its strategic significance, essentially, is the ability to use it as a base to project naval air power across the
34:35Mediterranean.
34:36If you control the Mediterranean, you control access to the Suez Canal,
34:42you're then forcing shipping to go the long way around.
34:44You're also then able to bring that to bear on the British position in North Africa and the Middle East.
34:51But capturing the island was not an easy task.
34:56The plan deployed 10,000 paratroops to drop onto the island,
35:01a further 750 to land in gliders,
35:065,000 to be brought in by transports,
35:10and a further 7,000 to land by sea.
35:13The assault would begin on May 20th.
35:18Opposing them, Freiburg would have a mixed force of 30,000 British,
35:25Australian and New Zealand troops.
35:27He himself was a New Zealander,
35:30with 10,000 Greek troops.
35:32But his men were poorly equipped,
35:35having left most of their heavy weapons and armour on the mainland.
35:40But he had one advantage,
35:43thanks to ULTRA.
35:46German plans had been intercepted and decoded.
35:49So Freiburg knew what to expect and when.
35:54On May 15th,
35:56the Luftwaffe, 650 aircraft for Operation Mercury,
36:01began preliminary raids on Crete.
36:05Freiburg recognised that his own air defence was hugely outnumbered.
36:13So he ordered his aircraft off the island to Egypt.
36:21To compensate for the complete absence of air cover,
36:26he committed to making all of the island's airfields unusable.
36:32The day after the aircraft had been released,
36:35on May 20th, the attack began.
36:41German paratroops landing at four airfields.
36:45The attack was a disaster.
36:50German airborne assault for all its psychological impact.
36:54In most places in Crete struggled.
36:56For a start, the Germans didn't have enough planes to do it all in one hit.
37:01So they had to attack the west of the island before they attacked the east of the island,
37:07which of course gave early warning then to the forces deployed in the east of what was coming.
37:12German paratroopers dropped from a very low height.
37:15They were subject to a great deal of small arms fire and suffered very heavily on the descent.
37:20All of the glider-borne troops and four of the parachute battalions were smashed to pieces,
37:27before they could join the fight.
37:30Of the 600 men of the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Air Landing Assault Regiment,
37:36400 were killed on that first day.
37:43And Hitler ruled out any further airborne operations, ever.
37:50On the 20th and 21st,
37:53convoys sailing in support of the landing were repulsed by the Royal Navy.
38:01In action in the waters around Crete,
38:04the Navy lost several ships,
38:06and others, including Ajax,
38:09which had figured in the Battle of the River Plate, took damage.
38:14But in repulsing the convoy,
38:17Force D destroyed half the troop-carrying vessels,
38:21and the only damage the Navy suffered,
38:23was from what is now called friendly fire.
38:27The German command decided to gather and concentrate all of its forces on a single objective,
38:34the airfield at Malemi.
38:39Their job was made easy,
38:42because in a confusion of orders and breakdowns in communication,
38:47the troops defending Malemi had withdrawn.
38:51By grabbing hold of Malemi,
38:53they then had the capacity to reinforce and reinforce rapidly,
38:57before moving west to then bring aid to the German troops fighting at Retimo and Heraklion.
39:06Freyberg ordered a counter-attack to retake the airfield,
39:10but it failed,
39:12because the Germans had
39:16undisputed air superiority.
39:18Freyberg was criticised then,
39:20and has been criticised since,
39:23for an inadequate defence of the airfield at Malemi,
39:27which now became a German staging post.
39:30Because of the intelligence that he had,
39:33it perhaps forced him to be a little blinded to the situation,
39:36that he didn't actually form a mobile reserve for contingencies that he didn't see,
39:41and particularly once Malemi airfield was lost,
39:44he had no real ability to respond to the German foothold there.
39:49On the 22nd of May,
39:51a night attack, which would neutralise Axis air support, was ordered.
39:57But an unexplained delay in giving the order,
40:00turned the operation into a day attack,
40:04which failed,
40:06under the howling of Stuka dive bombers.
40:13Further attempts to land reinforcements by sea,
40:17were frustrated by the Royal Navy,
40:21which forced a planned invasion fleet to turn away on May 23rd.
40:30Further naval reinforcements were sent from Malta to join the battle.
40:35But as three destroyers,
40:38Kelly, Kashmir and Kipling,
40:41were rounding the western side of the island,
40:44they were attacked by 24 Stukas.
40:59Kashmir was hit, turned turtle, and later sank.
41:04Kipling survived 83 bombs.
41:08And Kelly, commanded by Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten,
41:12was hit and sank in two minutes.
41:19The Germans, by now, were landing reinforcements at Malemi.
41:24Freiburg had not, after all,
41:27rendered all of the airfields unusable.
41:30By May 27th,
41:32he decided that the battle for Crete was lost.
41:36His commander, General Wavell,
41:39endorsed that view,
41:41and London authorised an evacuation.
41:45By now, the Germans had superiority in every arm,
41:50air, artillery, manpower.
41:55And they pushed the Allies south,
41:58with motorcycle and specialised mountain troops hard at them.
42:08Despite gallant rearguard actions by commando units and companies of the Maori Battalion,
42:14only 18,600 of the 32,000 Allied troops on the island were taken off.
42:22And many of those failed to reach safety,
42:25as their transport came under aerial attack.
42:32The Germans now had Crete, they now had its airfields,
42:36they could now project naval and air power out from that island across the Mediterranean.
42:42Longer term, it also just made the position in the Mediterranean a lot more tenuous for the Allied forces.
42:51But the greatest victims of the loss of Crete were the people of the island.
42:57Throughout the years of occupation,
43:00well-documented atrocities, including the massacres of whole villages,
43:05extracted a heavy price from the ordinary people of Crete
43:09for their resistance to the German invasion.
43:11The mission is a mission.
43:38There a variety of vehicles,
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