Great PBS links - Secrets of the Dead!

[Walt's Daughter]

Check out these PBS links - Secrets of the Dead

 

 

Dogfight Over Guadacanal

 

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_dogfight/index.html

 

On August 7, 1942, the opening day of the Guadalcanal campaign, American forces began shelling Guadalcanal and neighboring Tulagi in the Solomon Islands. It was the beginning of a U.S. push to capture the Japanese-controlled islands in the Pacific. Success was critical because the Japanese were rushing to complete a landing strip that would be a major threat to Allied shipping lanes between Australia and America...

 

 

 

Bombing Nazi Dams

 

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_nazidams/index.html

 

Spring rains had swelled the water dammed up in Germany's Ruhr valley, and on May 16, 1943, Operation Chastise was about to begin. Taking off from an air base in England, nineteen Lancaster bombers manned by 133 airmen from Squadron 617 of the Royal Air Force were on a mission to destroy several of the Nazi's major hydroelectric dams. The Ruhr region was an important industrial center for Germany, and the demolition of these dams was expected to create widespread destruction, cut off the supply of water for industrial purposes, and halt work in coal mines and factories. Each Lancaster in Squadron 617 was outfitted with a strange new weapon -- a bouncing bomb that, when dropped precisely on target, would skip across the water and slam into the wall of an enemy dam....

 

 

Bridge on the River Kwai

 

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_kwai/index.html

 

Construction of the Thailand-Burma Railway began on September 16, 1942 at two existing railroad terminals, one in Thanbyuzayat in Burma and the other in Nong Pladuk, Thailand, about 25 miles west of Bangkok, in the Ratchburi province. As early as 1939, the Japanese had drawn up plans to build the railway, which was to provide a supply line capable of transporting 3,000 tons of supplies per day to support their frontline troops in Burma. At that time, Japanese engineers estimated that the 257-mile line would take five years to build because of the harsh conditions and treacherous terrain. Much of the railway, particularly the roughly 175 miles of track that ran through Thailand, required high bridges (more than 600 along the entire line) and deep mountain cuttings. The railway was completed in just 16 months when the two separate lines joined 23 miles south of the Three Pagoda's Pass. But the cost was incredibly high....

 

 

D-Day Normandy

 

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_dday/index.html

 

World War II had barely begun when Allied countries began hatching informal plans to invade Europe. As early as 1940, the British were cooking up a siege against the continental mainland, while the Americans began plotting their own assault immediately after Hilter declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941. The real push came in 1942, when Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin started pressuring U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to open up a "second front" in the west, to complement the Soviets' eastern front and squeeze Hitler's armies in between. The most obvious site for the offensive was the northwest coast of France, where the English Channel separates Britain and France by as little as 22 miles. The idea was that once northern France was captured and secured, the Allies could begin the steady overthrow of the rest of the Nazi-occupied country -- and, eventually, push into Germany. The trick, though, would be to surprise the Germans with a swift and overwhelming onslaught, giving them no chance to mount an effective counterattack...

 

 

 

The Hunt for Nazi Scientists

 

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_nazis...ists/index.html

 

In the closing months of World War II, defeat was looming for the Germans. The invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944 -- D-Day -- opened a second Allied front, and the Allies began overtaking a host of German positions; Paris was liberated on August 25; Romania and Bulgaria surrendered in quick succession. But the Nazis did not intend to go down without a fight -- and without inflicting as much damage as possible on the Allies. To do so, they employed or planned to employ an increasingly deadly array of military weapons -- from ballistic missiles to rocket planes to, perhaps, the atomic bomb...