Assault on Normandy: 6th Airborne

With the Battle of the Aisne grinding to a halt as trench warfare gradually set in, both the German and Allied commanders realised the dominance of the defensive, established by quick firing artillery and the machinegun, meaning that casualties in frontal attacks on a dug-in enemy were enormously heavy. Consequently, the armies sought to outflank the opposition by heading north in a set of manoeuvres known as the Race to the Sea. During this phase Field Marshal French insisted on redeploying the British Expeditionary Force to the Allied left, nearer the Chanel ports.

Gold Beach is the story of the highly successful assault by 50th Northumbrian Division and 231 Malta Bde on the central beach of the Allied D day landings. The beach was one of the 2 extra beaches that Montgomery had added to the COSSAC plan and the two veteran formations chosen were highly successful achieving nearly all their objectives despite some hard and bloody fighting. It was on this beach that WO2 Stan Hollis won the only VC of D Day.

The story of the miraculous evacuation of Allied soldiers from Belgium, Britain, Canada and France, who were cut off and surrounded by the German army from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk between May 26th and June 4th 1940 during World War II.

Normandie, terre d'abondance

The 3rd Division was in the van of the D Day assault force. Their task was to break through Hitler's Atlantic Wall on a stretch of Normandy beach codenamed SWORD. Once ashore their problems were only just beginning! Montgomery had tasked the Division with the capture of Caen but the Germans were deployed in greater depth and strength than the Allies assumed. Rommel had deployed 21st Panzer Division into positions immediately behind the invasion area. With bitter fighting in the villages and open ridges around Caen the two sides fought a desperate battle; the Germans knew that once firmly ashore it would be impossible to throw them back into the sea. This film charts the operations on D Day from the embarkation of the force, the crossing, assault landing and the subsequent advance to the Perriers Ridge.

In 1941 Dr RV Jones realised that the Germans had developed their own radar system that would account for increasing RAF bomber casualties. An enemy Würzburg system was located on the cliffs of Northern France at Bruneval. An operation was planned to seize it involving all three Services, including the newly raised C Coy, 2 Para, commanded by Major John Frost. The planning went well but the rehearsals were all disastrous. As the narrow window of moon and tide approached it was decided 'to bash on'. Nine of the twelve sticks of Paratroopers were dropped by 51 Squadron and the Germans were caught napping. However, they quickly responded and the Paras had a serious fight on their hands to keep the enemy at bay while the experts, who the Paras had orders to kill rather than let fall into enemy hands, dismantled the radar. With the enemy closing in the job was done and the force withdrew. It seemed that they may be caught but they made it to their badly delayed landing craft.

At about 1230 on the 8th August 1944 near St Aignan in Normandy Hauptsturmführer Michael Wittmann the top German tank ace and Coy Comd in an SS Heavy Tank Coy (Tiger) was killed when his tank was knocked out in counter attack against British and Canadian Forces taking part in Op Totalise. Over the years much controversy had grown up over who destroyed Wittmann's tank Joe Ekins of the British Northants Yeomanry, a Canadian tank of the Sherbrooke Fusiliers or a rocket from an RAF Typhoon. In this film the BHTV examine the latest information on the ground, including testimony from German survivors and Joe Ekins himself.. The BHTV team believe that the main weight of the evidence shows that it was most probably Ekins Sherman Firefly that struck the killer blow.

Jumping in to Drop Zones eight to ten miles from Arnhem on the second day of Operation Market Garden was always going to be difficult for Brigadier “Shan” Hackett's 4th British Parachute Brigade. With little information on how 1 Para Brigade's battle went the day before or what faced them on the ground the stage was set for an epic battle. John Waddy, v company commander in 156 Para Battalion and a team of Arnhem experts cover the ground where 4 Para Brigade fought with 9 SS Pz Div in the woods to the west of Arnhem in what was to be an unequal but heroic battle; the result of a flawed concept and plan.Driven back the Brigade was withdrawing across LZ P when the Polish heavy lift gliders swept in to cause. Captain Quirepel was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for his action in helping stem the enemy advance long enough for the Paratroopers to escape across the railway embankment by nightfall.

The Battle of Arnhem, fought in the early autumn of 1944, remains without a doubt the most hotly debated battle of the North West European Campaign, both then and now. From its inception in the sixteen cancelled airborne operations during August, we will chart the problems, many of which were ignored by men desperate to get into battle, the compromises and mistakes that pitched lightly armed and ill equipped paratroopers and glider infantry into an unequal struggle against an SS panzer troops. We follow the eight mile route that 2 Para took to reach the bridge at Arnhem, slipping through the German defences.In Part 2, a separate film we look at their epic battle.

The core of the plot is the romantic triangle formed by the protagonist, a conscripted soldier named Private Brigg, a worldly professional soldier named Sergeant Driscoll, and Phillipa Raskin, the daughter of the Regimental Sergeant Major. The location is a British army base in Singapore during the Malayan Emergency.

This final part takes us through the dramatic events when Wellington’s Anglo-Dutch Army aided by Blucher’s Prussians defeat Napoleon. The French army was outfought and Napoleon was out-generaled by Wellington. At Wavre Grouchy beat the Prussian rearguard before retreating to France. Meanwhile, the Anglo-Dutch army counted the bloody cost of the previous days fighting while Wellington wrote his controversial Waterloo Dispatch and the vengeful Prussians pursued the French towards Paris, leading to Napoleon's abdication and the occupation of the city by the Allies.

On the 31st Oct 1914 the Germans were on the cusp of victory at Ypres. troops of the German 30th and 54th Divisions had broken the line at Geluveldt to the east of Ypres.The German troops were fired with enthusiasm as the Kaiser was said to be watching their action. If they succeeded the way to Ypres and even the coast was open, the BEF would be destroyed. This is the story of the last British reserve the 2nd Worcesters who were ordered to counter attack and drive the Germans out of Geluveld. Their attack was a success and was described by Field Marshall French as the " The Charge that saved the Empire".

Private Daly of the Connaught Rangers triumphs in the Aldershot Command annual cross country race, months before the outbreak of WWI.

Normandy, 1944. Young engineer Sgt. Wally Harris and his unit of craftsmen begin a journey through France, aiding the Allied liberation of Northern Europe. Untrained in combat, Wally and his men have never looked their enemy in the eye, until now.

69 Infantry Brigade had a highly successful landing and now had to fight its way through German defences to its objectives eight miles away. It was here that the veteran warrior, Sergeant Major Stan Hollis, continued the actions that led to him receiving the only D Day Victoria Cross.Meanwhile, 231 Infantry Brigade,were attempting to recover the situation and fight through German strong points towards Arromanches and Point 54 ridge. These battles lacked the coordination between infantry and tanks achieved by 69 Brigade and were up against field grade German infantry. Hours behind schedule, the village of Ryes was taken. This allowed the much delayed second wave consisting of 56th and 151 Infantry Brigades to deploy and exploit the early successes, reaching the outskirts of Bayeux by dusk. Meanwhile, in the west, the hard pressed 231 Infantry Brigade and 47 Commando continued its advance through enemy held territory to Port en Bessin, Arromanches and the Longues sur Mer Battery.

Black Panther, the Avengers, Hulk, Fantastic Four, The X-Men, Thor, Iron Man - to name only some of the best known super-heroes created in the 1960s by comic book artist Jack Kirby, the super heroes which today, dominate the world wide blockbuster box office cinema. This documentary mixed with CGI form his work examines Jack Kirby’s comics through his experience as a young American soldier in WWII France. How did this terrifying experience inspire him to create Captain America, and so many others characters as the war came to a close?

On the 6th June 1944, Maj Howard’s Coy of the OX & Bucks LI carried out one of the greatest and most successful small unit actions in history in capturing the two Orne Bridges as a precursor to D Day. The initial part of the film traces the development of the British Airborne Forces to the stage where they can play a major part in the allied plan to storm Hitler’s Fortress Europe. The BHTV team then tell the story of this heroic action and the equally heroic follow up actions of 7 Para in holding the bridges against the might of 21st Pz Div. This action exemplified the British soldier at his best whether in The Glider Pilot Regiment, The Glider Infantry ( Ox & Bucks)or the Parachute Regiment, all showed courage skill and commitment.

This film tells the story of Col Rudder’s 2nd Ranger Bn and their heroic attack on the gun battery at Pointe du Hoc, which covered both Omaha and Utah beaches. Despite their thorough training scaling techniques that included sectional aluminium commando ladders, rocket grapples and ropes experienced commanders predicted a disaster. In the event bad weather, navigational errors and communications failure meant that less than 200 Rangers were delivered to the foot of the cliffs late and under enemy fire. Small groups of Rangers battled their way up ropes and ladders, with grenades bursting around them, to scale the muddy unstable cliff. A handful of men spread out and cleared the stunned defenders but, as often is the case, seizing the objective was only a part of the battle. Isolated for over 24 hours, with no relief from the near disaster at Omaha, the Rangers fought on against increasingly determined German counter-attacks.

The German paratroopers established a reputation in Crete as an elite force. A battalion commander now led a new Fallschirmjäger regiment, deployed to Normandy in the spring of 1944 to the very area where the US Paratroopers were to drop on D Day. This DVD will tell the story of this regiment, one that was more like a pocket division than a regiment, and its six day battle around the base of the Cotentin Peninsula to prevent the effective link up between Omaha and Utah Beaches.Using the established and popular style of expert interviews, pieces filmed on the ground where the battle happened, illustrated with contemporary re-enactment footage and numerous maps, the story of the part played by the 6th Fallschirmjäger in the key engagements against the 101st Airborne Division around Saint-Come-du-Mont, the flooded marshes and the key town of Carentan will be told in graphic and controversial detail.

Georges Marchais, l’homme qui avait choisi son camp