🎧 The Lancaster Bomber
Archive of Dan Snow's History Hit 🎧 • 24m
I was thrilled to be joined again by one of our most popular guests, John Nichol. John shot to international prominence when he served in the first Gulf War. When his Tornado was shot down in 1991 he was captured, tortured and paraded on television provoking worldwide condemnation and leaving one of the enduring images of that war. Since then, John has become one of our most successful aviation historians, writing bestsellers such as 'SPITFIRE – A Very British Love Story'. His latest book explores the Avro Lancaster - described by Bomber Harris as his 'shining sword' and the 'greatest single factor in winning the war'. Carrying out offensive operations from the first day of the Second World War until the very last - more than five and a half years later - they flew nearly 300,000 sorties and dropped around a million tons of explosives. Of the 7,377 Lancasters built during the conflict, more than half were lost to enemy action or training accidents, and of the 125,000 men who served in Bomber Command, over 55,000 were killed. The figures are remarkable. But John also took me behind the statistics to uncover the human stories - truly unbelievable accounts of survival.
Up Next in Archive of Dan Snow's History Hit 🎧
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🎧 Raid on the Medway: Part 2 with Ric...
Richard Holdsworth is Director of Preservation and Education at The Historic Dockyard Chatham.
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🎧 The Last Highlander
Sarah Fraser @sarah_fraseruk won the 2012 Saltire First Scottish Book of the Year for her acclaimed debut The Last Highlander, which in 2016 also became a New York Times ebook bestseller. A writer and regular contributor on TV and radio, she has a PhD in obscene Gaelic poetry and lives in the Sco...
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🎧 The Queen & US Presidents
We had plans today to release the first two episodes of American History Hit but due to the news of the death of Queen Elizabeth II last week, we’ve decided to take some time and do something a little different.
You’ll hear those episodes on Thursday September 22, until then here’s a special min...
