Maximization of damage. That’s the purpose of the cluster bomb. These weapons, which can be traced back to the First World War, when the Kaiser would not give permission for their use, are still being dropped today. Not only that, but duds, unexploded during their deployment during the Second World War, the Vietnam War and the Gulf War still litter the earth. The cluster bomb is a paradox. A force will drop them to gain the advantage in a war, but will then not be able to move forward into the spaces where they have been dropped, or engage in post-war reconstruction. John Ismay is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and served as the gunnery officer aboard a destroyer in the Pacific before becoming a Navy special operations officer. He is qualified in deep-sea diving and salvage, parachuting and bomb disposal, and completed a number of overseas deployments, including one to northern Iraq during the 2007 surge. Now working at the New York Times Washington Bureau, he joined James to talk about his research into the development of the cluster bomb, its impact and his personal experiences of this lethal weapon.
Espionage. The word brings to mind the Cold War - Stasi informants and surveillance bugging in East Berlin. Or today’s media promoted anxieties about Chinese infiltration. But for this episode, Calder Walton came onto the World Wars podcasts to talk about spying during the Second World War. Calde...
On 23 August 1939, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov signed a pact in Moscow. This pact was perplexing to many at the time, and remains the subject of much discussion, mainly for the fact that it consolidated a partnership between the co...
Harsh living and working conditions, poisonous chemicals and explosions. For 10,000 navvies, hundreds of chemists and engineers from across the empire, and 12,000 women, this was the reality of mixing the 'Devil's Porridge', cordite, in munitions factories on the Home Front. In 1915, an extreme s...
