Shows
Battlefield Travels300 against an empire: The Battle of Thermopylae 480 BCThis episode examines one of history's most famous last stands — the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, where King Leonidas of Sparta and a small Greek coalition held the narrow coastal pass of the 'Hot Gates' against Xerxes' vast Persian invasion force for three days.
The episode explores how the Greeks used the restrictive terrain of the Thermopylae defile to nullify Persian numerical superiority — the disciplined hoplite phalanx, the narrow frontage that neutralised the Persian advantage in numbers, and the tactical logic of a position that forced the Persians to attack on terms the Greeks chose. It also exam...
2026-07-0354 minBattlefield TravelsThe Culloden Bayonet Drill: How Cumberland's army solved the highland chargeThis episode examines one of the most contested questions in Jacobite War historiography — did the Duke of Cumberland's army use a modified bayonet drill at the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746, and does the evidence support it?
The standard academic position holds that a November 1746 retraction in The Scots Magazine, combined with the absence of a written general order in Cumberland's papers, settles the question. There was no new bayonet drill. The debate is closed.
Drawing on primary source research across six independent contemporary accounts — including two eyewitness letters in The Scots Magazine of April 1746, inde...
2026-07-0335 minBattlefield TravelsLee's Greatest Victory: Chancellorsville, Virginia, 1863This episode examines the Battle of Chancellorsville from 30 April to 6 May 1863, Robert E. Lee's most audacious victory of the American Civil War and a masterclass in aggressive manoeuvre against a superior force.
General Joseph Hooker's 130,000 strong Army of the Potomac, crossed the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers and positioned itself on Lee's flank at Chancellorsville in what Hooker described as the finest movement in military history. Lee, with fewer than 60,000 men, responded by dividing his Army to face the Union force to his front at Fredericksburg, and on his left flank around the Chancellor House crossroads. Lee then d...
2026-06-1133 minBattlefield TravelsBattle of Cowpens, South Carolina, 1781: Dan Morgan’s Tactical Masterpiece!This episode examines the Battle of Cowpens on 17 January 1781, one of the most tactically sophisticated engagements of the American Revolutionary War and one of the rare examples in military history of a deliberate double envelopment executed by an outnumbered force against a superior enemy.
American Brigadier General Daniel Morgan, commanding approximately 1,900 Continental regulars and militia in the South Carolina backcountry, chose his ground carefully at a cattle grazing area called Hannah's Cowpens. Facing Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton's British Legion, one of the most feared and aggressive cavalry and infantry formations in the southern theatre, Morgan devised a...
2026-06-1142 minBattlefield TravelsThe Dalton Gang Raid on Coffeyville, Kansas, 5 October 1892This episode examines the Dalton Gang raid on Coffeyville, Kansas on 5 October 1892, the most dramatic bank robbery in the history of the American West, and the event that ended the Dalton Gang in a single fifteen-minute gunfight.
Bob, Grat, and Emmet Dalton, along with Bill Power and Dick Broadwell, rode into Coffeyville that morning intending to rob two banks simultaneously: the First National Bank and the Condon Bank. This audacious plan was intended to surpass the legendary exploits of the James-Younger Gang. The plan had a fatal flaw: the gang was riding into their own hometown, where...
2026-06-1017 minBattlefield TravelsFirst Battle of Elephant Pass, Sri Lanka, 10 July – 9 August 1991This episode examines the First Battle of Elephant Pass from 10 July to 9 August 1991 , the largest single battle of the Sri Lankan Civil War and one of the most intense siege operations in modern Asian military history.
Elephant Pass is the narrow isthmus connecting the Jaffna Peninsula to the Sri Lankan mainland, the only overland route to Jaffna, flanked by the Jaffna Lagoon to the west and the Kilali Lagoon to the east. Whoever held it controlled the land gateway to the peninsula. The Sri Lanka Army garrison, approximately 800 troops of the 6th Battalion, Sinha Regiment under Major...
2026-06-1044 minBattlefield TravelsOperation Hirondelle, July 1953: The Audacious French Paratrooper Raid on Lạng SơnThis episode examines Operation Hirondelle, the French airborne raid on Lang Son, 17-18 July 1953, one of the most audacious deep penetration operations of the Indochina War and a remarkable demonstration of French airborne capability fourteen months before the fall of Dien Bien Phu.
Approximately 2,000 paratroopers of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps dropped behind Viet Minh lines onto the Lang Son plain, the same town abandoned by France in the catastrophic RC4 disaster of October 1950. The operation was built around three coordinated elements. Major Marcel Bigeard's 6th Colonial Parachute Battalion (6e BPC) and Captain Pierre Tourret's 8th...
2026-06-1042 minBattlefield TravelsFort William Henry, 1757: The Siege, the Massacre, and the Struggle for Lake George!This episode examines the Siege of Fort William Henry in August 1757, one of the most dramatic and controversial engagements of the French and Indian War, and the event that inspired James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans.
The French force under Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, Marquis de Montcalm, approximately 8,000 regulars, Canadian militia, and Native American warriors drawn from 41 nations, besieged the British garrison of Fort William Henry at the southern end of Lake George in New York. Lieutenant Colonel George Monro commanded the defending force of approximately 2,200 men and appealed repeatedly to Major General Daniel Webb at...
2026-06-0935 minBattlefield TravelsThe Crusades: Kerak Castle under siege, 1183-1188This episode examines the Sieges of Kerak Castle, the series of military confrontations between 1183 and 1188 that made this Crusader fortress in modern Jordan one of the most strategically contested strongholds of the twelfth-century Levant.
Kerak, in the ancient Kir Moab, capital of the biblical land of Moab, commanded the King's Highway, the ancient trade and pilgrimage route connecting Damascus to Egypt and the Hejaz. Whoever held Kerak controlled the movement of caravans, pilgrims, and armies through Transjordan. It was this strategic reality that made Kerak both the prize and the provocation at the heart of the conflict...
2026-06-0943 minBattlefield TravelsCaesar and the Siege of Alesia, 52 BC: Rome's Gallic TriumphThis episode examines the Siege of Alesia in 52 BC, the decisive engagement of Caesar's Gallic Wars and one of the most remarkable feats of military engineering in ancient history.
Facing the Gallic confederation under Vercingetorix at the hilltop stronghold of Alesia in modern Burgundy, Julius Caesar constructed a double circumvallation — an inner contravallation to contain the garrison and an outer circumvallation to repel the Gallic relief army estimated at 250,000 men. Outnumbered on two fronts simultaneously, Roman discipline, engineering, and tactical flexibility produced one of antiquity's most complete military victories.
Drawing on Caesar's own Commentarii de Be...
2026-06-0940 minBattlefield TravelsOperation Kingpin, 1970: The Audacious Son Tay Prison Raid
This episode examines Operation Kingpin: the Son Tay Raid of 21 November 1970, planned and rehearsed under the code name Operation Ivory Coast. One of the most audacious special operations missions of the Vietnam War. A joint task force of US Army Special Forces and Air Force crews penetrated deep into North Vietnam to liberate American POWs held at Son Tay Prison, 23 miles west of Hanoi.
Drawing on original research and a personal visit to the site in 2025, the analysis covers the mission's planning under Brigadier General Donald Blackburn, the tactical execution led by Colonel Arthur "Bull" Simons and...
2026-06-0953 minBattlefield TravelsPegasus Bridge 1944: Seizing the Caen Canal and Orne River bridgesThis episode examines Operation Deadstick, the glider assault on the Caen Canal and Orne River bridges in the opening minutes of D-Day, 6 June 1944. Six Horsa gliders carrying D Company, 2nd Battalion Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry under Major John Howard landed within metres of their objectives at 00:16 hours, the first Allied ground action of the Normandy invasion.
Drawing on the original Glider Pilot Regiment and 6th Airborne Division Operations Orders, personal exploration of the preserved battlefield, and GIS terrain analysis, the episode covers: the precision of the glider landings at Bénouville and Ranville, the assault on t...
2026-06-0844 minBattlefield TravelsAmbush at Bắc Lệ, 1884: Catalyst of the Sino-French WarThis episode examines the Ambush at Bắc Lệ on 23 June 1884, the skirmish in northern Tonkin that ended French diplomatic negotiations with China and triggered the Sino-French War of 1884-1885.
A French column of approximately 1,000 men under Lieutenant Colonel Alphonse Dugenne, advancing on the Mandarin Road between Hanoi and Lang Son to secure the border region, was ambushed by Chinese Guangxi regular forces near the village of Bac Le. Despite being vastly outnumbered and conducting a fighting withdrawal over several days, the French column maintained discipline under sustained pressure. The engagement was documented in the primary account of C...
2026-06-0844 minBattlefield TravelsGarryowen in Glory: A Tactical Study of Little BighornThis episode examines the Battle of the Little Bighorn on 25-26 June 1876, the most iconic engagement of the Great Sioux War and the most analysed military disaster in American history.
Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry Regiment, operating as part of General Alfred Terry's three-pronged campaign to force the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne onto reservations, encountered a massive encampment on the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory. Custer divided his command into three battalions, his own, under Major Marcus Reno, and under Captain Frederick Benteen, and attacked without adequate reconnaissance. Within two hours, Custer and...
2026-06-0754 minBattlefield TravelsFighting for the Causeway – 82nd Airborne Division at La FièreThis episode examines the Battle for La Fière Causeway, 6-9 June 1944, one of the most savage small-unit actions of the entire Normandy campaign and one of the least known.
The La Fière causeway crossed the flooded Merderet River valley west of Sainte-Mère-Église, connecting the Cotentin Peninsula's road network to Utah Beach. General Matthew Ridgway called it the most critical terrain feature in the 82nd Airborne's sector. For three days, approximately 1,000 American paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, principally the 505th and 507th Parachute Infantry Regiments, held the eastern end of the causeway against dete...
2026-06-0747 minBattlefield TravelsRaate Road 1940: When tiny Finland humbled the mighty Red Army!This episode examines the Battle of Suomussalmi and the destruction of the Soviet 44th Division on the Raate Road, the defining engagement of Finland's Winter War of 1939-1940 and one of the most complete tactical defeats in modern military history.
In December 1939 and January 1940, Finnish forces under Colonel Hjalmar Siilasvuo destroyed the Soviet 44th and 163rd Rifle Divisions in the forests of Kainuu, killing or capturing an estimated 27,500 Soviet soldiers while suffering approximately 900 Finnish dead. The Soviet 163rd Rifle Division was halted at the village of Suomussalmi, cut off from its supply routes and then pursued across...
2026-06-0733 minBattlefield TravelsThe Desert Gamble: T.E. Lawrence and the Fall of AqabaThis episode examines the capture of Aqaba on 6 July 1917, the audacious operation that transformed T.E. Lawrence from a liaison officer into a strategic architect of the Arab Revolt and established the Hejaz Arab Army as a serious military force in the Palestine campaign.
Working with Sherif Nasir of Medina and the Howeitat tribal leader Auda abu Tayi, Lawrence led an irregular Arab force on a 1,000-kilometre desert march from Wejh through the Nefud Desert: terrain the Ottomans considered impassable and therefore left undefended. The decisive engagement at Aba el Lissan on 2 July 1917 destroyed the Ottoman garrison...
2026-06-0740 minBattlefield TravelsBite and Hold: The 1917 Battle of Polygon WoodThis episode examines the Battle of Polygon Wood, 26 September 1917, the second of General Plumer's methodical bite-and-hold offensives during the Third Battle of Ypres, and one of the most tactically successful Allied operations of the entire war.
The Australian 4th and 5th Divisions, supported by a precisely timed creeping barrage, seized the fortified Polygon Wood and the Butte de Polygon from German defenders operating the elastic defence system — the Eingreif counter-attack doctrine that had blunted earlier Allied advances. The analysis contrasts the Allied artillery-infantry coordination with the German Stellungsdivisionen and Eingreif divisional system, examining why bite-and-hold tactics proved ef...
2026-06-0637 minBattlefield TravelsBattle of Franklin, 1864: Hood’s Suicidal AssaultThis episode examines the Battle of Franklin on 30 November 1864, one of the most devastating and tactically inexplicable engagements of the American Civil War. It was the battle that effectively destroyed the Confederate Army of Tennessee as an offensive force.
Confederate General John Bell Hood ordered a frontal assault across two miles of open ground against heavily entrenched Union positions held by General John Schofield's Army of the Ohio. In five hours of fighting, the Confederacy suffered approximately 6,300 casualties, including six generals killed, among them Patrick Cleburne, the finest division commander in the western theatre. The assault briefly...
2026-06-0644 minBattlefield TravelsRocroi 1643: The Last Stand of the Spanish TercioThis episode examines the Battle of Rocroi on 19 May 1643, the engagement that ended Spanish military supremacy in Europe and announced the emergence of France as the dominant continental power of the seventeenth century.
The newly appointed French commander, the 21-year-old Duke of Enghien, later known as the Great Condé, met the Spanish Army of Flanders under General Francisco de Melo on the plains before the fortified town of Rocroi in the Ardennes. Enghien's decisive cavalry action on the French right, followed by a wheeling attack on the exposed Spanish flanks, collapsed the allied German and Italian contingents a...
2026-06-0645 minBattlefield TravelsSpion Kop, January 1900: A day of disaster on the Tugela Heights:
This episode examines the Battle of Spion Kop on 23-24 January 1900, one of the most analysed British defeats of the Second Anglo-Boer War and a defining moment in the historiography of terrain perception and command failure.
A British force of approximately 1,700 men under General Edward Woodgate seized the summit of Spion Kop by night assault on 23 January, believing they held the dominant ground above the Tugela River. When dawn broke and the mist lifted, the reality was catastrophic. The British had entrenched on the topographic crest, not the military crest. The true tactical crest lay 150-200 yards...
2026-06-0647 minBattlefield Travels1866: The Needle-Gun and the Dawn of Mission CommandThis episode examines the Battle of Königgrätz on 3 July 1866, the decisive engagement of the Austro-Prussian War and one of the most consequential single days in European military history. The battle established Prussian hegemony over Germany and set the conditions for the Franco-Prussian War four years later.
The analysis goes beyond the standard needle gun versus Lorenz rifle comparison to examine the doctrinal foundations that made Prussian victory structurally predictable before the first shot was fired. Drawing on the Prussian Exerzir-Reglement of 1847 and the Austrian Exercier-Reglement of 1861, read in the original German, the episode demonstrates that th...
2026-06-0536 minBattlefield TravelsIndochina, October 1950: Battle of Route Coloniale 4This episode examines the Battle of Route Coloniale 4, the Cao Bang Ridge Disaster of 16 September to 18 October 1950, the most catastrophic French colonial defeat prior to Dien Bien Phu, and the engagement that effectively ended French control of the Chinese border region in Tonkin.
The disaster unfolded across 137 kilometres of jungle road between Cao Bang and Lang Son. Ordered to evacuate the isolated garrison at Cao Bang, Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Charton led his column south along RC4 while Lieutenant Colonel Marcel Lepage advanced north from Lang Son to effect a junction. Both columns were ambushed and destroyed in...
2026-06-0553 min