What happens when tanks attack a modern city? Major Tim Brown led a squadron of Challenger 2 main battle tanks in one of the most daring British armoured assaults since the Second World War. We follow him into the middle of a vicious, close-quarters firefight with the Fedayeen Saddam in the streets of Basra during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
A special focus this month is the Blitz. If the Battle of Britain was won by ‘the Few’, the Blitz was won by ‘the Many’. The RAF had no defence against night raids and the bombers got through again and again. What won the battle was the mass mobilisation of a million ordinary Londoners in a new kind of ‘democratic’ war.
We examine how the Spanish Civil War inspired British air-raid precautions in the run-up to the Second World War, and flick back to that earlier Blitz when Zeppelins bombed London in 1916, and an earlier generation of fighter pilots became heroes shooting them down.
To mark the annual 5 November celebrations we take a serious look at the Gunpowder Plot and the ‘war on terror’ in 1605. Who exactly was Guy Fawkes, and should we regard him as villain or hero?