Hello everyone, and thank you once again for listening to the saga of World War II, Akassas Belly project.

Today, my guest is Simon Reed, author of the Iron Sea, How the Allies Hunted and Destroyed Hitler's Warships from Hatchet Books.

This book details the efforts made by the Allies to sink the Kriegs Marines major surface combatants,

namely the Bismarck, Terpitz, Nisenau, and the Sharnhorst.

Stories range from bombing missions over France and Norway to the epic battle between the HMS Hood and the Bismarck.

Anyone who is familiar with the broad strokes of the Second World War

is familiar with the sinking of the Bismarck.

But most of the other events recounted were new to me, most especially the raid on San

Nazaire, on the Atlantic coast of France. Many of these stories I cover only briefly in the show,

or will cover briefly, but the INC details them with a real eye for the individual experiences of those

involved.

This is the type of book I really love to include, because it fills in so many gaps that I leave in my show.

I try to paint a big picture, but leave out a lot of the nitty-gritty detail, especially when it comes to personal experiences of those who actually fought in the war.

This book gives a very foxhole level, or maybe gunport level, view of that war.

I also think it gives a good idea of what the war was like for a sailor or airman.

It's easy for most people to imagine the war for an infantryman, but for some reason a sailor's experiences seem harder to conceptualize, I think.

I really enjoyed the book and had a great conversation with the author.

I felt like I could have gone on all afternoon talking with him about the war and ships, but alas, I was recording an episode and needed to keep things relevant.

Anyway, let's begin Appendix F, the Iron C, an interview with Simon Reed.

Okay, so to get started, Simon, thanks for being on the show.

Thanks for having me. Great to be here, Sean.

So overall, just to kind of cover the book in a nutshell, I think we start with, it covers

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