The

The From the home of the codebreakers and the birthplace of modern computing, this is the Bletchley Park podcast.

Welcome to the July 2024 episode of the Bletchley Park podcast.

The Forgotten Army.

In early 1942, one of the most disastrous defeats of the war saw British forces

pushed out of Burma, now known

as Myanmar. Two years later, the multinational 14th Army, the forgotten army, had learned

to fight and beat to the Japanese, inflicting their largest defeat of the war at Infal

and Khadima, and was poised to begin the reconquest of Burma.

This turnaround had much to do with bitter experience gained in close combat and superb logistics,

but an important element was detailed intelligence, which allowed the Allies to seize control

of the skies and control the battle below.

In this It Happened Here episode, Research Officer Dr Thomas Cheatham leads us through

the transformations at Bletchley Park, at Signals Intelligence Centres in Southeast Asia and

on the front lines which turned defeat into victory. This is Bletchley Park.

It happened here. This is Bletchley Park.

It happened here.

The Bletchley Park podcast has been going for nearly 12 years now, and we like to go into detail,

and we've covered so many topics, but one of the campaigns that we haven't really covered,

as much as we should, has been the Southeast Asian campaign and particularly the Burma campaign.

And that's what we are going to attempt to cover in this episode.

Now Tom, why Burma and why now?

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