Hello everyone welcome back to the history hit warfare podcast I'm your host James Rogers and in this episode we're looking at Operation

Argiment it's one that we all know as big week. It's gone down in history as the beginning of the end of the German lufwaffe.

I've dug this one out of the Dan Snow's history hit archive because it's with the fascinating

James Holland. He is of course the award-winning historian and author and he takes us through step by step the stages of this mission.

He talks about the sheer size of the operation with over 6,000 Allied sorties and the impact that this mission had on winning the war.

So here he is, James Holland on're back on the podcast you've written another book what's wrong with you man these

things just seem to come out you're like Harry Potter he seemed to get into magic to have a thin air

yeah this one's well actually I did sign up to do this quite a few years ago, so it's sort of been a little while in coming, but yeah, I did write most of it in a sort of fast period of fury early part of this year, and it was fascinating because actually although I do really like

the kind of aviation side of the Second World War and find that endlessly fascinating I have to say this was a bit about which I had only the

vaguest notions before I started it. So all the research was really fascinating

for me and really just amazing about D-Day because this is this is a period of the

air war in the autumn of 1943 where you sort of thing the Allies in sort of

of getting their stuff together you know bomber command is getting better

the Americans coming over the growth of the mighty

eighth, the introduction of the Mustang and all the rest of it. But actually, there's this huge crisis going

on in the autumn of 1943 among the Allied command about air power, what it needs to do. the gain air superiority over northwest Europe.

So it's not just the invasion beaches,

which is an absolute essential precursor

before you have any invasion.

It is also about that wider area,

because of course, it's not just those beaches that you need protecting you

also need to do all the kind of pre-invasion stuff you need to be able you know and

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