World War Two African victory and 'Kai Tak heart attack'

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week's Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service.

We hear about the Allies' campaign in North Africa in the Second World War in 1943.

Ahead of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in 2025, the BBC is trying to gather as many first-hand accounts from surviving veterans as possible, to preserve for future generations.

Working with a number of partners, including the Normandy Memorial Trust and the Royal British Legion, the BBC has spoken to many men and women who served during the war. We are calling the collection World War Two: We were there.

We also have the story of the last flight out of the old international Hong Kong airport in 1998. The approach to the airport was known as 'the Kai Tak heart attack' because of it's location between the mountains and the city.

As well as the end of the uprising in the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw, the sinking of the 'Indian Titanic' and the United States' bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

Contributors: Peter Royle - British Army Captain in the Royal Artillery. Dr Helen Fry - author and historian, specialising in the Second World War. Simha "Kazik" Rotem - a Jewish fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Arvind Jhani and Tej Mangat - survivors of the sinking of the SS Tilawa. Captain Kim Sharman - the pilot of the last passenger flight out of Kai Tak.

(Photo: Tunis victory parade, 20 May 1943. Credit: Peter Royle)

Transcript

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0:00.0	15 years ago 23 year old Norwegian student Martina Vic Magnison was killed in an apartment near Mayfair.
0:08.0	23 year old Martin Vic Magnison was found partially buried in the basement.
0:12.0	Before being questioned, the only suspect in the case had fled the UK to Yemen.
0:17.0	I made a promise to Martina's family to find out what happened.
0:21.0	Murder in Mayfair, part of the documentary, find it wherever you get your BBC
0:25.7	podcast.
0:26.5	Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me
0:37.1	Max Pearson, the past brought to life by those who were there.
0:40.3	This week a disaster at sea which has come to be known as India's Titanic.
0:45.0	A lot of people also died and fall in the water and they were floating, you know.
0:50.0	Bodies. In the moonlight, the clothes and everything was spreading around like a flower.
0:55.0	Plus, we'll be on a hair-raising flight out of Hong Kong's old international airport.
1:00.0	And we relive the American bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during NATO operations in 1999.
1:06.4	The bombing noise was so loud you could hear it even from old Belgrade.
1:12.0	When I arrived, the left-hand side of the embassy
1:15.3	was badly damaged, with huge fireballs.
1:18.6	That's all coming up later in the podcast,
1:20.3	but we're going to begin with items which have become
1:22.4	rooted in the imagination
1:23.8	when talking about the Second World War. In a moment we'll be reliving the violence
1:28.0	and hardship of the Warsaw Ghetto, but first it's 80 years since the Allies declared victory in North Africa.
1:35.0	It was a decisive moment that paved the way for the Nazis to be defeated in Europe.
	...

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