Assault on the Merville Battery, Part 2.

Improved 2 part episode of the Merville assault.

In the early hours of June 6th, 1944, the 9th Parachute Battalion drops into chaos. Aircraft scatter six hundred men across the flooded fields of Normandy. A handful find their way to the wire of Batterie de Merville. What follows is one of the most audacious small-unit actions of the Second World War.

In this episode we follow Major George Smith's Trowbridge Party from the wire back to a battalion that barely exists. We follow Lieutenant-Colonel Terence Otway as he organises an assault with a fraction of his force, no engineers, no specialist charges, and no way to illuminate the target for the gliders. We follow the men through the breach in the wire, across the minefield, and into the casemates. And we follow the survivors as they fight their way to Amfreville and hold it until the Commandos arrive.

This episode draws on the works of Neil Barber in The Day the Devils Dropped In and The Silencing of the Merville Battery, Carl Shilletos's Merville Battery and the Dives Bridges, Jon Cookseys operation Tonga: 6th Airborne Division, Stephen Wright and Kevin Shannon's in Operation Tonga: The Glider Assault, and the war diaries of the 6th Airborne Division.

For maps, photographs, original documents, and the full source base behind this series, visit www.worldwar2-sof.com.

#WorldWarII #WWII #DDay #Normandy #MervilleBattery #9ParachuteBattalion #BritishAirborne #6thAirborneDivision #SpecialForces #MilitaryHistory #Paratrooper #OperationOverlord #DDay1944 #WW2Podcast #MilitaryPodcast #Airborne #WarHistory #NeilBarber #SwordBeach #Parachute

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