HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-11-03T09:01:03.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Terror in the deep: how Hitler's U-boats pushed Britain to the brink
items: The battle of Sandwich: England’s medieval Trafalgar
items: Jutland: the battle that won the First World War
items: Bismarck: why was the WW2 German battleship so feared? Plus 9 things you didn’t know about its only mission
items: The battle for Iwo Jima: why did it happen and why was it so hard fought?
items: Actium, 31 BC: the beginning of the end for Mark Antony and Cleopatra
items: The Spanish Armada: one of history’s biggest fibs?
items: The Battle of the Atlantic: why Britain almost lost to Hitler's U-boats
items: Danger in the deep: key questions about the Battle of the Atlantic answered
items: The Battle of the Atlantic: the "desperate" WW2 campaign featured in Tom Hanks film Greyhound

Terror in the deep: how Hitler's U-boats pushed Britain to the brink
type: item
date: 2025-11-03T09:00:20.000Z
creator: Roger Moorhouse
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Historical events
subject: Naval battles
subject: Second World War battles
description: Did German U-boats conduct a ‘clean’ campaign during the Second World War? Or were they guilty of routinely murdering survivors in the water? Roger Moorhouse weighs the evidence
encoded: On the night of 13 March 1944, the Greek-registered steamship SS Peleus was en route from Freetown to Buenos Aires when she was hit amidships by two torpedoes, launched by a German U-boat, U-852. The twin-masted merchantman, of around 5,000 tons, swiftly began to sink, her internal bulkheads ruptured by the detonations. Within three minutes, the Peleus disappeared below the surface, leaving the surviving members of her 39-strong crew clinging to rafts and flotsam in the darkness. As sinkings go during the naval war, it was unremarkable, one might even say routine. But what followed would set it apart. Soon after, U-852 surfaced close to the debris field, hoping to identify her prey and glean some information. Her captain, 27-year-old Kapitänleutnant Heinz‑Wilhelm Eck, ordered one of his men – who spoke some English – to come up to the bow to question one of the survivors. After learning the identity of his target, Eck gave the order for U-852 to move away. But then he changed his mind. Eck was nervous. Prior to his departure from port, he had been given a lecture from his superiors on the perils of passing through the Atlantic Narrows, around Ascension, and was told that all four of the previous patrols undertaken by his predecessors had ended with the vessels being sunk. Due to the heightened risk of air attack he was urged to take every precaution to avoid being spotted by enemy aircraft. Even debris from a sinking, it was stressed, could give away his position. Calculating that he could be only some 200 miles away by daybreak, when the wreckage of the Peleus would doubtless be spotted, he made the decision to attempt to destroy the debris. He brought a party of his men up on deck and ordered them to open fire on the rafts and other debris with machine guns. In the moonless night, they were largely firing blind, but the operation continued for hours, with grenades being thrown and U-852’s anti-aircraft gun even being brought to bear. The number killed by these act…

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The battle of Sandwich: England’s medieval Trafalgar
type: item
date: 2021-06-09T13:28:16.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Naval battles
description: In 1217, with a French armada approaching the coast of Kent, English sailors secured what may be the most significant naval victory in their country's history. Sean McGlynn describes the battle of Sandwich
encoded: Nelson and Trafalgar? Yes. Drake and the Armada? Yes. But de Burgh and Sandwich? This unlikely-named combination of medieval naval hero and sea battle proved arguably of far greater importance than its more renowned successors. Errol Flynn would find it hard to measure up to a contemporary writer’s swashbuckling account of the hand-to-hand fighting that occurred at the battle of Sandwich in the summer of 1217: Reginald Pain of Guernsey, “with nothing of the coward in him, jumped from the English cog [type of naval vessel] onto the French flagship. His landing was not gentle, for his leap had been a fearsome one.” Reginald’s fall was broken by a French knight whom he bowled over. As he fell he also took down another knight with a well-timed blow. As he got to his feet he was set upon “with great force” by a third knight, and a lengthy duel – “a battle royal” – ensued with Reginald triumphing once again. The writer leaves our hero grappling with yet another French knight before breaking off to describe the rest of the battle. Yet the reality of Sandwich was a lot less stylised and a lot more bloody and brutal. The background to the battle was one of great peril for England. In the aftermath of King John’s rejection of Magna Carta in the summer of 1215, the rebel barons had asked the Capetian prince Louis, heir to the throne of France, to replace John as King of England. Louis ‘the Lion’ (compare this to John’s ‘Softsword’) landed with a large army on the Isle of Thanet in May 1216. A second battle of Hastings might have occurred but John bottled the battle, and Louis went on to conquer and occupy over one-third of England for a year. A royalist fightback only began to achieve any notable success after John’s death in October 1216, when the regent William Marshal’s army won a victory against the French and rebels at the battle of Lincoln in May 1217. The defeated army retreated to its stronghold in London and there awaited reinforcements to begin the reconquest. The Fr…

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Jutland: the battle that won the First World War
type: item
date: 2021-05-27T06:05:00.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: First World War
subject: Period
subject: Naval battles
description: The British press declared it a disastrous defeat, and the public despaired. But, argues Nick Hewitt, the battle of Jutland, fought in the North Sea in May 1916, ensured that Germany would never prevail in the First World War...
encoded: Between the hazy late afternoon of 31 May 1916 and the grey dawn of 1 June, more than 100,000 British and German seamen aboard 250 warships fought a brutal naval engagement. They were battling for control of the North Sea, global oceanic trade and, ultimately, victory in the First World War. For the British it became known as the battle of Jutland. For the Germans it was the Skagerrak. By the end, 25 ships had been sunk, almost one in 10 of those sailors was dead, and Europe’s fate had been decided. For both sides, this battle was a new experience. The British had been the undisputed masters of the seas since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, more than 100 years earlier. However, the last time the Royal Navy had fought a sea battle against an enemy fleet, it had entered the fray with wooden sailing ships armed with muzzle-loading cannon. The service now went to war in armoured, steel ships, powered by steam engines and armed with breech-loading rifled guns in revolving turrets. Uninterrupted peace in western Europe had arguably led to complacency, failure of imagination and tactical stagnation. Nevertheless, the Royal Navy was still the most powerful navy in the world. Read more | 10 WW1 generals you should know about The Kaiserliche Marine, or Imperial German Navy, had existed only since Germany unified from a multitude of kingdoms and principalities into a single, Prussian-dominated state in 1871. The German kaiser, Wilhelm II, was determined to make Germany a world power, and in 1897 he had appointed Rear (later Grand) Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz as secretary of state of the Reichsmarineamt, or Imperial Navy Office. Tirpitz was a compelling advocate of the need for a larger navy, and within a year he had persuaded the German parliament to pass the first of a series of naval bills calling for the construction of 19 battleships and 50 cruisers. The British responded in kind, and an expensive arms race between the two powers followed, vociferously supported on both sid…

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Bismarck: why was the WW2 German battleship so feared? Plus 9 things you didn’t know about its only mission
type: item
date: 2021-05-22T08:33:08.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Naval battles
description: Named after the ‘Iron Chancellor’ who masterminded the unification of Germany in 1871, the battleship Bismarck was intended to be a national icon – but it had a short life at sea. Iain Ballantyne reveals nine lesser-known facts about the ship and its sole mission…
encoded: Launched on Valentine’s Day 1939 at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, the battleship Bismarck inspired love in many of those watching her go down the slipway. A powerful representation of Germany’s rise from the ashes of the First World War, it was a fearsome combination of size, swiftness and firepower. Bismarck was nominally meant to be 35,000 tons to meet the stipulations of the Washington Naval Treaty [which placed limits on the size of battleships]. That treaty lapsed, allowing naval architects of the major maritime powers to add a further 5,000 tons, but then the Germans secretly pushed it even further. Bismarck’s true displacement when fully laden was 50,933 tons – a fact the Allies only discovered when they acquired secret German naval documents after the Second World War. With a top speed of 29 knots, Bismarck (and her sister vessel Tirpitz, launched in April 1939, were faster than any the Royal Navy could send to war. Its eight 15-inch main guns were of a bigger calibre than those of Britain’s new King George V-class battleships – and though Britain did possess warships with larger guns, they were built in the 1920s and couldn’t match Bismarck for speed. By May 1941, with the battle of the Atlantic in full swing, Bismarck was a latent threat. British naval forces were spread thin, tasked with protecting Atlantic convoys, fighting the Italians and Germans in the Mediterranean, and watching a belligerent Japan. Could the overstretched British stop Bismarck from breaking out of the Baltic and into the Atlantic to join forces with U-boats? The vessel’s long-awaited first deployment was expected to be a severe trial of Britain’s national will and the Royal Navy. And so it proved, though for the Germans it was a major test of nerve that ultimately ended with the sinking of the Bismarck. Here Iain Ballantyne, author of Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom, reveals nine lesser-known facts about the battleship and its one and only sortie… The Kriegsmarine was afraid to t…

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The battle for Iwo Jima: why did it happen and why was it so hard fought?
type: item
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Naval battles
subject: Second World War battles
description: The 1945 battle for Iwo Jima was bitter and brutal: few of the 20,000 Japanese defenders survived it, while the attacking American marines suffered 25,000 casualties. Why was the US so committed to wresting this tiny island from Japanese control? Julian Humphrys tells the story...
encoded: Just over four miles long and two miles wide, Iwo Jima is a speck on the map. But in early 1945 this tiny volcanic island was the scene of some of the most savage fighting of the Second World War. By late 1944, the war in the Far East had turned decisively against the Japanese. The British had forced them back in Burma while in the Pacific the Americans were steadily closing in on the Japanese home islands, capturing strategically important islands in a series of amphibious operations. The capture of the Mariana Islands in late 1944 had given the US a base from which to launch long-range bombing raids on Japan, but its fighter planes, which couldn’t carry so much fuel, were unable to accompany the bombers on what was a 3,000-mile round trip. But as Iwo Jima was just 650 miles from Japan, it was thought that it offered an ideal base for US fighter planes. A task force was assembled to capture it and a two-month bombing campaign was mounted to soften it up. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the Japanese commander on Iwo Jima, wasn’t going to give up without a fight. He turned the island into a fortress with a vast network of pillboxes, bunkers and fortified caves linked by trenches and 11 miles of underground tunnels. Hundreds of hidden artillery, mortar, machine gun and sniper positions were set up. The 11 most significant battles of the Second World War The storm begins The US assault was preceded by a three-day naval bombardment, but this, it later became apparent, was not long enough. In any case, the 20,000 Japanese defenders were so well dug in that it had little effect. On the morning of 19 February, the attack began. Ferried by an armada of nearly 500 landing craft and ships, the first 8,000 US marines splashed through the surf onto beaches on the south side of the island. Iwo Jima: Battle facts Who fought at Iwo Jima? Japan and the US. The Japanese had around 20,000 men under General Tadamishi Kuribayashi, the US around 70,000 men under Admiral Chester Nimitz. W…

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Actium, 31 BC: the beginning of the end for Mark Antony and Cleopatra
type: item
date: 2020-08-12T14:30:05.000Z
subject: Ancient Egypt
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Naval battles
description: Military historian Julian Humphrys explains what happened at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, and why this naval clash off the Greek coast presaged both the end of the Roman Republic and the deaths of one history’s most famous couples
encoded: Mark Antony’s campaign to become sole ruler of Rome was crumbling. By the summer of 31 BC, his fleet was trapped in the Ambracian Gulf, on the west coast of Greece, by the ships of his enemy Octavian. He was chronically short of men, and the spot where his army was camped was a mosquito-infested marsh near Actium, on the south shore of the gulf. Their every move was being watched by Octavian’s men from the high ground on the opposite shore. Supplies were running out, malaria and dysentery were decimating his army, and the oarsmen who powered his ships were starting to desert. Antony had to make a move, and soon – if he didn’t, before long he’d have no forces with which to fight. The Battle of Actium was the climax of 13 years of civil wars. Sparked by the assassination of Julius Caesar, they had torn the Roman world apart. Julius Caesar’s heir, Octavian, and his former right-hand man, Antony, had been two-thirds of the triumvirate, which, in 42 BC, brought down Caesar’s murderers. But once that common enemy had been tackled, their fragile alliance began to fracture and the two became bitter enemies. Octavian’s power base was in the western part of the Roman territories, while Antony controlled the eastern part – with the aid of his lover, Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. That relationship gave Antony access to the riches of Egypt but it also scandalised Rome, a situation exacerbated by the fact that Antony had abandoned his Roman wife – who, significantly, was also Octavian’s sister. Octavian’s propaganda machine was soon hard at work, portraying the struggle not as one between him and Antony but as a war between virtuous Rome and decadent Egypt. What happened at the Battle of Actium? Who | Octavian and Agrippa (400 ship) versus Mark Antony and Cleopatra (500 ships, reduced to 230) When | 2 September 31 BC Where | Ionian Sea near Actium, off the west coast of Greece Why | Antony and Cleopatra were attempting to break through Octavian’s naval blockade Outcome | Victory for…

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The Spanish Armada: one of history’s biggest fibs?
type: item
date: 2020-07-01T15:46:36.000Z
subject: Elizabethan
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Naval battles
description: From Elizabeth I’s rousing speech at Tilbury to that famous game of bowls, much of what we think we know about the events of 1588 is the product of four centuries of spin, argues Lucy Worsley...
encoded: In a world where thousands of opinions are competing for our attention, we like to think of history books speaking with one clear voice to tell us the definitive truth about the past. But it’s not like that at all. One of the stopping-off points in the usual story of England’s journey towards becoming a global superpower with a world-class navy is the so-called defeat of the ‘invincible’ Spanish Armada in 1588. The quotation marks are used advisedly, for all is not as it seems. The schoolgirl version of the story is that Philip II of Spain, deadly foe of Elizabeth I of England, sent his huge Armada of ships to invade England and return it to the Catholic faith, only to be defeated by the plucky little English navy, whose courageous captains included Sir Francis Drake. Drake’s celebrated against-the-odds victory is often depicted as the moment that England took on Europe and won. For example, here’s Winston Churchill during the Battle of Britain: “We must regard the next week or so as a very important period in our history. It ranks with the days when the Spanish Armada was approaching the Channel, and Drake was finishing his game of bowls...” Was Sir Francis Drake really playing bowls when the Armada approached? Yet that game of bowls is problematic. You probably have the idea that it was while Drake was enjoying a game on the greens of Plymouth Hoe that the Spanish Armada was first sighted on the horizon. The usual story has Sir Francis turning to Lord Effingham, commander of the English fleet, and saying that there was no need to hurry, there would be plenty of time to finish the game, and to thrash the Spaniards too. It’s deep in our national psyche as a moment of coolness in the face of fire; of the stiff upper lip. Disappointingly, though, none of the early accounts of the Armada mention anyone playing bowls at all. It was a number of years after the event that one account finally describes sailors in Plymouth in July 1588 “dancing, bowling and making merry” on…

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The Battle of the Atlantic: why Britain almost lost to Hitler's U-boats
type: item
date: 2020-05-27T18:15:08.000Z
creator: Gavin Mortimer
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Naval battles
subject: Second World War battles
description: Historian Gavin Mortimer delivers an explosive tale of how the British ignored the German U-boat threat in the early days of the Battle of the Atlantic – and how that could have led to defeat in the Second World War
encoded: On the second day of September 1939, a 13,000-ton liner, SS Athenia, of the Donaldson Atlantic Line, set sail from Liverpool for Montreal, across the Atlantic Ocean. Among the 1,103 passengers were a number of German Jews and 72 British nationals, along with 315 crew, under the command of Captain James Cook. The next day, the Athenia was makin good progress as passengers sat down to dinner. There was only one topic of conversation: the message pinned to the ship’s noticeboard that morning announcing Britain’s declaration of war on Germany. Not all passengers had an appetite. A few, like Mrs McMillan Wallace, were getting some fresh air on the promenade deck. Suddenly from the crow’s nest she heard a a yell: “Submarine!” She looked out to sea and saw an ominous white wake. Lieutenant Fritz-Julius Lemp sounded the klaxon for battle stations, as U-30 dipped below the surface of the Atlantic to attack what he thought was “an armed merchant cruiser” travelling at 16 knots. When the U-boat was 1,600 yards from its target, Lemp “called out his firing intervals for a spread of four torpedoes”. Back came the message: “Torpedoes loose!” Greyhound, a World War Two film starring Tom Hanks, is set at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic. Read more from us: The real history that inspired WW2 film Greyhound The Battle of the Atlantic: the "desperate" WW2 campaign featured in Tom Hanks film Greyhound Danger in the deep: key questions about the Battle of the Atlantic answered At 7.43pm, the Athenia shook with a mighty explosion. The ship listed to port, and diners screamed in confusion as tables, chairs and cutlery went flying. In the melee, husbands were separated from wives, mothers from children and sisters from brothers. The crew rushed to lower the 26 lifeboats, as a few hundred yards away the crew of U-30 roared their delight. They had struck the first submarine blow for the fatherland, sinking an armed cruiser less than 12 hours after the declaration of war. But as Lemp o…

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Danger in the deep: key questions about the Battle of the Atlantic answered
type: item
date: 2020-05-22T17:30:08.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Naval battles
subject: Second World War battles
description: Jonathan Dimbleby talks to BBC History Magazine editor Rob Attar about how German U-boats nearly changed the course of the Second World War during the Battle of the Atlantic – and why salvation for the Allies came from the skies...
encoded: Jonathan Dimbleby, author of The Battle of the Atlantic: How the Allies Won the War, answers key questions about one of the most important campaigns of World War Two... How important was the Battle of the Atlantic to the outcome of the war? It was fundamental. The Atlantic was the route by which all resources came to Britain, without which the country would have collapsed. Had we lost the battle, we wouldn’t have had enough weapons – nor the industrial capacity to make weapons – and American troops would not have been able to get across for D-Day. In fact, there wouldn’t have been a D-Day. Was it possible that the Allies could have lost the Battle of the Atlantic? With the benefit of hindsight it’s clear that we were likely to win, but at the time it appeared that we could very easily lose. Had Adolf Hitler not been so obsessed with the urge to conquer Russia, and instead diverted more resources to the Atlantic, it could have been a very close-run thing. To my mind it’s academic whether we could or couldn’t have lost, because what is intriguing is that it was an open question for so long. With all the demands on ships elsewhere, it took only a small number of vessels to be lost in the Atlantic for the reduction in supplies to inhibit the ability to wage war. Winston Churchill claimed that nothing caused him greater anxiety than the U-boat threat, while President Roosevelt said that the war would in the end be won or lost in the Atlantic. At the start of the battle, which of the two sides was best prepared? Neither was very well prepared. The British came to the battle having misread the lessons of the First World War – when U-boats first displayed their destructive potential – and they underestimated their capacity to damage Allied routes across the Atlantic. They did not have enough escorts to protect their ships, and were torn between that requirement and the need to protect against invasion across the Channel. There just weren’t enough ships to go round. As for t…

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The Battle of the Atlantic: the "desperate" WW2 campaign featured in Tom Hanks film Greyhound
type: item
date: 2020-05-22T17:00:47.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Naval battles
subject: Second World War battles
description: Greyhound, an upcoming World War Two film starring Tom Hanks, is set at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic. But how much do you know about this crucial period of Second World War history, which saw the Merchant Navy fend off German Kriegsmarine's U-boats? Here GH Bennett explores the desperate six-year campaign to preserve the Atlantic supply line and prevent Britain from starving
encoded: Learn about the campaign featured in forthcoming Hollywood film Greyhound, starring Tom Hanks and based on C S Forester’s 1955 novel The Good Shepherd In March 1941 Winston Churchill coined the phrase ‘Battle of the Atlantic’ to describe a campaign that had opened on 3 September 1939. That battle would not conclude until the last day of the war. It was the longest, and perhaps strangest, clash of the Second World War – one that would see British merchant seamen using kites and wire-carrying rockets in defence of their ships. In a struggle for control of the sea lanes from Britain to the Americas, the Royal Navy and United States Navy would be pitted against the German Kriegsmarine. Against the sea lanes, upon which depended Britain’s ability to feed and maintain itself in the war, Germany would deploy U-boat submarines, surface raiders, mines and aircraft. The convoys of merchant ships would be defended by a variety of armed escort vessels from makeshift ships like armed merchant cruisers and trawlers through to purpose-built corvettes, frigates and destroyers. It was a war of technological innovation – of Enigma code-breaking, radar, sonar and high frequency direction-finding. From 1940 until 1943 the combat in the Atlantic hung in the balance. Yet, due in part to the fact that they were able to make better use of these technical innovations than the enemy, from the middle of 1943 the Allies slowly gained the upper hand. Success and failure in the battle would be measured in tonnage: tonnage of ships sunk and tonnage of cargo delivered safe to port. Civilians would play a significant part in the battle. Campaigns like ‘Dig for Victory’ and ‘Make do and Mend’ were ancillary elements in the Battle of the Atlantic – programmes aimed at minimising civilian demand on the cargoes from North America. But the outcome of the Battle of the Atlantic depended most heavily on one group of civilians in particular: the men and, in some cases, the women who made up the British Mer…

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