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Coming Up

All of that sneaking around I did last year, playing with gunpowder, riding in tanks and going underneath WW1 forts is finally about to hit screens as part of National Geographic’s flagship new series ‘Defending Europe’. Viewers in the UK can start watching from Monday night, 16th September. Making this with Atomic was my best TV job so far. Each episode is about a different country, and I’m in the Britain, France and Finland episodes. It’s also hitting screens in various European countries with the episodes in a slightly different order, so keep your eyes peeled, but for now here’s a trailer:

We’re just a few weeks out from our Portsmouth day trip.

You’ll tour the Mary Rose with me, then we have lunch in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, before we head on to HMS Victory with Kate Jamieson. To finish the day, we recreate Lord Nelson’s last walk on English soil and then adjourn to the pub to toast him.

If you’d like to spend a day of boat nerdery with self and Kate, visit www.istoriatravel.org/portsmouth.

We’re also coming up hard on the Great War Group conference now. Each year, we move it to try and make it fair for those positioned around the country, and this year we’re in Leicester. There’s a whole weekend of learning and fun planned.

Keynote speeches are epic:

Peter Hart will be talking about the battle experience of WW1 Generals: WE WERE YOUNG ONCE: GENERALS IN THE SUDAN

Vanda Wilcox will also be jetting in from Italy for this exclusive: THE GREAT WAR IN LIBYA: JIHAD, COLONIALISM AND THE WORLD'S FIRST ARAB REPUBLIC.

Finally, Professor Sir Simon Wessely will be giving an outstanding talk: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PRIVATE HARRY FARR: SHELL SHOCK, COWARDICE AND AN EXECUTION.

On the Saturday, you also get to build your own programme by attending as many of our small group seminars as you can squeeze in. The list this year is formidable:

ALEX NELEPOVITZ: MALAS AMISTADES: MEXICO, GERMANY AND THE USA IN WW1

GARETH DAVIES: LANDSHIPS OF THE DESERT: THE PALESTINE TANK DETACHMENT IN GAZA

LOUISE PROVAN: THE SPY WHO DISAPPEARED: A TRANSCASPIAN ADVENTURE

ANDY MOODY: ZOMBIES, DYSTOPIAN CITIES & THE UNDEAD: HOW THE GREAT WAR INVENTED HORROR FILMS

STEVE MARSDIN: DÉFENSE DE FUMER: HOW A COMPANY OF FRENCH RESERVES (MAY HAVE) CHANGED THE WAR

NIGEL ATTER: TIGERS ON THE TIGRIS: THE 2ND LEICESTERS IN MESOPOTAMIA

NICOLAI EBERHOLST: A MORE MOBILE WAR?: THE REALITY OF LIFE ON THE EASTERN FRONT

ALI KIMLINGER: FEEDING BELGIUM: HERBERT HOOVER AND THE COMMISSION FOR RELIEF

CHRISTOPHER NETHERCLIFT: THE HANDMAIDEN'S TALE: THE RFC & THE ARMY, JANUARY - JUNE 1917

ANDREW HOLMES: PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP: HOW TO GET BEST OUT OF YOUR TRIP TO THE BATTLEFIELDS

RICHARD WILLIS: SCHICKSALSIENDE: 18TH JULY 1918: THE REAL BLACK DAY OF THE GERMAN ARMY

CLIVE O'CONNELL: PROXIMATE CAUSE: THE LEYLAND LINE AND A LEGAL LEGACY OF WW1

We like to have a bit of fun on the Friday night, so along with dinner there will be our own version of University Challenge dedicated to WW1. Peter Hart’s ‘Naughty Sausages’ will be taking on Andy Lock’s ‘Sneaky Beavers’. The twist? The teams will be picked from volunteers on the night. I’ll be the Quizmaster, and Henry Spilberg will be our designated grown up (umpire).

There's lots more in the way of socials etc., and we finish off on Sunday morning with a remembrance ceremony dedicated to Leicester’s war dead. We’ve got lovely people coming in from as far away as California and New Zealand, and lots of places in between, so if you’d like to turn super nerd for the weekend, you can see ticket options HERE.

This Week

On Monday, I shared my 100th article since starting this mayhem, and concentrated on my recent visit to the Battle of Britain Bunker on the outskirts of London.

HOW IS THIS MY 100th POST ALREADY?! I’ve saved an exciting one for you today, so get ready to get stuck into the Battle of Britain and nerds coming to the rescue during the dark days of 1940, but before I do I just wanted to say: Thank you. When I was approached to start a Substack I had never heard of it, and now thanks to the work model it offers creative people, for the first time in my life I’m actually being paid at least something for the endless hours I put into creating history content for ordinary people.

If you’ve subscribed, particularly if you pledged the £5 a month or more, then you have literally changed my life in the past few months. Substack means I can limit the endless exploitation of being a content creator. I’ve been able to start turning down the kind of opportunities that offer “exposure;’” the ones where someone wants to pillage the inside of your head for their own gain, for a fleeting TV documentary, an event or an article and give you nothing in return for the incredibly hard work you’ve put in learning this stuff. The sleepless nights about how to hustle enough money from various projects to put a roof over my head, when you’re fretting about the £100 xxx owes you for something you did three months ago, have also diminished.

Thanks to people like you, I get to do the thing I love, most of the time. I hope you feel like you’re getting your money’s worth. If you haven’t yet subscribed, then please do. The more I can build this publication up, the less time I have to spend on beating a path towards the red line that clarifies paying the bills every month, and the more I get to write for you. Who knows, one day, maybe I can start building up a team and paying others to do what makes their nerdy little hearts sing. There are whole magazines that have moved onto here employing multiple writers.

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June, 1940

If you need the scene setting for you, then in short, it’s bleak. France has just dropped out of the war, the Low Countries have been overwhelmed and so now, Britain faces the prospect of an invasion coming from the continent. To pave the way, the Luftwaffe are about to attempt to pummel Britain into oblivion, so that at the very least we might negotiate a peace settlement with Hitler and back out of the war. Failing that, they’re coming for us.

On 18th June, Churchill addressed parliament and said: "The 'Battle of France' is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin."

The German plan all hinges on Hitler’s airmen gaining superiority over the Royal Air Force. The solution is obvious for RAF Fighter Command: Get up, get in their faces, send them packing before they can bomb the living daylights out of us. But if you thought it was just a case of someone keeping watch, then phoning it in when the enemy appeared from across the Channel and spitfires scrambling to meet them, you’d be wrong. Because nerds had got involved, and the system that they were able to develop was so advanced, it is mind boggling. So advanced, that Hitler never saw it coming…

In order to combat the Nazi menace above Britain, the RAF needed to assemble, filter and then digest a vast amount of information at high speed. That information then needed to be distributed back out, at even higher speed, to the fighter squadrons capable of combatting the Luftwaffe before it was already outdated and the RAF turned up to find the enemy gone.

What do you do when you need a computer but they haven’t really been invented yet?

The answer is: Go and find Hugh Dowding.

Designed prior to the outbreak of war, the Dowding System was the first large-scale aerial interception network run from the ground. Radar stations and observers telephoned in their information, and this was used to create a real time map of Britain’s airspace that the RAF could then properly defend by issuing orders to Fighter Command.

This graphic created by the Air Ministry in 1941 simplifies the whole process and makes it easy to digest.

ARTICLE: Choreographing the Battle of Britain

On Thursday, I ferreted out a real character from the American Civil War, with some Confederate naval history that included this scrap off the coast of Texas:

At the beginning of 1863, Semmes had information that the US Navy had taken the port of Galveston, and that some 30,000 Union troops were now there getting ready to invade Texas. Semmes was fixated on how many ships they’d have needed to land that many men, and all of the supplies necessary to keep them going. He also knew that the entrance to the port was narrow, and that most of those ships would have had to anchor outside the mouth of the harbour, so that they could decant men and materials into lighters and get it all onto dry land.

‘"Much disorder and confusion would necessarily attend the landing," he wrote. "My design was to surprise this fleet by a night attack, and if possible destroy it, or at least greatly cripple it." Semmes was fully aware he was disobeying orders by planning an attack on General Banks's forces… [He had been] specifically directed to avoid combat with any enemy warships, but those same orders had given him wide discretion in interpreting his mission, and the opportunity to play havoc with a major enemy troop movement, and possibly destroy it, was simply too tempting to ignore.’

Added to this was the fact that Semmes was confident that everyone believed his ship to be half way to Brazil, on her way round to the Far East. Nobody would see them coming. "My crew was well drilled, my powder was in good condition, and as to the rest, I trusted to luck, and to the creek not being too high.’

On a Sunday morning the Alabama approached Galveston, looking for a large fleet of transports bobbing about on the water. When they didn’t find one, Semmes quickly worked out that Galveston must have fallen back into Confederate hands. By this time, one of the five remaining US navy warships blockading the port had spotted them and out it came.

"The Alabama had given chase pretty often, but this was the first time she had been chased. I at once conceived the design of drawing this single ship of the enemy far enough away from the remainder of her feet, to enable me to decide a battle with her before her consorts could come to her relief.”

The ship pursuing them, the USS Hatteras, was actually a converted passenger ship, and she wasn’t built for this fight. She was slow, her exposed paddle wheels made her vulnerable and she boasted less firepower than Semmes’s ship. It was getting dark when he gave the order to beat to quarters. The ships were by now close enough to shout to each other, and the Hatteras demanded that Semmes identify himself. With his crew were several of the Liverpool based sailors that had originally taken the Alabama out to the Azores, and one of them employed a ruse in the appropriate accent:

"This is her Britannic Majesty's steamer Petrel.” Now who are you? Semmes only listened long enough to hear: ”This the United States ship..." Before crew from the Hatteras could board them to verify their Britishness, Semmes decided to open fire:

"Tell the enemy who we are, for we must not strike him in disguise, and when you have done so, give him the broadside!" [An officer] took the speaking trumpet from the English officer and shouted, "This is the Confederate States steamer Alabama!" and gave the signal to fire. Instantly the starboard side of the raider erupted in a sheet of flame, and the air was rent with the roar of six heavyweight cannon fired almost simultaneously.

Witness George Fullam wrote: "Twas a grand though fearful sight to see the guns belching forth, in the darkness of the night, sheets of living flame, the deadly missiles striking the enemy with a force that we could feel. Then, when the shells struck her side, and especially the percussion ones, her whole side was lit up.” Semmes conducted the attack while standing on the horse block, a raised platform on the quarterdeck over the well that housed the propeller. Fullam was impressed by his captain's coolness under fire. As the shots whizzed past him, he would call out, "Give it to the rascals!” "Aim low, men!" "Don't be all night sinking that fellow!" The crew was equally enthusiastic. "That's a British pill for you to swallow!" shouted the boatswain, after a shot from the Alabama tore open the Yankee's side.

The action was intense. Some of the Alabama's shells went completely through the Hatteras before exploding, while others burst inside, setting her afire in three places. One shot exploded in her steam chest, scalding all within reach. About seven minutes into the engagement, a shell from the 100-pounder Blakely entered the Hatteras at the waterline, exploding in the sick bay.’

The Hatteras valiantly tried to ram the Alabama and board her, but after a thirteen minute battle, she was done for. Firing off a gun to surrender, when she went down, she apparently became the first steam warship sunk by another in history. Semmes was not about to wait for the remaining US Navy ships to come and investigate. The Alabama made for Jamaica.

Next Week

I’ll be on a tour in Italy, so you can expect history nerding continental style. There will also be a preview of Dan Jones’s new biography of Henry V, and some political wittering from a public figure who should have known his speaking limitations and stopped embarrassing himself and others, who sat with their heads in their hands whilst he waffled complete nonsense… Wilhelm II, obviously.