SORRY - SOLD OUT
The focus of attention in volume 18 (issues 69-72) covers two major operations: 'Gomorrah' which brought massive devastation to the German city of Hamburg in 1943, and the battle of the Hürtgen Forest in 1944 which resulted in horrendous casualties for the American units concerned. Hamburg received three major bombing raids at the end of July 1943, creating an atmospheric firestorm in which more than 40,000 civilians lost thir lives. 'Then and Now' comparisons taken in and around the firestorm area, together with maps and aerial photographs, illustrate the raids in detail, and describe the aftermath and subsequent clear-up which it was estimated would take 25 years to complete. Lying astride Germany's western frontier, the Hürtgen Forest was the location of one of the Second World War's bloodiest battles. For three months, up to 200,000 American and German troops were committed to a terrible battle of attrition to try to capture or defend, as the case may be, fifty square miles of forest. In the end it was a hollow American victory with a casualty total approaching 24,000 killed, wounded and missing, with the German forces suffering an even higher loss ratio. The opening of former West Germany's eastern frontier, celebrated in a feature on the Day of German Unification in Berlin in October 1990, resulted in a visit by After the Battle to the site of Hermann Göring's mansion at Carinhall, north of Berlin. Previously in a restricted area, it has now already become a tourist attraction. Other stories cover lesser-known, but equally important, historical locations such as the 'Luftwafe' hospital in Woolwich in South London; the Combined Services Detailed Interrrogation Centre in Buckinghamshire, and an original American Field Hospital Unit in Wiltshire. Further afield, we revisit Addis Ababa in Ethiopa on the 50th anniversary of its liberation from the Italian forces, and the Danish airfield of Aalborg attacked by the RAF in an abortive operation in August 1940 in which all the attacking aircraft were shot down. Plus Operation 'Sealion' — the invasion that never was, and the remaking of the film Memphis Belle.
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