Military Blunders

This program examines the ramifications of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, where Viet Minh revolutionaries defeated French forces and changed the future of Southeast Asia.

First Sea Lord Winston Churchill's badly planned attack on Turkey in World War I

The disastrous ‘Bay of Pigs’ invasion and the subsequent Cuban Missile crisis brought the world to the brink of Nuclear War. Was it necessary and how close did the world come to World War III?

The attempt by U.S. Special Forces to rescue hostages in the U.S. Embassy during the Iranian Revolution in 1980

Failed 1991 coup against Mikhail Gorbachev.

A general's flawed tactics causes wide-scale mutinies in the French army.

Saddam's blunderbuss decision to invade Iraq's neighbor.

See how the Lusitania sailed into history, leading the U.S. into World War I

Blistering conditions imposed by the Allies on post-war Germany resulted in the rise of Nazism.

By the mid-1930s, Soviet Armed Forces ranked with the world's most modern - but a purge of senior officers would have disastrous consequences.

A hydrogen bomb is dropped dangerously close to a Spanish holiday resort.

The Soviet Union shoots down pilot Gary Powers in a top-secret U.S. spy plane over Russia.

Whatever your opinion on the moral rights and wrongs of the Falklands War, it is inescapably one of the most significant historical events of the 1980s. When Argentinian dictator General Galtieri invaded the South Atlantic islands early in 1982, he set off a chain of events that would eventually lead to the overthrow of his own government. The resulting war would see British and Argentinian forces involved in the biggest naval conflict staged since World War II, the South Americans finally defeated, and more than 1,000 personnel lose their lives around Goose Green and Port Stanley.