Original subtitles

June 6th, 1944.

The shores of Normandy come alive as Allied forces surge forward

in a massive coordinated assault

to liberate Europe from Nazi occupation.

Word of the landing rapidly spreads through

the chain of German military command.

The countdown to Hitler's downfall has begun.

D-Day is to this day the largest amphibious operation in history.

It's also one of the biggest military gambles in history,

as the success of the operation relies on

the Germans not knowing where the Allies are landing.

Just 10km from these beaches, Luftwaffe forces

at the Douvres Radar Station stand their ground.

A defiant outpost in the face of the Allied advance.

This radar station was a priority target

on the 6th of June, and it was the duty of the Canadian Forces

and their North Shore Regiment to take it - intact, if possible.

Yet, as the Allies rush in to reclaim Western Europe,

this German station holds strong for nearly two weeks.

What secrets lie within this site?

What makes this installation so vital to protect?

The answer lies in events that unfolded two years earlier

on the windswept cliffs of Bruneval, France.

In 1942, grainy photographs captured at

British intelligence reveal an epic piece of Nazi engineering.

The photographs capture a grand chateau nestled 12km from Bruneval.

Beside it, a dark spot on the image reveals itself to be

a peculiar dish-shaped structure pointing directly at England.

This is no ordinary coastal defence.

It's something far more sinister.

This is a piece of radar technology the Allies have never seen before.

This is something new, something different.

What is it? How does it work? What does it do?

For months, the Allies have struggled

to get their bombers past enemy lines.

Time and time again, they've been caught off-guard by German planes.

It's as if they're expecting them. But how?

This site could hold the key to unlocking some of

the Nazis' best-kept secrets when it comes to aerial dominance.

Is this site important for a particular reason,

or is it just part of the bigger puzzle?

The Allies are determined to find out.

These photographs set the stage for a daring gamble,

a mission to unravel the secrets that appear

to be hidden in plain sight.

How did this quiet stretch of the French coastline become

the target of British paratroopers?

And what would they discover here that would ultimately lead to such

a prolonged German resistance during the D-Day invasion?

A ten-day stakeout on the shores of a falling regime

is the culmination of the Second World War's Battle of the Beams,

an unspoken technological arms race between Germany

and Britain that ignites in the early days of conflict.

The Second World War was as much about technology

and technological innovation as it was about brute force.

Technological superiority in war is critical,

and the country that can outmatch

and outperform the other has the upper hand in the conflict.

Both sides have bomber planes,

so what then would give one side the advantage over the other?

The ability to attack when the other side is least prepared,

and the ability to defend against similar surprise attacks.

To accomplish this, both Nazi Germany

and Britain will turn to a novel technology called radar.

Early radar technology operates on

the basic principle of radio wave reflection.

The radar sends out radio waves,

and when they hit a metal object -

say, an aircraft or a ship -

they're sent back to the receivers.

Radar measures the distance to that object

by the time it takes

to bounce back from it.

Radar transforms the battlefield in

the Second World War by shattering the threat of a surprise attack.

But the British have an early lead.

By the time the Second World War explodes into

a brutal reality, in September 1939,

they were already equipped with a secret weapon.

The world's first operational early-warning radar

to be integrated into a country's air defence system.

It's known as the British Chain Home.

After the First World War,

early detection became a real concern in France

and England because Paris and London had been bombed

by the German airships

and by the Gotha bombers.

And the acceleration

of war in those times forecasts that the winner of

the next war will be the country with air superiority

and smashing enemy towns under carpet bombing.

A prediction that proved to be woefully realistic.

The Chain Home radar stations are predominantly located along

the eastern and southern coast of Britain.

By the beginning of the war, the Chain Home system is made up

of around 20 individual stations.

But over the course of the war,

that network expands to over 40 stations.

The Chain Home system is

a network of early warning radar

stations that can spot enemy aircraft up to 190km away.

Any aircraft flying over the English Channel

and North Sea would be seen,

triggering a warning to the Royal Air Force,

who could swiftly intervene.

Each station typically has two main sites - a transmitter site

with four 110m tall steel towers,

and a receiver site with wooden towers about 73m tall.

The transmitter towers send out radio waves in

a fan-shaped pattern over the sea.

And when aircraft entered this field,

the signals would reflect back to the receiver tower.

And of course, this entire chain is linked to

the British aerial command system,

so that's of great help in the defence of Britain.

It's key in helping target

the Luftwaffe as it's coming in on bomb runs.

Could the technology at Bruneval simply be

a Nazi version of the Chain Home system,

or could it be something much more advanced?

Struggling to evade Britain's formidable defences,

Nazi Germany develops a strategy

to improve their bombing techniques.

This is no easy task, but the Third Reich has a plan.

The Lorenz system is

a blind-landing technology that's developed

for civil aviation in Germany in the 1920s and '30s,

and is adopted in 1932 at German airports.

The system transmits beams that guide the aircraft left,

right or centre through bad weather for a safe landing.

Simple tones are used to signal position.

Too far to the right of the runway,

a pilot would hear a series of Morse code dashes

and know to adjust to the left.

Too far to the left of the runway,

and he would hear a series of dots

and know to adjust to the right.

The key to the system is the centreline,

where both signals overlap,

resulting in a steady tone known as the equi-signal.

By adjusting his path until he heard a steady tone,

the pilot could be guided to the runway.

In the late 1930s,

this technology is installed on planes

in the German Air Force known as Luftwaffe.

Leveraging this commercial technology,

they use radio signals from ground stations

to facilitate night-time military operations.

The Lorenz radar system needed to be located at

the end of a runway. And it was quite a compact system.

It consisted of a small shack that housed a lot of the equipment

and three antennas as a timber frame connected

to that building to gather the signal and relay the data.

It was made out of wood. It was easy to construct and pretty compact,

but also pretty limited in its capabilities.

In the early days of WW2,

the Luftwaffe relies on the Lorenz beam system for navigation,

but its limited range of roughly 48km proves insufficient

for their ambitious bombing plans.

Very early on in the war,

Hitler does declare Britain to be his primary enemy

on the Western Front. Now, Britain is an island,

whereas Germany is on continental Europe.

So the strategy that was decided

for attacking Britain was one of using airpower.

This kind of attack was extremely taxing on the British population,

obviously, because it would happen in a very sudden wave.

It would be a lot of bombs that would be dropped.

So, of course that takes a toll on the population,

not just with respect to casualty

and the mass destruction that it brings with that, but also,

of course, the psychological costs

of having these attacks happen again and again and again.

The Germans really focus on these bombing raids for

a number of reasons. They want to disrupt

the British war effort by targeting specific military

and strategic sites.

The bombing raids will also hopefully divert

British resources from other fronts.

Nazi scientists develop a more powerful,

long-range version of the system. Knickebein.

They essentially built huge versions of Lorenz antenna arrays,

capable of projecting two powerful intersecting beams over targets in

Great Britain to guide bombers with greater accuracy.

Knickebein literally means "bent leg",

and it's actually called the crooked leg

because the frame that holds up the antennas is in a bent shape.

The antenna is fixed on a steerable rail-mounted track,

allowing for directional control of the radio beams.

By 1940,

multiple Knickebein transmitters are strategically placed along

the coasts of Norway, Germany, Holland and France.

Their gaze fixed on potential targets across the English Channel.

The Knickebein systems work together

to dramatically boost

transmission power.

The bombers are able to track these beams like

a digital breadcrumb trail to their target.

This really changes the way the war's fought,

as it allows German bombers to attack their targets

with much more accuracy.

There's nowhere to hide.

This is a new and deadlier kind of warfare.

The Luftwaffe is now far better equipped

to carry out night raids than their adversaries.

German pilots are now becoming blind flying experts.

From a military perspective, they own the night sky.

Later this year,

a very different installation sits on the shores of northern France.

The Bruneval coast, 1940.

A frenzy of construction unfolds as

a hulking structure of steel

and wire rose up from the ground.

A radar station, the eyes of the technological beast

with its watchful gaze focused across

the English Channel. This isn't just a line of defences.

It's a technological shield in the making.

This particular site, once it's photographed,

baffles photo analysts

because it doesn't look like any other site.

The radar antenna at Bruneval doesn't appear

to be attached to any kind of shack that you'd expect

to see with the Lorenz system. Instead, it's positioned within

the grounds of this inconspicuous French villa.

When I look at the crooked leg, it's large, it's long, it's movable,

and it has these towers that are tall

and has more fine elements.

And the other radar system is solid.

It's this parabolic bowl that is mounted to a base.

It's a very different feeling when you look at these two things.

If this was the site of a Lorenz or a Knickebein radar system,

the most obvious giveaway would be the surrounding infrastructure.

It's not fortified. It's not protected.

So what's it doing? What's it picking up?

What's it looking for?

If you're an Allied pilot or an Allied bomber,

you have to wonder,

could this radar represent your impending doom?

Most notably, the station at Bruneval is missing two crucial

structural elements that these bomber guidance systems would

need to operate - tracks and airstrips.

Completely detached from its surroundings,

the radar at Bruneval is a solitary structure.

Could it be yet another leap

of technological warfare for the Nazis?

As Germany deploys its secret array of radar along

the continental coast,

British scientists get to work on counter technology.

Starting in October 1940, the RAF deploys

a high-powered transmitter codenamed "Aspirin," effectively confounding

German bombers and their Knickebein systems.

Instead of jamming the Knickebein system,

the British deploy a clever deception strategy

by broadcasting their own dot signals.

These random signals synchronise

with German transmissions

and essentially scramble the Morse code guidance.

This was so effective that

the Germans began missing their

targets at a much higher rate than before. And in fact,

it was so confusing that at one point

a German aircrew landed on

the British air base using their radar information,

thinking it was actually their own air base.

That's how lost they were.

This countermeasure doesn't slow the Nazis down, though.

They'll have to come up with something better,

and it's almost guaranteed that they will.

Aspirin can only cure the German headache for so long.

The Luftwaffe will soon become immune

to the British countermeasures.

November 14th, 1940. The sky over Coventry, England,

erupts as more than 500 bombers unleash

a devastating 11-hour aerial attack.

The Luftwaffe has flown under the cloak of darkness,

honing in on their target with incredible precision,

resulting in one of the most infamous raids of the war so far.

What's called the Blitz over England by the Germans

was intended to soften Britain up for the impending invasion.

The term Blitz means lightning,

and it harks back also to the blitzkrieg,

which was the type of warfare that

the Germans had engaged in when they invaded Poland

in September of 1939,

and also when they invaded Western Europe in

the spring of 1940. The Blitz is

a sustained aerial bombing campaign that lasts from

the fall of 1940 until the spring of 1941.

It's estimated that approximately 43,000 civilians are killed in these

bombing raids, and over 120,000 more are injured.

Britain is still considered one of the strongest,

most powerful countries in the world.

They are at the peak of their power, essentially.

And then suddenly this Blitz happens

and Germany comes back on the world stage

with superior military technology,

enhanced military technology with the ability

to attack England in this way.

So how was the Luftwaffe able to achieve this?

What type of technology did the Germans have at this time

that could surpass the Chain Home system?

The answer?

A new radar system now operating on a higher frequency.

The X-Gerat.

Just months after their reliable

Knickebein is jammed,

this new Nazi tech

utilises cross signals

to pinpoint targets

with unparalleled accuracy.

Germany is developing new systems very rapidly.

As soon as one is deployed,

they're already working on improving it and extending its capacity.

The X-Gerat operated on a higher and more powerful frequency,

and its beam was narrower and more concentrated,

making it difficult for the enemy to detect and jam.

Soon the Blitz becomes a terrifying symphony

of destruction as X-Gerat guided bombers

carve a path of ruin across British cities.

Looking to the coastline where this strange device was spotted,

you have to ask, could the French cliff sides

be concealing an X-Gerat system?

The unit at Bruneval is specifically positioned just metres away

from the edge of the cliff.

It's a rather unusual position for

a long-range bombing tool,

which could be installed further inland.

Its aim is clearly laser focused on the English Channel,

but what is it looking for?

We know from their track record that

the Nazis are always very specific about

the sites that they choose.

So what was it about this particular location

that made it so important?

Barbed wire and other fortifications

hint at the vital role this location plays.

The villa is located about 90m back

from the cliff edge. Between the villa and the coast,

we see this parabolic radar mounted on a wheeled unit.

The British, as they're looking at this new parabolic antenna,

they don't see any control room hut.

And their assumption here is that the so-called "brain"

of this radar system is going to be somewhere in the house.

Though the dish itself is distinct, smaller,

and uniquely shaped, it's the brain of the radar system -

hidden in the old French home - that is truly

the most fascinating feature of all.

Inside the control room, you have

Luftwaffe-trained radar operators.

A category of trades in the military that you know how

to read a scope, measure it, understand what you're looking at

and communicate that information for the Luftwaffe air commander

then to scramble his airplanes and deploy them.

Control rooms like these handle

the all-important communications portion of Nazi Germany's main line

of defence. This is just one station in

a fine-tuned web that passes information back and forth.

By overlapping their observational coverage,

the Nazis have come up with

a way to expertly map and track the sky.

But how exactly it does this is still a baffling mystery

to the Brits. Even as the Allies hone in

and effectively intercept the Nazis' advanced expert systems,

this radar station remains operable.

Could it be a technology even more superior than what

the Germans had already devastatingly deployed?

As the Blitz rages on,

a relentless downpour of fire and steel,

the British refuse to yield.

Uncovering the strategic purpose of this site

becomes an urgent endeavour.

It would have been incredibly challenging and even demoralising

for the British, having undermined one scheme,

to suddenly find out the Nazis have another one.

Because the stakes are so high,

Britain is really fighting for its survival,

and time is of the essence.

Both sides recognise the critical importance of radar dominance,

and with each leap Nazi Germany makes in radio navigation,

the British trail close behind, working to thwart enemy attacks

with counter technologies for each new development.

Thanks to secrecy on both sides,

they were not really aware of

the level of technology reached by the opponent.

This really becomes a cat-and-mouse game where

as the British are able to intercept and jam the German radar,

the Germans are then coming up with new technology

that the British have to figure out new ways to counter.

At this point in the Battle of the Beams,

the British recognise that maybe it's time for them

to go on the offensive. So far,

most of their radar technology has focused on defensive strategy,

but the Germans were always one step ahead of them.

As war tactics shift,

the British turn their attention to the offence.

But in order to develop a technology worthy of warfare,

they not only have to intercept German radar

but uncover what makes it so successful.

Radar is basically something for defence,

and defence is not a concern for the Germans in the '30s.

They do not fear to be attacked by anybody.

Yet, as the Nazi war machine continues

to plough through Europe,

the need to defend their skies becomes evermore pressing.

By 1941,

a sinister transformation of Nazi-occupied Europe unfolds

as a defensive line of radar installations,

Eyes of the Reich, emerges from conquered land.

The Kammhuber Line runs from Denmark to the middle of France,

dividing Western Europe into a series of radar-equipped boxes.

These stations relay real-time information

to Luftwaffe command posts,

so they can shoot down enemy aircraft before they get

to their intended target.

This system was able to detect enemy aircraft from up to 320km away,

so it posed a real threat to Allied bombers.

The German forces had been on the offensive

for a long time. But with this development,

it seems like they were realising that at some point they'd have

to defend the territory they conquered or even their home turf.

Kammhuber Line is a two-pronged system that requires long

and short-range tracking.

Several long-range radars provide the first line of defence,

but it's a mysterious new technology that delivers the final punch -

turning night skies into a killing ground for Allied air crews.

The implications of the Kammhuber Line defence for

the German military are immense.

Early warning means preparedness.

So now the Luftwaffe can detect incoming threats

and mobilise against the Allies.

Allied bomber losses increase with each attempted raid,

and soon British intelligence concludes that

an advanced German defensive system must be responsible.

Nearly two years before, on December 18th, 1939,

German radar systems spotted a British bombing raid on

Wilhelmshaven, a staggering 113km away.

German fighters pounce on the unsuspecting bombers.

This was one of the first instances

that really tipped the Allies off to the possibility that

the Germans had some kind of defensive radar system.

The Allies, however,

don't have any vital information about what it's called,

where it's located, or how it works.

Mere months later, some of these questions are answered when

a Danish Flight Lieutenant stationed on

the remote island of Fano makes a startling observation.

Photographs reveal this large rectangular array

of antennae, almost looking like a bed spring.

The Freya system is 20 to 30 metres wide.

It's a huge set-up

and very difficult to mistake for other technologies.

The Freya system uses pulse repetition frequency.

It sends out radio pulses and measures the amount of time it takes

to bounce back off of an aircraft,

which then reveals the exact position of that aircraft.

Freya has this amazing long-range capability

to pinpoint enemy aircraft up to 160km away.

Despite its capabilities,

Freya still has some weaknesses.

Primarily the fact that it's a 2D radar system.

This means that a radar technician knows where

the plane is coming from,

has a general idea of where it's going to,

but does not know what its altitude is.

While Freya blankets the skies with its early warning net,

another radar revolution is under way.

German engineers plot a complementary system,

one that fills the gaps in Freya's vision,

pinpointing enemy aircraft with deadly precision.

And among the many vantage points which it will soon occupy is an

unassuming clifftop in Bruneval, France.

Follow-up reconnaissance flights soon feed the Allies

the infamous photographs snapped about Bruneval.

This isn't the bedspring-like installation they'd captured before.

The radar here is something entirely different.

Seeing this parabolic dish at a time when

the Allied radars, English or Americans' radar,

were mostly rectangular ones.

It shows that the Germans at this time had

a three or four-year advance in technology.

The Allies see this new radar station as posing

a real threat.

It may have the capability of not only measuring

the distance of the incoming aircraft,

but also the direction and the altitude.

Think about it. It's unlikely that this parabolic dish is a one-off.

So could the Allies, by learning more about this station,

actually figure out how to penetrate the German coastal defence?

This radar station,

with its strategic position facing southern England,

scans the English Channel for Allied bombers.

The site's location, perched on an exposed coastline,

raises troubling questions for the Allies,

who intend to investigate.

At first glance, this dish doesn't seem very well protected.

It's not fortified. But actually,

by placing it on top of a rocky cliff side,

the Nazis were exploiting the natural landscape to protect it.

This would be hard to reach by foot and dismantle.

But with Allied aircrew casualties mounting in early 1942,

and the German radar threat growing,

it's imperative that the Allies take action now.

They had to go and investigate. They had to figure it out,

because it could have been new technology that they needed

to understand. It could have turned the war.

A request rockets up the chain of command

to Combined Operations HQ,

a raid on the Bruneval site to capture

the German radar technology

and bring it back to Britain for dissection.

It would be quite concerning because you do not know what

the capability of this new radar technology is.

The first question that would probably go through their minds is,

what can this object do? Second,

how is it more enhanced than previous technologies that

Germany has deployed before? The third question would be,

OK, how can we try to emulate this or to make it better

so that we can get the technological edge?

This could be the most important raid of WW2 that you've never heard

of. If it could give the British air superiority

and the ability to penetrate German detective systems,

the tide of the entire war could turn.

A direct assault on Bruneval could be a recipe for disaster.

Not only would it likely cost countless lives,

but any hint of an approaching raid could trigger

the swift destruction of the coveted radar technology.

A different approach is needed, one that demands daring innovation.

Britain's new 1st Airborne Regiment,

a fresh experiment in paratrooper tactics,

could be just what the Allies need to pull this off.

The success of Operation Biting hinges on

a carefully orchestrated manoeuvre

in a silent airborne raid to seize the equipment

and a harrowing escape under the watchful eyes of the enemy.

When the time is right, a parachute drop will deliver

a 120-man assault force led by Major John Frost.

Their mission? Overpower the German garrison

and secure the vital radar installation.

As soon as the parachute team deploys,

the clock starts ticking. They have to find the radar,

dismantle it, and get it to the beach

before the Germans are aware that they're there.

Can it be divided up into pieces? What's the material?

How heavy is it?

You've got all these questions going through your brain that you can't

answer until you're actually there.

The British, in preparation for this very carefully timed mission,

rebuilt the entire complex in England

so the paratroopers could practise on, you know,

similar kind of topography that they're

going to actually go into action

to make sure that absolutely everything happens on time

and that they get the right equipment out of there.

A very complex operation.

This is an incredibly risky raid,

but the expected rewards make it worthwhile.

If the British are able to capture and dismantle

and study this German radar,

they'll know exactly what the Germans can detect

and what they can't detect,

and how they could maybe slip under the radar

and penetrate German lines of defence.

February 27th, 1942, 2100 hours.

120 British paratroopers descend towards the French coast.

These elite soldiers plummet towards their objective,

poised to snatch a vital piece of Nazi technology

and rewrite the course of the war.

The sound of British bombers buzzing overhead clues them in

that something's going on. But it's actually pretty confusing.

They don't immediately understand how or why

the British would be launching a raid on this installation.

German forces scramble to respond to the attack.

They rush towards the Bruneval radar station

and they engage with the British paratroopers.

The question is, how does someone manage to steal such

a massive device?

Piece by piece.

Flight Sergeant Cox,

the RAF's technical specialist for the raid,

leads a team of engineers towards the massive round dish

to the soundtrack of heavy German fire.

Ignoring the danger, they begin dismantling the system.

Working swiftly, they use crowbars and other tools

to remove key components for analysis.

They know how radar systems work in general,

but this is something new that they've never encountered.

If they damage the wrong part or leave something vital behind,

this could all be for naught.

After roughly 30 minutes, they secure the essential parts

and information they need and set their sights on the beach.

The crew narrowly evade the wrath of machineguns just in time

to escape onto British boats. Once they return,

the British need to build the radar system from

the stolen parts using photographs and their memories to guide them.

If they could pull this off, they may unlock the secrets to some of

the Nazi's most powerful wartime tools before

the Germans have a chance to come up with their own game plan.

You can imagine how difficult it would be

to rebuild this system with raw parts and pictures.

It's certainly an art, reverse engineering.

When you take apart a system

and you're not quite sure which parts are

the essential parts and how they work,

and now you not only have to rebuild it

the way it was built originally,

but then to actually decipher how that system actually works.

Thankfully, they have help.

So when this assault team captures the radar dish,

they also fortuitously capture two German technicians

and they will provide unexpected expertise for

the scientists back in the UK.

Would they have been able to reassemble this

and gain the knowledge that they gained without these two?

I'm not sure.

When they reassemble this dish piece by piece, they

discover that it's the top-secret German Wurzburg radar system.

This is a major score for the Allies. They've discovered

the secret that was being kept at Bruneval. They've cracked

the mystery of what they were seeing in those reconnaissance photos.

The British leveraged the technical knowledge gained from the stolen

equipment and German technicians to verify the design, function,

and capabilities of not only the Wurzburg system

but the Kammhuber Line as a whole.

The Wurzburg radar system was so effective

because it could track the movement of enemy aircraft

with unprecedented detail, providing vital information

for German anti-aircraft guns and night fighters.

The Wurzburg system uses a highly-concentrated beam,

which makes it a deadly tool in anti-aircraft defence.

By analysing the Wurzburg, researchers determined

the exact wavelength used by German radar,

and this is a key factor

in developing effective jamming techniques.

Based on its proximity to

the other German Freya systems discovered on the French coast,

it's clear that Wurzburg was designed to work in tandem

with its predecessor.

First, Freya's long-range vision acts as an early-warning system.

It identifies blips on the radar that pinpoint

the incoming aircraft's distance and direction.

Once Freya sounds the alarm,

Wurzburg steps in.

Prior radar systems could only measure the distance that

the plane was from the radar

and the direction that that plane was heading.

This technology could determine the altitude at which

the plane was flying, a three-dimensional radar system.

And that was the game-changer.

That was the advantage that the Nazis had in air warfare.

For the British, this is a huge win.

Successes in espionage, successes in intelligence gathering

I think are huge confidence-boosters for any military.

Yet, even with this win,

the Battle of the Beams is far from over.

Hitler's response to the Bruneval raid

inadvertently aids the Allied cause.

His order to fortify radar installations

with barbed wire creates an easily recognisable pattern

for aerial reconnaissance,

marking these sites as prime targets for future attacks

and weakening German defences in the lead-up to D-Day.

While performing an air reconnaissance,

the station was quite invisible,

but the defence around was absolutely visible.

Hitler believes that the most likely landing spot for

the Allies in their attempted liberation

of Nazi-held Europe is at Pas-de-Calais,

and the reason for this is very simple -

that is where the English Channel is at its narrowest,

and therefore it's the closest geographic part of France

to Great Britain. So the Germans only have limited resources.

As the Germans are pouring all this effort

into fortifying Pas-de-Calais,

it means that the Normandy coastline remains relatively undefended.

June 6th, 1944.

Allied forces surge onto the shores of Normandy, France.

Just a short distance inland,

German troops at the Douvres radar station braced for

an unprecedented assault.

The largest amphibious invasion in history.

Baiting made them aware that this station was quite

a vulnerable target, and that's why the level of defence was

so heavily reinforced, in fact. And the consequence in, uh,

on the D-Day, in June 1944, was that it could oppose a fierce resistance.

The Douvres station code name

"Distelfink" holds particular importance in the assault.

Not only does it house the powerful Freya and Wurzburg duo,

but its location on an elevated plateau with

a panoramic view of the sea makes it a prime spot for

a German master station.

One of just six critical control centres

to amalgamate radar data from the 92 stations along

the coast of France.

They were not sure of the level of the German technology,

and that's why, even in 1944,

it was important to take a master station to understand

the level of the equipment

and the organisation of the Luftwaffe.

And that's why this radar station was

a priority target on the 6th of June.

But it won't be an easy feat.

Though the Allies manage to damage the site's antenna

with naval artillery,

breaching the station by foot is a task fraught with danger.

After their Wurzburg was hijacked on

the exposed shores of Bruneval two years earlier,

the Germans ensure this set-up is near impenetrable.

The minefields,

they had barbed wire, they had concrete defences.

As Allied forces rained fire upon the Germans,

the compromised station continues to relay critical data

to Luftwaffe night-fighters.

Without control of Distelfink,

the Allied advance is uncertain if the Germans refuse to yield.

This place resisted for ten days.

Six attacks have failed. So the British said,

"Well, there'll be siege. We wait for them

"to surrender when they are running short of food

"and short of ammunition."

It was the establishment of the airfield in

the vicinity that make them decide to wipe the position out.

On June 17th,

Allied forces initiate a devastating bombardment.

Finally, after relentless pressure, surrender seems imminent,

but not before orders come down

to destroy all evidence of their technology.

The Germans still believe that they have a technological advance,

and that could be interesting for the Allied to capture it.

And that's why the instruction was to destroy everything.

The Bruneval raid was incredibly significant in the wider war.

This allowed the British to get a leg up in

the technological race to understand German technology

and thwart it. It gave the British an advantage in the battle

for control of the skies.

The secret war over radar,

fought in the shadows of hidden Nazi research facilities

and allied laboratories,

emerges a critical factor in determining the outcome of WW2.

Both sides recognise that technological dominance could mean

the difference between victory and defeat.

German ingenuity pushes the Nazi regime to

the forefront of innovation, earning them a temporary lead.

But in the end,

the radar race proves to be a marathon, not a sprint.

To understand how important it was

and why this competition about radars,

we can compare the budget of the Manhattan Project,

which is the development of the atomic bomb, is $2 billion.

The American investment in radar research during

the Second World War, $3 billion,

so 50% more than for the atomic bomb.

These secret Nazi facilities do raise unsettling questions.

How close do these technological

innovations bring the Nazis to victory?

Subtitles by Red Bee Media