Holland and Murray launch a new series on the naval battles at Narvik, starting with the strategic context — why Hitler needed Norway, how WWI shaped Raeder's thinking, and the Royal Navy's initial response to the German invasion in April 1940. Holland is particularly good on the Kriegsmarine's institutional culture and the risks the Germans accepted in sending destroyers that far north. A strong opener that sets up the tactical action to come.

Part 4 of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry series gets into the grim reality of British armour facing Panthers and Tigers in the Normandy bocage after D-Day. Holland draws on unit diaries and personal accounts to show how British tank crews adapted their tactics against superior German armour, and the daily attrition that ground down even elite formations. The operational detail on defensive actions and combined-arms responses is exactly what this series does well.

Angus Wallace covers the Special Duties squadrons that flew SOE agents and supplies into occupied Europe — the night-flying, moonlit navigation, improvised landing strips, and the extraordinary skill required to land Lysanders in French fields. This is the unglamorous logistics-and-aviation backbone of the secret war that rarely gets its own episode. Well-researched and properly focused on the operational mechanics rather than the glamour of espionage.

Ray Harris Jr. covers the Battle of Savo Island — one of the worst naval defeats in US history — as the Japanese catch the Allied screening force flat-footed after Fletcher's controversial carrier withdrawal from Guadalcanal, another case where commanders at multiple levels failed to act on the warnings they had. At 35 minutes it's brisk for such a consequential night action, but Harris knows this campaign cold and the tactical detail on the Japanese approach is well handled.

Christian Parkinson and Steve Brown cover three genuinely obscure British campaigns of the Napoleonic era: the disastrous River Plate expedition against Buenos Aires and Montevideo, the capture of Mauritius, and a third colonial operation. This is the kind of episode that earns its hour — campaigns most listeners won't know, with enough tactical and logistical detail to understand why some succeeded and others didn't. Excellent for anyone who thinks they know the Napoleonic Wars but has never looked beyond the Peninsula and Waterloo.

Stephen Long discusses the joint CIA-MI6 operation to overthrow Enver Hoxha's regime in Albania from 1949 — inserting exiled dissidents for paramilitary and propaganda operations, and the catastrophic penetration by Kim Philby that doomed the mission. Over an hour and properly focused on the operational planning and intelligence failures.

The Ancient Warfare team discusses Rome's campaigns across the Rhine from 17 BC onward — the Germanic incursions that triggered three decades of Roman operations in Germania. Reliably on-topic for this feed, covering the operational challenges of projecting Roman power into unfamiliar territory.

The fighting on Gavutu, Tanambogo, and Tulagi as US Marines encounter their first banzai charge — a sharp, 24-minute episode on the brutal small-island actions that preceded the main Guadalcanal campaign. Short but focused on the tactical reality of close-quarters Pacific combat.