Lions Led By Donkeys covers the 1097 Battle of Dorylaeum during the First Crusade — the Crusader column's near-destruction by Kilij Arslan's Seljuk cavalry and the improvised relief that turned the fight. At over an hour with guests from the Failure to Launch podcast, there's room to dig into the tactical mismatch between Western heavy cavalry and Turkish horse archers, and the command chaos that nearly ended the Crusade before it reached the Holy Land. The show's irreverent tone works well here because the source material is genuinely chaotic.

McManus and Hymel take on the Patton-Rommel comparison with more rigour than the clickbait title suggests. McManus — who literally wrote the book on the US Army in the ETO — is well-placed to dismantle the Hollywood mythology around both commanders, stripping away decades of reputation-building to get at each general's actual operational record. The key insight is how little their careers actually overlapped, which reframes a matchup most people know only through popular myth rather than sourced analysis. The hour-long format gives room for that kind of corrective work.

🏛 Where to see it: The Imperial War Museum, London, holds the personal papers of British commanders who directly opposed Rommel in North Africa, providing primary-source counterpoint to Rommel's operational claims.

The Ancient Warfare team traces how battlefield tactics developed across the ancient world — from early phalanx rigidity through the combined-arms innovations of Hellenistic and Roman commanders. The discussion of what actually drove tactical change (new weapons, new enemies, or individual genius) is the kind of analytical question this podcast handles well, and at nearly an hour there's room to move beyond survey-level treatment. A good companion to the Dorylaeum episode this week if you want to think about tactical adaptation across eras.

The setup for one of the lesser-known British airborne disasters of the war: 2 Para's drop at Oudna in late 1942, poorly equipped and sent against objectives that made little operational sense. Holland walks through the planning failures and the limitations of early British airborne kit with real specificity — the kind of granular command-level detail, drawn from sources that reframe a campaign usually buried beneath bigger North African headlines, that makes We Have Ways at its best. Essential context for Part 2.

Holland and Murray continue the Oudna disaster — 2 Para abandoned behind Axis lines in Tunisia, John Frost leading a fighting withdrawal across hostile terrain. The operational detail on how a botched airborne raid turned into a survival march is excellent, and Holland's command of the North African theatre keeps the narrative grounded in the wider Torch campaign. Part 2 of 2, so start with Part 1 if you haven't.

Michael Makatura recounts life in the 10th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Hahn Air Base in West Germany during the late Cold War, then into Desert Storm. Strong on the day-to-day readiness posture of a NATO frontline unit — hardened shelters, alert rotations, and the transition from Cold War deterrence to actual combat operations over Iraq.

Ray Harris Jr. covers the August 1942 carrier clash off Guadalcanal — Fletcher's task force versus the Japanese attempt to reinforce the island. Decent tactical overview of the engagement, though at 32 minutes it moves briskly through what was a complex multi-day naval action.

A festival extract with Beevor and Holland debating why Eisenhower didn't race for Berlin and how Soviet generals burned through their own troops competing for the prize. At under 25 minutes it's a taster rather than a full treatment, but Beevor on the endgame is always worth hearing.