HC The Lost Evidence - Sicily (2007)

On 10 July 1943, the American Fifth Army, commanded by General George Patton, landed on the Italian island of Sicily. Patton's forces were joined by the British Eighth Army, led by General Sir Bernard Montgomery. It was the first major attack launched against Hitler's 'Fortress Europe'; an attempt to strike at the 'soft underbelly' of European Nazi hegemony. Over the next thirty-eight days, half a million Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen participated in a bloody battle of attrition against German and Italian troops. Operation Husky was one of the largest combined operations of the Second World War. Allied forces were immediately disadvantaged by the battle's location; their Italian enemies would be fighting on familiar territory. The weather also provided an unforeseen and dangerous adversary. In a disastrous start to the operation, forty mile an hour gales turned the airborne phase of the attack into chaos; American and British paratroopers were scattered arbitrarily over the island's hazardous terrain. Despite these adverse conditions, the Allies achieved considerable early success on the battlefields of Sicily. As their advance gathered momentum, they secured an Axis withdrawal from the strategically important port of Messina. As Axis forces hurriedly evacuated more than 100,000 troops, the Allied had won undisputed control of the island. Sicily could now serve as the base for an attack on the rest of southern Europe. The vast operation also provided vital fighting experience for the Allied soldiers who would take part in the June 1944 invasion of France. Eleven months later, the men who gained their 'stripes' amid the tumultuous tides of the Mediterranean would be engaged in ferocious combat on the savage shores of Normandy. Aerial reconnaissance photographs of the battle have been layered over a three dimensional map to create a CGI 'model' of the island. For over sixty years these photographs have been hidden. For the first time these original high-resolution images allow us to track the battle from the air. Cutting edge technology, archive film, vivid re-enactments and extraordinary interviews provide a unique insight into one of the most dramatic campaigns of the Second World War.

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