Narrow Escapes of WWII Season 1

Seeking to hit back at Japan, Col. Jimmy Doolittle puts B-25 bombers on aircraft for a mission that the crews have little chance of surviving.

Surrounded by the Japanese, Orde Wingate led the 77th Indian Infantry Brigade in one of the most imaginative and complex escapes of World War II.

Unsung heroes: the battalion of black soldiers who were surrounded, down to their last ten rounds, and yet who helped win the Battle of the Bulge.

Fleeing from the Russian troops, Erich von Manstein devised one of the most brilliant escapes in military history Â- one that is still studied in military schools.

This is the dramatic story of how Crete was captured by the Germans and how Robert Laycock led a desperate rear guard action against crack German mountain troops.

In advance of the Allied landings at Normandy, the British plan the aerial bombing of Amiens Prison, where a hundred Resistance fighters await execution.

With 60,000 German soldiers surrounded by the Russian army, this is the story of the heroic rearguard action that allowed thousands of troops to escape.

In 1944, 1500 outnumbered British and Indian troops amazingly hold Japanese forces at the key Burmese town of Kohima. This is their amazing story.

By Easter 1941, all that stands between Afrika Korps commander Erwin Rommel and Egypt's Suez Canal is Tobruk. Australia's Gen. Leslie Morshead and his defenders are ordered to hold the Libyan port for eight weeks while the defenses of Egypt can be strengthened. The "Rats of Tobruk" are convinced that if they fail, the war against Germany will be lost.

Sadly, the Allied Forces did not manage to capture the last bridge near Arnhem. Arnhem quite literally proved to be 'a bridge to far'. More than 1,750 Allied soldiers who were killed during Operation Market Garden lie buried at the Airborne Cemetery in Oosterbeek.

As the war enters its final months, the nearly 2 million Germans living in East Prussia flee an advancing Red Army no longer distinguishing between German soldiers and civilians. Hundreds of thousands make for the Baltic ports--the start of the single biggest evacuation of WWII.

By 1942, the fight between the Allies and the Axis for control of the Mediterranean is focused on tiny Malta. From there, British aircraft and submarines have been preying on enemy supply ships. When Hitler and Mussolini decide to crush Malta, Churchill dispatches a huge convoy to run the gauntlet of Axis air and naval power to reach the beleaguered island stronghold.

With the Italians preparing to invade Egypt in the summer of 1940, the British army's Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) causes havoc far behind the front. But after an LRDG patrol is attacked, a tough New Zealander named Ron Moore leads the survivors barefoot through the desert, 300 miles from Allied lines.