June 17, 2026 • 64 mins
As one of the most high-stakes, ambitious operations in all of military history, the D-Day invasion of World War II remains a thrilling -- and terrifying -- tale, constantly retold and reexamined by Hollywood and historians. But there's another strange, oft-ignored story in the D-Day narrative, something Uncle Sam would still prefer we all stop thinking about. Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they dive into the disastrous events of Exercise Tiger... and the cover-up that persists, even now, in the modern day.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nol.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They call me Bed. We're joined as always with our
super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. I think it's fair
to say tonight we are taking a queue from our
sister show, Ridiculous History. Now we all remember, in a
(00:53):
previous episode of Stuff they Don't Want You to Know,
we looked at systemic corruption and conspiracyes haunting the US military,
especially when it comes to covering up assault and murder.
That was a grizzly one, but I'm still glad we did.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
It, oh for sure.
Speaker 5 (01:10):
And it's come up a couple of times in other
contexts since then, just in terms of like systematic issues.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
That are sort of swept under the rug.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
And I just thought that was such a really good
kind of go to deep dive into how these things
can work.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah, And as we were looking. You know, through the
research for that episode, we happened upon a couple of
different things that happened. I suppose there are more of
cover ups or embarrassments, things that the military, you know,
in combination, especially during large conflicts, didn't want the public
(01:46):
or maybe international audiences to know about, at least for
a time.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Along the way in that earlier episode, folks, we ran
into so many other things as well, including, of course,
the saga of the US Liberty. Stay tuned for that episode.
We also, as you were saying, Matt discovered another cover up.
It's one a lot of people, even in the US,
(02:11):
probably haven't heard of in the modern day. And folks,
Uncle Sam is kind of happy with that. They don't
want you to know about a little thing called Exercise Tiger.
And to learn about that, we're going to have to
travel across the pond. And while we're on the water,
(02:32):
why don't we talk about our next maritime adventure.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Hey, Yeah, this episode's all about ships. We're going to
be on a ship that stays afloat while it travels
its way to Bermuda.
Speaker 5 (02:42):
A patently non battle oriented ship. Yeah, in fact, the opposite.
It's for relaxation and you know, good good times. I'm
maritime merriment.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
I would call the Lady Valiant because that is the
name of the vessel, the Valiant Lady. The rumors are true.
From October two to the seventh of this year, we
are heading back with our friends at Virgin Voyages, so
please do join us. We're also not going alone, right fellas.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
No, we're not going it alone.
Speaker 5 (03:14):
We're going with our buddies Josh and Chuck from Stuff
you should know, who you may have heard of, and
our pals Sam and Annie from stuff Mom never told you,
who you likely have also heard of. And guys, I'm
happy to hear that it's the Valiant Lady again because
I still have a one hundred dollars poker ship from.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
The Valiant Lady.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Yeah, it ended up in.
Speaker 5 (03:31):
The suitcase, but silly me, but hey got an opportunity
to strike it rich on that make good.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
And we love Chuck and Josh, we love Sam and Annie,
and most importantly, we love the idea of getting to
hang out with you in person. We'll be doing live shows,
We'll have some secret adventures on and off the boat. Yeah,
come hang with us.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
But you got to be on the ship. If you
want to experience these things, just go ahead and search
for stuff at s you'll find the official Virgin Voyage's
website and it has everything you need there to go
ahead and book yourself a cabin, you and a bunch
of friends hopefully.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
And with that we'll be right back. Here are the facts.
We're traveling to a place. Okay, let's set the stage
for this conspiracy by heading across the Atlantic to a
place called Slapton Sands. And Slapton Sands is, i would argue,
(04:34):
not the most accurate name.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, it's definitely like a beach, essentially an area of beach.
You can find it if you check out your maps.
It's not really near Plymouth or Exeter, these are places
you may have heard of, but it is down in
the UK near the south west side.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah, it's far to the southwest. Slapton Sands is a beach.
It's a boucolic, very tiny village called Slapton, which is
located in a place called south Ham's, Devon, England. And
I'm sorry but I always when I'm making up British names,
I always add Ham or Sandwich into the thing.
Speaker 5 (05:16):
Yeah, there's a very famous football club. I believe it's
from west Ham that people are quite fond of. And
whenever I hear slapped on sands, I just picture getting
slapped on sands, like like someone trying to start a duels.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
It's so far to the southwest of the United Kingdom.
If you look on a map and you pulled up
easily if you're looking for driving time or another reference,
it's about four and a half hours from London. And
the reason I'm saying it's a misleading name is because
slapped in sands doesn't actually have a lot of sand.
(05:52):
It's not a sandy.
Speaker 5 (05:53):
Beach, sort of a gravelly beach, right, more like a
parking lot.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah, But ultimately it's a thing that connects the ocean
to the land, right, which is the most important part
about when it's going to function for us in today's episode.
And it is just across the English Channel from France.
A large swath of France, actually all of France is
right across the way there, so it provides proximity to
(06:21):
the place that is being simulated for today's episode, or
this thing that we're going to get into. But it's
also similar enough that it's going to provide all the
functionality of let's say a beach somewhere in France.
Speaker 5 (06:37):
Would this, for our military purposes, be considered a beach head.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
It would be considered a good place to have a
dress rehearsal, because make a bead.
Speaker 5 (06:47):
A beachhead would be enemy territory, but a relatively secure
bit of enemy territory.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
And whether or not this is secure or not was
up for debate. I guess the timing enters into that
a lot.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
A beachhead is like in terms of analogy of beachhead
is like when you're trying to enter a house to
do some shenanigans and you manage to get your foot
in the door so the door can't close, like a foothold.
Is a beachhead tactically and slapped in sands. Look, we're
(07:21):
not here to detegrate it. It's technically to your point, nol.
It is gravelly. It's called a shingle beach like a
shingle lot of roof. The view is breathtaking. It's not
necessarily the kind of place where you would lay out
comfortably for hours on a beach towel. They do have
a great deal of tourism even now, the sea is
(07:44):
safe and palm and clean. There are a lot of
water sports. There's a water sports beach, you surf, you
can be.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
Kayak and there are plenty of other beaches in the
UK and in Europe that would have this similar you
know texture.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
I guess, yeah, international hotspot, maybe not, but it is similar.
It's a regional hotspot. It's similar to how family in
Atlanta might take a summer vacation for a week at
Hilton Head or Tybee Island. And if you're in the area,
by the way, folks, we'll pro tip make sure to
(08:19):
pop by the nearby nature reserve because Slapped In Sands
has a very specific geography. In addition to the way
the shore is, it's got a strip of land behind
it that's kind of our nature preserve, and then it
has a lake behind it. There are only a few
places in the world that have that exact sort of similarity,
(08:43):
or only a few places in Europe, I should say,
Normandy be one. If you have ever had the fortune
to visit south Ham, or to visit Devon entire, or
especially to visit Slapped In Sands, we would love to
hear from you. Fellow conspiracy realist but it's not just
(09:03):
a fun weekend excursion spot for the locals. It has
a disturbing history. And to understand that history, we have
to go back to the height of World War Two.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
So in nineteen forty three, it was becoming pretty obvious
that the Allies were ready to make some serious pushes
against the Axis powers, specifically in France, as an attempt
to push those Access powers back towards Germany. And the
Germans knew that the Allies wanted to do this, and
the Allies were playing a bit you know, KOI with it,
(09:40):
but also yes, we're doing this. Remember there's a spy
game happening at all times throughout the war on all sides.
So whenever you know commanders on any side or from
any force are thinking about doing things, there's all kinds
of planning and logistics that goes into it, and then
everybody else kind of begins to figure out because everybody's
(10:01):
gets biplanes and all kinds of stuff going on in Intel.
One of the major things the Allies wanted to do, though,
was go into France to get a bunch of troops,
a bunch of artillery like military might into France, and
that's kind of how we set the stage, because they're
attempting to figure out how in the heck are we
(10:23):
going to do this feasibly?
Speaker 4 (10:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Yeah, the Allies are growing increasingly desperate. This actually because
this story inspired me to reread an awesome unfinished graphic
novel series called Uber, which is about World War two
if superheroes existed or superpowers existed anyhow. It shows a
(10:45):
lot of the calculations and the mad desperation of both
sides of the war. At this point, the Allies are
well aware, they're cognizant that they're in an all or
nothing war, so they start planning these increasingly bold, audacious,
and arguably mad plans to turn the tide. One of
(11:09):
the most infamous turned the tide that was an accident.
One of the most infamous examples is something called Operation Overlord,
which you can't say without gravitas. Operation Overlord is the
code name for the looming Battle of Normandy. The D
Day Invasion, if it works out, is going to be
(11:30):
the largest military seaborn invasion in all of human history.
Well sorry, Phoenicians.
Speaker 5 (11:38):
Well for sure, and to pull something like that off,
one would imagine, requires a lot of planning, So The
lead up to the invasion was incredibly hectic, larger than life.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
It was just utter insanity.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
The Access and the Allies both employed extensive misinformation campaigns,
feeding the other incorrect location, you know, details, so that
they would be in the wrong place, timeline and correct timeline,
all of those things, all of those siops. The Access
powers build numerous fortifications, and the Allies obsessed over every
(12:13):
single contingency and possible outcome detail, very very detail oriented planning.
So Operation Neptune was the initial for a launched on
June the sixth of nineteen forty four, with nearly one
hundred and sixty thousand soldiers crossing the Channel on that day.
By the end of August there were more than two
(12:33):
million Allied troops there stationed in France.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Were hanging out in France.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
And to our statement about to our statement about having
one hundred dollars chip at a casino or at a
blackjack table, the Allies were pretty all in on this.
They were very much aware this is a one shot deal.
If you win Normandy, you can win the war in Europe.
But if you lose due to the sheer amount of
(12:59):
res already committed, were spelling disaster for future conflicts. And
we're we're not being hyperbolic here, folks. The free world
would fall if D Day did not work. In addition
to all these dizzey and logistics, these at times competing
strategic proposals and people arguing back and forth, the Allies
(13:22):
realized they couldn't just get to the shore and you know,
sort of wing it like doing cool free form jazz.
They decided pretty early on that they had to exercise
for this. They had to rehearse.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Before we get into the full rehearsal of the day
we're talking about. I'd love to spend a second on
the other operations that were put in Plague. I found
these who you really fascinating you guys, Operation Bodyguard and
Fortitude and Glimmer, Taxable, Big Drum. These are all operations
that were a part of this thing we're talking about
(13:59):
the Allies taking so seriously so they they had to
do a whole bunch of things to try and throw
off the German forces. And they knew again we were
talking about spies earlier. The Allies knew, specifically the UK
Britain knew that there were quite a few German spies
(14:20):
working in country, So they worked assiduously to get false
information to those spies that they were aware of. They
were fairly confident that they knew most of the spies.
Of course they didn't know all of them, but they
knew most of them. So they fed them information about
specific dates, most of them that were going to be
further in the future than actual D Day actual was
(14:42):
going to be. They did things like, I think you
guys talked about this before.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Yeah, hiding hiding fake plans on a corpse that's one
of them, yeah, And setting up putting small fleets of
tiny little ships that had radar reflectors on them and
things to make it seem as.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Though if there's a radar operator in Germany or in
France and one of the forward positions looking out at
the radar, they would think, oh my god, there's a
huge fleet that is beginning to accrue in this area,
when it's actually just a couple of small ships that
are throwing them off. They even set up inflatable I
think planes and artillery and tanks and things so that
(15:24):
spy planes flying over would would think that the Allies
are occurring forces in another area. It was just fascinating
to see how much went into throwing off the other
side so that you could have that sneak attack. Because
it was so vital that it was a sneak attack.
I didn't realize how out gunned the Allied forces were
(15:47):
when it comes to the fortifications that Germany had all
along France's coast. If they didn't do all of these things,
no matter where they attempted to land, Normandy or wherever
and whenever, they would have been just blown completely out
of the water. But all of these little things, all
of those operations, you can go back and search every
one of them, allowed for this sneaky thing to occur,
(16:12):
which is, you know, it's deception at its finest.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Perhaps, Yeah, because you know, any student of war, anybody
who's been to a war college, knows very well a
funny little truism, which is that until the rubber hits
the rope, until the bullets really start flying and the
actual operation begins, a lot of the lead up is misdirection.
(16:37):
It's a lot closer to stage magic than you would think.
And that's why we know as early as nineteen forty three,
the Allies begin these training exercises specifically for this thing.
They're calling Overlord ravtas we have paratroopers executing maneuvers under
(16:58):
the eyes of Winston Churchill, under the eyes of Eisenhower
other top officials. The Navy was running drills in Northern Ireland.
The combined militaries of the Allies were practicing landing craft
and using live AMMO in Scotland. There were a lot
of smaller operations that went into what we call D
(17:21):
Day and down in London. This part's especially grizzly medical teams,
well not just in London, but also in military bases
and other urban centers. The medical teams would game out
tenaciously how best to handle the forthcoming waves of casualties.
Even the most optimistic leaders predicted a lot of people
(17:46):
were going to die during D Day on either side.
They knew thousands would no longer be with us, and
that was the best case scenario.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Sorry, I know we're moving on to the next part.
I just wanted one last thing that I found interesting
here was this concept that there was an entire army group,
fictitious army group that was created like a general patent
run army group, where they put the paperwork in in
the United Kingdom to show that there's this whole US
(18:17):
Army was it the United States First Army Group, and
it was all false. It was all fake, but they
did all the paperwork, They did all of these false
you know, blow up things to make it seem as though,
I forgive you guys, I don't know how to pronounce
this correctly, Chalet Calais maybe.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Vacation spot, don't be told at the end.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
To make it seem like they were going from essentially
like Dover in that area directly across the channel, which
is a super short run to Calais, at least compared
to anywhere else you would try and cross the English
Channel there. I just think it's a really cool thing
that that was part of it. Just before we get
into exactly how they did this test run.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Yeah, because why do we have rehearsals. We have rehearsals
because we know we'll make mistakes and we don't want
mistakes to happen on show night right. The most infamous
of these rehearsals is something called Exercise Tiger. You may
also see it called Operation Tiger. It was a disaster
(19:26):
and then it was a cover up. We'll be right back.
Here's where it gets crazy. Noel, can you take us
to nineteen forty three and kind of paint the seat and.
Speaker 5 (19:42):
Here, Oh my gosh, Ben, it would be my great honor.
In nineteen forty three, late in the year, the British
government and Allied powers took over slapped In Sands, the
aforementioned slapped In Sands. It was where that force you
the American group that was met to land on Utah
Beach would do a bit of a dry run for
(20:04):
what was to come. Slapton was selected because of its
similarity to Utah Beach, which was that gravelly shore behind
which was a small strip of land and then a lake.
So because of the scale of the operation, there wasn't
really an ideal way to keep the whole thing a secret.
(20:25):
It's really hard to hide this kind of activity when
you are having to evacuate the nearly three thousand.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
Residents in the region as well as.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
You know, it's just tough to hide that level of
military personnel. So the landing operations kicked off in December
and Exercise Tiger took place in April and May of
the following year. It was a multi day process, a
multiday rehearsal. Nathan Fielder would have been proud.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Yes, yes, very much so. It runs from April twenty
second to April thirtieth. In the big climax. The APEX
event is a mock landing at slapped In Sands with
nine large what they called LST's. I think it's a
funny name because it's short for landing ship Comma tank.
(21:13):
So these are chonky boys and they're very slow and
their job is not to win a speedboat competition. Their
job is to get very heavy machines of war from
the ocean to the shore. Along with this, we have
thirty thousand Allied troops and we have live fire, which,
(21:35):
as any veteran in the crowd knows, kicks training up
a notch. The Allies, again are in desperate times at
this point and they have planned to protect the area
during the operation. The maritime history of World War Two
itself is fascinating in one heck of a rabbit hole,
(21:59):
but we can tell you the Royal Navy of the
UK had stationed destroyers and torpedo boats and motor gunboats
along a place called Lime Bay, the entrance to Lime Bay.
This was a maritime path to slap In Sands and
the thing is they knew that Germany had a stranglehold
(22:21):
on France. They knew that German E boats were based
in a town called Chairboard, and the British because of that,
they also stationed torpedo boats there and they were thinking,
you know, if these E boats are coming at us,
we can nip them off right at the pass. We
could stop, we could stop the poison at the route.
(22:43):
E boat is not a U boat by the way,
It's the Allied designation for Germany's fast attack craft. So
they called those things E boats. The subs are the
U boats.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
The E boat isn't exactly the same thing as a corvette.
It's smaller, yeah, but the but the corvette is like
close to kind of what was used. I don't know,
it's I imagine a corvette being about twice aside. I
don't know the like the length of an E boat.
(23:17):
I can't find it quickly right here. But the corvette
is the thing that the Allies were using, at least
the Royal Navy would be using to protect a ship
or you know, exercise like this. And we'll get into that.
Because there is a corvette involved, right, they have at
least one one ship and they were supposed to have
a destroyer, which is like one hundred and fifty to
(23:39):
two hundred feet larger than a corvette. But there's a
problem with that. We'll get into.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
It right, right, right, right. Scheduling is always the great
enemy of any group project.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Exactly, But just the real threat of these e boats.
They are fast attack ships. They're not the same thing
as encountering a larger ship that's got some of the
crazy large caliber ammunition that we'll just tear through boats
in the same way. But these things are very, very dangerous,
and these LST's are so interesting to think about. We've
(24:11):
all seen like World War Two movies, right and D
Day movies where there are depictions of it and all
kinds of different things, from saving Private Ryan all the
way on to just everything.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
Yeah, there's a couple I actually looked up the list.
There's some other ones.
Speaker 5 (24:25):
Overlord D Day, the sixth of June, Breakthrough, Storming Juno,
Band of Brothers.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
It's depicted, and I.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
Think there's actually a horror fantasy, kind of revisionist history
version of it also called Orverlord, that came out in
twenty eighteen. But I think the one everyone pictures a
saving Private Ryan probably most likely.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
But the LST's aren't correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
Guys.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
The LST's are different from a lot of the smaller
ships that actually end up on the shore that are
delivering the troops. Right, that's a comspletely different vessel.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Yeah. Those other vessels are people movers. Yeah, these are
tank movers, which means of course they have more Wait,
they're slower, Like I said, they're chonky boys.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Well, but they they are the ones that have the
troops on them. The troops are just up above, and
then they would be moving through different vessels to actually
get to the land as part of the test, or
you know, get the ship far enough in. So it's
just that's just pointing out perception, my perception. When I
heard the LSTs and was reading this on paper, I
saw those d day ships that are just the people
(25:26):
movers you're talking about, Ben, and then just imagining that
these things, these huge, slow chonky boys, are supposed to
be out there somewhat alone, even if they have the
protection they're supposed to have while they're doing this exercise.
It's still only two ships, a teeny tiny one and
a slightly bigger.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
One yeah, two ship escort ideally right, and that's still
not enough. So on paper, everything is in place, everybody
signs off on it, everybody green lights it. Things begin
to go wrong pretty fricking quickly. So the I'm laughing
(26:04):
because it's terrible, folks. The first, the first thing that
goes disastrously wrong occurs on seven thirty am, April twenty seventh.
This is our first assault practice. It is a live
fire scenario, and the idea is not to kill these
soldiers in the sailors training. The idea is to acclimate
(26:27):
these troops to the experience the sound, the sight, the
smell of mortar shells, right of ammunition being fired at you.
This idea was championed in Special by General Eisenhower because
Eisenhower strongly felt that soldiers, and some of these soldiers
(26:48):
we have to remember, had little wartime experience. He strongly
felt these soldiers had to be hardened by exposure to
conflict conditions that were as real as possible with out
actually killing them. So yeah, so fifty minutes before the
actual landing again at seven point thirty, the force you
(27:11):
that you mentioned, the Force U Bombardment Group would start
firing on the shore, and then when you get to
the shore, as these hapless kids training for this, you're
also going to have other soldiers on the land firing
above your head. This is hazing to the max. This
(27:33):
is Haese Baxing.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
The three of us have no experience being fired upon
in a situation like this, just like.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
In any situation.
Speaker 5 (27:41):
Frankly, I've never been fired upon in my life knock
gone wood.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
We just don't, especially not in ease conditions. And we again,
we've seen it depicted. We've seen the shock of that
moment and what it's like. We've seen attempts at through
artistry showing a viewer what that might sound and look like.
But there's no I can understand why Eisenhower would think
(28:07):
you have to have this or everybody's just going to
freeze up, because it seems like a panic inducing moment,
even for a hardened soldier, you know, or sailor. It
seems like that, right, But again I have no actual
understanding of that whatsoever.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
Personally.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
This concept though, of firing, as you're saying, Ben Hayes Maaxing,
by firing live ammunition over these ships means if there's
any issues with where the ships are located with timing.
I'm assuming they're not doing this with a bunch of
lights flashing everywhere so that everybody knows where everybody is.
(28:45):
Because remember is this has to be a secret to
be pulled off as an exercise.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
And let's also remember that nothing ruins a perfect plan
like real world conditions, right. The enemy of a plan
is practice. So in the real world, so several of
these landing ships get delayed. There's a little bit of weather,
it's more radio communication which wasn't standardized, and so the
(29:12):
officers in charge this day, they said, okay, we're going
to call an audible. We're going to delay our practice
landing by one hour. So it's no longer going to
be seven thirty, it's going to be eight thirty. Not
everybody got the update, so some of the craft showed
up at the original time, an hour before they were expected.
(29:34):
Then the second wave comes, right, this is raggedy at
this point, is not coordinated. They got hit by the
training fire. This is where we've got to go to
a great a great author, great historian who looks into this.
A guy named Nigel Lewis, the author of a book
called Exercise Tiger, the dramatic true story of a hidden
(29:57):
tragedy of World War tw People were frightened. Obviously, they
were seeing their fellow their fellow soldiers die because of
this exercise that was again supposed to be kind of
like the real world, but safe and death free. There
were internal rumors saying as many as four hundred and
(30:19):
fifty men died due to this friendly fire.
Speaker 5 (30:22):
Dude, I mean, if you're dying during the practice run,
I mean, that does not bode well for the.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Real thing, right, a damning harbinger of things to come.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
That is higher than I would have expected just knowing
the total number or official total number right casualties in
this event, because that's well over half.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
But we still again we still don't have we'll see
this with the second big screw up. We still don't
have verified or universally accepted estimates of the death toll.
And that four hundred and fifty number has also itself
never been fully verified for reason currency later.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Because we're talking about nine of these large transfert shows.
The LST's coming in at least, you know, some portion
of them making it early, some portion of them coming
in late. And it's hard to believe that that many
people could have been killed by live fire without anyone knowing.
But just going back to as you're saying, Ben, you're
(31:24):
talking about radio communication. The radio communication that was plagued
with issues throughout this whole event. Right, there's several other
issues we're going to get into where the radio played
a major role in why people either got hurt or killed.
It's hard to believe that it would screw up that
badly from the jump, right.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
Yeah, it's not a good sign, and I'll love it.
But to be coldly accurate about this, and we're giving
you some off the book stuff here, folks. Some officials
privately argued that this was indeed the brutal reality soldiers
would have to face when D Day actual came. And
(32:07):
so the exercise continued ed things just got worse.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
And we'll get to that final twist after a quick
word from our sponsor.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
And we have returned Guten Dog say the German forces. Yeah,
villiclemen in the least nice in the least villicle mean way. Yeah,
Because the very next day after this disastrous friendly fire incident,
the Germans do arrive. There are eight tank landing vehicles
(32:47):
that are attacked by nine German e boats in Lime Bay,
and as we noted, the tacticians had already predicted Lime
Bay would be a potential conflict point. These e boats,
which the Allies knew about, they left Cherbourg around midnight
and they successfully avoided those British patrols, those torpedo boats
(33:11):
we mentioned earlier, because they're small, nimble guys, and there
were tons of other accidents. The Allies were unprepared. They
were supposed to, believe you mentioned this bat. The LST's
were supposed to have an escort of two vehicles, but
one of them didn't make it.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
The big one, right, which sucks. The destroyer had to
go in I guess for repairs, maintenance and things pretty
close by.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
I think they collided with a boat.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Yeah, but it wasn't close by enough to be close
enough to help in an emergency. And on top of that,
the radio frequencies were wrong.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
LST's were on a different radio frequency than the corvette,
which was on a different frequency than the spotterships, the
ones that are around in the area to give the
heads up, you know, like more of a private vessel
that is not going to raise any flags for e
boats going by.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
Or it's like a lookout.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
It's a lookout.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Yeah, but they're on the different frequency. And there was
this need for radio silence and bearer orders for essentially
radio silence unless it was an emergency. So nobody is
checking to make sure everybody's on the same frequency and
to realize that problem before there's an emergency.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Yeah, and this is this is disastrous. This is darkly ridiculous.
Because we also note that the one escort ship that
made it, which was supposed to be leading the LSTs
to the shore, it violated established standard doctrine. It violated
the typical move that you would do, which is to
(34:53):
zigzag right, move around, be a moving target. It took
everybody in a straight line like a mother duck with
her ducklings. And in the next ten minutes, as a result,
when these I keep thinking of the I keep thinking
of the LSTs as young elephants and of the e
(35:15):
boats as hyena. So when these hyena approach in just
the space of ten minutes, one of the LST's LST
five point thirty one is torpedo, it sinks into the
cold waters. Another one, LST two eighty nine, is hit.
Its stern is blown clean off. Someone smacks it across
(35:37):
the stern and it doesn't sink, but it is crippled.
It's not going to be useful during D Day.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
And remember there are hundreds of human personnel inside these
things and where they're holding the tanks and those big
holding areas, as well as on top of the ship
in it, and they all believe they're taking part in
an extra size with live fire. So like, put yourself
(36:03):
in that headspace, like it is this exercise? Is is
this real? What's happening? And when you think about the
radio problem on top of that, the corvette, the ship
that we're talking about, you're talking about ben mother ducking
Everybody in it got the warning that the e boats
were coming in because it was on the right frequencies
(36:24):
with the lookout ships, but the LSTs were not, so
they had no idea. The actual troops and the people
inside these things that are being attacked had no idea
it was coming. The corvette knew, and they thought the
LSTs were on the same frequency, so they thought they
knew too.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
It's such a good point you make there because it
reminds me of hearing a fire drill in an office building,
and you always have to ask yourself, is this the
scheduled fire drill? Is there an actual fire? In this case,
this was not part of the drill. And that's such
(37:01):
an excellent point that a lot of the service members
a board probably did not realize that another six hundred
and thirty nine troops died. If you're depending on the estimates,
you find this leads experts like Lewis and others the
author we mentioned earlier to estimate that seven hundred and
(37:23):
forty nine service members passed away as a result of
these two events. But even here again the estimates vary
so widely because you can find other equally credible historians
who will say the death toll from these two incidents
was way closer to one thousand. It would say nine
hundred and forty six died. And not all of these people,
(37:47):
by the way, died as a direct result of fire
from an e boat. They died because they drowned or
they succumbed to hypothermia while they were doing their best
to float on the surface and get rescue. It's a
it's an ugly way to go by the way.
Speaker 5 (38:06):
Well, And also, Ben, isn't there another further grizzly detail
about these packs that they had.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
You gotta do it.
Speaker 5 (38:13):
Yeah, Well, I just you know, as if what you
mentioned thus far wasn't, you know, awful enough. Some people
either drowned or perhaps were suffocated or choked to death,
strangled to death by their own flotation devices.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
So again, as we said, this is a desperate all
or nothing play. This is when you have one one
hundred dollars ship at the blackjack table and you put
the whole thing down. As a result, because the allies
are in such a hurry and in such eleventh hour calculations,
the officials left some blind spots in their shake and
(38:55):
bake training. Basic stuff like you were saying, no, like
how to properly put on a life preserver.
Speaker 5 (39:01):
Well, and I think I misspoke a little bit. It
wasn't that they were strangled. They were they the only
way they could get it on because of the bulkiness
of their packs was around their waist. But then the
bulkiness of the packs made them so top heavy that
they flipped upside down, like you know, like one of
those bobblehead things that you punch and just pops back up.
(39:22):
But the other way around, yes, and no, it's not funny,
it's terrific. And then they, you know, were so way
down by that pack that they couldn't right themselves.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
They drowned upside down.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Yeah, and others were just inside those ships and you know,
and those water fills in. You can just imagine those
final modes. It's all horrifying.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
So no way of egress, Yeah, an escape room.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Well, and it's freezing cold water in the channel, right,
I mean, that's the other thing. You're even if you
don't drown, you are probably gonna freeze.
Speaker 5 (39:54):
And I mean, you know, we can all understand. We've
already laid it out there, the need for a dry
run of this kind. But it certainly seems that there
was some preparations not made correctly, or the very least
some they're talking about weighing all these contingencies. But what
a foolish thing to, you know, in the lives of
(40:15):
so many of your troops in advance of the thing
where you really need them. I mean, not that any
any situation is acceptable for the loss of life, you know,
of service members, but it just seems like.
Speaker 4 (40:27):
A really desperate move. Maybe I just don't understand.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Yeah, it is desperation. It is one of those rare,
ticking time bomb situations. And the thing that I think
escapes a lot of people who don't study this or
haven't had to study this, is that everything that happens
(40:52):
in a conflict theater like this becomes new data. All
the horrible stuff, all the successful You actually focus more
on the missteps. So this is horrific. The exercise Tiger
is horrible in terms of what we were expecting versus
what happened, but it also brings with it another thing
(41:17):
even worse. There is a new precedent established. Now both
the Allies and the Axis powers realize the enormous damage
the e boat Hyena can reak on any slow moving
landing craft. So this means if you were Germany, you
look at what happened and you say, wow, we could
(41:40):
just repeat this on a larger scale whenever the Allies
attempt to invade France, which also our spies tell us
they are definitely doing and top brass freaked out.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
It reminds me a little bit of our discussions about
these extremely expensive missiles and missile defense ammunition and all
that stuff versus drones. Yeah, where like these little hyaenas
are relatively dirt cheap to produce versus some of these
other larger warships. And if you can just be like
(42:16):
mass manufacturing these things and have them patrol around, and
that's going to be as effective, if not more effective
at times than the huge ship that's twenty times as expensive.
My god, that as you're saying, just just with the
drones now that exist and are really the technology that
(42:38):
is pushing forward front lines in several conflicts across the
world right now, these these e boats are very similar.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
That's an excellent point, yeah, because now both sides of
the conflict have discovered a symmetry, right Like we see, now,
why build a carrier when I can build a missile
that will kill a carrier. Let's exercise a little bit
of empathy for General Eisenhower. Let's take ourselves to the
(43:10):
moment where he learns about all this, and let's also
feel very sorry for the person who had to give
him the news because this live fire thing, again, he
was the main proponent of it. When he learns about
all this stuff, he is livid, furious, does not even
approach the tectonic levels of rage the General has when
(43:35):
he learns about this disaster.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Do we have a quote or anything from him?
Speaker 3 (43:39):
We have a quote from some of his boys, like
Vice Admiral Kirk gets quoted a lot. But unless you've
got one, Matt, I'm just I'm still stuck in the
Oh God, I hate to laugh. I feel so horrible
for the person who had to be in the room
with Eisenhower and say, you know, General, not a great
(44:03):
day and slapped like he probably got He probably got backhand,
you know, just from the jump.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Oh yeah, well, things, as you said, things did not
happen the way they were supposed to. I think the
well correct me if I'm wrong. I think the biggest
deal for like military command, like someone in Eisenhower's position,
somebody in some of the major general's positions and admirals,
is that those LST's were It's not like they had
an unlimited number, right, The fact that two were sunk
(44:32):
was a big freaking deal.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Yeah, here's the stuff he's pissed about, and rightly sue,
that's the word we tectonic. This is what he's tectonically
pissed about. First, that convoy of landyship tanks. They had
violated policy because they sailed in that straight line. They
should have zigzagged, and he was like Guice. We talked
about this, but he said it in a way less
(44:54):
chill way. Second to your point, Matt, Now the allies
are short several LST's. These are crucial to D Day
and at this point they are impossible to replace in time.
America is in a war economy now, in a total
war economy, and they're making all the cool toys, including
you know, the atomic bomb, but they are limited in
(45:18):
their time window of manufacturing. So now we have two
less LST's for D Day.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
So the way I have I'm trying to understand and
through maybe through the lens of car stuff. Been in
this idea that you've got a fleet of vehicles and
you've got two of those vehicles as your reserve ones
in case one or hopefully not worst case scenario two,
have a major problem right before the race begins, so
(45:45):
you can just put those in and they'll be up
to speed and ready to go. And because of the
loss of these two LST's, there's not a single reserve
of those ready to go for the big show.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
That's well put. It's all the chips and you know,
as we were talking earlier. There are a couple of
other reasons that Eisenhower is just beyond words. Apoplectic would
be another word for it.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
The German that one. That's a good one.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
Though the German forces can now rightly assume that all
their spy infull is correct. The Yanks are on the
verge of their rumored invasion, they're actually doing it, because
what else are they practicing for?
Speaker 2 (46:33):
Oh, dude, this, you're right, Yes, I don't want to
take away from that scene. And Ben, just I saw
something about with the two LST's. There were ten total
human beings on board those two ships that went down
that had pretty intimate planning knowledge of D Day actual.
(46:53):
So the actual Normandy invasion versus all this other disinformation
that's being thrown around, right, And wasn't that one of
the big parts.
Speaker 3 (47:02):
Of this where yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
These guys, these ten individuals had to be accounted for
because it was thought that the enemy would perhaps know
exactly what's about to happen.
Speaker 3 (47:14):
Later historians will say, hey, this information probably led Adolf
Hitler to specifically order reinforcements in Normandy because they figured
out this training exercise and they said, what other beaches
looked like slapped in sands. There's one we know of,
and like you were saying, Matt, the perhaps most troubling
(47:37):
for the top brass Eisenhower especially, and for the thousands
of people who are putting their lives on the line.
Not all of the attacked officers were found. There were ten,
at least that we know of, who had sensitive intimate,
as the word often used, knowledge of what was actually
(47:58):
going to go down on D Day in terms of
what forces went where, what times, how they connect, how
they communicate. Had these ten missing officers drowned, it's quite
a likely possibility, or had they been captured by the Hyena,
(48:19):
by those little e boats, and if captured, they would
have almost certainly compromised the whole of Operation Overlord when
they were put to the question. And it's now we
get into even weirder stuff because now the Allies are saying, Okay,
we're clocking German craft, right, or even little pretend civilian
(48:42):
craft that's run by German intel, where we're seeing them
searching the wreckage. But we can't fire upon these vessels
because if we fire on them, we're going to teach
the access powers more stuff we're going to show the
Germans where are ford of vcations are. Once you fire,
(49:02):
the enemy knows where you're at. So they had to
just sit there and bite their lips and watch and
hope those officers were not, you know, taken as POW's.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
Wasn't that crazy. They had to hope that they were dead.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
They had to hope that they were dead.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
And as it turned out, as a result of this watching,
at least according to several different places, including the Naval
History and Heritage Command, those ten officers had drowned, like
they confirmed those specific individuals had drowned, which is as
messed up as it is, was a good thing because
(49:38):
DDA could continue.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
Yeah, and as a result of all these considerations, you know,
let's exercise some more empathy. Let's say the five of
us are in these operations in Exercise Tiger, and we survived,
but our colleagues do not, or fellow soldiers and sailors die.
(50:02):
We are now sworn to secrecy. We cannot tell anybody
what happened to our friends, to our brothers and arms.
That's why even now, and we're recording this, by the way, folks,
On Monday, June eighth, twenty twenty six. Even now, we
do not have a ton of information on exactly how
many individual sailors and soldiers die. We have at best
(50:27):
very good estimates from enterprising historians. It's interesting that the
DoD made a public statement way later in nineteen eighty eight.
They said, here's why we didn't talk about it that much,
and let's throw this around. Let's riff on this and
(50:48):
see if we accept this official explanation. They said, Look,
record keeping is lax on these ships, and they did
a bad job. And the majority of the relevant log
books that would tell us who was on the ship
those got lost at sea in the attacks. So we
(51:08):
don't know. What do you guys think you buy it?
Speaker 5 (51:12):
I mean, certainly convenient, but also is chaotic. So I'm
not sure you're being a little bit very fair. You're
being very fair. I wish I could be that fair,
but I think they're I mean, just given the information here,
I'm just trying to be diplomatic, I guess, But no,
I mean, you know, do you think the government used
(51:33):
to be more trustworthy or have they always been the worst?
Speaker 3 (51:38):
It depends on whether you're in the government.
Speaker 4 (51:40):
Yeah, fair enough, but that's a great question.
Speaker 3 (51:44):
I mean, it does it feels like a cover up?
Speaker 2 (51:46):
Well, it does. It's weird to read back through the
history and to see that there is an official acknowledgment
in look at my hand, in this much of a
way by the military only a couple of months later,
like was it was like a month after D Day,
(52:07):
right that this that this occurred and acknowledgment through a
press release through Stars and Stripes that is like specifically
for military folks. And I don't know, man, it seems
it's weird because you can you can point to that
and say, well, we acknowledge it, we we we at
(52:28):
least whatever.
Speaker 3 (52:30):
Yeah, No, you're right, you're right. And Noel, I think
you landed on the perfect word with convenient.
Speaker 5 (52:35):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (52:35):
There's some really interesting historical debate over terminology where you'll
you'll hear people saying this is definitely cover up, and
then you'll hear other historians pointing to, you know, like
that Stars and Stripes article, and they'll say it wasn't
so much of a cover up as watch the air
quotes folks quietly forgotten.
Speaker 5 (52:57):
Yeah, and they sort of did the least right, like
they It's like a it's like a quick mention buried
in the back pages of Variety about.
Speaker 4 (53:06):
Something going on in Hollywood.
Speaker 5 (53:07):
You know what I mean, Like a planted story in
a sort of a niche publication that isn't going to
reach everybody.
Speaker 3 (53:14):
Other than that. My American cousin got pretty solid refuse
that kind of thing. I mean, this is like they're rumors. Okay,
So this is why we can argue cover up. You guys,
there were there was a narrative war, right happening concurrently
on a much smaller level than World War Two. It
(53:36):
was the official record versus the memories of the surviving eyewitnesses.
They were sworn to secrecy, but they were talking with themselves.
This is where historians find sworn accounts of mass unmarked
grapes hidden somewhere away in farm fields in Devin. That's
(53:59):
pretty stuff. It'd be difficult to cover it up now,
or would it?
Speaker 2 (54:06):
Right? Right, Let's talk about the motivation for the cover up.
One last thing that I didn't think about until just now.
It's reminding me of our recent episode we did on
the Lucy let Be case with Amanda Knox. Yeah, where
we're talking about the the the necessary protection of something
(54:31):
like the NHS, the National Health Services, through storytelling, through
you could call it propaganda, you call it just thought.
You want positive stories for a big institution like that
when propaganda is active. Think about how active World War
(54:51):
II propaganda is for Allied forces, US four Forces, British forces.
How much that that version of the propagandaized story equals
hope for people who are getting shelled, you know and
taking cover on you know, a weekly basis, if not
nightly basis, for troops who are having to be sent
(55:11):
into places like Normandy or you know, even after D Day,
Like remember the war didn't just end on D Day, right,
There's a massive amount of military operations that are occurring
after that. Then the Pacific Front and how much is
going on there, and just how necessary it is to
protect the reputation of you know, of things like the
(55:33):
Navy and the Army. And I imagine something like Slapped
in Sands if it just came out and it was
a big deal, would be such a morale killer if
if well, but see as you're saying as well, it's
not like these folks aren't talking somewhat. There's a book
that came out forty six something about my time with Eisenhower.
(55:57):
What the heck is it called My three Years with
Eisenhower TETI. So a little bit after it, there's a
detailed account of this, but it's again hidden in a book,
kind of the way the original acknowledgment is hidden away
in Stars and Stripes. Right that Conceptly, you cannot allow
this to be a major story because it would hurt
(56:17):
us too much.
Speaker 3 (56:19):
Yeah, especially considering Exercise Tiger wound up being the deadliest
training incident in the US military during the Second World War.
But we can also argue it's going to get really cold, folks,
is getting a little war college with it. We can
also argue these deaths are not in vain because the
(56:40):
tragic events of Exercise Tiger lead to several key improvements
that helped Operation Overlord that made D Day successful. First,
to your point, Noel, they finally got together. They got
their crap together with basic training, those life vests, right,
and they also put in smaller boats specifically in play
(57:04):
during the D Day invasion to prevent people from drowning.
So that was a win. Secondly, they said no more
deviating from established sailing strategies. You are a slow chonky boy.
You cannot just boop along in a straight line like
(57:26):
a box turtle walking across the interstate. You've got to
have escort. You've got to be moving your position because
otherwise you are target practice, right, you are sitting ducks.
So most importantly, probably third thing, the radio frequencies were standardized.
Why did that not happen earlier? It's like, you know,
(57:50):
the closest a lot of us get to that kind
of discordination is going to be when you are in
a group chat and one person as an Android or
one person as an iPhone, and you're like, why don't
these gifts work? Why k standardize that? We're talking billions
(58:10):
of dollars? I don't know anyway, Like you were saying, Matt,
the official Tallly the death Toll officially wasn't released until
August of nineteen forty four, and the world had a
lot more stuff going on. It was released quietly and
independent sources. Even then, we're saying that Uncle Sam is
(58:34):
downplaying the number of dead soldiers for one reason or another,
And I agree with you, probably propaganda, but also as
terrible as it is to admit this cover up was necessary,
at least for the short term, I hate that I
am saying this, but at least for the short term,
it was probably the right thing for the Allies to do.
(58:59):
If they went public, it would have screwed up D Day,
It's no way around it.
Speaker 2 (59:04):
You can imagine some of the folks that were involved
in that exercise, like the first Engineer Special Brigade who
ended up, you know, traveling to Normandy Beach very soon
after this, did get something that perhaps eisenhowerd was looking
for them to acquire, which is that initial shock, a
(59:29):
familiarity with that initial sustained shock of being under fire
and attempting to go through all this stuff right, because
that was that was thought to be his goal, Eisenhower's goal,
Give these soldiers and engineers who have to go up
on this beach through all of this, give them a
little more resolve. Right for the moment, I guess you
(59:53):
can just hope that that at least for a small
number of troops that was provided.
Speaker 3 (01:00:01):
And the people involved in Exercise Tiger, the survivors we
should say, were a small part of the D Day invasion,
because we're talking about so many people US, British, Canadian,
Polish troops one hundred and fifty thousand something land on
five beaches and their goal is to finally liberate Nazi
(01:00:25):
occupied Europe. Thousands of people died, just like even the
most optimistic tacticians predicted. We're talking at least four thousand,
four hundred and fourteen Allied troops. Germany's casualties are estimated
between four thousand and nine thousand people. That's not counting
the civilians, by the way, who probably won't get an
(01:00:48):
accurate number for quite some time. But it's certain. I
think it's virtually certain that if the Allies had handled
the aftermath of Exercise Tiger differently, the Allied death toll
would have been much higher. I mean, this is this
reminds me of something you know, old professors are fond
(01:01:08):
of saying morality is the first resource to vanish in war.
Speaker 5 (01:01:15):
Well that was my question, man, I mean, is this
a greater good argument? Like, is this ultimately internally seen
as worth it?
Speaker 4 (01:01:21):
Right?
Speaker 3 (01:01:22):
Yeah, that's the question. Well, maybe that's where we end because.
Speaker 4 (01:01:25):
I'm certainly not positing that.
Speaker 5 (01:01:26):
I mean, like, as we said earlier, like it seems
like really half half asked in its planning. But if
you do the math, did they need it to be
that high stakes in order to actually prepare for the big,
the big show.
Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
You know, I think I see what you're saying. Yeah,
that's the question that should haunt all of us. What
did they make the right decision in their cover up?
I mean, was this conspiracy to your point, Nol really
one of those rare cases of a true greater good?
And that brings us to, you know, the next big question.
(01:02:03):
So we've teased at the top. We see these stories,
genuine conspiracies. It's riddled throughout history, and we have to
ask what else has happened? What's happening now away from
the pride eyes of the public and the press. There
has to be more stuff they don't want you to know.
I mean, guys, do you think we can we can
(01:02:24):
actually hear from some folks in the Devon area. There's
a memorial over there and slapped in sands, I believe. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Is that the one that the SPA the oh god,
the engineers that I just mentioned, the first Special Brigade? Yeah, wow, Yeah,
that's or I know there's I know they put one
up in.
Speaker 4 (01:02:45):
Gosh, can't.
Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
I don't know if that one's on Normandy Beach or
in slapped in sands. There's several of them. Hey, let's
hear from you as you're saying, Ben, if you have information,
or if you've lived there, if you were you know,
know somebody who is a part of this, maybe a family. Remember,
we would love to just hear anything you have to
say regarding this or any other exercise that went wrong.
Speaker 3 (01:03:08):
We would love to hear your opinion on what else
is out there, what else happened or is happening now
that the governments of the world are trying to cover up,
especially the military. So find us on the lines and
call us on a phone. You can always send us
an email.
Speaker 5 (01:03:25):
Sure can find us on the lines at the handle
Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on which line
you go for which social media platform is your bag.
If you don't want to do that, you can also
find us some other ways.
Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
We have a phone number. It is one eight three
three STDWYTK. When you call in, give yourself a cool
nickname and let us know if we can use your
name and message on the air. If you want to
send us an email.
Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware yet unafraid. Sometimes the void
writes back, can't get it out of my head. Guys,
Delta and Quora mest indeed conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nol.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They call me Bed. We're joined as always with our
super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. I think it's fair
to say tonight we are taking a queue from our
sister show, Ridiculous History. Now we all remember, in a
(00:53):
previous episode of Stuff they Don't Want You to Know,
we looked at systemic corruption and conspiracyes haunting the US military,
especially when it comes to covering up assault and murder.
That was a grizzly one, but I'm still glad we did.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
It, oh for sure.
Speaker 5 (01:10):
And it's come up a couple of times in other
contexts since then, just in terms of like systematic issues.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
That are sort of swept under the rug.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
And I just thought that was such a really good
kind of go to deep dive into how these things
can work.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah, And as we were looking. You know, through the
research for that episode, we happened upon a couple of
different things that happened. I suppose there are more of
cover ups or embarrassments, things that the military, you know,
in combination, especially during large conflicts, didn't want the public
(01:46):
or maybe international audiences to know about, at least for
a time.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Along the way in that earlier episode, folks, we ran
into so many other things as well, including, of course,
the saga of the US Liberty. Stay tuned for that episode.
We also, as you were saying, Matt discovered another cover up.
It's one a lot of people, even in the US,
(02:11):
probably haven't heard of in the modern day. And folks,
Uncle Sam is kind of happy with that. They don't
want you to know about a little thing called Exercise Tiger.
And to learn about that, we're going to have to
travel across the pond. And while we're on the water,
(02:32):
why don't we talk about our next maritime adventure.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Hey, Yeah, this episode's all about ships. We're going to
be on a ship that stays afloat while it travels
its way to Bermuda.
Speaker 5 (02:42):
A patently non battle oriented ship. Yeah, in fact, the opposite.
It's for relaxation and you know, good good times. I'm
maritime merriment.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
I would call the Lady Valiant because that is the
name of the vessel, the Valiant Lady. The rumors are true.
From October two to the seventh of this year, we
are heading back with our friends at Virgin Voyages, so
please do join us. We're also not going alone, right fellas.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
No, we're not going it alone.
Speaker 5 (03:14):
We're going with our buddies Josh and Chuck from Stuff
you should know, who you may have heard of, and
our pals Sam and Annie from stuff Mom never told you,
who you likely have also heard of. And guys, I'm
happy to hear that it's the Valiant Lady again because
I still have a one hundred dollars poker ship from.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
The Valiant Lady.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Yeah, it ended up in.
Speaker 5 (03:31):
The suitcase, but silly me, but hey got an opportunity
to strike it rich on that make good.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
And we love Chuck and Josh, we love Sam and Annie,
and most importantly, we love the idea of getting to
hang out with you in person. We'll be doing live shows,
We'll have some secret adventures on and off the boat. Yeah,
come hang with us.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
But you got to be on the ship. If you
want to experience these things, just go ahead and search
for stuff at s you'll find the official Virgin Voyage's
website and it has everything you need there to go
ahead and book yourself a cabin, you and a bunch
of friends hopefully.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
And with that we'll be right back. Here are the facts.
We're traveling to a place. Okay, let's set the stage
for this conspiracy by heading across the Atlantic to a
place called Slapton Sands. And Slapton Sands is, i would argue,
(04:34):
not the most accurate name.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, it's definitely like a beach, essentially an area of beach.
You can find it if you check out your maps.
It's not really near Plymouth or Exeter, these are places
you may have heard of, but it is down in
the UK near the south west side.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah, it's far to the southwest. Slapton Sands is a beach.
It's a boucolic, very tiny village called Slapton, which is
located in a place called south Ham's, Devon, England. And
I'm sorry but I always when I'm making up British names,
I always add Ham or Sandwich into the thing.
Speaker 5 (05:16):
Yeah, there's a very famous football club. I believe it's
from west Ham that people are quite fond of. And
whenever I hear slapped on sands, I just picture getting
slapped on sands, like like someone trying to start a duels.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
It's so far to the southwest of the United Kingdom.
If you look on a map and you pulled up
easily if you're looking for driving time or another reference,
it's about four and a half hours from London. And
the reason I'm saying it's a misleading name is because
slapped in sands doesn't actually have a lot of sand.
(05:52):
It's not a sandy.
Speaker 5 (05:53):
Beach, sort of a gravelly beach, right, more like a
parking lot.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah, But ultimately it's a thing that connects the ocean
to the land, right, which is the most important part
about when it's going to function for us in today's episode.
And it is just across the English Channel from France.
A large swath of France, actually all of France is
right across the way there, so it provides proximity to
(06:21):
the place that is being simulated for today's episode, or
this thing that we're going to get into. But it's
also similar enough that it's going to provide all the
functionality of let's say a beach somewhere in France.
Speaker 5 (06:37):
Would this, for our military purposes, be considered a beach head.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
It would be considered a good place to have a
dress rehearsal, because make a bead.
Speaker 5 (06:47):
A beachhead would be enemy territory, but a relatively secure
bit of enemy territory.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
And whether or not this is secure or not was
up for debate. I guess the timing enters into that
a lot.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
A beachhead is like in terms of analogy of beachhead
is like when you're trying to enter a house to
do some shenanigans and you manage to get your foot
in the door so the door can't close, like a foothold.
Is a beachhead tactically and slapped in sands. Look, we're
(07:21):
not here to detegrate it. It's technically to your point, nol.
It is gravelly. It's called a shingle beach like a
shingle lot of roof. The view is breathtaking. It's not
necessarily the kind of place where you would lay out
comfortably for hours on a beach towel. They do have
a great deal of tourism even now, the sea is
(07:44):
safe and palm and clean. There are a lot of
water sports. There's a water sports beach, you surf, you
can be.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
Kayak and there are plenty of other beaches in the
UK and in Europe that would have this similar you
know texture.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
I guess, yeah, international hotspot, maybe not, but it is similar.
It's a regional hotspot. It's similar to how family in
Atlanta might take a summer vacation for a week at
Hilton Head or Tybee Island. And if you're in the area,
by the way, folks, we'll pro tip make sure to
(08:19):
pop by the nearby nature reserve because Slapped In Sands
has a very specific geography. In addition to the way
the shore is, it's got a strip of land behind
it that's kind of our nature preserve, and then it
has a lake behind it. There are only a few
places in the world that have that exact sort of similarity,
(08:43):
or only a few places in Europe, I should say,
Normandy be one. If you have ever had the fortune
to visit south Ham, or to visit Devon entire, or
especially to visit Slapped In Sands, we would love to
hear from you. Fellow conspiracy realist but it's not just
(09:03):
a fun weekend excursion spot for the locals. It has
a disturbing history. And to understand that history, we have
to go back to the height of World War Two.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
So in nineteen forty three, it was becoming pretty obvious
that the Allies were ready to make some serious pushes
against the Axis powers, specifically in France, as an attempt
to push those Access powers back towards Germany. And the
Germans knew that the Allies wanted to do this, and
the Allies were playing a bit you know, KOI with it,
(09:40):
but also yes, we're doing this. Remember there's a spy
game happening at all times throughout the war on all sides.
So whenever you know commanders on any side or from
any force are thinking about doing things, there's all kinds
of planning and logistics that goes into it, and then
everybody else kind of begins to figure out because everybody's
(10:01):
gets biplanes and all kinds of stuff going on in Intel.
One of the major things the Allies wanted to do, though,
was go into France to get a bunch of troops,
a bunch of artillery like military might into France, and
that's kind of how we set the stage, because they're
attempting to figure out how in the heck are we
(10:23):
going to do this feasibly?
Speaker 4 (10:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Yeah, the Allies are growing increasingly desperate. This actually because
this story inspired me to reread an awesome unfinished graphic
novel series called Uber, which is about World War two
if superheroes existed or superpowers existed anyhow. It shows a
(10:45):
lot of the calculations and the mad desperation of both
sides of the war. At this point, the Allies are
well aware, they're cognizant that they're in an all or
nothing war, so they start planning these increasingly bold, audacious,
and arguably mad plans to turn the tide. One of
(11:09):
the most infamous turned the tide that was an accident.
One of the most infamous examples is something called Operation Overlord,
which you can't say without gravitas. Operation Overlord is the
code name for the looming Battle of Normandy. The D
Day Invasion, if it works out, is going to be
(11:30):
the largest military seaborn invasion in all of human history.
Well sorry, Phoenicians.
Speaker 5 (11:38):
Well for sure, and to pull something like that off,
one would imagine, requires a lot of planning, So The
lead up to the invasion was incredibly hectic, larger than life.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
It was just utter insanity.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
The Access and the Allies both employed extensive misinformation campaigns,
feeding the other incorrect location, you know, details, so that
they would be in the wrong place, timeline and correct timeline,
all of those things, all of those siops. The Access
powers build numerous fortifications, and the Allies obsessed over every
(12:13):
single contingency and possible outcome detail, very very detail oriented planning.
So Operation Neptune was the initial for a launched on
June the sixth of nineteen forty four, with nearly one
hundred and sixty thousand soldiers crossing the Channel on that day.
By the end of August there were more than two
(12:33):
million Allied troops there stationed in France.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Were hanging out in France.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
And to our statement about to our statement about having
one hundred dollars chip at a casino or at a
blackjack table, the Allies were pretty all in on this.
They were very much aware this is a one shot deal.
If you win Normandy, you can win the war in Europe.
But if you lose due to the sheer amount of
(12:59):
res already committed, were spelling disaster for future conflicts. And
we're we're not being hyperbolic here, folks. The free world
would fall if D Day did not work. In addition
to all these dizzey and logistics, these at times competing
strategic proposals and people arguing back and forth, the Allies
(13:22):
realized they couldn't just get to the shore and you know,
sort of wing it like doing cool free form jazz.
They decided pretty early on that they had to exercise
for this. They had to rehearse.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Before we get into the full rehearsal of the day
we're talking about. I'd love to spend a second on
the other operations that were put in Plague. I found
these who you really fascinating you guys, Operation Bodyguard and
Fortitude and Glimmer, Taxable, Big Drum. These are all operations
that were a part of this thing we're talking about
(13:59):
the Allies taking so seriously so they they had to
do a whole bunch of things to try and throw
off the German forces. And they knew again we were
talking about spies earlier. The Allies knew, specifically the UK
Britain knew that there were quite a few German spies
(14:20):
working in country, So they worked assiduously to get false
information to those spies that they were aware of. They
were fairly confident that they knew most of the spies.
Of course they didn't know all of them, but they
knew most of them. So they fed them information about
specific dates, most of them that were going to be
further in the future than actual D Day actual was
(14:42):
going to be. They did things like, I think you
guys talked about this before.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Yeah, hiding hiding fake plans on a corpse that's one
of them, yeah, And setting up putting small fleets of
tiny little ships that had radar reflectors on them and
things to make it seem as.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Though if there's a radar operator in Germany or in
France and one of the forward positions looking out at
the radar, they would think, oh my god, there's a
huge fleet that is beginning to accrue in this area,
when it's actually just a couple of small ships that
are throwing them off. They even set up inflatable I
think planes and artillery and tanks and things so that
(15:24):
spy planes flying over would would think that the Allies
are occurring forces in another area. It was just fascinating
to see how much went into throwing off the other
side so that you could have that sneak attack. Because
it was so vital that it was a sneak attack.
I didn't realize how out gunned the Allied forces were
(15:47):
when it comes to the fortifications that Germany had all
along France's coast. If they didn't do all of these things,
no matter where they attempted to land, Normandy or wherever
and whenever, they would have been just blown completely out
of the water. But all of these little things, all
of those operations, you can go back and search every
one of them, allowed for this sneaky thing to occur,
(16:12):
which is, you know, it's deception at its finest.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Perhaps, Yeah, because you know, any student of war, anybody
who's been to a war college, knows very well a
funny little truism, which is that until the rubber hits
the rope, until the bullets really start flying and the
actual operation begins, a lot of the lead up is misdirection.
(16:37):
It's a lot closer to stage magic than you would think.
And that's why we know as early as nineteen forty three,
the Allies begin these training exercises specifically for this thing.
They're calling Overlord ravtas we have paratroopers executing maneuvers under
(16:58):
the eyes of Winston Churchill, under the eyes of Eisenhower
other top officials. The Navy was running drills in Northern Ireland.
The combined militaries of the Allies were practicing landing craft
and using live AMMO in Scotland. There were a lot
of smaller operations that went into what we call D
(17:21):
Day and down in London. This part's especially grizzly medical teams,
well not just in London, but also in military bases
and other urban centers. The medical teams would game out
tenaciously how best to handle the forthcoming waves of casualties.
Even the most optimistic leaders predicted a lot of people
(17:46):
were going to die during D Day on either side.
They knew thousands would no longer be with us, and
that was the best case scenario.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Sorry, I know we're moving on to the next part.
I just wanted one last thing that I found interesting
here was this concept that there was an entire army group,
fictitious army group that was created like a general patent
run army group, where they put the paperwork in in
the United Kingdom to show that there's this whole US
(18:17):
Army was it the United States First Army Group, and
it was all false. It was all fake, but they
did all the paperwork, They did all of these false
you know, blow up things to make it seem as though,
I forgive you guys, I don't know how to pronounce
this correctly, Chalet Calais maybe.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Vacation spot, don't be told at the end.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
To make it seem like they were going from essentially
like Dover in that area directly across the channel, which
is a super short run to Calais, at least compared
to anywhere else you would try and cross the English
Channel there. I just think it's a really cool thing
that that was part of it. Just before we get
into exactly how they did this test run.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Yeah, because why do we have rehearsals. We have rehearsals
because we know we'll make mistakes and we don't want
mistakes to happen on show night right. The most infamous
of these rehearsals is something called Exercise Tiger. You may
also see it called Operation Tiger. It was a disaster
(19:26):
and then it was a cover up. We'll be right back.
Here's where it gets crazy. Noel, can you take us
to nineteen forty three and kind of paint the seat and.
Speaker 5 (19:42):
Here, Oh my gosh, Ben, it would be my great honor.
In nineteen forty three, late in the year, the British
government and Allied powers took over slapped In Sands, the
aforementioned slapped In Sands. It was where that force you
the American group that was met to land on Utah
Beach would do a bit of a dry run for
(20:04):
what was to come. Slapton was selected because of its
similarity to Utah Beach, which was that gravelly shore behind
which was a small strip of land and then a lake.
So because of the scale of the operation, there wasn't
really an ideal way to keep the whole thing a secret.
(20:25):
It's really hard to hide this kind of activity when
you are having to evacuate the nearly three thousand.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
Residents in the region as well as.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
You know, it's just tough to hide that level of
military personnel. So the landing operations kicked off in December
and Exercise Tiger took place in April and May of
the following year. It was a multi day process, a
multiday rehearsal. Nathan Fielder would have been proud.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Yes, yes, very much so. It runs from April twenty
second to April thirtieth. In the big climax. The APEX
event is a mock landing at slapped In Sands with
nine large what they called LST's. I think it's a
funny name because it's short for landing ship Comma tank.
(21:13):
So these are chonky boys and they're very slow and
their job is not to win a speedboat competition. Their
job is to get very heavy machines of war from
the ocean to the shore. Along with this, we have
thirty thousand Allied troops and we have live fire, which,
(21:35):
as any veteran in the crowd knows, kicks training up
a notch. The Allies, again are in desperate times at
this point and they have planned to protect the area
during the operation. The maritime history of World War Two
itself is fascinating in one heck of a rabbit hole,
(21:59):
but we can tell you the Royal Navy of the
UK had stationed destroyers and torpedo boats and motor gunboats
along a place called Lime Bay, the entrance to Lime Bay.
This was a maritime path to slap In Sands and
the thing is they knew that Germany had a stranglehold
(22:21):
on France. They knew that German E boats were based
in a town called Chairboard, and the British because of that,
they also stationed torpedo boats there and they were thinking,
you know, if these E boats are coming at us,
we can nip them off right at the pass. We
could stop, we could stop the poison at the route.
(22:43):
E boat is not a U boat by the way,
It's the Allied designation for Germany's fast attack craft. So
they called those things E boats. The subs are the
U boats.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
The E boat isn't exactly the same thing as a corvette.
It's smaller, yeah, but the but the corvette is like
close to kind of what was used. I don't know,
it's I imagine a corvette being about twice aside. I
don't know the like the length of an E boat.
(23:17):
I can't find it quickly right here. But the corvette
is the thing that the Allies were using, at least
the Royal Navy would be using to protect a ship
or you know, exercise like this. And we'll get into that.
Because there is a corvette involved, right, they have at
least one one ship and they were supposed to have
a destroyer, which is like one hundred and fifty to
(23:39):
two hundred feet larger than a corvette. But there's a
problem with that. We'll get into.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
It right, right, right, right. Scheduling is always the great
enemy of any group project.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Exactly, But just the real threat of these e boats.
They are fast attack ships. They're not the same thing
as encountering a larger ship that's got some of the
crazy large caliber ammunition that we'll just tear through boats
in the same way. But these things are very, very dangerous,
and these LST's are so interesting to think about. We've
(24:11):
all seen like World War Two movies, right and D
Day movies where there are depictions of it and all
kinds of different things, from saving Private Ryan all the
way on to just everything.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
Yeah, there's a couple I actually looked up the list.
There's some other ones.
Speaker 5 (24:25):
Overlord D Day, the sixth of June, Breakthrough, Storming Juno,
Band of Brothers.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
It's depicted, and I.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
Think there's actually a horror fantasy, kind of revisionist history
version of it also called Orverlord, that came out in
twenty eighteen. But I think the one everyone pictures a
saving Private Ryan probably most likely.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
But the LST's aren't correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
Guys.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
The LST's are different from a lot of the smaller
ships that actually end up on the shore that are
delivering the troops. Right, that's a comspletely different vessel.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Yeah. Those other vessels are people movers. Yeah, these are
tank movers, which means of course they have more Wait,
they're slower, Like I said, they're chonky boys.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Well, but they they are the ones that have the
troops on them. The troops are just up above, and
then they would be moving through different vessels to actually
get to the land as part of the test, or
you know, get the ship far enough in. So it's
just that's just pointing out perception, my perception. When I
heard the LSTs and was reading this on paper, I
saw those d day ships that are just the people
(25:26):
movers you're talking about, Ben, and then just imagining that
these things, these huge, slow chonky boys, are supposed to
be out there somewhat alone, even if they have the
protection they're supposed to have while they're doing this exercise.
It's still only two ships, a teeny tiny one and
a slightly bigger.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
One yeah, two ship escort ideally right, and that's still
not enough. So on paper, everything is in place, everybody
signs off on it, everybody green lights it. Things begin
to go wrong pretty fricking quickly. So the I'm laughing
(26:04):
because it's terrible, folks. The first, the first thing that
goes disastrously wrong occurs on seven thirty am, April twenty seventh.
This is our first assault practice. It is a live
fire scenario, and the idea is not to kill these
soldiers in the sailors training. The idea is to acclimate
(26:27):
these troops to the experience the sound, the sight, the
smell of mortar shells, right of ammunition being fired at you.
This idea was championed in Special by General Eisenhower because
Eisenhower strongly felt that soldiers, and some of these soldiers
(26:48):
we have to remember, had little wartime experience. He strongly
felt these soldiers had to be hardened by exposure to
conflict conditions that were as real as possible with out
actually killing them. So yeah, so fifty minutes before the
actual landing again at seven point thirty, the force you
(27:11):
that you mentioned, the Force U Bombardment Group would start
firing on the shore, and then when you get to
the shore, as these hapless kids training for this, you're
also going to have other soldiers on the land firing
above your head. This is hazing to the max. This
(27:33):
is Haese Baxing.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
The three of us have no experience being fired upon
in a situation like this, just like.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
In any situation.
Speaker 5 (27:41):
Frankly, I've never been fired upon in my life knock
gone wood.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
We just don't, especially not in ease conditions. And we again,
we've seen it depicted. We've seen the shock of that
moment and what it's like. We've seen attempts at through
artistry showing a viewer what that might sound and look like.
But there's no I can understand why Eisenhower would think
(28:07):
you have to have this or everybody's just going to
freeze up, because it seems like a panic inducing moment,
even for a hardened soldier, you know, or sailor. It
seems like that, right, But again I have no actual
understanding of that whatsoever.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
Personally.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
This concept though, of firing, as you're saying, Ben Hayes Maaxing,
by firing live ammunition over these ships means if there's
any issues with where the ships are located with timing.
I'm assuming they're not doing this with a bunch of
lights flashing everywhere so that everybody knows where everybody is.
(28:45):
Because remember is this has to be a secret to
be pulled off as an exercise.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
And let's also remember that nothing ruins a perfect plan
like real world conditions, right. The enemy of a plan
is practice. So in the real world, so several of
these landing ships get delayed. There's a little bit of weather,
it's more radio communication which wasn't standardized, and so the
(29:12):
officers in charge this day, they said, okay, we're going
to call an audible. We're going to delay our practice
landing by one hour. So it's no longer going to
be seven thirty, it's going to be eight thirty. Not
everybody got the update, so some of the craft showed
up at the original time, an hour before they were expected.
(29:34):
Then the second wave comes, right, this is raggedy at
this point, is not coordinated. They got hit by the
training fire. This is where we've got to go to
a great a great author, great historian who looks into this.
A guy named Nigel Lewis, the author of a book
called Exercise Tiger, the dramatic true story of a hidden
(29:57):
tragedy of World War tw People were frightened. Obviously, they
were seeing their fellow their fellow soldiers die because of
this exercise that was again supposed to be kind of
like the real world, but safe and death free. There
were internal rumors saying as many as four hundred and
(30:19):
fifty men died due to this friendly fire.
Speaker 5 (30:22):
Dude, I mean, if you're dying during the practice run,
I mean, that does not bode well for the.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Real thing, right, a damning harbinger of things to come.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
That is higher than I would have expected just knowing
the total number or official total number right casualties in
this event, because that's well over half.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
But we still again we still don't have we'll see
this with the second big screw up. We still don't
have verified or universally accepted estimates of the death toll.
And that four hundred and fifty number has also itself
never been fully verified for reason currency later.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Because we're talking about nine of these large transfert shows.
The LST's coming in at least, you know, some portion
of them making it early, some portion of them coming
in late. And it's hard to believe that that many
people could have been killed by live fire without anyone knowing.
But just going back to as you're saying, Ben, you're
(31:24):
talking about radio communication. The radio communication that was plagued
with issues throughout this whole event. Right, there's several other
issues we're going to get into where the radio played
a major role in why people either got hurt or killed.
It's hard to believe that it would screw up that
badly from the jump, right.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
Yeah, it's not a good sign, and I'll love it.
But to be coldly accurate about this, and we're giving
you some off the book stuff here, folks. Some officials
privately argued that this was indeed the brutal reality soldiers
would have to face when D Day actual came. And
(32:07):
so the exercise continued ed things just got worse.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
And we'll get to that final twist after a quick
word from our sponsor.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
And we have returned Guten Dog say the German forces. Yeah,
villiclemen in the least nice in the least villicle mean way. Yeah,
Because the very next day after this disastrous friendly fire incident,
the Germans do arrive. There are eight tank landing vehicles
(32:47):
that are attacked by nine German e boats in Lime Bay,
and as we noted, the tacticians had already predicted Lime
Bay would be a potential conflict point. These e boats,
which the Allies knew about, they left Cherbourg around midnight
and they successfully avoided those British patrols, those torpedo boats
(33:11):
we mentioned earlier, because they're small, nimble guys, and there
were tons of other accidents. The Allies were unprepared. They
were supposed to, believe you mentioned this bat. The LST's
were supposed to have an escort of two vehicles, but
one of them didn't make it.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
The big one, right, which sucks. The destroyer had to
go in I guess for repairs, maintenance and things pretty
close by.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
I think they collided with a boat.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Yeah, but it wasn't close by enough to be close
enough to help in an emergency. And on top of that,
the radio frequencies were wrong.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
LST's were on a different radio frequency than the corvette,
which was on a different frequency than the spotterships, the
ones that are around in the area to give the
heads up, you know, like more of a private vessel
that is not going to raise any flags for e
boats going by.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
Or it's like a lookout.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
It's a lookout.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Yeah, but they're on the different frequency. And there was
this need for radio silence and bearer orders for essentially
radio silence unless it was an emergency. So nobody is
checking to make sure everybody's on the same frequency and
to realize that problem before there's an emergency.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Yeah, and this is this is disastrous. This is darkly ridiculous.
Because we also note that the one escort ship that
made it, which was supposed to be leading the LSTs
to the shore, it violated established standard doctrine. It violated
the typical move that you would do, which is to
(34:53):
zigzag right, move around, be a moving target. It took
everybody in a straight line like a mother duck with
her ducklings. And in the next ten minutes, as a result,
when these I keep thinking of the I keep thinking
of the LSTs as young elephants and of the e
(35:15):
boats as hyena. So when these hyena approach in just
the space of ten minutes, one of the LST's LST
five point thirty one is torpedo, it sinks into the
cold waters. Another one, LST two eighty nine, is hit.
Its stern is blown clean off. Someone smacks it across
(35:37):
the stern and it doesn't sink, but it is crippled.
It's not going to be useful during D Day.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
And remember there are hundreds of human personnel inside these
things and where they're holding the tanks and those big
holding areas, as well as on top of the ship
in it, and they all believe they're taking part in
an extra size with live fire. So like, put yourself
(36:03):
in that headspace, like it is this exercise? Is is
this real? What's happening? And when you think about the
radio problem on top of that, the corvette, the ship
that we're talking about, you're talking about ben mother ducking
Everybody in it got the warning that the e boats
were coming in because it was on the right frequencies
(36:24):
with the lookout ships, but the LSTs were not, so
they had no idea. The actual troops and the people
inside these things that are being attacked had no idea
it was coming. The corvette knew, and they thought the
LSTs were on the same frequency, so they thought they
knew too.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
It's such a good point you make there because it
reminds me of hearing a fire drill in an office building,
and you always have to ask yourself, is this the
scheduled fire drill? Is there an actual fire? In this case,
this was not part of the drill. And that's such
(37:01):
an excellent point that a lot of the service members
a board probably did not realize that another six hundred
and thirty nine troops died. If you're depending on the estimates,
you find this leads experts like Lewis and others the
author we mentioned earlier to estimate that seven hundred and
(37:23):
forty nine service members passed away as a result of
these two events. But even here again the estimates vary
so widely because you can find other equally credible historians
who will say the death toll from these two incidents
was way closer to one thousand. It would say nine
hundred and forty six died. And not all of these people,
(37:47):
by the way, died as a direct result of fire
from an e boat. They died because they drowned or
they succumbed to hypothermia while they were doing their best
to float on the surface and get rescue. It's a
it's an ugly way to go by the way.
Speaker 5 (38:06):
Well, And also, Ben, isn't there another further grizzly detail
about these packs that they had.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
You gotta do it.
Speaker 5 (38:13):
Yeah, Well, I just you know, as if what you
mentioned thus far wasn't, you know, awful enough. Some people
either drowned or perhaps were suffocated or choked to death,
strangled to death by their own flotation devices.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
So again, as we said, this is a desperate all
or nothing play. This is when you have one one
hundred dollars ship at the blackjack table and you put
the whole thing down. As a result, because the allies
are in such a hurry and in such eleventh hour calculations,
the officials left some blind spots in their shake and
(38:55):
bake training. Basic stuff like you were saying, no, like
how to properly put on a life preserver.
Speaker 5 (39:01):
Well, and I think I misspoke a little bit. It
wasn't that they were strangled. They were they the only
way they could get it on because of the bulkiness
of their packs was around their waist. But then the
bulkiness of the packs made them so top heavy that
they flipped upside down, like you know, like one of
those bobblehead things that you punch and just pops back up.
(39:22):
But the other way around, yes, and no, it's not funny,
it's terrific. And then they, you know, were so way
down by that pack that they couldn't right themselves.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
They drowned upside down.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Yeah, and others were just inside those ships and you know,
and those water fills in. You can just imagine those
final modes. It's all horrifying.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
So no way of egress, Yeah, an escape room.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Well, and it's freezing cold water in the channel, right,
I mean, that's the other thing. You're even if you
don't drown, you are probably gonna freeze.
Speaker 5 (39:54):
And I mean, you know, we can all understand. We've
already laid it out there, the need for a dry
run of this kind. But it certainly seems that there
was some preparations not made correctly, or the very least
some they're talking about weighing all these contingencies. But what
a foolish thing to, you know, in the lives of
(40:15):
so many of your troops in advance of the thing
where you really need them. I mean, not that any
any situation is acceptable for the loss of life, you know,
of service members, but it just seems like.
Speaker 4 (40:27):
A really desperate move. Maybe I just don't understand.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Yeah, it is desperation. It is one of those rare,
ticking time bomb situations. And the thing that I think
escapes a lot of people who don't study this or
haven't had to study this, is that everything that happens
(40:52):
in a conflict theater like this becomes new data. All
the horrible stuff, all the successful You actually focus more
on the missteps. So this is horrific. The exercise Tiger
is horrible in terms of what we were expecting versus
what happened, but it also brings with it another thing
(41:17):
even worse. There is a new precedent established. Now both
the Allies and the Axis powers realize the enormous damage
the e boat Hyena can reak on any slow moving
landing craft. So this means if you were Germany, you
look at what happened and you say, wow, we could
(41:40):
just repeat this on a larger scale whenever the Allies
attempt to invade France, which also our spies tell us
they are definitely doing and top brass freaked out.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
It reminds me a little bit of our discussions about
these extremely expensive missiles and missile defense ammunition and all
that stuff versus drones. Yeah, where like these little hyaenas
are relatively dirt cheap to produce versus some of these
other larger warships. And if you can just be like
(42:16):
mass manufacturing these things and have them patrol around, and
that's going to be as effective, if not more effective
at times than the huge ship that's twenty times as expensive.
My god, that as you're saying, just just with the
drones now that exist and are really the technology that
(42:38):
is pushing forward front lines in several conflicts across the
world right now, these these e boats are very similar.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
That's an excellent point, yeah, because now both sides of
the conflict have discovered a symmetry, right Like we see, now,
why build a carrier when I can build a missile
that will kill a carrier. Let's exercise a little bit
of empathy for General Eisenhower. Let's take ourselves to the
(43:10):
moment where he learns about all this, and let's also
feel very sorry for the person who had to give
him the news because this live fire thing, again, he
was the main proponent of it. When he learns about
all this stuff, he is livid, furious, does not even
approach the tectonic levels of rage the General has when
(43:35):
he learns about this disaster.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Do we have a quote or anything from him?
Speaker 3 (43:39):
We have a quote from some of his boys, like
Vice Admiral Kirk gets quoted a lot. But unless you've
got one, Matt, I'm just I'm still stuck in the
Oh God, I hate to laugh. I feel so horrible
for the person who had to be in the room
with Eisenhower and say, you know, General, not a great
(44:03):
day and slapped like he probably got He probably got backhand,
you know, just from the jump.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Oh yeah, well, things, as you said, things did not
happen the way they were supposed to. I think the
well correct me if I'm wrong. I think the biggest
deal for like military command, like someone in Eisenhower's position,
somebody in some of the major general's positions and admirals,
is that those LST's were It's not like they had
an unlimited number, right, The fact that two were sunk
(44:32):
was a big freaking deal.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Yeah, here's the stuff he's pissed about, and rightly sue,
that's the word we tectonic. This is what he's tectonically
pissed about. First, that convoy of landyship tanks. They had
violated policy because they sailed in that straight line. They
should have zigzagged, and he was like Guice. We talked
about this, but he said it in a way less
(44:54):
chill way. Second to your point, Matt, Now the allies
are short several LST's. These are crucial to D Day
and at this point they are impossible to replace in time.
America is in a war economy now, in a total
war economy, and they're making all the cool toys, including
you know, the atomic bomb, but they are limited in
(45:18):
their time window of manufacturing. So now we have two
less LST's for D Day.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
So the way I have I'm trying to understand and
through maybe through the lens of car stuff. Been in
this idea that you've got a fleet of vehicles and
you've got two of those vehicles as your reserve ones
in case one or hopefully not worst case scenario two,
have a major problem right before the race begins, so
(45:45):
you can just put those in and they'll be up
to speed and ready to go. And because of the
loss of these two LST's, there's not a single reserve
of those ready to go for the big show.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
That's well put. It's all the chips and you know,
as we were talking earlier. There are a couple of
other reasons that Eisenhower is just beyond words. Apoplectic would
be another word for it.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
The German that one. That's a good one.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
Though the German forces can now rightly assume that all
their spy infull is correct. The Yanks are on the
verge of their rumored invasion, they're actually doing it, because
what else are they practicing for?
Speaker 2 (46:33):
Oh, dude, this, you're right, Yes, I don't want to
take away from that scene. And Ben, just I saw
something about with the two LST's. There were ten total
human beings on board those two ships that went down
that had pretty intimate planning knowledge of D Day actual.
(46:53):
So the actual Normandy invasion versus all this other disinformation
that's being thrown around, right, And wasn't that one of
the big parts.
Speaker 3 (47:02):
Of this where yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
These guys, these ten individuals had to be accounted for
because it was thought that the enemy would perhaps know
exactly what's about to happen.
Speaker 3 (47:14):
Later historians will say, hey, this information probably led Adolf
Hitler to specifically order reinforcements in Normandy because they figured
out this training exercise and they said, what other beaches
looked like slapped in sands. There's one we know of,
and like you were saying, Matt, the perhaps most troubling
(47:37):
for the top brass Eisenhower especially, and for the thousands
of people who are putting their lives on the line.
Not all of the attacked officers were found. There were ten,
at least that we know of, who had sensitive intimate,
as the word often used, knowledge of what was actually
(47:58):
going to go down on D Day in terms of
what forces went where, what times, how they connect, how
they communicate. Had these ten missing officers drowned, it's quite
a likely possibility, or had they been captured by the Hyena,
(48:19):
by those little e boats, and if captured, they would
have almost certainly compromised the whole of Operation Overlord when
they were put to the question. And it's now we
get into even weirder stuff because now the Allies are saying, Okay,
we're clocking German craft, right, or even little pretend civilian
(48:42):
craft that's run by German intel, where we're seeing them
searching the wreckage. But we can't fire upon these vessels
because if we fire on them, we're going to teach
the access powers more stuff we're going to show the
Germans where are ford of vcations are. Once you fire,
(49:02):
the enemy knows where you're at. So they had to
just sit there and bite their lips and watch and
hope those officers were not, you know, taken as POW's.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
Wasn't that crazy. They had to hope that they were dead.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
They had to hope that they were dead.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
And as it turned out, as a result of this watching,
at least according to several different places, including the Naval
History and Heritage Command, those ten officers had drowned, like
they confirmed those specific individuals had drowned, which is as
messed up as it is, was a good thing because
(49:38):
DDA could continue.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
Yeah, and as a result of all these considerations, you know,
let's exercise some more empathy. Let's say the five of
us are in these operations in Exercise Tiger, and we survived,
but our colleagues do not, or fellow soldiers and sailors die.
(50:02):
We are now sworn to secrecy. We cannot tell anybody
what happened to our friends, to our brothers and arms.
That's why even now, and we're recording this, by the way, folks,
On Monday, June eighth, twenty twenty six. Even now, we
do not have a ton of information on exactly how
many individual sailors and soldiers die. We have at best
(50:27):
very good estimates from enterprising historians. It's interesting that the
DoD made a public statement way later in nineteen eighty eight.
They said, here's why we didn't talk about it that much,
and let's throw this around. Let's riff on this and
(50:48):
see if we accept this official explanation. They said, Look,
record keeping is lax on these ships, and they did
a bad job. And the majority of the relevant log
books that would tell us who was on the ship
those got lost at sea in the attacks. So we
(51:08):
don't know. What do you guys think you buy it?
Speaker 5 (51:12):
I mean, certainly convenient, but also is chaotic. So I'm
not sure you're being a little bit very fair. You're
being very fair. I wish I could be that fair,
but I think they're I mean, just given the information here,
I'm just trying to be diplomatic, I guess, But no,
I mean, you know, do you think the government used
(51:33):
to be more trustworthy or have they always been the worst?
Speaker 3 (51:38):
It depends on whether you're in the government.
Speaker 4 (51:40):
Yeah, fair enough, but that's a great question.
Speaker 3 (51:44):
I mean, it does it feels like a cover up?
Speaker 2 (51:46):
Well, it does. It's weird to read back through the
history and to see that there is an official acknowledgment
in look at my hand, in this much of a
way by the military only a couple of months later,
like was it was like a month after D Day,
(52:07):
right that this that this occurred and acknowledgment through a
press release through Stars and Stripes that is like specifically
for military folks. And I don't know, man, it seems
it's weird because you can you can point to that
and say, well, we acknowledge it, we we we at
(52:28):
least whatever.
Speaker 3 (52:30):
Yeah, No, you're right, you're right. And Noel, I think
you landed on the perfect word with convenient.
Speaker 5 (52:35):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (52:35):
There's some really interesting historical debate over terminology where you'll
you'll hear people saying this is definitely cover up, and
then you'll hear other historians pointing to, you know, like
that Stars and Stripes article, and they'll say it wasn't
so much of a cover up as watch the air
quotes folks quietly forgotten.
Speaker 5 (52:57):
Yeah, and they sort of did the least right, like
they It's like a it's like a quick mention buried
in the back pages of Variety about.
Speaker 4 (53:06):
Something going on in Hollywood.
Speaker 5 (53:07):
You know what I mean, Like a planted story in
a sort of a niche publication that isn't going to
reach everybody.
Speaker 3 (53:14):
Other than that. My American cousin got pretty solid refuse
that kind of thing. I mean, this is like they're rumors. Okay,
So this is why we can argue cover up. You guys,
there were there was a narrative war, right happening concurrently
on a much smaller level than World War Two. It
(53:36):
was the official record versus the memories of the surviving eyewitnesses.
They were sworn to secrecy, but they were talking with themselves.
This is where historians find sworn accounts of mass unmarked
grapes hidden somewhere away in farm fields in Devin. That's
(53:59):
pretty stuff. It'd be difficult to cover it up now,
or would it?
Speaker 2 (54:06):
Right? Right, Let's talk about the motivation for the cover up.
One last thing that I didn't think about until just now.
It's reminding me of our recent episode we did on
the Lucy let Be case with Amanda Knox. Yeah, where
we're talking about the the the necessary protection of something
(54:31):
like the NHS, the National Health Services, through storytelling, through
you could call it propaganda, you call it just thought.
You want positive stories for a big institution like that
when propaganda is active. Think about how active World War
(54:51):
II propaganda is for Allied forces, US four Forces, British forces.
How much that that version of the propagandaized story equals
hope for people who are getting shelled, you know and
taking cover on you know, a weekly basis, if not
nightly basis, for troops who are having to be sent
(55:11):
into places like Normandy or you know, even after D Day,
Like remember the war didn't just end on D Day, right,
There's a massive amount of military operations that are occurring
after that. Then the Pacific Front and how much is
going on there, and just how necessary it is to
protect the reputation of you know, of things like the
(55:33):
Navy and the Army. And I imagine something like Slapped
in Sands if it just came out and it was
a big deal, would be such a morale killer if
if well, but see as you're saying as well, it's
not like these folks aren't talking somewhat. There's a book
that came out forty six something about my time with Eisenhower.
(55:57):
What the heck is it called My three Years with
Eisenhower TETI. So a little bit after it, there's a
detailed account of this, but it's again hidden in a book,
kind of the way the original acknowledgment is hidden away
in Stars and Stripes. Right that Conceptly, you cannot allow
this to be a major story because it would hurt
(56:17):
us too much.
Speaker 3 (56:19):
Yeah, especially considering Exercise Tiger wound up being the deadliest
training incident in the US military during the Second World War.
But we can also argue it's going to get really cold, folks,
is getting a little war college with it. We can
also argue these deaths are not in vain because the
(56:40):
tragic events of Exercise Tiger lead to several key improvements
that helped Operation Overlord that made D Day successful. First,
to your point, Noel, they finally got together. They got
their crap together with basic training, those life vests, right,
and they also put in smaller boats specifically in play
(57:04):
during the D Day invasion to prevent people from drowning.
So that was a win. Secondly, they said no more
deviating from established sailing strategies. You are a slow chonky boy.
You cannot just boop along in a straight line like
(57:26):
a box turtle walking across the interstate. You've got to
have escort. You've got to be moving your position because
otherwise you are target practice, right, you are sitting ducks.
So most importantly, probably third thing, the radio frequencies were standardized.
Why did that not happen earlier? It's like, you know,
(57:50):
the closest a lot of us get to that kind
of discordination is going to be when you are in
a group chat and one person as an Android or
one person as an iPhone, and you're like, why don't
these gifts work? Why k standardize that? We're talking billions
(58:10):
of dollars? I don't know anyway, Like you were saying, Matt,
the official Tallly the death Toll officially wasn't released until
August of nineteen forty four, and the world had a
lot more stuff going on. It was released quietly and
independent sources. Even then, we're saying that Uncle Sam is
(58:34):
downplaying the number of dead soldiers for one reason or another,
And I agree with you, probably propaganda, but also as
terrible as it is to admit this cover up was necessary,
at least for the short term, I hate that I
am saying this, but at least for the short term,
it was probably the right thing for the Allies to do.
(58:59):
If they went public, it would have screwed up D Day,
It's no way around it.
Speaker 2 (59:04):
You can imagine some of the folks that were involved
in that exercise, like the first Engineer Special Brigade who
ended up, you know, traveling to Normandy Beach very soon
after this, did get something that perhaps eisenhowerd was looking
for them to acquire, which is that initial shock, a
(59:29):
familiarity with that initial sustained shock of being under fire
and attempting to go through all this stuff right, because
that was that was thought to be his goal, Eisenhower's goal,
Give these soldiers and engineers who have to go up
on this beach through all of this, give them a
little more resolve. Right for the moment, I guess you
(59:53):
can just hope that that at least for a small
number of troops that was provided.
Speaker 3 (01:00:01):
And the people involved in Exercise Tiger, the survivors we
should say, were a small part of the D Day invasion,
because we're talking about so many people US, British, Canadian,
Polish troops one hundred and fifty thousand something land on
five beaches and their goal is to finally liberate Nazi
(01:00:25):
occupied Europe. Thousands of people died, just like even the
most optimistic tacticians predicted. We're talking at least four thousand,
four hundred and fourteen Allied troops. Germany's casualties are estimated
between four thousand and nine thousand people. That's not counting
the civilians, by the way, who probably won't get an
(01:00:48):
accurate number for quite some time. But it's certain. I
think it's virtually certain that if the Allies had handled
the aftermath of Exercise Tiger differently, the Allied death toll
would have been much higher. I mean, this is this
reminds me of something you know, old professors are fond
(01:01:08):
of saying morality is the first resource to vanish in war.
Speaker 5 (01:01:15):
Well that was my question, man, I mean, is this
a greater good argument? Like, is this ultimately internally seen
as worth it?
Speaker 4 (01:01:21):
Right?
Speaker 3 (01:01:22):
Yeah, that's the question. Well, maybe that's where we end because.
Speaker 4 (01:01:25):
I'm certainly not positing that.
Speaker 5 (01:01:26):
I mean, like, as we said earlier, like it seems
like really half half asked in its planning. But if
you do the math, did they need it to be
that high stakes in order to actually prepare for the big,
the big show.
Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
You know, I think I see what you're saying. Yeah,
that's the question that should haunt all of us. What
did they make the right decision in their cover up?
I mean, was this conspiracy to your point, Nol really
one of those rare cases of a true greater good?
And that brings us to, you know, the next big question.
(01:02:03):
So we've teased at the top. We see these stories,
genuine conspiracies. It's riddled throughout history, and we have to
ask what else has happened? What's happening now away from
the pride eyes of the public and the press. There
has to be more stuff they don't want you to know.
I mean, guys, do you think we can we can
(01:02:24):
actually hear from some folks in the Devon area. There's
a memorial over there and slapped in sands, I believe. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Is that the one that the SPA the oh god,
the engineers that I just mentioned, the first Special Brigade? Yeah, wow, Yeah,
that's or I know there's I know they put one
up in.
Speaker 4 (01:02:45):
Gosh, can't.
Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
I don't know if that one's on Normandy Beach or
in slapped in sands. There's several of them. Hey, let's
hear from you as you're saying, Ben, if you have information,
or if you've lived there, if you were you know,
know somebody who is a part of this, maybe a family. Remember,
we would love to just hear anything you have to
say regarding this or any other exercise that went wrong.
Speaker 3 (01:03:08):
We would love to hear your opinion on what else
is out there, what else happened or is happening now
that the governments of the world are trying to cover up,
especially the military. So find us on the lines and
call us on a phone. You can always send us
an email.
Speaker 5 (01:03:25):
Sure can find us on the lines at the handle
Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on which line
you go for which social media platform is your bag.
If you don't want to do that, you can also
find us some other ways.
Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
We have a phone number. It is one eight three
three STDWYTK. When you call in, give yourself a cool
nickname and let us know if we can use your
name and message on the air. If you want to
send us an email.
Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware yet unafraid. Sometimes the void
writes back, can't get it out of my head. Guys,
Delta and Quora mest indeed conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Show Links
RSSStoreAboutLive ShowsPopular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Hey Jonas!
Hey Jonas! The official Jonas Brothers podcast. Hosted by Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas. It’s the Jonas Brothers you know... musicians, actors, and well, yes, brothers. Now, they’re sharing another side of themselves in the playful, intimate, and irreverent way only they can. Spend time with the Jonas Brothers here and stay a little bit longer for deep conversations like never before.
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.