Winner New York Festivals Gold Medal for best History Programme 2004
Nominated for a BAFTA (Specialist Factual) 2004
Nominated for an RTS Programme Award (History) 2004
1 x 120 for for
five, WNET, NGCI Originally broadcast 1 May 2004, five
Executive Producer Ian Duncan
Director Mark Lewis
Producer Ana-Paula Lloyd
D-Day: The Ultimate Conflict
This
is the definitive account of what really happened on D-Day. From the
motley crew of behind-the scenes inventors, creating the machines of
amphibious attack, to the thousands of soldiers determined to change
history.
In the spring of 1944, in one steamroller offensive, nearly two hundred
thousand troops landed on the coast of France in a last ditch effort to
reverse the Nazi Occupation of Europe.
It was a plan orchestrated by the greatest military minds the Allies
could muster. But there were others - now forgotten - who toiled
away behind the scenes in total secret. A maverick collection of
inventors, boffins, even sports heroes who had been drafted in from the
most unexpected walks of life with a specific command: design and build
an all-new mechanised armoury. Machines that could breath fire,
tanks that could swim, gadgets and mechanical devices that could find
the weak spots in Hitler’s defences.
This is their story, and the story of the men who put these machines to
the ultimate test on the battlefield - the ordinary soldiers that sixty
years ago this June made the greatest amphibious invasion in history -
D-Day.
“D Day: The Ultimate Conflict” was surprisingly brilliant.”
The Guardian
“Compelling and moving"
The Independent
“D Day: The Ultimate Conflict” was a beautifully organized opera.
Daily Telegraph
“It was the tiny
details and soldiers’ tear stinging recollections that gave Mark
Lewis’s documentary its tang”