Battlefield Detectives
Encyclopedia
Battlefield Detectives is a forensic documentary
television series that aired on the History Channel
from 2003 to 2006. The series explores famous battles focusing on the battlefield itself, and tell its story based on recent scientific research. It uses modern science to examine how the battles were won or lost.
According to History Television, "This series approaches the perennially interesting topic of famous battles in a fresh and exhilarating way. Focusing on the battlefield itself, each programme takes an important battle telling its story and posing a puzzling central question about the battle that recent scientific research is helping to illuminate - a contemporary journey of discovery and a compelling story from the past."
This book looks at seven of the most famous battlefields in history: The Battle of Hastings, The Battle of Agincourt, The Spanish Armada, Waterloo, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Battle of Little Bighorn, and Gallipoli,
It uses traditional methods and modern technology to discover what really happened on the day. The results include new and controversial insights into some of the world’s enduring military mysteries.
Battlefield Detectives uses evidence uncovered by a team of experts from a wide range of disciplines: archaeologists, forensic scientists, crowd dynamics specialists, metal-detectorists and military experts contribute to a new understanding of these fields of war.
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
television series that aired on the History Channel
The History Channel
History, formerly known as The History Channel, is an American-based international satellite and cable TV channel that broadcasts a variety of reality shows and documentary programs including those of fictional and non-fictional historical content, together with speculation about the future.-...
from 2003 to 2006. The series explores famous battles focusing on the battlefield itself, and tell its story based on recent scientific research. It uses modern science to examine how the battles were won or lost.
According to History Television, "This series approaches the perennially interesting topic of famous battles in a fresh and exhilarating way. Focusing on the battlefield itself, each programme takes an important battle telling its story and posing a puzzling central question about the battle that recent scientific research is helping to illuminate - a contemporary journey of discovery and a compelling story from the past."
Season 1 (9 episodes)
- Custer at Little BighornBattle of the Little BighornThe Battle of the Little Bighorn, also known as Custer's Last Stand and, by the Indians involved, as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, was an armed engagement between combined forces of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho people against the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army...
4 October 2003 - Charge of the Light BrigadeCharge of the Light BrigadeThe Charge of the Light Brigade was a charge of British cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. The charge was the result of a miscommunication in such a way that the brigade attempted a much more difficult objective...
11 October 2003 - The Gallipoli Disaster 18 October 2003
- What Sank the Armada?Spanish ArmadaThis article refers to the Battle of Gravelines, for the modern navy of Spain, see Spanish NavyThe Spanish Armada was the Spanish fleet that sailed against England under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia in 1588, with the intention of overthrowing Elizabeth I of England to stop English...
25 October 2003 - Who Got Lucky at Hastings?Battle of HastingsThe Battle of Hastings occurred on 14 October 1066 during the Norman conquest of England, between the Norman-French army of Duke William II of Normandy and the English army under King Harold II...
8 November 2003 - Massacre at WaterlooBattle of WaterlooThe Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands...
9 November 2003 - Agincourt's Dark SecretsBattle of AgincourtThe Battle of Agincourt was a major English victory against a numerically superior French army in the Hundred Years' War. The battle occurred on Friday, 25 October 1415 , near modern-day Azincourt, in northern France...
23 November 2003 - TrafalgarBattle of TrafalgarThe Battle of Trafalgar was a sea battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French Navy and Spanish Navy, during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars ....
13 December 2003 - VietnamVietnam WarThe Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
27 December 2003
Season 2 (8 episodes)
- World War IIWorld War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
: Operation Market GardenOperation Market GardenOperation Market Garden was an unsuccessful Allied military operation, fought in the Netherlands and Germany in the Second World War. It was the largest airborne operation up to that time....
12 November 2004 - Native American Wars: The ApacheApacheApache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the Southwest United States. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, which is related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...
19 November 2004 - American RevolutionAmerican RevolutionThe American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
: Battle of MonmouthBattle of MonmouthThe Battle of Monmouth was an American Revolutionary War battle fought on June 28, 1778 in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The Continental Army under General George Washington attacked the rear of the British Army column commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton as they left Monmouth Court...
26 November 2004 - World War IWorld War IWorld War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
: The Somme 3 December 2004 - Mexican-American War: Battle of Palo AltoBattle of Palo AltoThe Battle of Palo Alto was the first major battle of the Mexican-American War and was fought on May 8, 1846, on disputed ground five miles from the modern-day city of Brownsville, Texas...
10 December 2004 - American RevolutionAmerican RevolutionThe American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
: Battle of CowpensBattle of CowpensThe Battle of Cowpens was a decisive victory by Patriot Revolutionary forces under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan, in the Southern campaign of the American Revolutionary War...
17 December 2004 - Civil WarAmerican Civil WarThe American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
: Battle of GettysburgBattle of GettysburgThe Battle of Gettysburg , was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The battle with the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War, it is often described as the war's turning point. Union Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade's Army of the Potomac...
20 December 2004 - Civil WarAmerican Civil WarThe American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
: Battle of AntietamBattle of AntietamThe Battle of Antietam , fought on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek, as part of the Maryland Campaign, was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Northern soil. It was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with about 23,000...
20 December 2004
Season 3 (13 episodes)
- Battle of the BulgeBattle of the BulgeThe Battle of the Bulge was a major German offensive , launched toward the end of World War II through the densely forested Ardennes mountain region of Wallonia in Belgium, hence its French name , and France and...
14 November 2005 - Battle of BritainBattle of BritainThe Battle of Britain is the name given to the World War II air campaign waged by the German Air Force against the United Kingdom during the summer and autumn of 1940...
21 November 2005 - WaterlooBattle of WaterlooThe Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands...
28 November 2005 - Siege of MasadaSiege of MasadaThe siege of Masada was among the final accords of the First Jewish-Roman War. The long siege by the troops of the Roman Empire led to the mass suicide of the Sicarii rebels and resident Jewish families of the Masada fortress...
5 December 2005 - American Revolutionary WarAmerican Revolutionary WarThe American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...
: Battle of OriskanyBattle of OriskanyThe Battle of Oriskany, fought on August 6, 1777, was one of the bloodiest battles in the North American theater of the American Revolutionary War and a significant engagement of the Saratoga campaign...
5 December 2005 - World War IWorld War IWorld War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
: JutlandBattle of JutlandThe Battle of Jutland was a naval battle between the British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet during the First World War. The battle was fought on 31 May and 1 June 1916 in the North Sea near Jutland, Denmark. It was the largest naval battle and the only...
12 December 2005 - StalingradBattle of StalingradThe Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 23 August 1942 and 2 February 1943...
23 December 2005 - The War of 1812: The Chesapeake and the Shannon 23 December 2005
- Pointe du HocPointe du HocPointe du Hoc is a clifftop location on the coast of Normandy in northern France. It lies 4 miles west of Omaha Beach, and stands on 100 ft tall cliffs overlooking the sea...
30 December 2005 - The 6-Day WarSix-Day WarThe Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...
30 December 2005 - Civil WarAmerican Civil WarThe American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
: ShilohBattle of ShilohThe Battle of Shiloh, also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing, was a major battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, fought April 6–7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee. A Union army under Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had moved via the Tennessee River deep into Tennessee and...
2 January 2006 - AlesiaBattle of AlesiaThe Battle of Alesia or Siege of Alesia took place in September, 52 BC around the Gallic oppidum of Alesia, a major town centre and hill fort of the Mandubii tribe...
9 January 2006 - Battle of Big Hole 30 January 2006
Season 4 (2 episodes)
- Siege of AlesiaBattle of AlesiaThe Battle of Alesia or Siege of Alesia took place in September, 52 BC around the Gallic oppidum of Alesia, a major town centre and hill fort of the Mandubii tribe...
5 November 2006 - Trafalgar's Fatal FlawBattle of TrafalgarThe Battle of Trafalgar was a sea battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French Navy and Spanish Navy, during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars ....
19 November 2006
Book
- Battlefield Detectives [illustrated] by David Wason.
- (Hardcover/Paperback) 256 pages
- (March 2003)
- Publisher: Granada Media
- ISBN 0233050833
This book looks at seven of the most famous battlefields in history: The Battle of Hastings, The Battle of Agincourt, The Spanish Armada, Waterloo, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Battle of Little Bighorn, and Gallipoli,
It uses traditional methods and modern technology to discover what really happened on the day. The results include new and controversial insights into some of the world’s enduring military mysteries.
Battlefield Detectives uses evidence uncovered by a team of experts from a wide range of disciplines: archaeologists, forensic scientists, crowd dynamics specialists, metal-detectorists and military experts contribute to a new understanding of these fields of war.