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- (narrator): After two decades of boom and bust,
a new, unprecedented challenge...
The deadliest conflict in history...
A threat to our way of life, to our very existence.
More than any time in our history Canadians come together,
working, and fighting, for a common cause...
United at war.
We are explorers,
risk takers,
and dreamers,
fighting the odds in a land of extremes.
Across a vast continent, we build a nation.
(whooping)
Truly strong and free.
Adolf Hitler's Germany has already swallowed up Austria,
Czechoslovakia, and Poland.
Now, the rest of Europe is in his sights.
Desperate for help, our allies turn to Canada.
Fort William, Ontario,
known today as Thunder Bay.
Hundreds of workers are building new fighter planes
for the British.
- The Canadian war effort involved everyone.
On the Home Front, Canadians like in the First World War
banded behind the overseas forces.
We were playing an absolutely crucial role.
- One Canadian doing all she can for the war effort...
This factory's chief engineer, Elsie MacGill.
- Elsie was the very first
female aeronautical engineer and aircraft designer in the world.
- MacGill has retooled this plant
to manufacture the Hawker Hurricane.
- Line your corners.
- One of the most advanced fighter planes in the world.
Great Britain must bolster its air force
or face Nazi invasion.
They've ordered 40 Canadian-made Hurricanes,
to be delivered by the end of the year.
- In the production of Hurricanes,
the demand was real and it was immediate.
And if they didn't get produced,
the war could be lost. So she was under great pressure.
- Stricken with polio at 24,
doctors said Elsie MacGill
would never walk again. She survives
to become the first Canadian woman to earn a degree
in electrical engineering.
At just 35, she's at the top
of an industry dominated by men.
- Electrical updated you on that, correct?
- Elsie MacGill, she felt she was doing something
for the war effort. And maybe because of being a woman,
and maybe because of the polio, she really was able
to drive herself more than the average person.
- Assembling each Hurricane requires an 800-step process
involving 3,600 technical drawings
and 1,500 unique parts.
MacGill guides her workforce every step of the way.
- We want Phase 1 finished by the end of this week.
- You look to the leader to give everybody confidence.
People count on you. And if you give people confidence,
they can handle what's coming.
- To speed up production, MacGill champions a new idea
in aircraft manufacturing: Modular design--
Separate parts, precisely machined,
allowing for quick assembly and a lighter, more agile aircraft.
- The high quality of the machining
of all these pieces means
that they're actually the same-- they're machined the same way.
It's not just a custom-made one piece.
That's the way we do it in the space shuttle and aircraft now.
The modular concept of making these airplanes
was quite extraordinary. - MacGill's new techniques
pay off. The 40 Hurricanes are built and delivered to England
five months ahead of schedule--
just as the Allies' worst fears are realized.
Summer, 1940. Blitzkrieg
-Germany's lightning war- tears across France
right to the English Channel.
- When France was defeated and overrun by the Nazis
in June of 1940, Britain stood alone.
It didn't have the resources to survive the German onslaught.
- By July, the Battle of Britain has begun.
The British face a deadly rain
of German bombs.
Britain desperately needs more Hurricanes.
It's an open order for Elsie MacGill--
Deliver new planes as fast as you can.
- It was crucial for Elsie MacGill to prove
she had the goods to do what needed to be done
because a nation, a world was dependent on her delivering.
Talk about pressure.
- MacGill ramps up production.
The factory's workforce swells from 239
to almost 6,000.
- She knew that the Hurricanes were needed
and they were needed yesterday.
So at all times she knew
that every hour, every minute counted.
- MacGill's Canadian-made Hurricanes
arrive in Britain at a rate
of one hundred a month.
Most go to the RAF. But some are destined
for the No. 1 Squadron of the Royal Canadian Air Force.
And an all-Canadian team of pilots readying for battle here,
in Croydon, England.
The Squadron leader is a 34-year-old
from Regina, Saskatchewan, Ernie McNab.
- Let's give them hell, boys. - August 15th,
just over a month into the Battle of Britain.
McNab boards one of Elsie MacGill's Hurricanes.
He is about to become the first RCAF pilot to see air combat
in the Second World War.
McNab's squadron
is hunting for German bombers and their fighter plane escorts.
Within minutes, they're attacked by a group
of Messerschmitt 109s.
But their reliable, agile and precisely engineered aircraft
prove equal to the task.
- It's inspiring to know that those Canadian pilots
flew Canadian-built Hawker Hurricanes during the war--
Our bravery and our industrial capacity together in one.
- During the dogfight, McNab receives an alert.
Two German bombers are speeding west toward London,
ready to drop a deadly payload.
McNab catches up with the bombers,
taking on one while his wingman tails the other.
McNab's aim is precise and he registers his first kill
of the war.
It's the first of over 1,600 combat flights
for No. 1 Squadron and Elsie MacGill's Hurricanes.
By the end of 1940,
the British rule their own skies with critical help
from Canadian planes and pilots like Ernie McNab.
He survives the war and is awarded
the Distinguished Flying Cross.
- If we had not succeeded in the Battle of Britain,
if we had lost the control of the skies
over England, it's quite likely
England would have been invaded, and we might be living
a very different lifestyle right now.
- Throughout the war,
MacGill keeps her factory operating at an all-out pace,
producing almost 1,500 Hurricanes
in just three years. - The legacy of Elsie MacGill
is the fact that we live in a free land. I'm sure the war
would have droned on much longer with more loss of life
had it not been for Elsie MacGill
and her drive to produce the Hurricanes that she did.
It was an extraordinary time
for an extraordinary woman.
- Elsie MacGill's engineering brilliance
wins her international acclaim.
She is even immortalized in a comic book
with her very own superhero alias:
"Queen of the Hurricanes".
Canada's wartime contribution
to the Allied arsenal is immense:
800,000 military transport vehicles,
50,000 tanks, 40,000 field,
naval, and anti-aircraft guns,
and 16,000 planes.
- Canada was the arsenal of democracy.
There was tremendous passion behind this commitment
to war production in Canada.
- As Germany tightens its grip on Europe,
the demand for more Canadian-made planes,
vehicles, weapons
and ships increases.
A new labour force is on the rise--
Women in the workplace across the country
in numbers never seen before.
- I mean, women in Canada during the war were doing everything.
Things that Canadians had never thought women
were appropriate for, women were suddenly doing,
and doing extremely well.
- From leaders like Elsie MacGill
to workers like Louise Christoffersen--
She and her co-workers will have a direct impact
on the longest running battle of World War Two
and the outcome of the war itself.
September 19
Louise Christoffersen is one of 1.2 million women in Canada
who will join the work force
so that more men can go to war.
- It really was necessary that women
fill in the gap that the men left behind.
They needed
to take on these jobs in order to ensure
that the war could be won.
- It was an opportunity for women to be able
to work, to be able to be part of the war effort,
and to develop some kind of skill set
that normally they would not be able to have.
- After a tough childhood
in Depression-era Alberta,
Christoffersen moved with her family to Vancouver.
Now, she is one of 14,000 workers
at the Burrard Dry Dock--
the biggest shipyard in the country.
Our allies are counting
on Canadian ships now more than ever,
three years into a brutal fight --
the Battle of the Atlantic. - The Battle of the Atlantic
was the longest running battle of the Second World War.
For Canada it went from Day 1
and went to the last day of the war.
- The Battle of the Atlantic was over moving convoys
from North America to Britain to keep people fed
and supplied. If those convoys didn't get
to the ports in Britain, the war would have not lasted very long.
- Canadian food,
munitions and soldiers had to be transported across the Atlantic
to keep Britain in the war. - Hitler knows
that his best chance of victory is to cut the Atlantic
supply line and starve Britain into submission.
His chosen method: over a thousand attack submarines,
known as U-Boats.
Dozens of allied ships
are going down every month.
- The Merchant Marine, the Navy suffered incredible losses.
And they still went out in these convoys knowing
with some certainty that they were gonna be attacked.
- The Royal Canadian Navy scrambles to build up its fleet,
expanding from six warships to 434.
The Merchant Marine will increase from 38 vessels
to 410. Canadian workers
-men and women- will build them.
Louise Christoffersen is part of a crew
that assembles the massive steel hulls of cargo and naval ships.
- They understood the importance of what they were doing.
They understood that this was something that could help
win the war.
- Part of the riveting team, she must ensure these red hot bolts
get to the riveter as quickly as possible.
- The job she was doing was very dangerous.
People got hurt often.
(screaming)
- The rivet narrowly misses Christoffersen's eye.
But physical injury is only one
of the challenges she must face in her working life.
Women like Christoffersen face bias from a society not used
to seeing women in jobs traditionally held by men.
- I can imagine that she had a lot of challenges to deal with
that today women don't have and wouldn't put up with.
- Undaunted,
Louise continues to work long hours at the shipyard.
- I'm okay.
- And she becomes a mentor
to many of the 1,000 young women working there.
- I think that's when women came out of their shell,
because why did we have to always be secretaries
or telephone operators?
Now we can be whatever we damn well please.
- Christoffersen and her fellow workers are united
in a common purpose:
building up the allied fleet.
But the U-Boat proves a formidable adversary,
killing 4,600 Canadians in the six-year campaign.
Nearly 100 Canadian ships will be lost.
- The Navy learned. They learned through terrible losses.
They learned and expanded
from a few thousand sailors up to 100,000.
And by the end of the war we had one of the largest navies
in the world. - It's an enormous achievement,
impossible without the contribution of Canadian women
like Louise Christoffersen.
After the war, she championed equal pay and rights for women
in the workplace until her death in 2006.
- When you see Remembrance Day ceremonies
where there are still World War Two veterans,
you will see women standing there.
They were an incredible part of the thanks we should give
for that generation
who fought that war, and won that war
so we could live the lives that we live today.
- As Canadian ships brave the U-Boat menace,
a new, mysterious German weapon poses an even greater threat.
August 27th, 1943.
The Bay of Biscay, off the coast of France and Spain.
The Battle of the Atlantic is still raging,
and the Royal Canadian Navy
remains on the front lines.
His Majesty's Canadian Ship Athabaskan
is part of Operation Percussion,
an Allied campaign to root out German U-Boats
along the French and Spanish coasts.
The Athabaskan's commander
is Captain George Miles,
a veteran of the Royal Canadian Navy.
Miles keeps his men on constant lookout,
for U-Boats below,
and the Luftwaffe above.
- I can't imagine what that must have been like,
because there's no kind of 'all clear'.
There's no, 'Oh, we're fine for the next two days.
There's nothing out there.' They didn't know!
There was constant danger.
- Overhead, they see a formation of unknown aircraft.
- It looks like aircraft, 6'oclock.
- Action stations! - Action stations!
- What Captain Miles doesn't know is that his ship
has been targeted by one of the most advanced weapons
of the Nazi war machine. A weapon
that could sink not just his vessel
but the Allies' hopes for victory in Europe.
onboard the HMCS Athabaskan,
Captain George Miles watches as a cluster
of unusual aircraft streak toward his ship.
They're coming in fast, banking and turning
just like German dive-bombers on the attack,
but they are too small to be airplanes.
In three years of combat, Captain Miles
has never seen anything like it. - Right full rudder!
Right full. - He attempts to pilot
the Athabaskan out of harm's way.
Four of the objects miss the ship.
They hit the water and explode just like bombs.
But there is a fifth on the way and it's honing in fast.
- It must have been horrifying
to see a bomb coming across the sky
and it's changing direction.
- They knew they were dealing with something very different.
(explosion)
- Fire! (alarms sounding)
Everybody out! We're getting hit!
- The crew manages to contain the fire and seal the breach.
It's a narrow escape from disaster
and the beginning of a terrifying mystery.
Over the next six months, these flying explosives
wreak havoc on the Allied fleet.
More than thirty ships are badly damaged or sunk.
The Allies dub this deadly new weapon the 'glide bomb'--
It's the world's first guided missile.
- It was a game changer. It looked like the Germans
could knock out Allied shipping at a whim.
Thousands lost their lives in ship sinkings.
- Meanwhile, preparations are already well underway for D-Day.
The invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe is just four months away.
- The assault on Europe was an all-or-nothing push.
I mean, the planning is unbelievable.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers
in the air war, in the navy,
in the ground forces are gonna be hurled
against the German defences.
Allied planners thought there was about
a 50/50 chance of success. Those were not good odds.
- This new German weapon
threatens what is already an extremely risky plan.
In early 1944,
the Allies get a break: a chance
to crack the glide bomb's code,
and it's inside this Canadian army truck.
- The Allies managed to get both halves of the technology.
A transmitter in a plane that had crashed, and they recovered
a glide bomb as well. - The recovered technology
is shared among the Allies. The Royal Canadian Navy
orders this secret intelligence to be shipped
to one of the world's leading scientific organizations,
Canada's National Research Council.
- The National Research Council was a world leader and innovator
in radar and radio technologies.
They had the ability to take the science
and transfer it into useable products for the military
and get it delivered to the field in real time.
- The NRC faces a daunting mission:
Reverse engineer the glide bomb, then design and build
brand new technology to defeat it.
Our brightest scientists are called upon to defend
the nation.
The team leaders
are physicist W.C. Wilkinson...
...and 26-year-old Rhodes Scholar
and radio engineer Richard Rettie.
- Wilkinson and Rettie seemed to enjoy the game
of solving problems and developing new devices
and attacking problems even in most difficult and dark times.
- They must work fast.
The war in Europe is escalating.
Wilkinson and Rettie begin to get a clearer picture
of how the glide bomb works and how it can be stopped.
The glide bomb is launched from a plane. A bomb pilot
uses a remote control to send a radio signal
picked up by a receiver
built into the bomb itself, allowing him to direct the bomb
right into the target. - They were hoping they could
disrupt the signals that were coming from the airplane
and thus incapacitate the bombs.
They had to invent something new.
- They turn to a new field in the science
of electronic communication-- radio signal jamming.
- It was a brand new technology.
And they were working against the clock 24 hours a day.
There was a eureka moment when they realized
that they had produced something that could work.
- A way to make the enemy lose control of the bomb
by jamming its radio control signal.
They call their prototype
the Canadian Naval Jammer-- the 'CNJ'.
But they can't send it into battle
until they are sure that it works.
March, 1944.
In a well-guarded location outside Ottawa, the NRC team
runs a field test.
The fate of many troops
hangs in the balance.
- Gentlemen, commencing range test 1.
- Glide bomb is armed and under control of the transmitter.
- Stand-by to send jamming signal.
- They had both AM and FM and a wide range of frequencies
that they used in their jammer, hoping that they could disrupt
the glide bomb just enough
to throw it off track. - Now!
- The CNJ blocks the enemy radio signal
directing the glide bomb...
making it miss its target.
- It's working. - Yes!
- The CNJ is rushed into production
eight weeks before D-Day.
By April, 1944,
25 jammers have been deployed onboard
Canadian ships.
- In war you don't know for sure whether it's going to work
until the bomb is coming at your ship.
- Incoming! 11 o'clock!
- This new Canadian invention helps save lives.
Thanks to the CNJ and other Allied technology,
the accuracy rate of the German glide bombs
drops below 5%, drastically reducing
their threat to Canadian and Allied ships
in the lead-up to D-Day. - I can say
with absolute certainty that there would be
many more Canadian bodies in the graveyards of Normandy
if it was not for this invention.
- But there is another threat to the Allies' top secret
D-Day plans, this one on land...
...and deep behind enemy lines.
Plouha, Brittany.
Inside Nazi-occupied France.
A daring, covert mission is about to begin,
and it all depends
on two elite Canadian soldiers:
38-year-old Lucien Dumais, of Montreal,
and 23-year-old Raymond LaBrosse, from Ottawa.
Recruited and trained by the British spy agency MI9,
Dumais and LaBrosse
have been in Nazi-occupied France since November 1943,
posing as locals
and working closely with the underground French Resistance.
- Lucien Dumais and Raymond LaBrosse,
they trusted each other because their lives are on the line.
- Their mission, codenamed Operation Bonaparte,
is to locate and rescue a group of downed Allied airmen hiding
in this village.
But this mission is about more than saving lives.
Any airmen captured by the Germans
face severe interrogation
and risk revealing Allied secrets.
- [Bonjour, tout le monde à la maison d'Alphonse!]
- What sounds like a children's rhyme on a radio broadcast
is in fact coded intelligence direct from the Allied Command.
- There would have been a series of keywords and phrases
which would mean nothing to most people but everything to them.
- The mission is a go.
It's tonight.
January 29th, 1944.
Northern France.
Canadian soldiers Lucien Dumais
and Raymond LaBrosse are deep behind enemy lines
on a daring rescue mission.
- Here are two young French-speaking Canadians.
They had volunteered to go
into enemy-occupied territory where every second
they were in fear of the Gestapo
coming down on them and it's the end of their lives.
- The French Resistance have been hiding a group
of downed Allied airmen in this village.
Dumais and LaBrosse are to guide them across three kilometres
to British naval boats at a nearby Beach.
- The coastal areas were fortified, they were mined,
the Germans were not leaving any part of the coast unguarded.
- Dumais and LaBrosse have spent months
gathering intelligence,
studying the local terrain, and hiding weapons and supplies.
And with the proposed D-Day invasion just six months away,
the Allies must do whatever possible
to bring these men, and their secrets,
back from behind enemy lines.
- Having those people in the hands of German intelligence
would not have been a good thing.
Every person was important:
Every soldier,
every airman...
(hooting)
...and losing any of them and their potential for intelligence
was a danger.
- Tonight, it's up to Dumais and LaBrosse
to keep these sixteen American airmen
and two British agents out of German hands.
Each man is given a knife and orders
to kill any German patrol quickly
and silently. - You do what we say,
when we say. No question.
- When LaBrosse and Dumais would bring the downed Allied airmen
to the coast, they had to do so
literally under the noses of the Germans.
- They've almost made it to the rendezvous point.
But the final 75 metres to the beach
is a death-defying journey.
The area is covered with mines.
Based on intelligence from the French resistance, Dumais
and LaBrosse know the exact placement of every mine.
- Those men so close, tantalizingly close
to getting home,
everybody thinking the same thing:
Are we going to be killed
this close to getting home?
- Being behind enemy lines
must have been very intense,
because you know that as soon as you get seen,
you're either gonna die or you're gonna be taken prisoner.
You're never 100% sure of who you can trust.
- Bonaparte is ready to go.
- The British have brought arms, money and medical supplies
for the French Resistance.
Now, it's the moment of truth.
- When you talk to these veterans about:
'How did you deal with that kind of pressure,
'the constant pressure
that things could happen at any moment?'
And they just did.
They accepted...
more than just the possibility of death--
they accepted the likelihood of death.
- Tonight, all eighteen Allied soldiers
will make it safely back to England.
For Dumais and LaBrosse,
their first mission is a success.
But they have many more to come.
With the liberation of Europe on the line, everything depends
on safeguarding Allied intelligence.
- [Bonjour, tout le monde à la maison d'Alphonse.]
- They had more men to save.
Eight times Dumais and LaBrosse
organized these lifts in Operation Bonaparte.
(hooting)
By the end of the Second World War,
Dumais and LaBrosse return 135 Allied airmen
to the Allied cause.
- As Dumais and LaBrosse continue their secret missions
behind enemy lines,
one of the most consequential days of the war
is fast approaching.
D-Day, officially known
as 'Operation Neptune'.
An amphibious assault is underway
on an 80-kilometre stretch of the Normandy coast.
American forces will land at Utah and Omaha beach,
the British at Gold and Sword.
Canada's objective: Juno Beach,
where thousands of German soldiers are waiting.
June 6th, 1944.
Over 4,000 amphibious landing craft
power through the stormy seas
of the English Channel. 130,000 Allied soldiers
are about to land in Normandy.
14,000 are Canadian.
- I think for all of those guys on those landing craft
that that would have been the worst--
waiting for it to begin, the approach of it.
You could see it coming. You could see the shore.
You know that the Germans have considerable defences there.
That would just have been horrifying.
- June
Juno Beach.
The Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France
is underway. (explosion)
(screaming)
Among the first Canadians in the battle
is Brampton, Ontario's Bill 'Boots' Bettridge,
a sniper with the Queen's Own Rifles, Third Canadian
Infantry Division. He enlisted in 1940
straight out of high school.
His regiment, 800 men strong,
has trained four years for this day.
- They were from every part of Canada: Miners and teachers
and doctors and lawyers.
They'd come together
as volunteers. You know, they volunteered to go to war.
- Boots and his comrades
have landed at 'Nan White' sector.
They're here to secure this section of beach,
advance inland, and seize the town
of Bernières-sur-Mer.
- I can't imagine
what it was like for those young Canadian infantrymen.
Charging face first into this murderous machine gun fire,
watching their comrades torn apart around them,
finding the courage to rush forward.
- We were told, 'Don't stop,
even if your best friend's got wounded.'
- Go! Go! Go! - 'Don't stop or you're gonna be
laying alongside of him, you just keep going.'
- Now imagine how that must have felt.
If it was somebody you went through training with,
who had held your hand in that landing ship,
who'd wiped the vomit off you
because you'd been seasick all the way there,
and you're being told 'Keep moving.
Don't even look down.'
- The only way to survive on Juno Beach
was to get off Juno Beach.
- But first, Boots must run a terrifying path
of artillery fire, minefields,
machinegun nests, and barbed wire.
(battle cry)
Boots Bettridge and his comrades break through the German line
and reach the town of Bernières-sur-Mer.
They have met their first objective.
Of the 800 men of the Queen‘s Own Rifles,
there are 143 casualties.
4,400 Allied soldiers are killed on the first day
of the Normandy landings.
Canada alone suffers
over 1,000 casualties.
- Many of the Canadians who survived Juno Beach,
that beach of carnage and destruction, were
determined to keep pushing on. They knew the job wasn't over.
- The battle for the rest of Nazi-held Europe has just begun.
British and American forces press east toward Germany
as the Third Canadian Infantry fights on
across northern France, Belgium and into Holland.
- They are facing the German Army,
which despite having been battered
is still a fierce combat formation.
- The retreating Germans are desperate
and they will stop at nothing to halt the Allied advance--
obstacles, roadblocks,
and explosive *** traps.
Up ahead of Boot Bettridge,
in western Holland, is another soldier
of the Third Canadian Infantry Division, navigating
the rubble strewn roads with his army issue bicycle.
George Horse,
a Cree soldier
from Saskatchewan's Thunderchild first nation.
He's approaching the enemy line
with a small team of combat engineers
known as sappers. - Sappers are combat engineers
and one of the most overlooked elements of any combat force.
Amongst combat troops, they're one of the most respected.
Their job is to clear the road. These guys are going forward
clearing *** traps, clearing unexploded ordinance
in advance of the main body of troops coming through.
- In Breskens, Holland,
Allied bombing has forced the German army to withdraw.
But they've left ***-traps.
If the sappers can't clear the mine-infested roadblock,
the Allied advance will be slowed.
- Let's go to work!
- Horse must carefully place demolition charges,
run detonation cord, and destroy the roadblock
without killing himself or his men.
George Horse and his team have cleared another obstacle
standing between Allied armies and ultimate victory.
But out here, on the leading edge of the attack,
they are never free from danger.
- Artillery incoming!
- (Horse): After our charge blew, a bombardment came in
from the North Sea. The blast was so powerful
that it knocked us out for several hours.
- They take the highest rate of casualties
because they have to be at the forefront at all times.
- (Horse): My ears were humming. I couldn't walk straight.
I was never able to go back to the front,
but I felt I had served my purpose
alongside my friends in the military.
- I think Indigenous people join the military
for all different reasons. And it's different
depending on what time in history you're talking about.
There's a very long tradition
of duty and honour within Indigenous communities,
and I think that was a motivator for a lot of people.
The worst thing possible can be to forget people
who have served this country in wars.
You can't forget what they've done for us.
- Thanks to the efforts of Horse and his fellow sappers,
Allied troops -including the Canadian 3rd Infantry-
pursue a relentless assault on the German army across Holland.
As the Nazi empire
is slowly crushed from all sides...
May 8th, 1945.
Less than a year after D-Day,
the war in Europe -in which
more than 40,000 Canadians gave their lives- is over.
- The Second World War was a great turning point
in our history. Canada was never the same. We fielded
an enormous fighting force. One in ten Canadians served.
We fought around the world.
The nation was forever changed at home.
- Remember them. Remember their sacrifice,
not only those who are still in the ground there,
but those who came home.
Because not only did they fight for our country,
they then came home and contributed
to help making our country.
And they should never be forgotten for that.
- For six years, Canadians have shared a common purpose:
stopping foreign tyranny and building a better world.
Now, many will demand a better country at home--
fighting for freedom on our own soil.
Closed Captioning by SETTE inc.