Battleplan 13. Urban Warfare (1 of 20)

Battleplan

Battleplan is a military-based television documentary series examing the various military strategies used in modern warfare, since World War I. It is shown on the Military Channel and UKTV History. Each episode looks at a particular military strategy (or "battleplan") used in warfare, through two well-know historical examples and compares them both with the military requirements needed in order to conduct that "Battleplan". All the episodes use examples from modern warfare, dating from the First World War (1914–18) up to the recent Iraq War (2003).

Vietnam, 1968.
US Marines battle street-by-street with Communist insurgents during the struggle for the historic city of Hue.
Stalingrad, 1942.

German troops fight close-up with Soviet defenders of the city their leader, Josef Stalin, renamed after himself.
Urban warfare is the most vicious form of fighting.
In an era dominated by technology, it takes a soldier back to the most primitive type of warfare - hand-to-hand, knife against knife, street by street, house by house, even down to room by room.
It gives, and expects, no quarter.
The battleplan is urban warfare.
United States troops practise urban warfare in the American army's specially-built facility at Fort Hood, in Texas.
Teamwork is vital.
Every man depends on every other man to get it right.
British troops run their urban warfare drills at the British army's special facility on Salisbury Plain.
Get it wrong and the consequences can be deadly...
...because this is what it's like for real.
Fallujah, lraq, November 2004, in the aftermath of the war against Saddam Hussein.