Dan Snow's History Hit - New D-Day Shipwrecks Discovered

Episode Date: June 6, 2021

D-Day on 6 June 1944 saw the largest amphibious landing in history take place as more than 150,000 allied troops stormed five assault beaches in Normandy, attempting to break through Hitler's Atlantic Wall. ⁠One of the unsung heroes of that operation were the landing craft and their crews. Without whom there could have been no initial landing and that beachhead that created could not have been maintained. Landing Craft Tank were the backbone of the operation to put the Allies back on continental Europe. They brought thousands of tanks, vehicles and tons of supplies ashore on the beaches and allowing the men fighting inland to continue to push forward against stiff German resistance. In this episode of the podcast, Dan speaks with historian Stephen Fisher about his exciting new project which has led to the identification of two Landing Craft Tank that were sunk in Poole Harbour after the war as a breakwater. They discuss the role of these ships, their development, the often perilous conditions they faced in The Channel and how Stephen came to discover the identities of these vessels. For more D-day content, such as the new film D-Day: Secrets of the Solent, subscribe to historyhit.tv. For a limited time, you can receive 50% off your first six months as a History Hit subscriber using the code dday.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email,

someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Dan Snow's History. This podcast is first broadcast on the 6th of June,

2021. That means it's the anniversary of D-Day, the largest amphibious assault ever launched in the history of the world. To mark the anniversary, I've got the very brilliant Stephen Fisher on the podcast. He is a meticulous historian. The spreadsheets he builds, folks, you don't want to know. You don't want to know. He played a key part in resurrecting the wreck of landing craft tank 7074, restoring it in minute detail to how it looked on the morning of June the 6th, 1944, and placing it outside the D-Day Museum in South Sea, Portsmouth. He's incredibly knowledgeable and he and I have just made a documentary for historyhit.tv. You may have heard me mention

this channel. It's the best history channel in the world. We rampage around the Solent. For those of you listening abroad, the Solent is a beautiful protected stretch of water on the south coast of England, protected by the Isle of Wight. It's where the Mary Rose sank. It's where HMS Victory set off on her journey towards the Battle of Trafalgar. It's where Titanic slid out from Southampton on her maiden journey. And it is where hundreds and hundreds of vessels, naval vessels, landing craft, supply ships, all gathered before the D-Day landings. It was said you could walk from one side of the Solent to the other without getting your feet wet. There were so many ships there.

And I'm happy to say some of those ships remain to this day. There are still the wrecks, the ghosts, the remnants of the D-Day landings, of those fleets, of those shore facilities built along the edge of the Solent. They're still here to be seen and in some cases discovered. In this podcast, I'm very proud to say that it's exclusive. My guest, Stephen Fisher, has discovered that a shipwreck actually slightly west of the Solent in Pool Harbour is in fact a D-Day veteran. Keep listening for details of what this ship did on D-Day itself and how Stephen Fisher was able to identify it. It's such an exciting story.

Why don't you listen to this podcast? If you go over to historyhit.tv, you can watch the TV show. I have been overruled. I have been locked out of the office. I've been denied the password to the mainframe and my team have gone mad. They're giving out an extraordinary D-Day offer on historyhit.tv. If you become a subscriber today or tomorrow, D-Day weekend, and use the code D-Day, D-D-A-Y, you get 50% off your first six months using the service. That means you get History Hit, the world's best history channel, for the price of a pint of beer every month until Christmas. It is very, very alarming. I hope those kids know what they're doing. So head over to historyhit.tv,

use the code D-Day, watch the shows made on Bismarck, watch Eleanor Janneger's medieval history shows, and check out our new exclusive on D-Day when we identify this new wreck. Historyhit.tv, use the code D-Day. In the meantime, here is Stephen Fisher, everyone. Enjoy. Stephen, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm very pleased to be here. Well, after our adventure around the Solent, I feel I've seen a lot of D-Day, but just give us all a sense,

give the audience a sense of the scale of the undertaking on the British side of the channel. It was absolutely massive. Nothing had ever taken place of this sort of scale before in terms of amphibious operations. And really, you can't underestimate the level of organisation and planning that had to go into an operation of this scale. So it had been in the background as a preparation had really been starting ever since 1940 when we left mainland Europe, because we knew that in order to defeat Germany, we would have to return to the continent. And if you're going to do that, it has to be by sea. So for a long time, this background planning had been happening. Of course, that ramps up into 1943 and 1944, but a lot of the groundwork for it, the preparation of the embarkation hards,

that can be dated back to 1942. The construction of the landing craft to carry out the operation, that goes all the way back to 1940. A time when invading Europe seemed fairly remote. It was, yeah. It speaks volumes about the foresight of the planning for D-Day, that they are already planning it the moment they when it comes to actually constructing all of these vessels that are going to be needed not just constructing them but designing them as well because we didn't have landing craft tank before 1940 so we had to design these vessels and then that also gives you a number of years to actually practice using them to train the crews to operate them to iron out the problems in the design so that you get the ideal landing craft, which is, I suppose, really the Mark IV landing craft tank, which combines all of the

lessons that have been learned in the previous years into an efficient, easy-to-produce landing craft that is really only suitable for cross-channel operations. That's pretty much all it was designed for. If you look at big amphibious assaults, I guess Gallipoli, I'm so struck that before 1944, or before starting the Second World War, there were adapted and modified craft and people thought about how to get infantry on the beach in quick time. But the scale of reimagining for Sicily, for D-Day, was just gigantic. I mean, these are whole new fleets of vessels, as you say, being designed and built and tested for the first time. new fleets of vessels, as you say, being designed and built and tested for the first time. Yeah, and it took years to actually iron out all of the problems with them. The very early landing craft tank, they designed them without any accommodation because they assumed that the crews would be able to live ashore and then they would just operate them during the day and then return to harbour at night. And in practice, of course, that doesn't work. You can't have that

many landing craft all operating from a shore station and all returning to the shore every evening. So they very quickly realised you need to put accommodation on them to accommodate the crews. And that doesn't leave you much space on your landing craft. So it has to be of a really minimal size. So very soon you have literally thousands of these vessels operating around the coast of Britain with nowhere to put the crews. And so they quickly realised, yes, you have to accommodate men on ship. This is a whole brand new arm of the Royal Navy that has to be trained and equipped and become a cogent part of the fleet very, very quickly, just in the space of a couple of years.

And to turn that around so fast is you know a real tribute to the skill of the men involved and the planning that went into it now we're going to talk about landing craft tanks in a sec because it's an extraordinary discovery that you and a couple of associates have made but just before we do what else is there on the south coast i mean you showed me some amazing sites what else can people still see on the south coast of England that's connected with this extraordinary moment from our past? There's a surprising amount to see. And I think a side effect of the recent pandemic and the fact that we can't go to France for the D-Day anniversary, and we're coming up to the second

anniversary where we can't actually travel over to Normandy, is that people are looking more for the sites that exist along our own coast connected with the D-Day invasion. And they come in all types. There's training facilities. So there's concrete landing craft down in Devon that we use to practice disembarkation. There's the D-Day wall, a training facility up in Surrey. Then you also have accommodation sites. So the marshalling camps, which don't actually leave incredible remains, but there's still locations where you can actually stand where troops were marshalling before D-Day. Then there's the points of embarkation themselves and many of those purpose-built embarkation hordes, but also existing dock facilities. And many of those have memorials

and tributes to the fact that the landing craft actually departed from there. And then there's all of the random sites that people don't really see. They don't notice, they're not aware of, but they drive past almost every day. So the lay-bys that were put in place alongside roads to accommodate the additional traffic that would be moving to the marshalling areas. So a lay-by is necessary in case a vehicle breaks down so you can get it off the road and out of the way as quickly as possible so that the convoy can carry on moving. And many of those are still on the sides of our roads today. Some of them are bus stops, some people pull up and buy strawberries in them without ever realising that they were put in place between 1942 and 1944 with this expectation of Operation Neptune. And the troop concentrations, you mentioned

these marshalling areas, some of which are in the New Forest, which is near where you and I explored. What kind of numbers of troops are we talking about gathered in southern England for this invasion just before D-Day 1944? So the entire invasion force is operating from the south coast of England, with the exception of Force L, which is the Commonwealth Beaches Reserve Force, and they departed from East Anglia. The rest of the invasion, there were seven task forces. One Force L is in East Anglia. The other six are all along the south coast of England. So at Falmouth, you have Force B. Plymouth and around Dartmouth, you've got Force U for Utah. And then from Dartmouth to Pool Harbour, including Portland, you have Force O for Omaha,

and then you have the three Commonwealth beaches, Sword, Juneau, and Gold, are all concentrated in the Solent. So almost the entire invasion force of, what is it, 150,000 men or so is actually just along the south coast of England. It's a phenomenal amount of men and vehicles and material that is being gathered. And the camps themselves could accommodate anywhere between 1,000 and 2,000 men. So they're all being concentrated in these little areas as close as possible to their points of embarkation. So you have these small temporary camps that aren't really used much beyond D-Day, where suddenly you just mass 1,000 to 2,000 men in a field or in a small wood who were there for a week, maybe two weeks, and then suddenly just as quickly they're

gone. And a bit like those airfields, a huge number of airfields suddenly sprang up along the coast as close as you could possibly get to Normandy to maximise flying time. Literally, yes. So they're right on the shores and there are many of these advanced landing grounds that were built practically on the waterfront, literally as close as you can get to Normandy, so that they can maximise their flying time over the fleet and over the beaches. And some of them, very briefly, the busiest airfields in the world because of all the activity taking place just on D-Day and the days after, as well as aircraft, ships leaving, troops. Let's talk a bit about Mulberry Harbour, because you took me to see a piece of Mulberry Harbour. I mean,

that was so ambitious. It was. Of all of the innovations put in place for Overlords, the Mulberry Harbour is the most complex, the most fascinating, and also the most brilliant and successful. And although D-Day, as an independent day on the 6th of June didn't require Mulberry Harbour, in order to stay in the continent, in order to build up sufficient men and vehicles to resist the obvious gathering of German troops that will come to resist us in Normandy, you can't succeed without Mulberry Harbour

because you need to be able to use your full fleet of vessels. The beaches of France, perfect for landing craft, but that's it. You can't use deep draft vessels, merchant ships, transport ships, and liners and hospital ships. For that, you need a harbour. And there was no way we were going to capture one easily. And the Germans, of course, made it very difficult for us to capture the Havre and Cherbourg, which were the closest sizable ports to the actual invasion beaches. So in order to be able to utilise your full fleet, to be able to keep transporting men and vehicles across the English Channel, you need a harbour. And taking one with us sounds completely mad, but it was achievable and they did it.

And it was a massive success. And yeah, you can see the evidence of that in Normandy but also here in the south coast of England and you get a real size of the scale of that operation from those huge concrete behemoths the phoenix caissons that were assembled to provide that huge breakwater that harbour off the coast of France. Yes you took me to see where wine had been abandoned it was default during the construction process and, you took me to see where wine had been abandoned. It was default during the construction process. And also you took me to two sites, didn't you, where they were launched. It did feel like monumental archaeology, almost on the scale of visiting sites in the classical

world. You know, these gigantic, crumbling sites that there's a sort of awe-inspiring nature of the scale. There is, and they do have that same impact, if you like, when you actually visit them as many of the classical archaeological and historical sites that we visit. And they are comparable in a way, because especially for the construction sites for Mulberry Harbour that I took you to at Langston and at Leap, these were one-shot use. They only used them the one time to build the Phoenix caissons, and then they were abandoned. So they capture a snapshot of time of a need to build these harbours. And then, because they were never reused, they very quickly turn into ruins. And that's what we're left with now, much like we're left with the ruins of other periods of history. So they're definitely comparable. And archaeologically, I consider them also very comparable and ones that are worthy of protection and respect.

And we need to treat them accordingly as heritage sites, even though they're from the very recent era, they're less than 80 years old. If we don't treat them as heritage sites now, then they won't be around in the future for us to then think back and say, oh, we should have treated that as a heritage site then, and now we don't have it. So they're very important sites,

and they are endemic of a particular snapshot, a particular moment in time, which is the Second World War. So they're incredibly significant locations, archaeologically and historically. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. On the anniversary of D-Day, we are talking about that amphibious assault with historian Stephen Fisher.

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don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz.izz switching to fizz is quick and easy mobile plans start at 17 a month certain conditions apply details at fizz.ca well you took me to so many locations that many people probably just overlook as you mentioned

leap langston we found a rotting landing craft on the Bewley River that we were able to get up close to. And after some drama in the marshes, we were able to get close to. But let's talk about the Pool Harbour LCTs, because this is something that no one will know about. And it's just incredibly special. In Pool Harbour in the UK, there are two rotting, sunken wrecks, twisted mass of metal that to most people would look just like generic sunken wrecks. But to you, well, you spotted something very different. Tell us how you uncovered their story. Yeah, in Pool Harbour, there are two landing craft tank. So comparable in size to LCT 7074, the recently restored example outside the

D-Day story in Portsmouth. And they're Mark 4 landing craft tank. And they were put there at the end of the war, sometime between 1948 and 1950. And incredibly, they are still there. They were built as a breakwater at the very end of a quay in P and that key has been massively expanded all around the landing craft, which are now still lying there in the middle of this little marina. They're not in the best condition, they're very difficult to recognise for what they are, but when you see certain key features, especially the bow ramps at the front and then the capstans at the rear, which are still actually standing above the collapsed superstructure, it's very, very obvious that these are landing craft tank.

One of them was known about because it had been photographed quite clearly shortly after the landing craft were put in place to serve as this breakwater. So that could be identified as LCT728, which was at D-Day. The second one, nobody was quite sure about. And of course, with the pandemic recently, it's very difficult to get into archives and try and identify paperwork that we can associate with these wrecks. But very fortunately, there was a memoir that I had acquired from a crew member who had served on that landing craft. And from his own correspondence post-war to find out what had happened to his vessel, he subsequently found out through the Normandy Veterans Association

that the second landing craft was LCT 940 or 940, which was also a D-Day veteran. And of course, I have the memoir of the person who served on it on D-Day. So although one of them had been identified, the second hadn't been conclusively identified. So it's brilliant to actually be able to put names to both of these vessels and the story as well of how they served on D-Day. I love the fact you found that. That was like an almost self-published,

a very, very small print run memoir that you found in a secondhand bookshop. Yeah, secondhand bookshops are the place to find these things. There's so many books that were published in the years after D-Day, but then also in the 90s as well that never had a big publishing deal.

They're very small, locally published, quite often just privately published as well. And many of them you'll struggle to find on the bigger websites that list books by publication. So it was a pure stroke of good luck, to be quite honest. And I've got quite a few memoirs that way that add detail to the story of D-Day and in particular of the embarkation.

So first of all, why were the two landing craft from D-Day used as a breakwater? I'm very grateful to Danny Lovell, another landing craft expert, who was able to advise me on this. They'd been part of a ferry service operating just after the war in Europe had ended, literally running across to France, picking up scrap metal from the war and then bringing it back to Poole where it was loaded onto trains and taken, I think, to Wales for melting down and using a scrap metal. And then two of them were sold to a local company, a boatyard, Jay Bolson and Sons, for the price of £90 each, which was a bit more money back then than it is now, of course. And then they were used as this breakwater or this key wall at the end of Pool Quay, just to provide this area of sheltered water behind them. They were still moored off Bolson's Yard in 1948, and then in a 1950 postcard, they are in place at the end of the Key Wall. So they went in at some point between those two years,

and were literally just used to create a breakwater. And it's a very efficient means of doing it. The landing craft, especially because they're both Mark IV, as I said, they were only ever built for cross-channel operations. They had a shelf life, and many landing craft tank Mark IV, even during Operation Neptune in June, July, August of 1944, they were breaking their backs in the English Channel because structurally they were quite weak. And in rough weather, they would very easily start to fall to pieces. So these Mark IV obviously didn't have much of a sea-going life ahead of them anymore. So they were ideal structures really to sink in shallow water to provide a

breakwater and that's how they were used. And now miraculously they're still there, still slightly serving that function. It's been reinforced a little bit but they're still providing a bit of shelter for that marina. Tell me a little bit about their D-Day experience itself. Where were they? LCT 728 was at Sword Beach. So she was in Force S3, which was actually the assault wave, so the first naval element of Force S to go in, and part of Group 10. So she landed about two hours after the initial landings or an hour and a half perhaps.

And she was carrying a mix of vehicles. So immediate follow-up vehicles for the assault waves, a couple of tanks and basically all of the reserve but immediately needed vehicles to support the infantry that are now starting to move inland. And she had a bit of a torrid time. She beached Queen Red Beach and then the first vehicle to go off her ramp then got stuck and blocked the ramp. So the landing craft had to back off and then move in and beach again. And then the vehicle start disembarking again. And then the second vehicle to come off then jams and blocks the exit. So she has to come off again.

Then she beached a third time, but they couldn't get any vehicles off because I think there was a big shell hole in front of them. So they unbeached again and went in a fourth time until they could finally get all of their vehicles off. Now, bear in mind that although immediate resistance on the beaches has now been overcome, there's still mortars and batteries inland that are targeting Sword Beaches. So there's shell fire falling all around them during this time and yet very efficiently the skipper, temporary lieutenant Balfry, Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, still was cool-headed enough to beach four times to get his load off before they could then unbeach and then return to the UK. How about the other one? So LCT 940, slightly frustratingly, although I have the memoir, he doesn't actually talk a huge amount about the

exact events of his initial landing in Normandy and this is actually something that I find in quite a few memoirs it was just one part of their war because of course they then spend the next three four months constantly shuttling back and forth across the English Channel and many of their more significant events in storms, for instance, or encounters with German S-boats come in those subsequent months. So he doesn't mention a huge amount about what happened, but he landed, or LCT 940, I should say, landed three hours after the initial landings on Juno Beach. So about 1030, 1045 on Nan White Beach in front of Bernier-sur-Mer. And again, was landing immediate follow-up vehicles. So she was carrying six Sherman tanks and two Stuart tanks and a couple of lorries and motorbikes. But she

then, along with 728, they spent a very long time then shuttling back and forth across the English Channel, dozens of trips in some cases for these landing craft for this vital build-up period. So we often think of landing craft as D-Day and then we forget what's happening immediately afterwards. Whilst there's this big fight in Normandy and the breakout and Operation Cobra and Goodwood and Fallet, all of that has to be supported by the Royal Navy who are bringing more and more troops across the English Channel. So D-Day wasn't the end of it for the landing craft crews. They literally went back to England, snatched a few hours sleep and then they load up again and then it starts all over again and the really satisfying thing about the timing of your discovery is that it comes hot on the heels of another landing craft

tank effectively the same kind of vessel which you've been integral in restoring and putting back on the seafront at South Sea as part of the D-Day Museum there so people can actually go and look at that LCT and get a really good sense of what these other ones would have looked like. Yes so 7074 was a Land and Craft Tank Mark III actually a slightly modified version so a Land and Craft Tank Mark III Star is her official classification to differentiate her from the previously built Mark III. She was specifically built for D-Day. So as part of the research I've been doing, it was Churchill who of course raises the specter of there aren't enough landing craft.

And so they look at ways of producing more. And one way to do it was to utilize American petrol engines instead of the normal diesel engines that you use in a landing craft. And it would appear that the best solution to using these engines was to resurrect the Mark III class rather than the Mark IV class. And so they built just over 70 additional landing craft from December to May 1944, some of them literally just getting into service just before D-Day.

And 707-4 was one of those. She was only launched at the start of April and she's only ready at the start of April, and she's only ready by the end of that month, and then has a couple of weeks for her brand new crew to shake her down, get her ready, and to practice themselves in beaching and loading and all of the skills that are necessary to work a landing craft before she then sails straight to Normandy, and then is employed for months afterwards in that build-up, operating from Southampton and then from Dover to supply the Netherlands and Belgium and France right through almost to the end of the war. And she survived by a bit of a fluke, really. She was

due to be converted into a repair vessel that would go out to the Far East. So she was taken to Liverpool to be refitted. The war ends before she can go out to the Far East, So she was taken to Liverpool to be refitted. The war ends before she can go out to the Far East. So she was purchased as a club ship for the Mersey Mariners Association, and then later on a nightclub. And it's not until less than 10 years ago, when the National Museum of the Royal Navy became involved, that she was saved and they were able to refloat her with funding from the National Memorial Fund, and then from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to restore her. And National Museum of the Royal Navy spent a couple of years making her back into the vessel that she was on D-Day itself. And I was very lucky to be involved in that as the archaeologist recording the changes made to the vessel itself and also doing the historical research.

vessel itself and also doing the historical research. And so my proudest part of that is the detail on the vessel, the yellow stripe around the bridge, the unusual numbers on the bow, which are all part of her D-Day appearance. These are all of the details that were in the special orders that were sent to her skipper, Lieutenant Baggett, telling him how to mark up his craft in preparation for D-Day. So she does genuinely look as she would have done on the 6th of June. We're a nation blessed with our historic fleet, and this LCT is just a wonderful new addition to it. So as I've said before, congratulations to you and the whole team. It's just fantastic. Go down and visit everyone. I guess the last question, we can't give that treatment to every historic ship, every D-Day survivor, sadly. I reluctantly have to admit that.

When you look at the two wrecks in Pool Harbour, still recognisably landing craft, what should we do with them? That's a very good question. It's not an easy one to answer. We are, as you say, blessed with lots of maritime heritage. We're blessed with lots of archaeological sites from all periods of history. But many of them are at risk from development, but also from natural processes. And as you say, we can't protect all of them. It's just a physical impossibility. The embarkation site at Leap, for instance, the coast there is rapidly eroding. We know that we

can't hold back the tide. And so in time, that site will be lost. It's just inevitable. It will hopefully be in the terms of tens of years. So in a hundred years, perhaps there'll be less of Leap, for instance. So all we can really hope to do is preserve by record. So record these sites as best as possible so that we have a thorough understanding of their condition and how they are now. The LCTs in Pool Harbour aren't recoverable. We have no hope of ever returning them to the same state as 7074 because there simply isn't enough fabric left of the vessels. They've been immersed in the water too long, so that metal is compromised and it can't ever be restored. So the best thing really for sites like that and other wrecks that litter

our foreshore is really to record them as much as possible in as much detail while we have the opportunity so that when they are lost either through development or the natural process we have that snapshot in time of them as they are now for future generations to better understand them it is a great shame that we can't preserve everything but the more that we can record them, the better. And when we do have other examples, so we have 7074, so we do at least have an example of this type of vessel. And that helps. That makes it easier to accept the loss of these other examples.

It's very unfortunate, as you say, and I'd like to be able to say we can save all of them, but we just can't. Sometimes it's just natural that it will degrade. That metal is too far gone to actually be able to save now. So we have to reluctantly accept that and do the best we can to research and interpret these sites and record them so that moving forward, they're not totally forgotten. Well, I think often TV is a bit insubstantial, but it was a great privilege

making this programme with you because we did, we droned every inch of those wrecks, we filmed them close up, we recorded you talking about them on that location, and we're going to submit that TV programme to the archives. And that has become part of that process, hopefully. So in 200 years time, people can look back and get that snapshot of what it was like in 2021 so it feels for once like we're doing something that might have a little bit of impact and legacy as well so thank you so much for coming on the podcast and taking me on this adventure which people can obviously watch at historyhit.tv well thank you for having me it's a great pleasure to

do it and like you say it's vital that these stories are put out there so that people are more aware of them so by publicizing the details and the stories of wrecks like these so that people are more aware of them, then people will show more interest and it makes it easier to do our jobs if there's a more willing public to absorb that information. So thank you. Well, Stephen, I'm looking forward to our next adventure. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Thank you. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders.

All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs. Thank you. snoring forms, but anyone who's awake, it would be great if you could do me a quick favour, head over to wherever you get your podcasts and rate it five stars and then leave a nice glowing review. It makes a huge difference for some reason to how these podcasts do. Madness, I know, but them's the rules. Then we go further up the charts, more people listen to us and everything will be awesome. So thank you so much. Now sleep well. Now sleep well. Sonny. You'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca.