In Extremis - Stories from the Edge of History

On the night of September 26th, 1983, Stanislav Petrov stood alone in a Soviet bunker outside Moscow while every alarm in the building screamed that America had launched its missiles. He didn't make the call. This is the second and final part of the story of the man who may have saved human civilisation.. and was punished for it. In this episode: What was the Perimeter system — and why did the...

Shortly after midnight on the 27th of September 1983, a forty-four-year-old Soviet military officer named Stanislav Petrov was sitting in a reclining chair in a bunker eighty miles south of Moscow when his early warning system told him that the United States had launched a nuclear missile at the Soviet Union. He had minutes to decide whether to believe it. This is the first of a two-part episode o...

This is the final episode of the Heroine of Singapore arc. It begins with Elizabeth Choy sliding under the bars of her cell for the last time — certain she is being taken to Johor to be beheaded. Instead, a guard hands her her handbag and tells her she can go. After 193 days of imprisonment, beatings, starvation, and electrocution, the Kempeitai concluded that Elizabeth Choy was just trying to hel...

A warning before we start — this episode contains detailed descriptions of torture and extreme physical and psychological violence. Probably not one to have on in the car with the kids. Research for this episode comes from my book Survival in Singapore. Summary By the time this episode begins, Sumida Haruzo's investigation has been running for months. Dozens of British internees have been arrested...

When the 1,600 tonne coastal steamer Giang Bee was intercepted by Japanese destroyers 50 nautical miles off the coast of Sumatra, Robert Heatlie Scott did something extraordinary. He climbed into a 13-foot harbour dinghy and rowed toward a warship to negotiate surrender. It didn't work. It was never going to work. In this episode, we follow Scott's improbable journey from that dinghy back to Singa...

A warning to listeners: this episode contains detailed descriptions of torture and imprisonment. It is not suitable for children. When Elizabeth Choy arrived at the YMCA building in Japanese-occupied Singapore, she believed she was being taken to see her husband. She was not. She was being arrested. Part Two of The Heroine of Singapore begins inside the Kempeitai's detention centre. The converted...

The Heroine of Singapore — Part One On the morning of September 27, 1943, Major Sumida Haruzo of the Japanese Kempei Tai was woken by explosions in Singapore Harbour. As the day lengthened and reconnaissance aircraft found nothing — no Allied submarines, no enemy vessels — Sumida arrived at a conclusion that would have catastrophic consequences for the civilian population of occupied Singapore. Th...

In the final episode of the Jaywick arc of Britain's Greatest Soldier , Major Ivan Lyon and 13 other operatives move to the execution phase of the most audacious commando raid of the Pacific war. After a tense passage through the Lombok Strait, with Lyon's hand on the detonator that would obliterate the Krait if Japanese capture became inevitable, the men sail acros the Java Sea to the Ria...

In November 1943, an Australian merchant mariner steps off an American submarine alone, and rows for the shoreline of an island held by the Japanese. He is at least 50. He has no support. Within three days, he has been betrayed and captured. Within nine months, he is dead — but not before showing his executioners what a man can endure. This is the story of Bill Reynolds' last mission, and of what...

Eighteen men. One vessel. And an ocean that offered no second chances. In Part Two of Britain’s Greatest Soldier , Ivan Lyon takes command of a 25-tonne Sumatran prahu — a vessel with no keel, threadbare sails, and a dangerous tendency to roll under pressure. It is top-heavy, temperamental, and wholly unsuited to the journey ahead. And yet, either they sail or they will be captured by the Japanese...

Long before Ivan Lyon led one of the most daring raids of the Second World War, he carried the weight of a family steeped in duty, service, and legend, from Flodden to the Western Front. Raised on those expectations, Lyon became an at times solitary, but always driven, child who was drawn to extremes. A sailor, an endurance athlete, a man more comfortable at the edge than in the centre. In this ep...

After nearly two months stranded behind enemy lines on Japanese-occupied Timor, Bryan Rofe and his party of Australian airmen face their most desperate moment. A submarine has attempted a rescue, but the rendezvous has been missed. Now, with four men dead, supplies exhausted and illness spreading, time is running out. Worse still, the Japanese have dispatched a force of 300 soldiers to hunt them d...

The escape has already begun to unravel. The flying boat meant to lift the stranded Australians from Timor is destoryed during the Broome air raid. What was meant to be a clean extraction turns, in an instant, into a nightmare as the men begin to succumb to illness and starvation. In desperation, a new plan is set in motion. The submarine USS Searaven is dispatched into hostile waters. But her cap...

A young RAAF flight lieutenant is thrust into command when 28 Australian airmen are stranded on Japanese-occupied Timor in 1942. Cut off, outnumbered, and hunted, he must lead with limited supplies and no clear rescue. The episode explores leadership under pressure, fragile morale, and the thin line between discipline and survival as the group navigates danger, uncertainty, and the realities of wa...