D-Day gets the Hollywood treatment, but by the size of the landing zone and the number of divisions put ashore on the first day, the largest amphibious assault of World War II was Operation Husky, the July 1943 invasion of Sicily. This episode unpacks the 38-day campaign that reopened the Mediterranean to Allied shipping, triggered the fall of Mussolini, and pulled German divisions away from the Eastern Front before Kursk.

We cover the strategic logic hammered out at Casablanca, the Operation Mincemeat deception that sent Rommel to Greece, and the obliteration of Pantelleria from the air. Then we get into the clash between Montgomery and Patton over concentrated versus dispersed landings, the DUKW amphibious truck that made supplying an army over open beaches possible, the gale that scattered paratroopers but caught Italian coastal defender ...