- Title: Secret History: The Tragedy Of Hms Glorious
- Date: 30th June 1997
- Summary: The programme tells the story of the sinking on 8th June,1940 of the air- craft carrier HMS Glorious and her two escort destroyers off the coast of Norway by the two German battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Over 1,500 seamen lost their lives. Some 900 had taken to the lifeboats but no one came to their rescue and only 41 survived. Such was the scale of the catastrophe that there was an immediate cover up. The Admiralty's Court of Inquiry report is stamped `Closed until 2041'. The film reveals how the Admiralty received repeated warnings from British Intelligence that a German battlefleet was putting to sea but failed to alert their own ships; how Glorious was allowed to ignore the Admiralty's own instructions about the escort required for a carrier and sail straight into the path of the German ships; how Glorious might have saved herself had the captain taken elementary surveillance precautions; and how a message from Glorious was picked up by a British cruiser close to the action but was apparently ignored,leaving the men to die. Survivors from the sinking recall the events.
- Description:THE LOSS OF THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER HMS GLORIOUS IS ONE OF THE GREAT MYSTERIES OF WORLD WAR TWO.
- Broadcaster:Channel 4
- Collection: Channel 4
- Genre:Documentary and Factual
- Producer:Unspecified
- Programme Episode:Episode 1
- Transmission Date:30/06/1997
- Rights:On Request
- Decade: 1990s