Operation Crossbow
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Operation Crossbow refers to a British project in World War II to destroy a German secret weapons project.
In June, 1942, Germany began working on a new secret weapon. It was originally called the Waterfall Rocket (A-4) but was also called Vergeltung (Retribution) as it was built in response to the mass bombing of urban areas in Germany.
British intelligence first became aware of this new weapon when on 22nd August, 1942, a Danish naval officer discovered an early test version that had crash landed on a small island between Germany and Sweden. The officer sent a photograph and a detailed sketch of the bomb to Britain and preparations began to deal with this new weapon that had the potential to win the war for Germany.
With the help of spies and the resistance movement in Germany, British Military Intelligence eventually discovered that the rockets were being built at Peenemünde and in May, 1943, Winston Churchill ordered Operation Crossbow, a plan to destroy rocket production and launch sites. Over the next few months Arthur Harris, head of RAF Bomber Command, aranged for 36,000 tons of bombs to be dropped on these targets.
By February 1944 the Royal Air Force had badly damaged the Peenemünde armaments factory and successfully destroyed 73 out of the 96 launch sites built by the Germans for the V-1 Flying Bomb and the V-2 rocket.
The 1965 spy thriller movie Operation Crossbow is a fictionalized account of the real-life Operation Crossbow, although with very marginal historical accuracy.
"The U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II, Preemptive Defense, Allied Air Power Versus Hitler’s V-Weapons, 1943–1945", Adam L. Gruen, http://www.usaaf.net/ww2/preemptivedefense/index.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWcrossbow.htm
