From 13 June 1944, London was enduring deadly V-2 missile attacks, and there was an urgent need for as much intelligence on these new and terrifying weapons as possible. England had already experienced sustained terror bombing by the earlier V-1 rockets. Approximately 10,000 of these were fired towards the country, of which 2,419 reached London, killing over 6,000 people and injuring nearly 18,000. The British developed countermeasures to the V-1, utilising antiaircraft guns, barrage balloons and fighter plane interceptors. But the V-2 was different: it couldn’t be intercepted or shot down because it arrived at its designated target so fast that no warning could be given.
Meanwhile, the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) had managed to recover an unexploded V-2 rocket, and sent it to Warsaw for analysis. There, it was decided that the rocket and vital information should be delivered to the Allies in London. An ambitious and daring plan was quickly developed, but it would run into a number of unexpected difficulties. Operation Most III (British cryptonym, Wildhorn III) was the most famous of a series of missions organised by the VI (Special) Department of the Polish Commander-inChief’s Staff in co-operation with the Special Operations Executive (SOE). These involved flights to and from occupied Poland, bringing intelligence, agents, equipment and Home Army field commanders to London for meetings with the Polish Government in Exile.
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Denne historien er fra Issue 121-utgaven av History of War.
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NAUMACHIA TRUTH BEHIND ROME'S GLADIATOR SEA BATTLES
In their quest for evermore novel and bloody entertainment, the Romans staged enormous naval fights on artificial lakes
OPERATION MANNA
In late April 1945, millions of Dutch civilians were starving as Nazi retribution for the failed Operation Market Garden cut off supplies. eet as In response, Allied bombers launched a risky mission to air-drop food
GASSING HITLER
Just a month before the end of WWI, the future Fuhrer was blinded by a British shell and invalided away from the frontline. Over a century later, has the artillery brigade that launched the fateful attack finally been identified?
SALAMANCA
After years of largely defensive campaigning, Lieutenant General Arthur Wellesley went on the offensive against a French invasion of Andalusia
HUMBERT 'ROCKY'VERSACE
Early in the Vietnam War, a dedicated US Special Forces officer defied his merciless Viet Cong captors and inspired his fellow POWs to survive
LEYTE 1944 SINKING THE RISING SUN
One of the more difficult island campaigns in WWII's Pacific Theatre saw a brutal months-long fight that exhausted Japan’s military strength
MAD DAWN
How technology transformed strategic thinking and military doctrine from the Cold War to the current day
BRUSHES WITH ARMAGEDDON
Humanity came close to self-annihilation with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Broken Arrows’ and other nuclear near misses
THE DEADLY RACE
How the road to peace led to an arms contest between the USA and USSR, with prototypes, proliferation and the world’s biggest bomb
THE MANHATTAN PROJECT
Einstein, Oppenheimer and the race to beat Hitler to the bomb. How a science project in the desert helped win a war