Operations

An unprecedented joint campaign of both the RAF and US Air Force – fighters, bombers, transport and coastal operations - provided the aerial fire power and protection for naval and land forces to ensure the success of the D-Day landings and subsequent liberation of Western Europe.

The story of a remarkable decoy operation, flown in support of the D-Day landings, simulating an invasion fleet on German radar screens, intended to convince the enemy that the expected invasion would take place away from Normandy. Amongst the pilots was our own Les Munro.

In the weeks before D-Day, the RAF prepared for the landing of ground forces in France. New Zealand Bomber Command aircrew were among the many attacking strategic targets such as railway lines, military bases and the coastal defences ahead of the greatest invasion force ever assembled.

It is difficult to comprehend the challenging conditions aircrew faced in winter operations during WWII. Thursday 16th December 1943 became RAF Bomber Command’s ‘Black Thursday’ when almost three hundred airmen lost their lives in one night, half of them the victims of cruel British winter weather rather than enemy action.

Intelligence reports had identified that a ground-breaking German rocket weapon programme was centred in Peenemunde on the Baltic Coast. Here development of the prototype V-2 rocket was underway. Operation Hydra was tasked with attacking the rocket research centre to delay development of this new threat to Britain.

The third of Bomber Command’s three strategic campaigns of 1943 targeted Berlin – ‘The Big City”. At crew briefing, when the curtain covering a map of Europe was pulled aside to reveal the plan for that night was an attack on the German capital, more than the usual sense of anxiety swept over the assembled airmen.