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Highlights during WWII and Other Lesser Known Historical Facts

Khalid Elhassan April 27, 2020 34 min

Junkers Ju 88 - Aviation — A Junkers Ju 88. World Warbird News

21. Springing Imprisoned Resistance Fighters With Precision Bombing

The Gestapo rounded up many members of the French Resistance in northern France in 1943, and locked them up in the Amiens Prison. In early 1944, word got out that the Germans planned to liquidate their prisoners, starting with a mass execution of over 100 prisoners on February 19^th, 1944. A precision airstrike to breach the prison’s walls and allow the inmates an opportunity for a mass jailbreak was requested. Accordingly, the RAF’s Second Tactical Air Force drew up plans for Operation Jericho.

Finding the prison was easy: it was a conspicuous building with high walls in an open area by the long and straight Albert-Amiens road. The difficulty, in pre-smart bomb days, was in dropping bombs to blast the outer walls and kill many guards, without destroying the prison and killing too many prisoners. Planners realized that some or many prisoners would die in the bombing. However, they were marked for execution anyhow: possible death in a breakout attempt was better than the certainty of execution.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.