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The Most Dramatic Aerial Attacks That Changed Military History

Khalid Elhassan January 31, 2023 35 min

An Air Raid to Free Resistance Fighters from a Gestapo Prison

Raid - The Amiens prison — The Amiens prison. British Pathe

In 1943, the Gestapo rounded up many members of the French Resistance in northern France and held them in the Amiens prison. Word leaked that the Germans planned to liquidate their captives, starting with a mass execution of over 100 Resistance and political prisoners on February 19^th, 1944. A precision air raid 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.

To find the prison was easy. It was a conspicuous structure with high walls, in an open area along the long and straight Albert-Amiens road. The difficulty, in pre-smart bomb days, was how to drop bombs to blast the outer walls and kill many guards, yet not destroy the prison and kill too many inmates. It was accepted that some or many prisoners would die in the strike. However, it was reasoned that they were slated for execution anyhow, and the risk of death in a breakout attempt was better odds 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.