Operation Crossbow - Strategic Bombing

Strategic Bombing

For a list of bombing targets, see the Operation Crossbow navigation box (below).

In May 1943 Allied surveillance observed the construction of the first of 11 large sites in northern France for secret German weapons, including six for the V-2 rocket. In November it discovered the first of 96 "ski sites" for the V-1 flying bomb. Officials debated the extent of the German weapons' danger; some viewed the sites as decoys to divert Allied bombers, while others feared chemical or biological warheads. When reconnaissance and intelligence information regarding the V-2 became convincing, the War Cabinet Defence Committee (Operations) directed the campaign's first planned1 raid (the Operation Hydra attack of Peenemünde in August 1943). Following Operation Hydra, a few Crossbow attacks were conducted on the "Heavy Crossbow" bunkers of Watten (V-2) and Mimoyecques (V-3) through November. "CROSSBOW Operations Against Ski Sites" began on December 5 with the NOBALL code name used for the targets (e.g., 'Noball 27' was the Ailly-le-Vieux-Clocher site, 'Noball No. 93' was in the Cherbourg area, 'Noball No. 107' was at Grand Parc, and 'noball' V1 site No.147 was at Ligescourt). ). The US formed its own Crossbow Committee under General Stephen Henry (New Developments Division) on December 29, 1943, and the US subsequently developed bombing techniques for ski sites in February/March 1944 at the Air Corps Proving Ground (a June plan to attack V-1 launch sites from aircraft carriers with USMC fighters was disapproved). V-2 facilities were also bombed in 1944, including smaller facilities such as V-2 storage depots and liquid oxygen plants, such as the Mery-sur-Oise V-2 storage depot on August 4, 1944 and, by the Eighth Air Force, which bombed 5 cryogenic LOX plants in Belgium on August 25, 1944 and aborted the next day "to hit liquid oxygen plants at La Louviere, Torte and Willebroeck, Belgium...due to clouds."